Free The Death of Integrity by Guy Haley

said Caedis. ‘Quickly. Your prolixity tires me.’
    ‘No doubt you both have noticed an amount of radiation emanating from the hulk itself. The stellar environment here is turbulent, and our nearness to the star Jorso does not aid our cause one iota.’
    ‘Aye, we are not fools, Explorator,’ said Caedis.
    Galt broke in, seeking to head off Caedis’s building irritation. ‘Our ship communications and deep scans are much affected,’ he said. ‘We are aware, magos.’
    ‘Then you are also probably aware that the youthful violence of Jorso is not the sole cause of your difficulty.’
    The hulk grew in size until it filled the whole of the room. The long spines of a primeval spacecraft brushed past Galt’s face, so close he could see how much the hard hand of time had plucked at its surface. The hulk’s opacity lessened, the outer shell became near-transparent, uncovering a nightmarish warren of corridors, chambers, and caverns within. This was revealed in far greater clarity than Novum in Honourum ’s own augur suite could manage. Nevertheless, much of the interior was blank. At the hearts of these dark spots on the map, pict representations of power sources could be seen, picked out in livid purple.
    ‘Within the hulk are an unusual number of active power sources. The warp engines and reactors of countless ships, that so many are still active doubtless makes our undertaking harder. Much of the hulk is flooded with radioactivity surpassing the sigma ten level. Deadly. But it is also a promising sign.’
    The twinned voices of Clastrin rang out, and there was excitement in them. ‘Any datacores may still be not only part-viable, but functioning. Active, not dead, supported by the reactors. More data could thus be present, perhaps all data. A full template database?’
    ‘Exactly, oh son of Mars. As I said, I believe there are several ships of unsurpassed vintage contained in this agglomeration. By my reckoning, at least three of these are active. It is not beyond the bounds of hope that a full Standard Construct Database might be present. Think of it!’
    Silence descended onto the room. This was the grail of the tech-priests of Mars, the condensed knowledge of the Dark Age of Technology.
    ‘However, it does present us with difficulty, even for our machineries,’ continued Plosk. ‘So many overlapping power signatures in such a vast object make accurate mapping difficult.’
    ‘‘To go into battle not knowing of the enemy’s disposition is folly,’’ quoted Galt.
    ‘Just so.’
    ‘Curse your endless circumlocution, magos. What will you tell us?’ snapped Caedis.
    ‘There is a way around our particular problem, a manner of mapping that is foolproof and simple.’
    Red dots appeared at a dozen places around the hulk.
    ‘A seismic map?’ said Clastrin.
    ‘If we were to plant explosive modules upon the skin of the hulk, then we could build an accurate representation of the agglomeration, accurate to within eighty per cent, I would say.’
    ‘The other twenty per cent?’ said Galt.
    The magos spread his hands and made an apologetic face. ‘Seismic mapping is a mathematical exercise, lord captain. Our devices are made aware of what shape and size things are by how quickly waves of force move through materials. Often, we have enough data for our savants and cogitators to unpick the signals and create an accurate map. It is all done by inference, you understand. But certain substances generate unusual signals. Unknown alloys, for example, or liquids of peculiar density, or anything of abnormal atomic structure might throw off our findings, lord captain. There is always a degree of guesswork in our craft. Science is an art.’
    ‘Very well, go to it then,’ said Caedis. ‘Why not simply proceed?’
    ‘The sensors operate by measuring the rapid passage of vibrations through the fabric of the gathered mass. By calculating their rapidity, how they slow and accelerate, we can discern what is stone, what is