I'm curious, is the 224536 - Ready (WARN: Nonstandard Software Detected) Engineering drone the same one that was modified by an engineer to be "treated like a regular crewman" for fun?
No it's some other drone. I have no idea which that was. Probably destroyed during the crash
Hey @nesrak1, you might want to double check that drone name, then look at yourself.
I'm curious, is the 224536 - Ready (WARN: Nonstandard Software Detected) Engineering drone the same one that was modified by an engineer to be "treated like a regular crewman" for fun?
That's one interpretation. Either that, or some crazy modder got his mitts on it.
C'mon, don't let this story die. God, please, not this story.
I'd let Eclipse bleed out on the hospital bed before I let this god damn story die.
Pshaw, I'm betting @scifiwriterguy is just busy IRL, you know, stuff happens. He'll be back, I'm sure (or I'll drag him back with a Propulsion Cannon and feed him nothing but Hoverfish until he updates the story ).
@Jamezorg - don't worry; it's not dying. Our buddy @0x6A7232 was right: RL got a little hairy there for a bit...and it still is, to a degree. But the next installment will be coming soon, promise!
I can't tell you all how much I appreciate the encouragement; it's great to see people are enjoying the story!
Hollister grimaces at the rising sun makes its presence known. He's not happy to see it nor, he strongly suspects, is it to see him. The prior night had been largely sleepless thanks to the problem that had reared up out of the ship's spec manual, and what little sleep did come was decorated with a particularly vivid dream of a group of archaeologists finding the wreck by chance more than a century in the future. He'd woken up in a sweat upon seeing his skeleton in a handsome display case in an Alterra museum somewhere.
All in all, not the best way to spend a night.
The morning is promising more of the same. Barring some revelation on how to overcome the problem that RACS poses him and his crew (and no such revelation was forthcoming), something else was chewing at the back of his brain and giving him no rest for it. It was a simple item, but a thorny one: why?
As Hollister sits in the Engineering station chair, glowering at the growing glow of sunrise, the question keeps rolling around in his brain. Why send the Aurora, a new ship fresh out of the yards, so far out of its way on its highly-touted maiden mission? And to look for two people Alterra couldn't possibly care about? It's not like the Degasi had been an Alterra ship. It belonged to a Mongolian outfit, and if there's one thing Alterra cares about less than employee opinion polls, it's competitors. Granted, the company in question was a little thing, hardly a competitor even before the Degasi sailed off into its private oblivion, but it wasn't and still isn't an Alterra subsidiary, so why would Alterra give a damn?
Well, public relations. No, that was stupid. Alterra only makes grand PR gestures when there's an equally grand payoff waiting. Like those freighters of refugee kids Alterra rescued from Kharaa space; each one was a little PR gold nugget to be paraded in front of the Authority News Grid's holocams, and paraded they were...well, before being dumped into orphan custody in some little trans-gov nobody'd ever heard of, but that part didn't make the news. The only reason Hollister knew that was because he'd piloted one of the freighters on that trip. ANG wouldn't even raise an eyebrow about two Mongolian corp execs that'd been dumb enough to fly into the dark and not come back. So, not PR.
Money? Well, that was Alterra's guiding light, so money had to be in there somewhere. The old King's Ransom gambit shuffles through Hollister's head for a moment before being shown the door; Torgal Corp hadn't been a big job when Torgals senior and junior vanished, and they'd become less so in the intervening years. Certainly not enough money to make it worth diverting a ship the size of Aurora. There was much more money in building the phasegate out at Ariadne, especially when he considers all the extra refit work that had to be done on a brand-new ship to accommodate this mission. Fresh out of the yard, and Aurora went back in before setting sail once to have extra sensors stuffed into her hide, which meant extra engine baffles and shielding to keep from interfering with them. Oh, and all of those extra drones! Everybody had joked about that. The Aurora had enough damn drones to build a phasegate in a week, if that were physically possible.
Corporate stupidity, he ultimately decides, and heads off to the locker for his daily block of manufactured nausea. Grabbing one at random, he doesn't even glance at the label before tearing open the end and taking a healthy bite.
He immediately regrets it as his eyes begin to water. He's torn between following the biological imperative to eat and a deep-seated preference to starve to death instead. As the, for lack of a better word, "food" is warming up in his mouth, the flavors are becoming bolder, which isn't helping matters. Forcing himself to chew, he slowly turns the ration brick over to find himself face-to-face with the words "TURKEY/PICKLE."
His tongue is trying to fold itself in half to escape.
Forcing himself to chew and promising himself something to clear away the taste (possibly a nice blast from the fire extinguisher - COB gas has to taste better than this), Hollister sits down on the floor next to the locker to eat. If not for the fact that the flavors had his face ready to implode, he'd probably be laughing. Everything Alterra does is done for a reason, and that reason is usually at least peripherally - if not centrally - money. Which means that these catered-by-hell rations were that way on purpose. Come to it, he wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that the Aurora smashing into this godforsaken waterball was on...
...purpose.
