Morning Song: A Seeders Universe Novel by Dean Wesley Smith Page A
Authors: Dean Wesley Smith
Tags: Fiction
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work.”
Roscoe could tell she was clearly back to being excited, and since the history of Seeders was her passion and life’s work, he could certainly understand that.
His passion was to keep everyone safe. And he needed to know what was inside this monster old ship to even begin to do that.
And secondly, he needed to keep them all focused on one task: Stopping this ship before it killed millions of others on defenseless planets.
THIRTEEN
THE NEXT THREE hours went by quickly, too fast, as far as Maria was concerned. The former exercise room turned second scanning room was long and fairly narrow. Fisher had set up ten stations down one wall. The other walls were covered in art and some of the exercise equipment had been pushed together in a back corner.
The floor was covered in a comfortable mat-like substance that felt soft and warm to her feet. It was a comfortable place to work, but she wouldn’t have cared. She could have done this work standing in a closet and she wouldn’t have cared.
The scans they were getting of the big ship were amazing.
It had become clear after the first hour that there was no one alive here, even though the ship had been designed for millions of humans to live comfortably for very long periods of time.
And she had a hunch that was a very, very low guess as to the number this ship could actually hold. She just couldn’t imagine a ship holding more, so her brain stopped her there.
All of the scans from the three areas of the ship, the main scanning room, the control room, and this room, were being fed into a central image and slowly in that three-dimensional image, pieces of the ship were coming together.
Part of this ship was nothing more than a huge city, plain and simple, with housing that went from small apartments to five bedroom suites. It had what looked like schools, shopping, large areas that would be parks when planted, and so on.
The ship also carried a good five hundred other huge ships on one landing deck. All those ships were also empty of human life, but designed to hold thousands of humans per ship comfortably.
In fact, each ship was bigger than Chairman’s Ray’s ship, one of the biggest the Seeders had working right now in any of the Local Sector galaxies.
The big ship was also riddled with massive warehouse rooms stacked full of who knew what. Every warehouse looked completely untouched and her scans could not seem to tell what was in any of them. They were just too far away.
And from what she could tell, there were thousands of science labs and other areas for unknown reasons. Offices and work areas she guessed.
Roscoe was at the screen beside her, his rifle over his shoulder. She noticed he was amazingly good at running scans and comfortable on the heads-up board. He seemed to be focused on different areas of the ship than she was.
She liked having him that close and had stopped herself from excitedly showing him something at two different points. It seemed she just wanted to share things with him.
She had always been a loner by nature. This kind of desire to share and be close to another person was different for her and she honestly liked it more than she ever thought she would. And she had no idea why he was bringing that out in her. No other man she had known ever had.
Roscoe’s second-in-command, Jonas, had focused his scanning on the Command Center for the big ship.
After three hours, Fisher came in and motioned for her and Roscoe to come talk with him in the kitchen again.
“We’re going to need to feed people pretty soon,” Fisher said as he entered the kitchen and took a container of water from the fridge and sat down. “We’ve set up a room as a dining hall and we have a meal already prepared and ready to just heat and serve when we call dinner. After this first meal, we’re going to need to do more cooking.”
Maria nodded, sitting down at the table across from Fisher again. Roscoe once again stayed standing
Roscoe could tell she was clearly back to being excited, and since the history of Seeders was her passion and life’s work, he could certainly understand that.
His passion was to keep everyone safe. And he needed to know what was inside this monster old ship to even begin to do that.
And secondly, he needed to keep them all focused on one task: Stopping this ship before it killed millions of others on defenseless planets.
THIRTEEN
THE NEXT THREE hours went by quickly, too fast, as far as Maria was concerned. The former exercise room turned second scanning room was long and fairly narrow. Fisher had set up ten stations down one wall. The other walls were covered in art and some of the exercise equipment had been pushed together in a back corner.
The floor was covered in a comfortable mat-like substance that felt soft and warm to her feet. It was a comfortable place to work, but she wouldn’t have cared. She could have done this work standing in a closet and she wouldn’t have cared.
The scans they were getting of the big ship were amazing.
It had become clear after the first hour that there was no one alive here, even though the ship had been designed for millions of humans to live comfortably for very long periods of time.
And she had a hunch that was a very, very low guess as to the number this ship could actually hold. She just couldn’t imagine a ship holding more, so her brain stopped her there.
All of the scans from the three areas of the ship, the main scanning room, the control room, and this room, were being fed into a central image and slowly in that three-dimensional image, pieces of the ship were coming together.
Part of this ship was nothing more than a huge city, plain and simple, with housing that went from small apartments to five bedroom suites. It had what looked like schools, shopping, large areas that would be parks when planted, and so on.
The ship also carried a good five hundred other huge ships on one landing deck. All those ships were also empty of human life, but designed to hold thousands of humans per ship comfortably.
In fact, each ship was bigger than Chairman’s Ray’s ship, one of the biggest the Seeders had working right now in any of the Local Sector galaxies.
The big ship was also riddled with massive warehouse rooms stacked full of who knew what. Every warehouse looked completely untouched and her scans could not seem to tell what was in any of them. They were just too far away.
And from what she could tell, there were thousands of science labs and other areas for unknown reasons. Offices and work areas she guessed.
Roscoe was at the screen beside her, his rifle over his shoulder. She noticed he was amazingly good at running scans and comfortable on the heads-up board. He seemed to be focused on different areas of the ship than she was.
She liked having him that close and had stopped herself from excitedly showing him something at two different points. It seemed she just wanted to share things with him.
She had always been a loner by nature. This kind of desire to share and be close to another person was different for her and she honestly liked it more than she ever thought she would. And she had no idea why he was bringing that out in her. No other man she had known ever had.
Roscoe’s second-in-command, Jonas, had focused his scanning on the Command Center for the big ship.
After three hours, Fisher came in and motioned for her and Roscoe to come talk with him in the kitchen again.
“We’re going to need to feed people pretty soon,” Fisher said as he entered the kitchen and took a container of water from the fridge and sat down. “We’ve set up a room as a dining hall and we have a meal already prepared and ready to just heat and serve when we call dinner. After this first meal, we’re going to need to do more cooking.”
Maria nodded, sitting down at the table across from Fisher again. Roscoe once again stayed standing
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