<Eridani Landing: 9 years 2 months 29 days>
<Exploration Mission: 0 day>
“Tell the council I’ll go back to Bellona,” moaned Arik.
Diana slapped the side of the case housing Arik’s original brain and several of the more powerful processors that Bellona had manufactured. Arik was still getting used to the large cut in processing power available to her with the new accommodations on the Canada. She had been installed inside the engineering section next to the FTL control computer. The idea being that in the case of an emergency she would be able to utilize it. She had wanted to be hooked up directly to the weapons systems as well but that idea had been vetoed by Captain Stagg and Commander Young.
The Canada had been stuck running shakedowns and tests in the orbit of Big Blue despite the announcement that they would be leaving in a day to start the mission.
“You’ll live,” said Derick as he continued to adjust the frequency of the Canada’s engines.
“You didn’t have to be mean about cutting my link though!” said Arik.
“I was running diagnostics on the communications array, how the hell was I supposed to know that you were still connected to the systems you had on Bellona?” he asked.
“Could the both of you shut up?” asked Minerva, she and Bruno were out on the hull of the ship along with another few dozen of the combat specialized crew, who were staging a zero-g combat drill.
Diana, Derick, Minerva, Bruno and Arik were all looped into a private communication channel as they went about their duties on the Canada, a practice that was somewhat encouraged to try and build team cohesion and unity.
“You missed,” Said Arik.
“I know that!” growled Minerva as she lined up another shot, the target buoys that they were shooting at were over ten kilometers away in a retrograde orbit around Big Blue, so any stray shot would eventually fall into its atmosphere.
“You going to help?” asked Derick interrupting Minerva as a steady stream of curses began to filter through the com.
Diana glanced over at him, “I’m off duty, I came here to hang out with Arik.” She patted the case emphasizing her point.
“I told you to buzz off, I’m trying to figure out what to do with this pitiful amount of processing power,” said Arik.
Diana gave the case another thump and drifted out of the engineering section, “It’s nice to feel wanted! Jerk!” she said as the hatch opened and drifted out into the main corridor running the length of the ship.
Diana felt her stomach growl and she glanced in at the galley, where the preparation for the evening meal appeared to be under way. Even as they were doing their shakedowns to iron all of the kinks out of the systems the Canada was receiving daily allotments of food to keep her supplies fresh.
Food and water for the 90 crew was the only limiting factor on the length of a mission the ship could undertake. They had a limited form of protein recycling but it wasn’t perfect, so like the nuclear powered vessels that had cruised the Earth’s oceans three hundred years ago they were limited by food and not power.
For now though Diana was waiting, her training was to lead teams or in the worst case the ship, if about half of the crew were killed she would be up for command. During her training missions she had usually gone and tinkered in engineering and helped Derick out with something when off duty, her expertise in that area just about as good as his own. Doing that now when they were actually on assignment had only annoyed him.
Slowly Diana floated to her quarters, which consisted of a small sealed bunk (in case of depressurization) and strapped herself to the wall to try and get some sleep.
“Why the fuck shouldn’t we forward all the data to them?” asked Ben.
Megan sighed, “Because they’re on a dangerous enough mission as it is. We don’t need to encourage them to experiment with plasma energy relaying.”
“Well I sure as fuck wouldn’t want to be on that mission without all of the information,” said Ben.
Megan rubbed at the bridge of her nose but nodded, “Fine, transmit the data to them but stick as many warnings as you can in it.”
Ben nodded and turned back to his computer, “data package is away, we’ve got a communication relay on the repair schedule for tomorrow. Everyone’s taking the day off to try and catch the Canada when she jumps so we’re the only ones still on the repair rotation. You want to start the next quantum suppression experiment now? Or after we do all that?”
Megan catching his yawn shook her head, “after.”
<Eridani Landing: 9 years 2 months 30 days>
“Engine room,”
“Go!”
“Weapons,”
“Go!”
“Navigation,”
“Go!”
“Environmental,”
“Go!”
“Cyberwarfare,”
“Go!”
Captain Stagg nodded, “All stations report ready status. Bellona control we are ready to make our first jump attempt.”
“Godspeed Canada. You are clear to make the jump.”
The Canada was making the tachyon based FTL jump at full battle readiness, they after all had no idea what it would be like on the other side of the beacon they were jumping too. The atmosphere had been vented and everyone was suited up, side arms had even been distributed, and Diana was stuck manning the damage control station on the bridge.