Hollister's jaw freezes as the thought takes root, the eyeball-curdling poultry-pickle flavor nearly forgotten. It made an awful kind of sense. The fresh-out-of-yards refit had cost Alterra a bundle, and none of it was necessary for building phasegates. Even if they had some other idea for future missions, it would've been more cost effective to let the Aurora go build its gate, then recall it for a refit. Which means the sensor upgrade, the drones, all of it was added with something else in mind, something for her maiden mission, not following.
He's off the floor in a hurry, headed back over to the Engineering station. He's so distracted he actually takes and eats another bite of the ration brick. Quickly calling up the spec book, he follows the listed reference for the RACS installation. Sure enough, it was added during the refit, not during construction. That alone would've cost a mint; a refit of something like RACS for a ship the size of the Aurora would've been blindingly expensive. And, in that one moment, all the pieces tumble together in his brain and lock into a single picture.
They knew. They knew or at least strongly suspected that the Degasi hadn't succumbed to normal deep-space hazards, and believed that this planet was the crux of it. That's why all of the extra engine shielding; it wasn't just to maintain sensor fidelity, it was to protect them from whatever aced the Degasi. Since kinetic weapons don't move fast enough to take a ship completely by surprise, it had to be some kind of DEW - a directed-energy weapon - hence the addition of RACS. Energy efficiency and economy was just a convenient cover. And, once her upgraded sensors identified the cause and her upgraded hull and systems protected her from it, Aurora could lay claim to the planet and whatever valuable technology or natural phenomenon responsible. The Degasi crew was dead, which meant they - and by extension, the Mongolians - couldn't claim the planet; dead men don't have property. And the one Mongolian representative on board would either be bought off or have a "terrible tragedy." Alterra claims exclusive intellectual property rights, exclusive mining and exploitation rights, and pockets money hand over fist selling it all to the TSA for use against the Kharaa.
In fact, they'd hedged their bets both ways. Either the Aurora would survive the encounter and be able to lay claim itself, or it wouldn't survive and they would then know for certain that some very valuable weapons technology was there for the taking.
Despite being a captain used as a pawn, which would rankle any ship officer, Hollister almost has to admire the lethally-efficiency cunning of it all, the icy calculation tallying the value of ship and crew against potential profit...and still coming out on profit's side.
For a few minutes, Hollister takes comfort in his realization. It means that rescue would be coming soon; Alterra never has been one for leaving valuables lying around, so a follow-up expedition wouldn't be far behind. His crew would be rescued upon the follow-up team's arrival, the "fortunate survivors of an unforeseeable disaster." Details of that disaster would be appropriately blurred, and money would be made.
Wait, no, that didn't hold together at all. Alterra, like most corporations (trans-gov or not), never admits failure or setback. Their new pride-and-joy starship being blown out of the stars on its first outing would be a black eye no matter how big the paycheck because they couldn't admit what was found. That made survivors a liability, not more PR gold to mine. This far off the starlanes, there'd be no reason for anyone to go poking around anytime soon, even if the Aurora's mayday was heard. Alterra could just sit and wait for the calendar to cruise past the MEST - the Maximum Estimated Survival Time - then conduct its follow-up, secure in the knowledge that the planet would've killed off his crew, leaving nobody to counter Alterra's version of the story. The lives lost were probably already factored into the cost-benefit analysis. Just another bean-counter's column with acceptably small numbers in red ink.
No.
That's not going to happen, not to his crew. Not if there was a single thing he could do about it.
Hollister looks out the bridge viewpanel at the waterscape around the ship. Lifepod 5 bobs contentedly in the distance, still stable and secure. During the night, he'd seen a MEL floodlight beam in the water a couple times, so he knows those survivors are apparently doing well. He feels his responsibility to them as keenly as a parent to his children. He's the captain, and his crew relies on him to get them through trouble. Trusts him to. And, more than anything right now, more than his own survival, he doesn't want to fail in that responsibility.
Unfortunately, though, trapped on the bridge, there's no course of action open to him. He can't repair the comm system from here, can't get to his crew, can't do a damn thing except run a handful of engineering drones with controls so limited that even if he could get the drones off the ship, he'd never be able to do anything useful with them. His eyes wander the length of the viewpanel, lingering on the few cracks that had appeared on impact in the thick monocrystal. Each jagged fracture line seems to concentrate the sunlight before blasting it into rainbows.
Slowly, his gaze does another circuit of the view, cracks and all, before sliding down onto the engineering console. Little has changed since the adventure of the night before last. Up in the corner, he can see the dark matter reactor's SQSER sync display, points ticking along in perfect unison. The metronomic mechanical perfection is entrancing in a way, even if it's not a solution. All that power, and it still does him no good because he can't use it to signal anyone. The RACS coating is absorbing any stray energy from the reactor, so there isn't even that much to home in on.
Hollister chuckles to himself. "Well, Mike," he says out loud to himself, his voice sounding rusty from disuse, "All you need to do is put the reactor on the outside. Hop to, son!" He enjoys the feeling of laughing at his own joke.
