DOWNWARD SPIRAL - A Subnautica Story
scifiwriterguy
Sector ZZ-9-Plural Z-α Join Date: 2017-02-14 Member: 227901Members
Sector ZZ-9-Plural Z-α Join Date: 2017-02-14 Member: 227901Members
Downward Spiral
A Subnautica story by Scifiwriterguy
Chapter 1, Part I
Hollister, Michael P.
Employee No. J-H8261827
Space Operations Division
Current Assignment: Captain, ASV Aurora
"Captain on deck!"
"As you were," Hollister says, walking briskly across the open-floorplan bridge. He notes that none of the crew manning stations had moved to get up on his entrance; if they had, it would've been a disciplinary note, no matter how much of a hurry he's in. Watchstanders have more to concentrate on than jumping to their feet every time someone with brass on his neck walks through the door, even if people like that pedantic pissant Yu didn't understand why.
In the center of the bridge, with a commanding view of both the local-sensor holo map in the lower-forward position and the viewpanels dominating the walls, his on-duty pilot team was working with uncommon speed. During the average cruise, pilots only have real work to do at departure and arrival, with a long stretch of nothing mid-flight.
Of course, this isn't an average cruise, he reflects.
Hollister makes for his navigator, Hideki Ishimura. Only a year out of Fleet training, but still one of Alterra's top interstellar navigators. That's why he's sitting on the bridge of the Aurora and not in some cushy job in Alterra Central back in Gilese.
"Ishi? What's the news, son?" Hollister asks as he approaches the nav station. Hideki doesn't look up.
"Approach to 4546B is currently nominal, sir. We're beginning the roll and pitch to orient for the maneuver." Outside, the luminous crescent of 4546B's sunlit side is rotating slowly counterclockwise as the Aurora spins on her long axis to point her belly at the planet.
"How long to gravity interface?"
Hideki glances at one of his wing monitors before answering.
"We'll be at the correct boost angle in two minutes, fifteen seconds...mark." In addition to rolling, Aurora is also yaw-thrusting, pointing her nose to skim the planet. When the right angle comes up, the pilots hit the main engines and shove the ship forward so that the massive ship rolls around the planet's gravity well, shifting her onto a new course for the next leg of her journey; at the moment, the ship is still in its original plotted vector, aimed at the planet rather than alongside it.
"Good," Hollister says before walking away. Despite the relative difficulty of the upcoming maneuver, navigation isn't his main concern. Instead, he heads for a nearby instrument cluster staffed by three crew.
"Any contacts?" Hollister asks the trio as he steps up to them.
"Sir, currently holding no contacts of any kind," the senior sensor technician, some overeager pup named Reenberg, replies.
"Nothing in our transit path?"
"No sir, no contacts or reflections."
"Scanning the planet?"
"Yes, sir, full-spectrum. Sensor efficiency is degraded but I don't have any firm contacts."
"Degraded?"
"Yes, sir. 4546B seems to be a waterworld, and the water scatter is throwing off the fine targeting. Astrogation should be notified; they have the planet marked as partly terrestrial."
"Fine, notify them. After the maneuver. In the meantime, all three of you keep up active scanning on the planet and the orbital path, and you let me know if you detect anything."
"Yes, sir."
Straightening, Hollister looks through the viewpanels. The glowing, sunlit atmosphere of 4546B has rotated about halfway down the panels. Despite being mostly cargo space and blessed with some of the most powerful thrusters ever to come out of an engine lab, a ship as big as the Aurora can't maneuver very quickly; that much mass resists changes in its inertia.
"Optimal boost angle in one minute twenty...mark," Ishi's voice announces to the bridge from its cluster of displays.
"Very good," Hollister says to nobody in particular. He's getting worried now. To everybody else on the bridge, this is a semi-ordinary maneuver which he's decided to make more interesting by being a busybody and bothering the sensor team. But the sealed orders the command crew received just before departure make this another matter entirely, and one which isn't panning out correctly.
Sensors should see something by now.
"What's that?"
Hollister spins on his heel, bulling his way to the sensor station.
"What?"
"Not sure, sir," Reenberg says, "Energy signature below, from the planet. Can't quite figure it out."
"Explain! Don't make me keep asking."
"It's a powerful signal, sir, but we can't localize it. It's a weird signature. I haven't seen anything like it before."
"Amplitude increasing exponentially," one of the subordinate techs says.
"Optimal angle in one minute...mark," Ishi says from halfway across the bridge.
"Power spike! It's going off the chart, sir!" the junior tech yells. Reenberg seems frozen.
Hollister's wrist flies toward his face, the bandmic keying automatically to the ship's 1MC announcement circuit.
"XO to the bridge on the double!" he shouts, his voice echoing in every corner of the ship's crew spaces.
"Sir!" the sensor tech screams. His gear has passed through the top of its range and is now showing Signal Off warnings - the energy reading below has exceeded the system's ability to understand.
"Sound collision!" Hollister yells to the bridge crew, and moments later the sound no spacer wants to hear begins: the rising-and-falling wail of the collision alarm. The one veteran spacers call "Death's Alarm Clock."
"Incoming!" The warning comes from the third-rate sensor tech, the one scanning in optical/IR. Although she can't make out what her telescopes are showing, it's bright, getting brighter, and unmistakably headed for her.
"Brace for impact!" Hollister screams over the 1MC.
If you want to see Part II, let me know. All comments welcome.
A Subnautica story by Scifiwriterguy
Chapter 1, Part I
Hollister, Michael P.
Employee No. J-H8261827
Space Operations Division
Current Assignment: Captain, ASV Aurora
"Captain on deck!"
"As you were," Hollister says, walking briskly across the open-floorplan bridge. He notes that none of the crew manning stations had moved to get up on his entrance; if they had, it would've been a disciplinary note, no matter how much of a hurry he's in. Watchstanders have more to concentrate on than jumping to their feet every time someone with brass on his neck walks through the door, even if people like that pedantic pissant Yu didn't understand why.
