customers' sight. Likely installed to contact station security if the evening crowd ever got too rowdy, Claire thought as she checked the transponder. It was set to activate automatically on loss of station power to the restaurant. The manual switch had not been turned.
She keyed it on and added the brief optional text record intended to allow the business to silently notify security in the event of a robbery. “Depressurized portion of Section B2 investigated by GNS Manasseh shuttle team. No survivors found. Remains of twenty-three souls present.” That should keep them from accidentally circling back and rechecking this piece before looking at all the others.
She couldn't just turn the transponder off. The families would want the remains.
Claire motioned for the team to follow her back out to the shuttle.
The pilot saw their gray faces and didn't ask, but he told them that while they were inside B2, Manasseh's sensor techs had compiled a list of wreckage most likely to hold survivors.
The pilot laid a course to the next piece of debris.
Claire noticed it took them directly away from the part of the roiling mass that should have encapsulated Birdies in section B3. She called up a magnified view of the piece of space; it held only pulverized bits. Claire's tears blurred the carnage.
“Lecroix, This is Manasseh actual.” Commander Greentree's voice rang from the speakers. “Report status, over.”
She keyed to transmit, “Sir.” She choked once and swallowed her horror, surprised to find her voice even and clear in spite of the wetness on her cheeks. “No survivors found. En route to second search location. Request Manasseh continue to coordinate search pattern and identify possible survivor locations.”
“Well done. We'll keep sending you locations. Keep me informed. We have more shuttles and ships on their way.”
The Manasseh directed them from one chunk of wreckage to another, and they went, found the bodies, and reported back on the way to the next one. Sometimes Claire's team found recognizable corpses, but never the air that might have sustained life. She made her techs leave the dead as they lay. The shuttle didn't have room to collect them.
“We can't slow down,” Claire told the techs, clinging to the hope that there might still be someone to care how quickly they arrived. “The next one might have survivors.” She tried to banish the doubt from her voice.
It almost worked. Her team responded with a list of possibilities.
“Maybe an air pocket.”
“Somebody in a suit. Lots of EVA work happens in these yards. Got to be somebody was in his suit when it hit.”
“Yeah. Or even one of those facemask air things. Lots of people have those.”
Claire nodded at them, glad to have their support and grateful the bodies would stay in their twisted metal crypts for a while longer. All the dead had started to look like Lucy or Mary if she looked too long, even the obviously male ones.
Her team settled for making choppy recordings to mark the bodies for later retrieval, placing the masses with remains in clear orbits, and proceeding on to the next hulk. Some hours later—twelve according to the shuttle's clock—Manasseh directed them back to the ship for a relief instead of providing the next set of coordinates.
On the short return flight, Claire's senior tech on the com updated the team on the bleak news from the other search and rescue operations. Four shuttles had hailed the Manasseh as soon as the ship broke com silence. The shuttles had been traveling between sections when the attack struck and had somehow avoided being holed by hypervelocity debris in the aftermath. The shuttles also had the crew from a shipbuilding slip who had been performing their own attempted rescue operation.
In their miracle, the crew of the building slip had launched its last ship the day before and wasn't slated to start the next build for a few weeks. Those still on station had been mostly moving their things out to go to the next job. As shipbuilders, they had suits, and it was easier to wear them than carry them. Their slip took only a single hit, which breached the hull in large enough holes to prevent quick repair, but caused little real damage. None of the other slips with their half-built warships fared as well. The hyper-capable ships, from the shuttle pilots' descriptions, had been a special target of the attackers, with only the weapons production facilities receiving a higher density of fire.
That brought the survivor count to one forty-three, and gave Manasseh