His laughter ebbs away as he actually allows himself to consider that thought. Signaling a ship in space at a distance is a matter of energy. Being found on the surface is a matter of having radar- and laser-reflective surfaces. It doesn't really matter what kind of energy is used and what kind of signal it creates; flares worked for centuries on Earth's oceans and carry no information of their own - they just needed to be noticeable. And all sorts of things reflect sensor frequencies, not just purpose-built reflectors.
The SQSER display ticks silently to itself.
Hollister gets up from his seat and walks over to the fabricator. The machine rouses itself from his nap as he approaches, auto-linking with his SECID. He cues up a batch fab process, asking for four copies of the same item. Running on backup power, each one takes a few minutes, which is fine; it takes a little longer than that to use each one up. Halfway through the fourth, he's finished. He drops the remainder of the stick on the deck, the vibrafenide hissing softly as it touches the deckplate. Another visit to the fabricator, and a few minutes later he's shrugging off the ripped flight jacket he's been wearing since the crash and slipping on a new captain's jacket, the sleeve sliding over the blinking SECID message on his left forearm warning him that the fabricator's feedstock supplies have been exhausted.
That's fine. He doesn't need it to do anything else. Hollister fits his jacket, not even facing the aft wall of the bridge. Vibrafenide is a tailored catalyst used to make permanent marks on titanium by oxidizing it into titanium dioxide, the whitest material known to science. Although it had come out on a slight slant, as human writing on large scales often does, it was just as legible as the countless chalkboards, whiteboards, and holoboards that had featured the same tilted text.
He's adjusting his cuffs as he sits back down at the Engineering station and calls up his drone lists. Some of the ones that helped save his life have dropped offline, probably with depleted power cells. But 218212 is still standing by, 221304 and 222906 showing low batteries but still ready for service. All three would be needed, but right now he needs one more, elsewhere.
Just one. Less than there should've been, but more than might have. Either way, it's a working drone right where he needs it, in the local computer node for the Engineering section.
Hollister abruptly draws a blank. He knows the maintenance procedure, but not its drone operation code.
ENG-216788> list processes
The alphanumeric tornado that follows takes more than a minute to end. So, like everyone facing a technical problem and having exhausted all alternatives, he does what any good technician would rather break his thumbs than do: he re-opens the manual and starts searching. Sure enough, the answer presents itself after only a few minutes' searching, but he still feels a little ashamed that he needed the manual. Still, how could anybody be expected to remember this?
ENG-216788> begin maint_proc LNC/OFL-DIAG starttime=now() DRONE 216788 - COMMAND ACCEPTED
DRONE 216788 - BEGINNING LOCAL NODE CLOCK DIAGNOSTIC
DRONE 216788 - !WARN! ENGINEERING CLOCK SIGNAL LOST
It's barely noticeable, but already the SQSER point ticks have lost their perfect synchronicity. It's only a fraction of a second, but a few points are not moving with their brothers. Having lost the drumbeat of the local computer node's clock, the SQSER initiators are behaving like a marching band whose drums have gone silent; they're still marching in unison, but are beginning to drift as they listen to their own internal beats rather than a single unifying one.
Hollister takes a glance at the engineering schematic page he'd left up from the manual file.
ENG-216788> setactivedrone=222906 Drone 222906 online
CAUTN: POWER CELL 19%
ENG-222906> run man_ord DISCONNECT target:MSC-A,125 DRONE 222906 DISCONNECTING MASER SYNCHRONIZER CIRCUIT A CONNECTION 125...
COMPLETE.
ENG-222906> setactivedrone=221304 Drone 221304 online
WARN: POWER CELL 7%
ENG-221304> run man_ord DISCONNECT target:LSC-B,3A5 DRONE 221304 DISCONNECTING LASER SYNCHRONIZER CIRCUIT B JUNCTION NODE 3A5...
COMPLETE.
Now there's a noticeable wave of dissonance in the SQSER display. Several arrows are moving well out of line with their neighbors, yet in line with nodes at far ends of the array. Discoordinated and getting worse, now that the internal synchronizer circuits have been disconencted. Now the array can't even talk to itself. The band is deaf and blind yet marching on.
DRONE 221304 ERROR - SIGNAL LOST
Michael Hollister silently thanks the drone's power cell for holding out for that last job. One of the SQSER points suddenly slips into a yellow border as its beat slips out of tolerance. Hollister gets up and walks over to the pile of ration blocks. There's time for a meal.
Rooting through the blocks, glancing at the black block lettering and tossing them away, Hollister finds himself reconsidering the meal idea. KIWI/FISH, no. BANANA/BEEF, absolutely not. PEANUT BUTTER - that's promising - MINT...never mind. PRAWN/VINEGAR, that's not even food. He picks up one last block and reads it, nearly tossing it back into the pile before doing a double-take. No, the words really are there: POTATO/BEEF.
It has to be a mistake, he thinks to himself as he tears open the foil. It's going to be bad somehow. They used those godawful Chinese potatoes, or "beef" is Alterra's new trademarked name for reprocessed sewage. With these wonderful thoughts in mind, Hollister takes a nervous bite.