“Navigation, give us a countdown, all hands brace for acceleration,” said Stagg.
The navigator nodded and turned back to his console, hand hovering over a small physical switch, one of the few present on the ship.
“Five, four, three, two, one!” he hit the switch, and the Canada leapt forwards, propelled by a wake of tachyons.
No one on the ship felt the acceleration as they moved, and the cameras on the outside of the ship didn’t display the mystery of the universe, only blue and red shifted stars that began to streak by.
“We’re going to be in transit for three hours,” said the navigator.
“Certainly different, compared to our own version of FTL,” said Stagg.
Arik drifted into view on the main monitor, “Different technological motivations, like our weapons and defensive technology.”
Stagg nodded, “I suppose we’re only going to find more differences.”
A warning flared on Diana’s screen, she turned to look at it, “Derick what’s going on with the engines?” she asked.
”I don’t know, I’m looking into it now. Loop Arik in I need this data analyzed as quickly as possible.”
“Captain, we’ve got an anomalous reading inside one of the engine resonance chambers,” said Diana turning to look at the Captain.
Stagg frowned, “anomalous how?”
Diana hesitated, “I’m not sure. Derick’s looking into it, and he’d like Arik to analyze the data. At the moment though it’s not a threat, it could just be a faulty sensor.”
Stagg nodded and keyed her com, “engine room, should we drop out of FTL to analyze the engine situation?”
”Not at the moment no, although I would recommend we keep at full combat readiness in case we do have a breach. Whatever the problem is further FTL doesn’t seem to be aggravating it.”
“Report any changes, if it looks like it might cause anything dangerous drop us out of FTL without waiting for my order.”
“Aye!”
“Anything in the data?” asked Stagg turning to look at Arik.
She shook her head, “Nothing yet at the moment it looks like a sensor glitch, but considering it took place the second we hit FTL it’s probably safer to make the worst assumption.”
Stagg sighed, “Anything else?” she asked.
Diana shook her head, “no, nothing at the moment.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way.”
Ben twisted the controls of the small repair shuttle around, they had managed to catch the Canada as she launched into FTL, for all of the technology behind it the tachyon FTL jump had looked like something from an old sci-fi show, she ship zooming off in a blink of light. It was nothing like the violent explosion of antimatter and strange matter to tear a hole in subspace that he was familiar with.
“Ready to go repair that stupid relay?” asked Ben.
Megan smiled, “Actually do some work for once instead of being cooped up in that lab? Yes.”
Ben chuckled and punched the thrusters, the two of them felt the acceleration as they moved quickly over Bellona’s surface.
Something made a distinct clunking noise in the back of the small craft, both engineers glanced at one another. The sound had been something similar to a micro fusion reactor dying, the small star inside of its containment field collapsing, but there were multiple redundancies in place to warn them of an error like that.
Alarms suddenly blared from every system, reporting a loss of power and control.
“Shit,” said Ben.
The craft they were in began to quickly fall towards Bellona, in their haste to get to the relay in need of repair they had nulled out most of their orbital velocity.
“Shit!” repeated Ben as the craft angled down, even the backup chemical thrusters down as the systems switched over to backups.
Megan keyed her com unit, “This is shuttle Wrench Two, declaring an emergency we have lost all power and are on an aggressive re-entry trajectory with Bellona. Repeat this is shuttle Wrench Two declaring an emergency,” her voice betrayed a false sense of calm even as Bellona began to grow very rapidly in the view screen in front of them.
Megan put the message on repeat and turned to look at the engineering readout as Ben continued to try and at least flatten out their re-entry profile.
“God damn it, all three redundancies are malfunctioning!”
“Unless the entire maintenance crew is on some seriously heavy stuff that’s not possible,” growled Ben.
Megan shook her head, “No it’s not possible, hell I’m not even sure we’re transmitting. Whoever did this can’t have messed with the beacon, I’m popping that,” said Megan as she reached under the console for the emergency beacon, a small modular device that came standard on every ship.
Pulling a small tab on the thing extending a backup antenna Megan pushed the beacon back behind her letting it float in the air.
“Any flight control?” asked Megan.
“No, I’d appreciate getting some,”
“Whoever did this messed with the backup control relays, I need to fix it,” said Megan.
