Colonial Space: The Ship's Cat

Title: The Ship's Cat

Location: Graveworld, IC-106, Blood Nebula Periphery

Hiroki Huron checked the environmental suit controls and descended the loading ramp of the Brighton Class Freighter ahead of her Freight Handler Bot.
Perhaps a hundred metres distant rested a near identical Brighton Class Freighter, its landing gear collapsed, and its crumpled nose jammed into the foam steel landscape that covered the planetary surface. Her suit sensors alerted her to a radiation source beyond the downed ship.
"Miko!" Hiroki addressed her Bot getting its attention. "Go and check the shipyard for the source of the Radiation leak."
"Yes Captain Huron." The bot continued past the freighter wreckage leaving Hiroki to examine her prize.

The Brighton Class freighter was, like all of its kind, a rare piece of history made of an unduplicatable foamed ceramic that weighed ten tons empty. The freighter's loading ramp at the forward end was jammed but the airlock was open and exposed to the elements. Hiroki climbed using the accessible exterior hand and foot holds reaching the top of the ship. From here she could see her MIKO scaling the exterior of distant shipyard to a gantry near the top of the building.
"Captain, I have reached an access gantry," Hiroki observed the MIKO on the Gantry. "I am next to a large hole in the structure from which the HP gantry protrudes."
"I see you Miko." Hiroki continued along the hull of the Freighter towards the airlock. "Can you affect entry?"
"The facility reactor has ejected its long-pile core on the HP gantry." The MIKO examined the interior. "...the interor of the reactor will be accessible."
"Survey the Interior of the Reactor." Above the Airlock, Hiroki locked in her suit winch cable. "See if it can be salvaged."
"Yes Captain." MIKO began to climb into the Reactor. "Entering now."

Hiroki leaned over the edge of the freighter and descended to the opening. The whine of the carbon fiber rope only ended when Hiroki achieved a good footing in the Airlock and walked carefully toward to the inner hatch. The access key electronics were dead, but someone had left a hand crank on its bolt and Hiroki applied some excess force from the powered exoskeleton of her environmental suit forcing the interior hatch open.
The suit sensors analyzing the interior atmosphere registered the traces of biological molecules associated with the presence of a corpse that had long decayed. Hiroki moved slowly from area to area expecting the sight of a long forgotten corpse of one of the ancient ship's crew.
There, mashed into the ship's computer core with catastropic force only accessible to someone wearing a powered exoskeleton was the recently burned and rotted remains of a Cat. It was dead no more than a month. Something unexpected considering the centuries this ship had been here.
A familiar vibration echoed through the freighter structure and Hiroki forced her way into the flight deck.
"Fuck!" Captain Hiroki Huron watched from the flight deck of the dead freighter as her own ship, its launch systems activated, lifting skyward. "Fuck!"
Hiroki sat back in the pilot's chair and stared up at the gigantic Habitation tower and then down at the Spaceport and the haze of shadowy structures beyond them before staring at the dismantled Reactor and generator that sat at their base.
"Miko?" Hiroki was in trouble. "Are you recieving me?"
"Yes Captain..." MIKO waded through a sea of glowing green organisms that was most certainly radioactive. "...I am recieving you."
"What is your assessment of the Shipyard?" Hiroki looked toward the shipyard. "Can we reactivate the Reactor?"
"I have reached the reactor chamber." MIKO scanned the glowing chamber. "Substantial Moisture has accumulated in the chamber over the millennia."
"This has in combination with radiation resulted in the growth of an ecosystem." MIKO examined the organic material floating on the water. "The radiation seems to be confined to the biological organisms."
"Piezoelectric reactor cores only give off tachyons." MIKO looked through a reactor control room observation window. The room was clean. "I am uncertain as to the cause of the radiation or the ejection of the HP gantry and its long-pile reactor core at this time."

"The Rads are probably environmental." Hiroki extracated herself from the pilot's chair and looked out at where her freighter had been sitting and turned and headed for the cargo section. "Bring it on line if you can."

The Cargo bay was dominated by fuel pods, three of them at the front of the ship sat empty. The crumpled front had cracked the ceramic foam hull and light spilled in from the outside and It certainly wouldnt hold an atmosphere ever again.
Hiroki isolated the empty tanks and located the manual ratchet lock for the boarding ramp. There she inserted to ratchet bar and turned the lock against its objections. The scream of metal struts and foamed ceramic forced apart by a powered exoskeleton ended with the rear of the freighter collapsing onto its landing gear and the loading ramp deployed fully open. They were level. With the shipyard operational they might even make the freighter fly.

Hiroki thought about the cat mashed into the ship computer with the force of a powered exoskeleton. Whoever did that was a viscious Bastard.