Steak and potatoes. It has the texture of gritty putty, sure, but it tastes like steak and potatoes. He wolfs the first bite and hungrily digs in for a second. With his free hand, he yanks a bottle of water out of the locker and whacks the cap off using the edge of the locker door. The clean water is a perfect match. He walks back toward the main viewpanel, past his former boot which is still welded to the deck. Out of idle interest, he passes a hand over the aft cableway deckplate and isn't at all surprised to find it hotter than ever. Walking by the Engineering panel, he sees that many of the SQSER points are now outlined in yellow. With the entire synchronizing network down, the system is falling apart quickly.
Standing by the viewpanel, chewing on the ration brick and looking at the waves tickling the sunlight outside, he wishes his crew luck. Surely none are close to Aurora by now, so they'll be safe. With any luck, they'll be found in time.
He takes another bite and grins as he chews. An insistent beeping begins over at the Engineering station.
It's unbelievable that something tasting like actual food made it into that cavalcade of misery, especially right now. Alterra assigns supervisors for everything - from multitrillion dollar operations to things as stupid as ration flavors - so someone overseeing Operation Tastebud Murder slipped up and let this little bit of heaven through. There's a supervisor who isn't getting his bonus!
The beeping is replaced with the nasal shriek of the Master Alarm going off. The screech siren begins a few seconds later.
Someone supervised the creation of those sirens, Hollister muses to himself, taking a swig of water.
Someone supervises everything...at...Alterra.
A supervisor. A mission like this, they'd've sent a supervisor. It wasn't him, and he was confident his XO wasn't it. It wasn't the second officer, Keen, either; the man no more has two faces than he has six arms. But they'd have someone watching over their investment, someone who'd get a seat on the Board if they cornered whatever treasure there was to be had on this planet.
The sirens abruptly vanish into silence as the Engineering console's kludged-together power cell finally goes empty. Moments later, the deck transmits a vibration through Hollister's shoes, as though a bass string the length of the universe had been plucked.
Of course. It had to be; more than anyone else, he was just the type. If only he could get his hands around --
As the reactor finally falls completely out of control, the quantum detonation spreads throughout the fuel in a wave of subatomic fury. The roiling heart of the reactor releases a pulse of prompt neutrons as its overture, and these high-speed neutrons pass through the Aurora's superstructure, whipping through the ship's titanium body as though it's hardly there. This shotgun of particles passes through Captain Michael Hollister, taking the life out of his body with surgical cleanliness.
His knees have barely begun to buckle when the Aurora's entire fuel train explodes, fragmenting the massive ship's entire bow section, tearing the skin off and vaporizing most of the forward frames. The water the ship is resting in serves to focus the blast energy upward, such that it blows out the hull in wide patches along both sides. Pressure strikes the reinforced engine bulkheads and splits, part of the energy buckling the massive framing members, and the rest going vertically, exiting through the astrogation suite aft of the bridge and blowing off the upper sensor fin.
The blast wave buckles the bridge deck and starts several new fractures in the monocrystal viewpanel, but by and large the space remains intact. Hollister's body lays in the warm sunlight. Behind him, his message remains on the aft wall of the bridge in the hope that it would one day be read.
Be it known that the crew of the Aurora served with distinction and honor, even in the face of deadly peril. The loss of this ship was due to circumstances beyond the control of those aboard her, and was due to no fault of her crew. At least one lifepod survived the destruction of the Aurora, and I survived the crash on the bridge. It is my sole hope that my crew is rescued. It is in this hope that I have taken the actions I felt necessary. To whomever reads this, please see my crew or their remains safely home - it is all I ask of you.
Captain Michael P Hollister, ASV Aurora
Thank you for reading Chapter 1 of Downward Spiral. It was always the intent to continue the story, each chapter focusing on a different member of the crew. If you're interested in this story continuing - or would like to leave any kind of feedback - please do so; it's greatly appreciated. I'd like to especially thank @0x6A7232, @Tarkannen, @Skope, @Jamezorg, and @nesrak1 for their support and interest...and the visits of the Bumpasaur and cats. It meant more to me than you know.
Woo! Another great read from @scifiwriterguy, as per usual. These stories have been and always is such a delight to enjoy, from the insightful readings of the lore of the universe the game partakes in, and delightful twists on what we already know and don't immediately realize. It's so refreshing to see such details put into the story, and how it affects the overall pacing. @scifiwriterguy I can speak for others in saying these writings are such gems, and you always spark joy for me when reading them. I hope to see more of these in the future and I can't wait to see what Chapter 2 has in store for us all!
P.S. I have to say, I really feel bad for Hollister, what with his spiteful choice of rations Alterra left for him...
Am I the only one who hits "Awesome" before reading a story post, forgets about it after reading a third of the story, hits "Awesome" again (removing it), realizes and fixes it, and then sometimes does the exact same thing again after reading further? xD
jeodStuck in Aperture Join Date: 2017-04-12Member: 229591Members
This is an amazing story that is well written and carefully thought out! Good job! This was an awesome read that I, and I bet many others, enjoyed greatly.
Although, I must admit, I almost shed a tear there....
Sorry, @ShuttleBug. But thanks for the compliments; they're deeply appreciated.
My original intent was to work my way down the Aurora chain o' command, which puts the ship XO next and Keen after that. Are we saying we'd rather jump to Keen, then?