“Fuck this,” Ben pushed himself away from the useless controls and unstrapping himself from his seat pushed off the forward display and moved to the back of the shuttle ripping a maintenance panel off of the floor.
“You get control, I’m going to try and get power,” said Ben as he began to dig around in the exposed shuttle systems.
“How long until we reenter the atmosphere?” asked Megan even as she tore open the control panel in front of her searching for what was wrong with it.
“No idea, we were at something like 300 kilometers, and we’re still accelerating down. A minute maybe? I don’t know,” growled Ben as he tore at the wiring in front of him.
“Fucking hell!” said Megan.
The two well paired engineers continued to work in silence. Although neither would admit it both were enjoying the events, it had been years since they had actually had to work to save their own lives. An experience common during the war which they had not dealt with since.
The small shuttle began to shake and slowly tilt, if they didn’t get control very soon they were going to be put into a death spin crushed against the wall of the ship as they fell.
“Got control!” said Megan.
The panels and controls in front of her dimly lit themselves, running on what was left of the rapidly diminishing backup power.
“Chemical backups are on!” said Ben.
Megan was already at the stick, trying to smooth out the ship with the chemical propulsive thrusters, not to very much effect. The surface of Bellona was growing very rapidly in front of them now.
“Take the attitude controls, try and keep us upright while I try and steer!” said Megan.
They were now well within the atmosphere, and the inside of the small shuttle was heating up very rapidly. They were not hitting the atmosphere at anything near the crafts correct angle, what little armor it did have on other sections was no doubt violently ablating.
Ben continued to adjust the attitude of the chemical thrusters, vainly trying to correct the error and bring the shuttle back under control but inertia being what it was and the significant amount of weight in the back of the craft made that nearly impossible.
“We’ve made it through entry, see any place to land?” asked Megan, her eyes glued to the surface which was an almost uniformly smooth blue sheet of ice. They had come out over one of the icy plains of Bellona, and although it looked inviting as a landing strip the plains were notorious for having ancient bubbles inside of them, meaning the flat looking terrain was a mine field of crevices and holes with only a thin layer of ice over them.
“No!” said Ben, “We’re 1000 meters over the surface, falling at a rate of nearly thirty meters a second, we don’t have time to find another landing site, just try and slow us down so we don’t punch through the ice!”
“Fuck I know that!” growled Megan as she wrestled with the controls.
The small shuttle continued to dive towards the surface, Ben tried not look at the rapidly declining altimeter, working as hard as he could to try and slow the shuttle with the controls he had.
“Here we go,” Megan was cut off as they hit the ground, and immediately punched through the ice. The shuttle hit the opposite side of the small crevice it had broken into and came to an abrupt stop. The cracking of bones and creaking of metal were the loudest sounds in the cabin for half a second.
The only noises that followed were startled squeaks in the 25 kHz range.
“We’re coming out of FTL in thirty seconds,” said the navigator.
“All stations prepare for the drop out of FTL,” said Captain Stagg over the intercom.
Diana looked over her console again, the error being reported in the engines was still present but otherwise the trip through FTL didn’t seem to be affecting the ship.
“Ten seconds.”
The Canada shuddered slightly and Diana gripped her console steadying herself. The ship slid out of FTL smoothly enough, the stars red and blue shifted from the speed quickly returned to their normal illuminations.
The master alarm sounded and Diana was thrown backwards into her seat, an aggressive number of g’s pushing and clawing at her.
It was over in a moment, and the warning on the engine in front of Diana died.
“Contacts!” said Captain Stagg ignoring the brief acceleration in lieu of combat readiness.
“Nothing at the moment!” said tactical.
“Keep scanning,” Stagg opened a line to the engineering section, “what the hell was that?”
“I’m still digging through the data! Best I can tell tachyons and vacuum thrusters don’t play well. No damage to the systems.”
Stagg nodded to herself, “I want a report from all stations, if we don’t have a contact in two hours we’ll stand down from battle readiness. Until that time I want everyone to remain on their toes,” said Captain Stagg.
Diana turned back to her station and switched off her local com unit, switching over to her team chat.
“Everyone good?” asked Diana.
“Just peachy down here, some idiot didn’t secure everything in the weapons bay. I got hit with a rack of rifles!” said Bruno, Diana brought up the local camera feed of the armory to see everyone on duty in the section rapidly collecting and re stowing the floating weapons.
