My scout drones encountered a closed safety hatch into the main engineering module section. This was a good sign: if the targetDrones had been circulating through here, it would have been open. I reached it and hit the manual release. As soon as the hatch started to slide upward I sent my drone cloud under the gap, directing it to spread out into the corridor ahead. No lost contacts, and their cameras and scans detected no movement. So far so good, though I was picking up a vibration just on the edge of my perceptible range. Maybe it was normal? I hadn’t spent any time here when I’d traveled with ART before.

My drone cloud didn’t encounter any targetDrones as it followed the circular corridor around to the engine control access, which was a relief. The last thing I needed was to be whacked into an involuntary restart again. Figuring out a countermeasure for the stealth material on the targetDrones and on the Targets’ helmets was on the long list of stuff I needed to do so we could survive. But none of the things on the list would matter much if the targetControlSystem had sent us into the wormhole with no destination.

I’d seen shows about humans and augmented humans trapped in wormholes indefinitely. They ranged from bleakly depressing (due to an excess of realism) to highly unlikely (due to an excess of optimism). At least the humans in the shows knew they were on a potentially endless trip, and not just a long one.

I hadn’t seen any sign of damage or disturbance up to this point, but then I came around the curve into a foyer where quiescent display surfaces floated along the walls above specialized control interfaces. The weird thing was that the stations were active, though in standby mode, and not shut down. Even I knew you didn’t mess with the engines while they were actually making the transport go. These stations would be for fine-tuning or altering or something, which should only be done while the transport was in dock.

Also, one station chair was twisted around to face the entrance, and near it one of ART’s repair drones lay smashed on the deck. My drones are tiny intel drones, but most of ART’s were larger, with multiple arms and physical interfaces so they could perform maintenance and other specialized tasks. This drone had six of its spidery arms deployed when something had knocked it out of the air, and it was splayed and flattened to the deck like something had stepped on it.

I wanted to pick it up and have an emotion over it like a stupid human. But I smelled growth medium again.

Amena said, This is such a different set-up from the ships I’ve seen. Can you look for a display somewhere with—

Oh, I had a bad feeling about this. I followed the smell. It led me through the next hatch and down a short gravity well where blinking caution markers floated in the air. (The gist was that various component manufactories and shipwrights and the University of Mihira and New Tideland did not want you to come down here without a Class Master Engineering License or Local Jurisdictional Equivalent and if you felt you just had to then really don’t fucking touch anything.) Amena had stopped talking, and her assigned drone camera showed her squinting in concentration as she watched the scene through my eyes.