Sorry, @ShuttleBug. But thanks for the compliments; they're deeply appreciated.
My original intent was to work my way down the Aurora chain o' command, which puts the ship XO next and Keen after that. Are we saying we'd rather jump to Keen, then?
I honestly don't particularly care about the order as long as it makes some kind of sense. I am a bit curious of what happened to Keen since we dont see any signs of life on the floating island and we know he (her?) showed up there at some point. Super excited for any further installments of the series @scifiwriterguy
Comments
Hey @nesrak1, you might want to double check that drone name, then look at yourself.
You might find something very interesting.
That's one interpretation. Either that, or some crazy modder got his mitts on it.
I'd let Eclipse bleed out on the hospital bed before I let this god damn story die.
Pshaw, I'm betting @scifiwriterguy is just busy IRL, you know, stuff happens. He'll be back, I'm sure (or I'll drag him back with a Propulsion Cannon and feed him nothing but Hoverfish until he updates the story
I can't tell you all how much I appreciate the encouragement; it's great to see people are enjoying the story!
Also,
That's freaking adorable.
Oh, how the internet has provided for this day and age.
Hollister grimaces at the rising sun makes its presence known. He's not happy to see it nor, he strongly suspects, is it to see him. The prior night had been largely sleepless thanks to the problem that had reared up out of the ship's spec manual, and what little sleep did come was decorated with a particularly vivid dream of a group of archaeologists finding the wreck by chance more than a century in the future. He'd woken up in a sweat upon seeing his skeleton in a handsome display case in an Alterra museum somewhere.
All in all, not the best way to spend a night.
The morning is promising more of the same. Barring some revelation on how to overcome the problem that RACS poses him and his crew (and no such revelation was forthcoming), something else was chewing at the back of his brain and giving him no rest for it. It was a simple item, but a thorny one: why?
As Hollister sits in the Engineering station chair, glowering at the growing glow of sunrise, the question keeps rolling around in his brain. Why send the Aurora, a new ship fresh out of the yards, so far out of its way on its highly-touted maiden mission? And to look for two people Alterra couldn't possibly care about? It's not like the Degasi had been an Alterra ship. It belonged to a Mongolian outfit, and if there's one thing Alterra cares about less than employee opinion polls, it's competitors. Granted, the company in question was a little thing, hardly a competitor even before the Degasi sailed off into its private oblivion, but it wasn't and still isn't an Alterra subsidiary, so why would Alterra give a damn?
Well, public relations. No, that was stupid. Alterra only makes grand PR gestures when there's an equally grand payoff waiting. Like those freighters of refugee kids Alterra rescued from Kharaa space; each one was a little PR gold nugget to be paraded in front of the Authority News Grid's holocams, and paraded they were...well, before being dumped into orphan custody in some little trans-gov nobody'd ever heard of, but that part didn't make the news. The only reason Hollister knew that was because he'd piloted one of the freighters on that trip. ANG wouldn't even raise an eyebrow about two Mongolian corp execs that'd been dumb enough to fly into the dark and not come back. So, not PR.
Money? Well, that was Alterra's guiding light, so money had to be in there somewhere. The old King's Ransom gambit shuffles through Hollister's head for a moment before being shown the door; Torgal Corp hadn't been a big job when Torgals senior and junior vanished, and they'd become less so in the intervening years. Certainly not enough money to make it worth diverting a ship the size of Aurora. There was much more money in building the phasegate out at Ariadne, especially when he considers all the extra refit work that had to be done on a brand-new ship to accommodate this mission. Fresh out of the yard, and Aurora went back in before setting sail once to have extra sensors stuffed into her hide, which meant extra engine baffles and shielding to keep from interfering with them. Oh, and all of those extra drones! Everybody had joked about that. The Aurora had enough damn drones to build a phasegate in a week, if that were physically possible.
Corporate stupidity, he ultimately decides, and heads off to the locker for his daily block of manufactured nausea. Grabbing one at random, he doesn't even glance at the label before tearing open the end and taking a healthy bite.
He immediately regrets it as his eyes begin to water. He's torn between following the biological imperative to eat and a deep-seated preference to starve to death instead. As the, for lack of a better word, "food" is warming up in his mouth, the flavors are becoming bolder, which isn't helping matters. Forcing himself to chew, he slowly turns the ration brick over to find himself face-to-face with the words "TURKEY/PICKLE."
His tongue is trying to fold itself in half to escape.
Forcing himself to chew and promising himself something to clear away the taste (possibly a nice blast from the fire extinguisher - COB gas has to taste better than this), Hollister sits down on the floor next to the locker to eat. If not for the fact that the flavors had his face ready to implode, he'd probably be laughing. Everything Alterra does is done for a reason, and that reason is usually at least peripherally - if not centrally - money. Which means that these catered-by-hell rations were that way on purpose. Come to it, he wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that the Aurora smashing into this godforsaken waterball was on...
...purpose.