“Still figuring out why the engines went crazy, I’m logging out I have to work on this!” said Derick, the com channel connected to him winking out.
“Arik?” asked Diana.
The girl appeared inside of her helmet, “You good?”
“So much data, the tachyon beacons function as relays for the aliens FTL communication, we don’t have the equipment to access the FTL versions of their communications, but the thing is broadcasting an enormous amount of data on standard wavelengths, I’m trying to sort through all of it.”
“So you’ve tapped into their communication networks?” asked Diana.
It took Arik a moment to respond, “I’ve tapped into their civilian communication network. There are encrypted data streams though, at the moment I don’t have enough computational resources to try and break into those.”
“Still just the civilian data has got to have useful information,”
“It does, I’m attempting to sort through it all.”
Diana smiled, “Well tell me if you find anything interesting.”
Arik nodded and her image disappeared.
Diana sighed and focused back on her damage control readout, typical everyone else was busy and she was stuck with nothing to do.
*“We’re receiving a hail from Captain [Adria]’s ship!” said [Tom].
“Put her through,” said [Charles] as he stood up.
The main display quickly resolved, showing a rather haggard looking Adria.
“The Class C species refuses to communicate with me, their representative has expressed the desire to only talk with you,” said the Captain sounding resigned.
“Did you get any information from them?” asked [Charles].
“They refuse to surrender.”
[Charles] nodded, “I’ll talk to them you are of course free to monitor the exchange.”
“I’ll do that.”
“[Tom] open a communication line to the Class C species,” ordered [Charles].
Within moments the communication request was sent, and a second later the Class C species responded and opened the channel.
“How’s your ship?” asked the same older looking man who [Charles] had communicated with earlier, despite the loss of the rest of their fleets and the abandonment by what were no doubt the more well off individuals of the species the same looked of resolute defiance twinkled in the aliens eyes.
“Surrender the FTL designs that your species developed and your life and the lives of those under your command will be spared,” said [Charles].
The alien let out a barking laugh that needed no translation, “We’re got nothing left to live for but make sure to take as many of you fuckers out with us as possible. You destroyed [Dirt], you destroyed our fleets, you destroyed everything that’s taken us centuries to build! If you want to take any more from us you’re going to have to pay for it in blood!”
[Charles] glared at the man, his words were insane and his resolve misplaced. Still he couldn’t help but feel some amount of respect for the genetic abomination of an alien. Whatever had made them into a Class C species had obviously made them ready to die for the smallest things.
“If you will not give me the FTL designs then we will take them from you.”
The alien spread his arms wide, “You can try! I guarantee you won’t get them, bomb this facility and they will be lost.”
[Charles] nodded in agreement, “I cannot destroy your base no, despite the ease at which we would be able to do so, I can however destroy the rest of the people on your pitiful excuse for a colony planet,”
[Charles] turned to Jack, the weapons officer taking his que targeted one of the settlements on the surface of the red planet. Within moments it was gone reduced to nothing but ash, the main gun of every ship in the small Imperial fleet having fired on it.
The alien’s lips thinned and his eyes narrowed, “You could do that yes, but all you are doing is making it worse for yourself. When you finally decide to stop being a fucking coward and come face us in person to try and get your precious FTL technology you will see how angry you have made us.”
The alien cut the channel and the screen went black.
[Charles] ground his teeth together, this species was really starting to frustrate him.*
Coughing Ben slowly opened his eyes, it took him a moment to work things out. He was flat on his back staring up at the dead display that had served as their main view port. It was now dead and cracked to hell not displaying anything.
Getting his bearings the first thing Ben noticed was that the chair holding Megan was gone, looking over his shoulder he quickly spotted her in the aft section of the shuttle, which also happened to be several meters down, still strapped into her seat buried underneath different components that had broken free in the crash. Unstrapping himself Ben grabbed the emergency medical kit from the console in front of him.
Ripping it open and quickly downing several of the chemical painkiller meds Ben rolled to the side, and off of his seat falling down to the bottom of the shuttle where Megan and her chair were.
He grunted at the impact, apparently it took more than a second for the pain meds to kick in and he definitely needed them based on how many different parts of his body were telling him to stop moving.
Taking a breath Ben looked down at Megan and the mess on top of her. It looked like the bolts holding it to the floor had sheared on impact, along with the cargo clamps holding the parts they had brought to repair the drone.