In the center of the bridge, with a commanding view of both the local-sensor holo map in the lower-forward position and the viewpanels dominating the walls, his on-duty pilot team was working with uncommon speed. During the average cruise, pilots only have real work to do at departure and arrival, with a long stretch of nothing mid-flight.
Of course, this isn't an average cruise, he reflects.
Hollister makes for his navigator, Hideki Ishimura. Only a year out of Fleet training, but still one of Alterra's top interstellar navigators. That's why he's sitting on the bridge of the Aurora and not in some cushy job in Alterra Central back in Gilese.
"Ishi? What's the news, son?" Hollister asks as he approaches the nav station. Hideki doesn't look up.
"Approach to 4546B is currently nominal, sir. We're beginning the roll and pitch to orient for the maneuver." Outside, the luminous crescent of 4546B's sunlit side is rotating slowly counterclockwise as the Aurora spins on her long axis to point her belly at the planet.
"How long to gravity interface?"
Hideki glances at one of his wing monitors before answering.
"We'll be at the correct boost angle in two minutes, fifteen seconds...mark." In addition to rolling, Aurora is also yaw-thrusting, pointing her nose to skim the planet. When the right angle comes up, the pilots hit the main engines and shove the ship forward so that the massive ship rolls around the planet's gravity well, shifting her onto a new course for the next leg of her journey; at the moment, the ship is still in its original plotted vector, aimed at the planet rather than alongside it.
"Good," Hollister says before walking away. Despite the relative difficulty of the upcoming maneuver, navigation isn't his main concern. Instead, he heads for a nearby instrument cluster staffed by three crew.
"Any contacts?" Hollister asks the trio as he steps up to them.
"Sir, currently holding no contacts of any kind," the senior sensor technician, some overeager pup named Reenberg, replies.
"Nothing in our transit path?"
"No sir, no contacts or reflections."
"Scanning the planet?"
"Yes, sir, full-spectrum. Sensor efficiency is degraded but I don't have any firm contacts."
"Degraded?"
"Yes, sir. 4546B seems to be a waterworld, and the water scatter is throwing off the fine targeting. Astrogation should be notified; they have the planet marked as partly terrestrial."
"Fine, notify them. After the maneuver. In the meantime, all three of you keep up active scanning on the planet and the orbital path, and you let me know if you detect anything."
"Yes, sir."
Straightening, Hollister looks through the viewpanels. The glowing, sunlit atmosphere of 4546B has rotated about halfway down the panels. Despite being mostly cargo space and blessed with some of the most powerful thrusters ever to come out of an engine lab, a ship as big as the Aurora can't maneuver very quickly; that much mass resists changes in its inertia.
"Optimal boost angle in one minute twenty...mark," Ishi's voice announces to the bridge from its cluster of displays.
"Very good," Hollister says to nobody in particular. He's getting worried now. To everybody else on the bridge, this is a semi-ordinary maneuver which he's decided to make more interesting by being a busybody and bothering the sensor team. But the sealed orders the command crew received just before departure make this another matter entirely, and one which isn't panning out correctly.
Sensors should see something by now.
"What's that?"
Hollister spins on his heel, bulling his way to the sensor station.
"What?"
"Not sure, sir," Reenberg says, "Energy signature below, from the planet. Can't quite figure it out."
"Explain! Don't make me keep asking."
"It's a powerful signal, sir, but we can't localize it. It's a weird signature. I haven't seen anything like it before."
"Amplitude increasing exponentially," one of the subordinate techs says.
"Optimal angle in one minute...mark," Ishi says from halfway across the bridge.
"Power spike! It's going off the chart, sir!" the junior tech yells. Reenberg seems frozen.
Hollister's wrist flies toward his face, the bandmic keying automatically to the ship's 1MC announcement circuit.
"XO to the bridge on the double!" he shouts, his voice echoing in every corner of the ship's crew spaces.
"Sir!" the sensor tech screams. His gear has passed through the top of its range and is now showing Signal Off warnings - the energy reading below has exceeded the system's ability to understand.
"Sound collision!" Hollister yells to the bridge crew, and moments later the sound no spacer wants to hear begins: the rising-and-falling wail of the collision alarm. The one veteran spacers call "Death's Alarm Clock."
"Incoming!" The warning comes from the third-rate sensor tech, the one scanning in optical/IR. Although she can't make out what her telescopes are showing, it's bright, getting brighter, and unmistakably headed for her.
"Brace for impact!" Hollister screams over the 1MC.
If you want to see Part II, let me know. All comments welcome.
Comments
No rush. Just finished the first part as I touched down...
You also kinda go out of your way to use excessively obscure vocabulary such as "pedantic and pissant", which i think mean something close to "perfectionist" and "worthless". Neither of them really work well or make sense in that situation though?
I've bolded the parts with bad grammar/grammar I don't understand.
There's just a lot of parts like this that don't make sense. This is a single quote where the character speaking jumps from two minutes to fifteen seconds to done.
It's all present tense.
"As you were" - Military; An order to resume activity interrupted by an officer's arrival.
Crew manning stations - Nautical term; Crewmembers currently working at a station on the bridge (called "manning")
Watchstander(s) - Nautical term; Persons on-duty, manning bridge stations (called "standing watch")
"Brass on his neck" - Military derivative; High-ranking officers, such as a captain or XO (aka "brass").
Pedantic/Pedant - Someone obsessed with details which are frequently irrelevant, often to the exclusion of the "big picture."
Pissant - A jerk, but a particularly dismissive way of saying it. The phrase, taken in its entirety, means Hollister holds Yu with contempt and disregard; despite his corporate rank, Yu not only has no value whatsoever in Hollister's eyes but is obsessed with unimportant things.
"At time...mark" - Timekeeping practice, chiefly military. When handling events that must be timed correctly, you can't just say "In two minutes and fifteen seconds" because that's imprecise. From when? When you started speaking? Finished? Hence, precision time announcements are made like this. State the time remaining, then "mark" when exactly that much time remains. It's the verbal equivalent of "at the tone, the time will be."
Also of note:
1MC - Military; Master announcement circuit. Essentially, the selection on the ship's PA system that enables someone to speak to every compartment and space on the ship; the "everyone needs to hear this" circuit.