Hollister's jaw freezes as the thought takes root, the eyeball-curdling poultry-pickle flavor nearly forgotten. It made an awful kind of sense. The fresh-out-of-yards refit had cost Alterra a bundle, and none of it was necessary for building phasegates. Even if they had some other idea for future missions, it would've been more cost effective to let the Aurora go build its gate, then recall it for a refit. Which means the sensor upgrade, the drones, all of it was added with something else in mind, something for her maiden mission, not following.
He's off the floor in a hurry, headed back over to the Engineering station. He's so distracted he actually takes and eats another bite of the ration brick. Quickly calling up the spec book, he follows the listed reference for the RACS installation. Sure enough, it was added during the refit, not during construction. That alone would've cost a mint; a refit of something like RACS for a ship the size of the Aurora would've been blindingly expensive. And, in that one moment, all the pieces tumble together in his brain and lock into a single picture.
They knew. They knew or at least strongly suspected that the Degasi hadn't succumbed to normal deep-space hazards, and believed that this planet was the crux of it. That's why all of the extra engine shielding; it wasn't just to maintain sensor fidelity, it was to protect them from whatever aced the Degasi. Since kinetic weapons don't move fast enough to take a ship completely by surprise, it had to be some kind of DEW - a directed-energy weapon - hence the addition of RACS. Energy efficiency and economy was just a convenient cover. And, once her upgraded sensors identified the cause and her upgraded hull and systems protected her from it, Aurora could lay claim to the planet and whatever valuable technology or natural phenomenon responsible. The Degasi crew was dead, which meant they - and by extension, the Mongolians - couldn't claim the planet; dead men don't have property. And the one Mongolian representative on board would either be bought off or have a "terrible tragedy." Alterra claims exclusive intellectual property rights, exclusive mining and exploitation rights, and pockets money hand over fist selling it all to the TSA for use against the Kharaa.
In fact, they'd hedged their bets both ways. Either the Aurora would survive the encounter and be able to lay claim itself, or it wouldn't survive and they would then know for certain that some very valuable weapons technology was there for the taking.
Despite being a captain used as a pawn, which would rankle any ship officer, Hollister almost has to admire the lethally-efficiency cunning of it all, the icy calculation tallying the value of ship and crew against potential profit...and still coming out on profit's side.
For a few minutes, Hollister takes comfort in his realization. It means that rescue would be coming soon; Alterra never has been one for leaving valuables lying around, so a follow-up expedition wouldn't be far behind. His crew would be rescued upon the follow-up team's arrival, the "fortunate survivors of an unforeseeable disaster." Details of that disaster would be appropriately blurred, and money would be made.
Wait, no, that didn't hold together at all. Alterra, like most corporations (trans-gov or not), never admits failure or setback. Their new pride-and-joy starship being blown out of the stars on its first outing would be a black eye no matter how big the paycheck because they couldn't admit what was found. That made survivors a liability, not more PR gold to mine. This far off the starlanes, there'd be no reason for anyone to go poking around anytime soon, even if the Aurora's mayday was heard. Alterra could just sit and wait for the calendar to cruise past the MEST - the Maximum Estimated Survival Time - then conduct its follow-up, secure in the knowledge that the planet would've killed off his crew, leaving nobody to counter Alterra's version of the story. The lives lost were probably already factored into the cost-benefit analysis. Just another bean-counter's column with acceptably small numbers in red ink.
No.
That's not going to happen, not to his crew. Not if there was a single thing he could do about it.
Hollister looks out the bridge viewpanel at the waterscape around the ship. Lifepod 5 bobs contentedly in the distance, still stable and secure. During the night, he'd seen a MEL floodlight beam in the water a couple times, so he knows those survivors are apparently doing well. He feels his responsibility to them as keenly as a parent to his children. He's the captain, and his crew relies on him to get them through trouble. Trusts him to. And, more than anything right now, more than his own survival, he doesn't want to fail in that responsibility.
Unfortunately, though, trapped on the bridge, there's no course of action open to him. He can't repair the comm system from here, can't get to his crew, can't do a damn thing except run a handful of engineering drones with controls so limited that even if he could get the drones off the ship, he'd never be able to do anything useful with them. His eyes wander the length of the viewpanel, lingering on the few cracks that had appeared on impact in the thick monocrystal. Each jagged fracture line seems to concentrate the sunlight before blasting it into rainbows.
Slowly, his gaze does another circuit of the view, cracks and all, before sliding down onto the engineering console. Little has changed since the adventure of the night before last. Up in the corner, he can see the dark matter reactor's SQSER sync display, points ticking along in perfect unison. The metronomic mechanical perfection is entrancing in a way, even if it's not a solution. All that power, and it still does him no good because he can't use it to signal anyone. The RACS coating is absorbing any stray energy from the reactor, so there isn't even that much to home in on.
Hollister chuckles to himself. "Well, Mike," he says out loud to himself, his voice sounding rusty from disuse, "All you need to do is put the reactor on the outside. Hop to, son!" He enjoys the feeling of laughing at his own joke.
