The False Admiral by Sean Danker Page B

Nils reported. “We can just boost it a little. It’s not bad.”
    â€œWe should’ve brought surface gear,” Deilani said, looking up from the black ground. She knelt, running her gloved palm over the peculiar mineral. “It’s irresponsible to just walk around out here like this. This stuff could eat through an EV for all we know. There’s no sampling, no workup on this. What if this is acidic, or it reacts to synthetics?”
    â€œThen we’re in trouble. But we’re not here to survey the place. Visibility’s about three, maybe four meters. Watch your feet. Private, are you getting anything?”
    â€œNo, Admiral.”
    â€œGood. Keep it that way.”
    â€œYes, Admiral.”
    Because of the limited visibility, it was difficult to see just how massive the freighter was, or even its true shape. I knew it was just a very long box, but being unable to see its form in the mist made it seem bigger. The vessel was half a kilometer long, far from thelargest ship out there—but still substantial enough to look impressive. It loomed over us like a mountain.
    Not all Ganraen ships were this uninviting. The ones I was used to certainly weren’t, though the Commonwealth had a long way to go if it wanted to catch up to Evagard.
    I led the trainees underneath the landers, making for the main airlocks. The outside of the ship was no more attractive than the inside. When it was new, the freighter had probably been a light gray. That had been a long time ago. Now it was covered in burns and corrosion, its uneven surfaces reduced to a mottled brown and black.
    If there were clues about Tremma’s sojourn on the surface, this was where we’d find them. Overhead, the bottom of the freighter looked badly neglected. Where the battered and blackened metal wasn’t openly burned, it was chipped, dented, and pitted. This ship had not had an easy life.
    I could see the trainees looking up at the plasma burns, and other indications that Tremma’s old tub had taken more eventful trails than the average cargo freighter. Deilani had already seen the weapons being stored in containers that were, by Salmagard’s own word, not intended for ordnance. The damage was done. Not that it mattered. Captain Tremma was dead.
    I doubted the old freighter would ever leave this world.
    I occasionally lost sight of the trainees in the mist; it was particularly dark beneath the ship.
    â€œWait a minute,” Deilani said. I looked around but didn’t see her.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œMineral formation. Have a look.”
    I spotted someone’s light and followed it. The formation wasnothing more than a thick spike of rock about a meter high. A short distance away was another, this one half as tall.
    â€œYou’re right,” I said. “That is unusual.” It stood to reason that Deilani would find this interesting, but I didn’t. We needed to find out what Tremma’d been up to with those explosives so we could get back inside, back to conserving our suit energy and oxygen. We didn’t have time to be explorers.
    â€œIt’s brittle,” she added.
    â€œDon’t break other people’s planets.”
    â€œShut up.”
    I’d have thought of a retort, but I’d almost fallen over an abandoned grav cart. “Guys, on me.”
    Deilani hurried over and put her gloved hand on the cart’s handle. “They left this out here?”
    â€œThey must have used it to move the 14-14.” I pointed. “That way.” The cart had left a clear trail in the thin shale covering the ground. We followed it until we hit a wall of crumbled stone scattered beneath the lip of the freighter’s lower buffers, and even piled up against the hull—farther than we could see through the mist. It was as though there’d been an avalanche of the stuff.
    Deilani was at a loss. So was I.
    The trail led on, skirting a steep hill. I wanted