The deep, basso thud of the impact is almost overshadowed by the groaning of titanium under extreme strain...and the screaming of the bridge crew. Aurora yaws hard - hit broadside aft, the shot spins the ship on her short axis, and 4546B suddenly lurches up, filling the viewpanels.
Nobody sees it happen, though; the sharp yaw throws everybody on the bridge. Hollister bounces off the sensor station, feeling the sharp snap of a rib giving way, before he bashes his head against the third tech's seat and manages grab the empty chair. The Tech-3 has flown out of the chair, and describes a short, screaming arc before colliding with the chart table, the sickening crunch of her neck breaking audible even in the chaos, or at least Hollister thinks he hears it. The Tech-2 is tossed against his workstation, which Heimlichs him and causes him to lose his lunch on the console just before he puts his head through the display. Reenberg simply vanishes from view.
The on-duty pilots manage to stay put thanks largely to their wraparound workstations, but Ishi is thrown into a haphazard somersault across the bridge decking. Screams and squawks from other bridge crew just add to the din.
As the human noise subsides, the mechanical noise takes over. The collision warning, still howling, has been joined by two others: the nasal rising cry of the master alarm, no surprise there, and an extremely unwelcome slow, two-tone hi-low siren.
"Power plant casualty!" one of the pilots yells, confirming what the siren was already telling Hollister.
"Angle is negative-70," Ishi's calm voice announces. Hollister throws a glance at his navigator; he's sitting at his station unsteadily, and blood from a scalp wound has soaked one side of his head and the shoulder of his uniform.
"Up-angle to positive-60, go to two-thirds thrust," Ishi says. He sounds like he's in a flight school simulator, not aboard a ship in serious trouble.
"I got nothing here, sir!" the first-seat pilot is shouting, Hollister figures either at him or Ishi.
"Sir, primary and aux power down, operating on emergency. Fire warnings in multiple sections, reading hull breaches and zero atmo in nine sections. Zero readings, Engine 1, Engine 2 overtemp. Probable quench on all four engines. Maneuvering system main and backup are down. Sir, we have no propulsion at all," the second engineer reports from her station. Glancing over in that direction, Hollister sees the first engineer's jumpsuit crumpled under the console's overhang.
Hollister hauls himself into the empty Tech-3 chair and cues the sensor system. Unsurprisingly, the system in error-reset. He throws a glance at the Tech-2, still seated at his station but folded over the console. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth. Hollister turns back to the workstation in front of him and begins running through every command-line instruction he knows to get at least some piece of the sensor system back up.
The Aurora bucks hard, rattling everyone on the bridge. With that, Hollister knows that they're all going to die. Space is smooth. Bucking means atmosphere, something Aurora was never meant to taste in her life.
"Altitude!" Hollister shouts, still trying to beat some life into the sensor system. Aurora lurches slightly.
"One-hundred twenty klicks AGL!" the second-seat pilot replies, "Losing altitude fast!"
"Propulsion! Give me something!" Hollister demands of the engineer.
"Trying, sir! We've lost all readings from the main engines. Trying to get something from the boosters," she hollers back, hands flying across her controls. Without propulsion, Aurora will definitely die. With it, well, it will only probably die. The sensor system finally coughs and brings up a low-res overlay from the forward sensors. The planet ahead is just a hash of water-surface echoes, with no hard reflections anywhere. Nothing solid.
To a layman aboard a starship that's become a megaton-massed cannonball, a water landing probably sounds better than hitting ground. Hollister, unfortunately, knows better. First of all, a million tons of mass hitting the water nose-on at terminal velocity or better will just collapse. If they can get the nose up, they might be able to skim her to a stop, but that means they'll just be alive for the new nightmare: the Aurora was never designed to float. With the hull damage of a water landing, she'll sink like a brick and take all of them down with her.
"Pilot, give me a continuous burn of the ventral-forward and dorsal-aft OMS," Hollister calmly demands.
"Roger, burning OMS," is the reply from the first-chair.
It's risky and stupid. Aurora's OMS, a high-impulse plasma shunt, is never designed to be operated in any thickness of atmosphere, even the wisps of 100 kilometers up. The thrusters will cook themselves. But, at the moment, it's all they have, and getting the nose up is critical.
Besides, the back of Hollister's mind reflects, her resale value is shot now, anyway.
"I'm getting something, sir," reports the first-chair, "Scott, is BTV up?"
"Working on it," the second-chair replies, "I have a master caution on the boosters, Captain, should-"
"Fire them," Hollister says without hesitation. He's finally getting something from the sensors. Nothing definitive, just a faint flash, but at the moment, he'll take it.
"Sir, I think we have comms up," comes a report from elsewhere on the bridge.
"Send an SOS to Alterra and up on the open channel." The sensors keep fighting, but there's something there. If he can get a fix before they lose too much altitude...
"Automated SOS sent to listening buoy Gamma-Alpha just prior to impact, sir," the comm tech reports.
"Fine, get one out on the open channel. We need help now. Tell them we're going down, give our position. Immediate rescue support needed. Don't argue," Hollister says tightly.
It's against Alterra regs, he knows. All SOS traffic goes to Alterra Central only, and only by the listening buoys. Alterra doesn't ask for help and certainly doesn't beg for it. But this is his crew.
"Mayday, mayday, mayday; all stations, all stations. This is the Alterra vessel Aurora. Suffered catastrophic damage; we are going down. Request immediate assistance, nav data burst following. 157 persons onboard. I say again, this is Alterra vessel Aurora; we are going down."
Hollister hears this but doesn't allow himself to even think about it. If he did, he'd know that the message just sent might as well be an epitaph, not a request for help.
Where the hell is Lackland? The XO should've been to the bridge ages ago. He lifts his wrist to speak into the bandmic again.
"Captain to XO, report."
"Captain, this is lieutenant commander Keen. The XO's dead, sir, in engineering when we were hit. The machine just sent me the advance. I'm on my way to the bridge now."
Field promotion by computer. What a company.