His laughter ebbs away as he actually allows himself to consider that thought. Signaling a ship in space at a distance is a matter of energy. Being found on the surface is a matter of having radar- and laser-reflective surfaces. It doesn't really matter what kind of energy is used and what kind of signal it creates; flares worked for centuries on Earth's oceans and carry no information of their own - they just needed to be noticeable. And all sorts of things reflect sensor frequencies, not just purpose-built reflectors.
The SQSER display ticks silently to itself.
Hollister gets up from his seat and walks over to the fabricator. The machine rouses itself from his nap as he approaches, auto-linking with his SECID. He cues up a batch fab process, asking for four copies of the same item. Running on backup power, each one takes a few minutes, which is fine; it takes a little longer than that to use each one up. Halfway through the fourth, he's finished. He drops the remainder of the stick on the deck, the vibrafenide hissing softly as it touches the deckplate. Another visit to the fabricator, and a few minutes later he's shrugging off the ripped flight jacket he's been wearing since the crash and slipping on a new captain's jacket, the sleeve sliding over the blinking SECID message on his left forearm warning him that the fabricator's feedstock supplies have been exhausted.
That's fine. He doesn't need it to do anything else. Hollister fits his jacket, not even facing the aft wall of the bridge. Vibrafenide is a tailored catalyst used to make permanent marks on titanium by oxidizing it into titanium dioxide, the whitest material known to science. Although it had come out on a slight slant, as human writing on large scales often does, it was just as legible as the countless chalkboards, whiteboards, and holoboards that had featured the same tilted text.
He's adjusting his cuffs as he sits back down at the Engineering station and calls up his drone lists. Some of the ones that helped save his life have dropped offline, probably with depleted power cells. But 218212 is still standing by, 221304 and 222906 showing low batteries but still ready for service. All three would be needed, but right now he needs one more, elsewhere.
ENG> list/drone_id sect:ecn stat:ready
Drones available:
216788 - Ready
Just one. Less than there should've been, but more than might have. Either way, it's a working drone right where he needs it, in the local computer node for the Engineering section.
ENG> setactivedrone=216788
Drone 216788 online
ENG-216788>
Hollister abruptly draws a blank. He knows the maintenance procedure, but not its drone operation code.
ENG-216788> list processes
The alphanumeric tornado that follows takes more than a minute to end. So, like everyone facing a technical problem and having exhausted all alternatives, he does what any good technician would rather break his thumbs than do: he re-opens the manual and starts searching. Sure enough, the answer presents itself after only a few minutes' searching, but he still feels a little ashamed that he needed the manual. Still, how could anybody be expected to remember this?
ENG-216788> begin maint_proc LNC/OFL-DIAG starttime=now()
DRONE 216788 - COMMAND ACCEPTED
DRONE 216788 - BEGINNING LOCAL NODE CLOCK DIAGNOSTIC
DRONE 216788 - !WARN! ENGINEERING CLOCK SIGNAL LOST
It's barely noticeable, but already the SQSER point ticks have lost their perfect synchronicity. It's only a fraction of a second, but a few points are not moving with their brothers. Having lost the drumbeat of the local computer node's clock, the SQSER initiators are behaving like a marching band whose drums have gone silent; they're still marching in unison, but are beginning to drift as they listen to their own internal beats rather than a single unifying one.
Hollister takes a glance at the engineering schematic page he'd left up from the manual file.
ENG-216788> setactivedrone=222906
Drone 222906 online
CAUTN: POWER CELL 19%
ENG-222906> run man_ord DISCONNECT target:MSC-A,125
DRONE 222906 DISCONNECTING MASER SYNCHRONIZER CIRCUIT A CONNECTION 125...
COMPLETE.
ENG-222906> setactivedrone=221304
Drone 221304 online
WARN: POWER CELL 7%
ENG-221304> run man_ord DISCONNECT target:LSC-B,3A5
DRONE 221304 DISCONNECTING LASER SYNCHRONIZER CIRCUIT B JUNCTION NODE 3A5...
COMPLETE.
Now there's a noticeable wave of dissonance in the SQSER display. Several arrows are moving well out of line with their neighbors, yet in line with nodes at far ends of the array. Discoordinated and getting worse, now that the internal synchronizer circuits have been disconencted. Now the array can't even talk to itself. The band is deaf and blind yet marching on.
DRONE 221304 ERROR - SIGNAL LOST
Michael Hollister silently thanks the drone's power cell for holding out for that last job. One of the SQSER points suddenly slips into a yellow border as its beat slips out of tolerance. Hollister gets up and walks over to the pile of ration blocks. There's time for a meal.
Rooting through the blocks, glancing at the black block lettering and tossing them away, Hollister finds himself reconsidering the meal idea. KIWI/FISH, no. BANANA/BEEF, absolutely not. PEANUT BUTTER - that's promising - MINT...never mind. PRAWN/VINEGAR, that's not even food. He picks up one last block and reads it, nearly tossing it back into the pile before doing a double-take. No, the words really are there: POTATO/BEEF.
It has to be a mistake, he thinks to himself as he tears open the foil. It's going to be bad somehow. They used those godawful Chinese potatoes, or "beef" is Alterra's new trademarked name for reprocessed sewage. With these wonderful thoughts in mind, Hollister takes a nervous bite.
