Chapter 4

The corpse appeared to be about 60 years old. His hair and beard were long, unkept and wild. his body had a glassy, even crystalyne look.

Jimi continued his scan of the room. While cluttered, he could see the attempt at organization. He also noted the control bank. It had obviously been scavanged from the shuttle outside.

Walking up to the corpse, Jimi noted the PDA clutched in his hand. Jimi didn’t see any signs of violence on the corpse. But then again he wasn’t a medic, so what did he know.

Inspecting the rest of the habitat, he found that all the systems were dead. The batterys were completely dead. Even the environmental systems clock was out. This was surprising. That battery was a low draw, isolated system. It was supposed to run 20 years without a charge.

While looking over the communications station, Jimi’s environmental alarm sounded. His battery and air were at 15 minutes. Jimi started gathering all of the data discs he could. On his way out, he stopped and looked at the corpse. On impulse, he pryed the PDA from its hand.

Stopping at his scout, he put the disc’s and PDA in the cargo lock, and then cycled into his ship. After getting into his command chair, rather than bring up the atmosphere, he jacked into ships power and air. His next step was lifting and setting up a tight compass point orbit. He programmed in a blaze launch to set his claim markers.

After lifting, Jimi kept an eye on his nav display. At the same time, he started bringing his cargo lock up to temperature. Once the nav program run had ended, Jimi set course back onto his sweep.

When his cabin air was up to pressure, he cracked his helmet and checked the cargo lock. It had another 10 minutes, so Jimi took the time to update his log and sent his claim confirmation to ‘Sutter’s Mill’. Checking his course, he noted another hour to the next roid.

By this time, the cargo lock was up to temp. Cycling everything in, he started looking it over. The data discs were old, real old. Jimi didn’t have the equipment to read them on board. But he knew where to get help on the ship.

The PDA, however had a universal port that he could access. Jacking it into his computer, Jimi looked at the directory.