"Commander Keen, do not come to the bridge. Get to a lifepod, right now."
"Sir?"
"Lifepod, Keen. Go. I'm sounding the order." Swallowing hard, Hollister raises his voice so the comm tech can hear him.
"Comms, sound abandon ship. Abandon ship," Hollister repeats so there will be no confusion.
Aurora shakes as thin atmosphere begins to thicken.
The comms officer doesn't reply. In unison, every PA speaker and bandcom begin the same recitation. The screech siren: three times, falling note. Then the automated announcement.
"ALL CREW, ALL CREW. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. ABANDON SHIP. ABANDON SHIP. ALL CREW REPORT TO LIFEPODS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. ABANDON SHIP. ABANDON SHIP."
And the sirens again. Hollister keys in a captain's code, overriding the lifepods' primary instructions loop. Aurora doesn't have much time left, so he's instructing all the lifepods to launch as soon as anyone's aboard and not to wait for a second crew.
"Passing 100 klicks, sir," the first-chair pilot reports, "Angle is now negative-65. OMS just doesn't have enough push, sir."
There. The sensors might not have cooperated much, not for long, but enough for a fix. There's land down there. On the status board on the aft bridge wall, lifepod indicators are flicking from green to red as pods are launched.
"Sir, I'm getting something from Engine 4. Permission to try a relight?" the lead pilot asks, struggling with his controls.
"Yes, granted, go!" Hollister shouts, keying in his access code to pull up comms without having to make his way across the lurching deck. The override goes through and he keys up Keen's band.
"Keen! This is Aurora, come in!"
A moment passes. The ship groans in pain.
"I hear you, Captain!"
"The computer has identified a landmass at the attached coordinates!" Hollister says, tapping controls to burst-transmit the location, "I want you to regroup the crew there!"
"Understood, but-" Hollister cuts him off. Now is not the time for "but."
"They're your responsibility now, don't let them down!"
"Captain, you need to evacuate!"
"Attempting relight," the pilot says at nearly the same time.
And the Aurora screams as another explosion tears her apart. Hollister tumbles from his seat, bashing his head on the decking. Blearily, through tears and blood, he can see the fuzzy image of 4546B through the forward viewpanel. Aurora has managed to lift her nose up after all; it just took another catastrophic explosion to do it.
"What the hell was that?" someone is screaming.
"Pilot, keep the nose up. Hard right rudder," Hollister groans, pulling himself up to hands and knees. He shakes his head, trying to clear it. Blood patters to the decking.
"Right rudder, aye," says the second pilot's voice. Through hazy vision, Hollister sees the first-chair pilot sagged halfway off his seat, held in place only by his harness.
The sirens and alarms are silent. There's just the terrible, hungry growling of atmosphere ripping Aurora's skin off.
"Altitude," Hollister grunts, pulling at the Sensor-3 seat to try to get up. It's not working.
"Forty-four thousand meters under the keel, sir."
Consciousness bleeds away, and Hollister sags to the deck.
Sounds, faint and foggy, drift in and out of his hearing.
"22,000 meters...Captain?...Sir, 15,000 meters, we're falling fast!...Sir, permission to try boosters?...Captain?..."
Hollister tries to answer, but it's barely a mumble.
"Five thousand meters...Ah, shit, I'm trying the boosters...Come on baby..."
Something shoves the deck, and Hollister feels himself sliding along the alloy flooring. It seems like a good thing, that finally, for some reason, something's going right. But no sooner has that thought congealed then he is thrown forward, or perhaps the deck pulled backwards, to the sound of grinding, groaning, shrieking mechanical agony. He crashes back-first into something hard and finally, mercifully blacks out.
The quiet crackling of a warm winter's fire and the smell of smoke tease Michael Hollister's consciousness back to the surface with the memory of a Swiss ski chalet. One eye manages to overcome the tackiness of the blood holding it shut and rolls open.
Sunlight bathes the bridge of the Aurora, which is now silent and still.
Hollister enjoys a brief moment of confusion before he remembers. The crash.
He opens his other eye.
Part III coming soon.
Yes sir!
Yes.
Scifiwriterguy has a good eye for detail, and the pacing appears to be spot-on. I'm watching this story with considerable interest.
For a moment, all Hollister can do is lay on the deck. His last clear memory is the ship going down - crashing, no need to sugar-coat it - and...hitting something. Trying to give orders, or maybe answer someone. Pain. Then nothing.
And now this. The ship's bridge, his ship, calm and in sunlight.
Somehow, he always thought death would be different. Not sure how, really, but at least not the same as every morning for the past thirteen months, which were the same as the six months pre-launch before that. This isn't right. And if he's dead, why does he hurt so much?
That helps bring him the rest of the way back around. He tries to sit up, but something in his lower back gives a pop and he sinks back to the decking with a groan. Raising an arm, he studies it with near-dispassion, noting the various stains on his shipsuit, the rips that show the skinny suit underneath. The standard-issue all-purpose compression garment seems okay, or at least that arm of it, which is good for him; it will have helped staunch any bleeding. Or at least it should have, if an Alterra promise was good for anything anymore.
Gingerly, he feels his head to see if he can figure out what feels so strange. Blood, alternately tacky or outright dried, is streaked through his close-cropped hair. There's a hell of a bump on his forehead, and based on what his fingertips can tell him, that was the source of a good bit of the blood, even if it's no longer bleeding. Nothing feels broken.
With more care than the last time, Hollister works his way up to a partial recline, resting on his elbows, and looks around the bridge.
Light streams in through the viewpanels, but several large cracks snake across the supposedly-indestructible cellular polymer. A thin veil of smoke curls around the ceiling, dicing the sunlight into rays. And there's a flickering light that doesn't make sense. Golden nearly everywhere, except off to his left where it pulses with the orange-red of...
...fire.
The worst thing on a ship in any state. The magnitude of that emergency is enough to force Hollister up on unsteady feet. Sure enough, a cabling access on the starboard side curve of the bridge is sprung, and flames roll out, licking at the main viewport sill.