Steak and potatoes. It has the texture of gritty putty, sure, but it tastes like steak and potatoes. He wolfs the first bite and hungrily digs in for a second. With his free hand, he yanks a bottle of water out of the locker and whacks the cap off using the edge of the locker door. The clean water is a perfect match. He walks back toward the main viewpanel, past his former boot which is still welded to the deck. Out of idle interest, he passes a hand over the aft cableway deckplate and isn't at all surprised to find it hotter than ever. Walking by the Engineering panel, he sees that many of the SQSER points are now outlined in yellow. With the entire synchronizing network down, the system is falling apart quickly.
Standing by the viewpanel, chewing on the ration brick and looking at the waves tickling the sunlight outside, he wishes his crew luck. Surely none are close to Aurora by now, so they'll be safe. With any luck, they'll be found in time.
He takes another bite and grins as he chews. An insistent beeping begins over at the Engineering station.
It's unbelievable that something tasting like actual food made it into that cavalcade of misery, especially right now. Alterra assigns supervisors for everything - from multitrillion dollar operations to things as stupid as ration flavors - so someone overseeing Operation Tastebud Murder slipped up and let this little bit of heaven through. There's a supervisor who isn't getting his bonus!
The beeping is replaced with the nasal shriek of the Master Alarm going off. The screech siren begins a few seconds later.
Someone supervised the creation of those sirens, Hollister muses to himself, taking a swig of water.
Someone supervises everything...at...Alterra.
A supervisor. A mission like this, they'd've sent a supervisor. It wasn't him, and he was confident his XO wasn't it. It wasn't the second officer, Keen, either; the man no more has two faces than he has six arms. But they'd have someone watching over their investment, someone who'd get a seat on the Board if they cornered whatever treasure there was to be had on this planet.
The sirens abruptly vanish into silence as the Engineering console's kludged-together power cell finally goes empty. Moments later, the deck transmits a vibration through Hollister's shoes, as though a bass string the length of the universe had been plucked.
Of course. It had to be; more than anyone else, he was just the type. If only he could get his hands around --
As the reactor finally falls completely out of control, the quantum detonation spreads throughout the fuel in a wave of subatomic fury. The roiling heart of the reactor releases a pulse of prompt neutrons as its overture, and these high-speed neutrons pass through the Aurora's superstructure, whipping through the ship's titanium body as though it's hardly there. This shotgun of particles passes through Captain Michael Hollister, taking the life out of his body with surgical cleanliness.
His knees have barely begun to buckle when the Aurora's entire fuel train explodes, fragmenting the massive ship's entire bow section, tearing the skin off and vaporizing most of the forward frames. The water the ship is resting in serves to focus the blast energy upward, such that it blows out the hull in wide patches along both sides. Pressure strikes the reinforced engine bulkheads and splits, part of the energy buckling the massive framing members, and the rest going vertically, exiting through the astrogation suite aft of the bridge and blowing off the upper sensor fin.
The blast wave buckles the bridge deck and starts several new fractures in the monocrystal viewpanel, but by and large the space remains intact. Hollister's body lays in the warm sunlight. Behind him, his message remains on the aft wall of the bridge in the hope that it would one day be read.
Be it known that the crew of the Aurora served with distinction and honor, even in the face of deadly peril. The loss of this ship was due to circumstances beyond the control of those aboard her, and was due to no fault of her crew. At least one lifepod survived the destruction of the Aurora, and I survived the crash on the bridge. It is my sole hope that my crew is rescued. It is in this hope that I have taken the actions I felt necessary. To whomever reads this, please see my crew or their remains safely home - it is all I ask of you.
Captain Michael P Hollister, ASV Aurora
==============================================================
Thank you for reading Chapter 1 of Downward Spiral. It was always the intent to continue the story, each chapter focusing on a different member of the crew. If you're interested in this story continuing - or would like to leave any kind of feedback - please do so; it's greatly appreciated. I'd like to especially thank @0x6A7232, @Tarkannen, @Skope, @Jamezorg, and @nesrak1 for their support and interest...and the visits of the Bumpasaur and cats. It meant more to me than you know.
P.S. I have to say, I really feel bad for Hollister, what with his spiteful choice of rations Alterra left for him...
Nice work, @scifiwriterguy - as always.
Although, I must admit, I almost shed a tear there....
Well, I am quite keen on seeing officer keen.
Now I'm gonna internally cry for the next 3 hours thanks a lot
My original intent was to work my way down the Aurora chain o' command, which puts the ship XO next and Keen after that. Are we saying we'd rather jump to Keen, then?
I honestly don't particularly care about the order as long as it makes some kind of sense. I am a bit curious of what happened to Keen since we dont see any signs of life on the floating island and we know he (her?) showed up there at some point. Super excited for any further installments of the series @scifiwriterguy
GIVE ME THIS CHAPTER OF HARD SCI-FI, INTERESTING CHARACTERS AND OVERALL GOOD WRITING
Get a telescope, attach a pair of binoculars to it, and hope and pray that I'll be able to see it on the horizon.
I need to see every little detail.
*Hammers the awesome button a dozen times before remembering he can only give one per post*