The preparations didn't take long and soon they were on their way.
four boarding teams were going for the ships.
The fifth team which was the largest was going down to the surface of the planet.
Simon was with the team that went to the least damaged ship they could find.
The vessel was relatively small compared to other wrecks but it was still three quarters the size of the Thanatos so in their fleet it would be either a battleship or a small dreadnought.
They entered through the hole in the hull as this was the easiest way to do so and the shortest route to the bridge of the ship.
The strange thing was that there was no sign of the crew anywhere on the ship and they managed to search most of it.
The exceptions were some areas that were sealed tight and Simon did not want to open them right now,which would require cutting them open.
The Humans learned fairly quickly that if something is sealed tight then there usually is a reason for that.
One of the scouting ships opened a sealed area on an abandoned alien ship just to get infected with some kind of virus and die a horrible death before help arrived.
Both ships were then towed into the nearest star to make sure that no one would fall victim to this plague again.
Simon and his team went around the ship just as a precaution as it was drifting for a few millennia but you could never know if there was some sort of unexpected danger aboard.
The technology was way more advanced then what humans currently had and even when they found a med-bay their medic couldn't identify anything other than an upgraded version of regeneration tank.
After searching the ship they went straight back to the bridge where the engineers were trying to interface a small power source to the navigation station or at least what they thought was a navigation station.
The problem was that there were no cables they could connect the device to.
-Admiral there is no way to connect the power source,we tried everything but this tech is so much more advanced compared to what we have that its not even funny.
The lead engineer reported.
Simon came closer to take a look and there really weren't any cables anywhere.
They checked the other consoles and it was the same.
-This is strange but they had to connect the consoles somehow otherwise how were they able to control the ship.
Simon thought aloud.
This was a really tough puzzle to solve.
Simon went to the engine room and some weapons ports but he didn't find even a piece of cable anywhere and it would be impossible to connect all the equipment by wireless connections as it would be easy to jam the signals.
There had to be something that he was missing.
On his way back to the bridge he saw a console on the wall and he saw that a part of the surrounding material had a slightly different color.
It was almost identical with the color of the wall but if he looked at it at a certain angle there was a difference.
The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. He once read a book in which the aliens did not use the cables but created pathways directly into the hull of the ship.
He immediately searched through his helmet's visual filters and he found the right filter after a few tries.
He saw the network of pathways that looked similar to the circuit board spreading through the wall in both directions.
He ran as fast as he could to the bridge and sure enough it was full of the same patterns that connected to the consoles.
He was really amazed just how accurately the authors described some of the things he had seen in alien technology.
Now that they knew why there were no cables they had to figure out a way to connect to the pathways without destroying them.
They had some ideas for that but the best one came from Athena who was monitoring them through their helmet cameras.
She designed an interface plat that should connect to the pathways without destroying them.
They had to be careful however as she warned them that there was a possibility that the ship had an A.I and if they awoke it then there was a chance that it would turn hostile to them as they would most likely be classified as intruders.
The new equipment arrived shortly via drone and it was additionally equipped with a sensor that monitored the energy distribution.
In the meantime Simon ordered all the pathways connecting to the bridge and the engineering to be mined with explosives just to be sure that there would be no surprises.
It took a while but the plate did connect to the pathways and they started slowly powering up the console.
One of the soldiers was monitoring the display that showed the energy distribution and as soon as he found any abnormalities he would detonate the charges without even waiting for an order.
After a few minutes the console powered up and a holographic display lit up.
The engineers stopped increasing the power and Simon asked Athena to try and figure out the language as the symbols were unlike anything he ever saw.
The A.I accepted the task but it took her a few hours to extrapolate even a rudimentary translation.
They managed to download the maps and the ships log which was translated but unfortunately it was gibberish.
The maps proved to be useful as all it took to make them more up to date was a few hours of Athena working on them and increasing the time flow in the simulation.
The surface team had no luck as of yet but they managed to find an abandoned military facility or something similar before they decided to return to the ship.
The strangest thing was the lack of corpses or even any sign of the inhabitants other than buildings that were still standing and some of them were in a good condition.
The teams sent to the other ships had mixed results but this was only the first day of exploration and they had some more time before they had to leave for Sol System.
After a meal and some sleep they all went back to work the teams went to search all the ships that were in more or less one piece.
That alone would take them some time as there were hundreds of them on this battlefield and even more were in pieces.
They also found a shipyard that had a lot of holes in it but was in one piece so it was designated to be searched another day.
Simon and his team went back to the ship that they visited the day before and tried to access the data core to extract all the data they could find before they went to another ship that he wanted to search and it was one of the big boys this time.