Half-walking, half-lurching, Hollister aims for the pilots' station roughly between himself and the fire. All of his energy focused on the red cylinder clipped to the side of the console cluster, he struggles through the first half-dozen steps. Something in his left knee gives a crack and he nearly stumbles from the blaze of pain, but as it subsides he realizes the knee feels more stable. Moving with more assurance, he reaches the station and unclips the fire extinguisher.
The heat of the fire keeps him from getting as close as he'd like to. Thumbing the safety in, he aims the extinguisher's blunt nose at the ruptured panel and squeezes the trigger bar. It takes every ounce of strength in his hand, but the extinguisher rewards him with a loud hiss and a strong jet of COB gas. The fire shrinks back from his attack, and he presses in, sweeping the extinguisher in short circles, strangling the fire. Little by little, the flames die back, and he moves in as they do, taking up the slack like a boa and squeezing the life out of his prey.
Just as the extinguisher is getting uncomfortably light, the last flickers of flame vanish. Hollister hoses down the cable bay with the remainder of the extinguisher's reserve just to be sure, but it's clear as soon as he lays off the trigger that the fire is done. A glance at the tiny display mounted near the nozzle tells him all he needs to know: 1%. His head tips back and he stands on the bridge, laughing quietly to himself. He's not sure why - head trauma, relief at beating the fire, confusion - but it seems like the right idea at the time. As he gets himself back under control, he tips his head back to a normal keel and opens his eyes. His laughter-smile melts away instantly. The extinguisher makes a hollow clong as it slips from his hand and his the decking. Hollister takes a few unsteady steps forward until he's up against the viewpanel, resting his hands on the still-warm metal sill. His eyes are lying to him.
Ocean.
That's what the strange flickering on the ceiling was. The ocean around the Aurora casts shimmers of sunlight across the ship's skin, through the viewpanels, and into the bridge. It's a beautiful sight. The water is an inviting, clean blue, gently rippling in a breeze. A rare whitecap appears amid the gentle swells, and the sun sends golden flashes off the azure waves. It's a scene from a paradise and, for a few instants, Hollister is again unsure if he's actually alive.
Turning around cures that delusion instantly. The bridge, his bridge, is a shambles. Smoke-stain has blackened a good chunk of the ceiling, and more scorch marks are visible on the aft bulkhead and even near some floor seams. And, finally, the piece his subconscious was trying to dodge clicked into place.
The bodies.
Stumbling forward, arms out, Hollister makes for the second pilot's position. The body in the seat has only one arm through the crash harness, from which it dangles slackly.
"Frost? Frosty?" he croaks, making his way around the wraparound workstation. With as much care as he can, he lifts the pilot's head. He knows before he even sees the man's face, but looks anyway. Darell Frost still wears the surprise-stained look of determination he died with on impact. It's a knife to the gut. Not just because Frost was part of his crew, but because he was one of the few colleagues Hollister actually considered a friend. He didn't have many of those, especially not on this crew. Really just Frost and...
"Ishi?" Hollister jerks his head up, blinking away the sudden vertigo. "Ishi? Ishimura, are you okay?" He looks around the bridge, hopeful until his eyes settle on Ishimura's color-coded jumpsuit, laying on its side, surrounded by a pool of dark, drying liquid too large for a man to survive.
"Is anyone okay?"
Several minutes later, he's made his way over to the bridge's aft bulkhead. His legs are starting to hurt again, and his back is starting to scream something fierce. The medkit fabricator's reassuring blue LEDs are dark - something that Alterra promised couldn't happen - so he knows it won't help. Instead, he cracks open the red-doored emergency locker. Everything has been given a good shake, so nothing is where it should be, but he manages to find the spare medkit without too much difficulty. Not a man to trust those kits and their automated treatment protocols, he thumbs open the latch and smiles softly at the rows of vials, the autoinjector, and the basic medical supplies. He draws a small dose of Atixole and gives himself the shot, trusting the drug to take the edge off the various pains but not so much as to put his brain into orbit, as attractive as that sounds right now. A follow-up of Savancon should help with the dizziness, so Hollister gives himself a shot of that, as well. He pulls a self-adhesive sponge pad from the kit as he makes his way over to the fabricator.
It's more than Hollister feels entitled to when the machine starts up. A quick press against the machine's right-side panel opens the access, and he toggles the small green switch at the top of the board inside. Instantly, the inside of his left forearm flashes amber as the SECID embedded in his flesh receives the contact signal from the fabricator. Capable of being input and output in practically any configuration necessary, the Structured Electronic Cellular Interface Device is essentially a series of tiny transducers and LEDs sewn into the skin under the dermis of the non-dominant forearms of the command team of every Alterra ship. It grants access to commands and features hidden from the general user interface, an indispensable tool for a captain or top officer. The SECID resolves itself into a miniaturized keyboard and a single display line, giving him command-line access to the fabricator.
>FAB BAG,BODY Q8
REQUEST DENIED: CONTACT WITH SHIP SUBSTRATE STOCK LOST
>COMMAND ACCESS, HOLLISTER, 6A7232
COMMAND ACCESS GRANTED. SOURCE RESTRICTION LIFTED.
>FAB BAG,BODY Q8
It takes the fabricator a several minutes to produce each of the woven silicone bags, so the next hour of Hollister's life becomes a grim dirge, pulling a new body bag off the fabricator shelf, dragging it to the nearest body. Putting his crewmember inside. Apologizing to each one by name, even if he has to read that name off the uniform because he can't remember it. Dragging the heavy bag over to the corner of the bridge that will serve as his morgue. And repeat. The sun sinks slowly toward the horizon as he works, and is only a bare sliver as the eighth and last crewman, Byrne, is laid to rest.
As he straightens up, he looks out over the ocean again. Now that the sun is almost completely down, the blue water has turned black, stippled every so often with copper as a wave catches the setting sun. He's just begun to think that maybe this isn't so bad a place to die when an irregularity catches his eye.
Out on the water, there's color. Bright, self-lit color!