“Shit!” said Ben, noticing the red blood and gore that was visible on the parts nearest Megan’s legs.
“Shit!” repeated Ben, ignoring the pain in his own chest and the blood dripping down into his eyes he began to move the debris away from Megan. She was still strapped into the chair, her chest slowly moving up and down but otherwise she looked dead her face already pale either from the creeping cold or the blood loss.
“I really hope you’re unconscious right now,” said Ben as he cleared away what was left of the metal on top of her. There was not much left of her legs, from the knees down there wasn’t flesh left on the bones, it looked as if something had simply scraped it off.
A single component was still resting on her knees, creating enough pressure that despite the damage to her legs little blood was pooling.
Pulling a syringe from the medical bag Ben stabbed the needle into Megan’s side and released the three nano-machine doses inside, they wouldn’t be able to repair the legs or any nerve damage, but they would be able to repair anything else that was wrong and keep her alive.
Ben glanced back down at her legs and shivered, he’d seen gore during the war with Mars, a man’s helmet get punched clean through with a piece of a deflected kinetic, the devastation on the surface of Earth where people had died as their skin burned off of their bodies due to the heat of an impact.
Just last night though, he’d been admiring those legs rather closely much to Megan’s delight. Neither of them knowing that it was going to be the last time.
Ben looked at her face for a minute, and then back down at her legs. He like everyone else who had gone through military training on Earth as well as the required brush up courses on Bellona knew what had to be done. Opening the medical kit again Ben dug around inside and extracted the combat tourniquets at the bottom. One for each of the pilots on a ship.
They were small bands that when placed on the limb quickly constricted to stop blood flow and then pushing needles into the damaged tissue would release local clotting agents. They were last ditch efforts used only when help had no chance of arriving quickly, because once they were used the limb was going to be amputated.
Ben glanced again at Megan’s legs, and then at the crushed skin and muscle that was sticking to the spare power supply module two feet away.
Swallowing Ben did a quick mental calculation, he had no idea how long he was out but it could only have been a few minutes. If the beacon was working correctly rescue would be arriving in less than an hour, if not it would be significantly longer.
Based on how the rest of the day was going Ben wasn’t putting much stock in the beacon and without the tourniquet Megan’s remaining time was measure in minutes.
“God damn it!”
Kneeling down next to Megan Ben quickly undid both of the tourniquets latches. He hesitated for another moment and then steeling himself quickly placed the first one on Megan’s right leg just below the knee an inch or two above the damage.
The device chirped and then tightened down, burning through the remainder of the cloth on her leg getting to the skin it quickly constricted and blocked the majority of the blood flow.
There was a sickening squelching sound as it tightened, and Ben nearly lost the contents of his stomach as the sound reverberated through the cabin.
Taking a shuddering breath Ben quickly slipped the other tourniquet on her opposite leg and winced at the sound as it once again ripped through the cabin.
Pulling a monitor out of the emergency kit Ben clamped it around her wrist and digging into his pocket pulled out his link, the devices already synced showed that her vitals were weak but steady. Barring any internal injuries that the nano-machines could not repair she was for the moment out of immediate danger.
Sitting Ben briefly closed his eyes, it felt like it had been hours but it had probably only been a few minutes since the crash. Opening his eyes to take stock Ben examined himself and winced, a long gash was running diagonally down his chest and their were numerous other cuts and gashes, a few of them were going to scar rather badly without a nano-machine injection but for the moment Megan was the one who needed those.
Looking at the mess around him Ben checked his link, trying to ascertain the condition of the shuttle. Their was power, but that was from the backups and barely functioning, and life support was now on the chemical backups, meaning they only had oxygen for three days and that was if the ships wasn’t leaking which seemed incredibly unlikely. The fact that the heaters were dead and the ship had to be wedged between two ice shelfs also meant they were going to freeze well before they ran out of air.
Ben looked over at the EVA suits, they were crushed beneath a crate of something heavy as well and neither he nor Megan had cybernetics or genemods to handle the cold and lack of O2 even if they could get out of the damaged shuttle.
A small high pitched squeak drew his attention and looking up at the source of the noise Ben was fairly sure he had sustained some sort of head trauma.
Strange.
Metal.
Warm.
Alive?
Dorvakian?
Others?
Greet?
Hide?
Kill?