Rubbing his eyes, Hollister looks again. It's still there! The unmistakable blue circle of a lifepod boarding hatch and the brilliant scarlet of an ID number. Even at this distance, the bright red "5" shines in the night. This is just beginning to sink in as a blinding shaft of white light erupts in the water under the lifepod. It begins to make the undulating movements of swimming as it slides away from the pod. The light turns around after a few minutes, heads back to the pod, and disappears inside through the ventral hatch.
Someone is alive out there.
I wonder if they meet at any time. I assume not, but that would be an interesting conversation.
Steve: So... you're alive...
Hollister: Yeah...
Steve: ...
Hollister: ...
Steve: Do you, uh, want some fish?...
Not giving anything away at this stage, but I wouldn't count on that particular event happening.
Part IV is coming.
Well, "how" is half a story. It's the "why" that we always want to know.
It was my plan since the start to create stories for named crew as part of a series of works (which means I probably should've called it "Downward Spirals," but oh well). So Keen is coming in a future installment. The critical part for me, though, is to avoid violating canon - that these stories could play out as written in the world and sequence of events we're shown in-game.
Lifepod 5 guy is still luckier than Hollister by landing in the most safe and providing place in the ocean. Just saying
I suppose it's like how people can (rarely) survive falling from airliners at up to 10KM / 33,000 feet (well, anything high enough to get you to terminal velocity and I don't think it matters how high you are)
True. Still feel bad for the guy who landed over the bloodkelp though
Kudos on such a terrific story, I hope to see more like it later on!
This looks like a job for: GAME THEORY! Okay no wait, hear me out! The theory that MatPat proposes is one of my all-time favorite videos of his: Surviving the Assassin's Creed Leap of Faith. Despite fixing some minor errors with annotations, his video covers extreme falls and how some people have actually survived them! Also of note, is that landing in water from an extreme height is just as bad as if you were to land on concrete...
MatPat: "You heard right: WATER. Surprisingly, the surface tension between water molecules makes the impact just as hard and inflexible as concrete. Except when you hit concrete, your newly crippled body ISN'T forced to swim to safety."
It makes crash landing from a starship's lifepod seem far more harrowing than the introduction sequence would indicate... At least our guy was safely strapped into his seat; the worst he seems to suffer from is just a concussion, and not a full-body crushing.
As soon as the first rays of daylight spill into the bridge, Hollister is awake. He'd hoped to somehow signal the lifepod out there while it was still dark, but nearly breaking both legs and catching what he assumes was the pilot's station to the gut convinced him that was not a winning solution. So, he'd gone to sleep on the deck where he was, determined to tackle the problem in the morning.
Now that morning has arrived, Hollister is more than ready to get to work and makes a beeline for the emergency locker. There should be a MEL in there, a handheld floodlight that, while murder on batteries, should be visible for miles at night. The glow of the fires burning on Aurora's skin last night proved that a flare or fire won't stand out, but the MEL will be perfect.
Hollister flips the red door open, and the pile of supplies he hadn't bothered cleaning up yesterday shifts. One item falls out and hits his right foot corner-down, sending a flash of pain up his leg.
"Greetings, Survivor. Great job not dying..."
Snapping out a couple choice words, Hollister kicks the FRIEND across the bridge, its voice vanishing with a skittering noise behind the sensor station. As much as Alterra talked up their survival PDAs and their ability to keep people alive in any situation, Hollister had always been of the mind that no piece of transparitanium stupidity could possibly live up to the promises. Given that, so far, all this one has done is re-injure his foot, he feels more than justified giving it the boot.
Pawing through the locker supplies, Hollister becomes increasingly concerned. Where's the MEL? The rations and water are here, another medkit, but there should be a floodlight in here. There has to be. Finally getting annoyed, he dumps several nutrient blocks and water bottles out onto the floor and is rewarded with a glimpse of the MEL's smooth, white shell at the bottom of the locker. A huge grin breaks out on his face for the first time since the crash as he feels for, and finds, the textured grip and hauls the MEL out of the pile.
His smile vanishes instantly. As soon as it's free, the broken front lens falls out, followed by the guts of the floodlight. Lastly, the battery - which is normally inserted from the back - falls through and out the front of the shell, landing on and denting one of his ration blocks.
Damn it all. Hollister drops the shell and just closes his eyes for a moment. Of all the things that could've broken, why that flashlight? Why not that damn stupid FRIEND? It's still chattering away to itself behind the sensor console, so even getting kicked didn't kill it. Opening his eyes, Hollister rolls the MEL's casing over with his toe. Sure enough, there's a rounded 90-degree dent in one side. The damn FRIEND broke it. Broke the light he needs and didn't have the decency to die doing it.
Well, wait a moment. He has a fabricator, and thanks to his SECID, he can still operate it. He can just make another!
Hollister walks purposefully over to the fabricator, which opens up as he approaches. Things aren't so bad after all, he reflects as arm starts to glow as the SECID starts up.
>FAB LIGHT,MEL 1
ERROR - ERRCODE 2: ITEM NAME NOT RECOGNIZED. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.
What?
>FAB LIGHT, MEL 1
ERROR - ERRCODE 2: ITEM NAME NOT RECOGNIZED. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.
No, that's not possible. The flashlight is standard inventory. It has to be in there. He's on the verge of trying it again when his crash-jangled memory helpfully recalls a conversation with one of the engineers, a Jeremy something-or-other. He'd mentioned that the ship had left port before some database refresh had been completed, so most of the fabricator inventory was running off old object ID codes. It shouldn't be a problem, he said, because everybody uses the GUI anyway, but the SECID text mode wouldn't autocorrect.
What the hell was the MEL's old OID?
>FAB HANDLIGHT 1
ERROR - ERRCODE 2: ITEM NAME NOT RECOGNIZED. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.
>FAB FLASHLIGHT 1
ERROR - ERRCODE 6: BLUEPRINT NOT INSTALLED OR FILE CORRUPT.
This has to be a joke. Somehow, someone put this together as some elaborate prank.
>REINSTALL FLASHLIGHT
ERROR - ERRCODE 9: NO CONNECTION TO DATABASE
Of course.
Hollister slides himself down the bulkhead until he's sitting on the deck. He knows that any survival situation is going to be complicated by unexpected roadblocks, but this feels personal.
No, that kind of thinking doesn't help. Objectives, obstacles, and paths, that's what counts.
Okay, objective: let that survivor know he's not alone.
Obstacles: Crappy sensors on lifepod and FRIEND won't pierce the hull well enough to pick up one person's life signs. Out of range for a hand scanner. No lights to signal with because the fabricator lost the blueprint and it's not like there's a copy laying around the brid...
...the bridge. He does have a copy!
Hollister doesn't even bother to get to his feet, speed-crawling past the sensor station to where the FRIEND sits, helpfully displaying a survival checklist to the floor. Hollister scoops the PDA up and swipes the list out of the way before tapping the blueprint tab at the top. Sure enough, there sits the icon for a shiny new MEL, at the moment the prettiest thing Hollister can recall ever seeing. The clouds are clearing in his mood as he heads back over to the fabricator. The PDA has an autolink feature that will tie it into the fabricator and upload its blueprint inventory practically instantly.
He's actually grinning as he raises his left arm and types.
>FAB FLASHLIGHT 1
ERROR - ERRCODE 6: BLUEPRINT NOT INSTALLED OR FILE CORRUPT
This puts him back for a moment. The upload should've been automatic, but maybe with the main computer out of touch, the system didn't run the proper protocol. Also not a problem; there are manual commands for just such a situation, allowing him to manually connect via near-field comm to the PDA and pull the blueprint.
>INIT NFC
NEAR-FIELD COMM DISABLED - SEE ALTERRA POLICY NOTICE YU-1732.3 (SHIPBOARD FABRICATOR RESTRICTIONS, NON-SECID CONNECTIONS)
In spite of it all, Hollister just shakes his head and grins. Fine. That's just fine. Multimillion dollar machine can't do what it's meant to do because of the edict of an airheaded corporate officer. Signaling the lifepod using the altitude advantage of the bridge would've been best, but that's not going to happen now, thanks to Alterra. So, Hollister shifts to Plan B: swim over and find the survivor. It's not far, and there's no such thing as sea monsters. Apart from some wet clothes, it's almost as good as his original plan.
Given that there's no power on the bridge, he isn't terribly surprised when the bulkhead doors don't respond when he walks up to them; he's even less surprised when even the touchpad gets nothing. Still, it's only a setback, not a roadblock. They're reinforced doors, but his SECID does have the advantage of overriding some of the basic restrictions Alterra places on its hardware, meaning that the laser cutter the fabricator will make for him is significantly more capable than one it would make for, say, a janitor.
>FAB LASERCUTTER 1
BATCH PROCESS HALT: MISSING INPUT - PROC REF.782620
>ID INPUT LIST /M 782620
MISSING MATERIAL - (1x) 1.CB.10a
Hollister frowns at his forearm. Usually, the system identifies missing components by OID, and materials by periodic symbols. It should be telling him what the missing material is in plain chemistry, not this...code.
>ID/VERBOSE: 1.CB.10a
CARBON ALLOTROPE: DIAMOND TYPE IIb (OPTICAL) (4/m 3 2/m)
Aha. Still not a problem; diamonds are just carbon, and the fabricator is a molecular manipulator. Graphene is both plentiful and pure carbon. Easy fix.
>REPROCESS REQ: ELEMENTAL C TO 1.CB.10a
ACCESS VIOLATION: FABRICATION POLICY VIOLATION (COUNTERFEIT PRECIOUS MATERIAL). YOUR PROCESS REQUEST HAS BEEN REPORTED.
Almost everything in Hollister's being wants to break the display for its stupidity. However, since breaking the display would mean breaking his own arm, sanity manages to win out. Barely.
Fine.
>FAB HAMMER 1
ACCESS VIOLATION: FABRICATION POLICY VIOLATION (WEAPON RESTRICTION). YOUR PROCESS REQUEST HAS BEEN REPORTED.
>FAB SCREWDRIVER 1
ACCESS VIOLATION: FABRICATION POLICY VIOLATION (WEAPON RESTRICTION). YOUR PROCESS REQUEST HAS BEEN REPORTED.
>FAB SURVIVALKNIFE 1
FABRICATING...PLEASE WAIT
The fabricator pops to life, molecularly assembling an Alterra Survival Knife on its workbed with a throaty hum. He'd actually keyed in the last request more out of peevishness than belief it would work.
As soon as the knife is done, Hollister starts in on Plan C. He'll pry open the aft cableway cover, shinny down the shaft until he can kick out another panel, then make his way to an exterior opening.
The ASK's gleaming knifepoint takes little effort to work between the floor panels, and the titanium blade doesn't even flex as Hollister puts his weight onto the hilt and levers the deckplate up. It's not much, but it's enough; he's able to get his fingers under the titanium alloy to lift the plate out of the way.
A split second later, though, he drops the plate as he jerks his hand out from over the cableway. The falling deckplate catches the knife point and flicks the ASK across the bridge while Hollister curses and flaps his fingers in the air. The underside of the plate was blistering hot.
After retrieving the knife, Hollister works the plate up again, this time just turning the knife like a key to open a wider gap into the cableway. The furious glare of firelight shines up from below, and a blast of hot, smoky air is blown into his face. He tugs the knife out and lets the deckplate drop back into its recess.
As he applies burn gel to his fingers, Hollister runs over his options again. He can't signal the lifepod, can't get out to go to the lifepod. The fire suppression systems are clearly down throughout the ship, so even if he could get off the bridge, there's no guarantee he could make it out of the ship, but that's a moot point because he can't get off the bridge. Titanium to the rear, transparitanium to the front, and fire down below.
Somehow, in all his training, there hadn't been a lesson titled "What to do when you're trapped on your own ship."
After pacing the bridge for an hour without any new insights, Hollister finally decides to solve a problem that is within his grasp. He hasn't eaten since yesterday, and his stomach is reminding him of that oversight. On his next orbit past the supply locker, he grabs a ration block and a bottle of water, then sits down at the Pilot-2 station.
With a sigh, he peels the foil off one end of the block and takes a bite of the gritty, putty-textured nutrient block. He almost begins to chew before his gag reflex kicks in; whatever the flavoring is, it's enough to make him want to empty his stomach of contents it doesn't have. He flips the block over and, written on the foil, is the answer: BANANA/BEEF.
Wonderful, he thinks. If you do manage to survive a major accident, Alterra gives you rations that make you wish you hadn't. Gnawing on the corner of a ration block, inspiration finally comes to him. He manages to choke down a few more bites before getting back to work.
Prying open one of the maintenance panels on the pilots' station, he pulls out several wiring harnesses and control boards, which he then dumps onto the fabricator's workbed.
>DEFAB
DEFABRICATING...PLEASE WAIT.
Hollister takes a few minutes to plumb his memory while the fabricator tears the components down into basic metals and materials. With the connection to the ship's fabrication feedstock out, he's going to have to recycle a fair bit, but he's sure he can make Plan D do...something, at least.
>FAB WIRINGKIT 1; FAB POWERCELL 1
BATCH FABRICATING...PLEASE WAIT.
As soon as the fabricator finishes, he hauls his new gear over to the engineering station. It and the attached comms station draw their power from a common main, which is apparently dead. But power is power; so long as voltage and amperage are right, everything does what it's supposed to do. Better still, since power cells are designed to handle high-voltage, high-amperage equipment, they have the same output specs as any Alterra heavy-duty power bus.
Without the tools that the fabricator refuses to give him, the work takes longer than it has any right to. Working with only the blade of the ASK is both time-consuming and more than a little hazardous, but Hollister finally manages to graft a patch cable onto the power cell's terminals, then splice it into the console's power cable, now cut from the ship's mains and having rendered his ASK about as sharp as a butter knife.
The first brush of the power cable brings a loud squawk that rattles the bridge and causes Hollister to bash his head on the underside of the console in surprise. It takes a moment before he realizes that the master alarm would still be triggered. Bracing his eardrums, he twists the power cable into place, scuttles out from under the console, and thumbs the alarm off.
Power. Wonderful power. The console has reactivated, and while large stretches of it are occupied with the red blocks of error messages indicating unresponsive systems, it's clear at a glance that he has some access and control.
Night has almost fallen by the time Hollister sits back. Although it's spotty, he has contact with a bunch of ship systems and even some sensor data. Most importantly, though, he has access to records - sensor data, system event records, comms logs - things that could help him rescue his crew.
The crew. How many are out there? Rifling through subsystem logs, he's relieved to see lifepod records are accessible. His heart sinks as soon as the files open, though; nearly half of the lifepods were never launched, disabled by the impact event that downed the Aurora. Only 27 of the pods launched at all, and telemetry hasn't been received from any of them.
While not promising, it's also not necessarily disaster. Hollister can see the occupant or occupants of Lifepod 5 right now, the beam of a MEL cutting through the water as a diver keeps working past sundown. It's entirely plausible that some, even all of the other lifepods survived as well, just with disabled comms. In fact, that's all the more plausible because a quick check of the Aurora's transmitters shows that they're not just down, they're dead. Regardless of what happens from here on out, Aurora won't be calling for help again.
No response logged from Alterra, but a notation that a high-priority message was forwarded to the Captain's secure terminal. That's down in his quarters. Might as well be back on Earth for all the good that's going to do him.
Well, nothing for it right now. His fingers have resumed stinging from the burn earlier, so he fumbles his way over to where he left the medkit, sitting on the pilots' station, to get more burn gel. After gagging down some more of the horrifying ration block with the help of some water, the time has come to call it a day.
Should've fabricated something for a pillow. Oh well, tomorrow.
Hollister has finally found a somewhat-comfortable position on the deck when an alarm begins screeching on the engineering console.
Part V coming soon - stay tuned.
"So, Hollister shifts to Plan B: swim over and find the survivor. It's not far, and there's no such thing as sea monsters."
match what the average Subnautica player likely experienced the first time they played the game (and made friends with the Reaper Leviathan...)
I can't wait to see what happens next! Keep up the great work, @scifiwriterguy, you're doing a great job!
Remembering his earlier painful attempts at walking the bridge in the dark, Hollister takes the safer - if slower - option of crawling to the engineering station. The alarm is cutting into his brain by the time he bumps into the workstation seat and hauls himself up onto it. He feels the blood drain from his face as soon as he reads the red-ribbon warning plastered over every section of the board:
!-DANGER-! CRITICALITY 1 FAULT : REACTOR CONTAINMENT ANOMALY - ERR.122
Swiping the alert bar off the main console display simultaneously wipes it off the various status monitors as well, giving Hollister his view of the engineering systems back. It's not a pretty sight.
The Aurora, being a long-range vessel operating without support, had been designed from the start to be able to generate more power than she'd need. Alterra, never producing an excess without a plan for using it, always intended that extra power to be harnessed as part of phasegate construction operations. While this streamlined exploration and construction, it also saddled Aurora with a very temperamental high-output reactor: one of the ill-tested, so-called "dark matter" reactors.
Of course, it was nothing of the sort; that was just what they wrote on the brochures. Labeling it dark matter was just easier than explaining what Superposed Quantum State Entanglement Resonator engine meant. One of the drydock techs (Beck? Or was it Karsen? The one with the hair.) had tried to explain it to Hollister months ago. Engineers tend to just pronounce the initialism SQSER - Squeezer - because it more accurately describes the thing: lasers and masers are used to compress and decompress its fuel - ordinary vibronically-coupled Californium - inducing quantum instabilities and causing the atoms to rapidly flip between two wave states, 4,2,0 and 4,2,1. The resultant shifts in electron distribution induce current in pickup collectors, powering the ship. The marketing people slapped the label "dark matter" on it because the physicists are still unable to explain why the fuel isn't consumed; everything about the entire system violates thermodynamics, so the energy must be coming from nowhere, which is impossible. So they call it "dark" and hope nobody looks behind the curtains. It works, but damned if anyone knows why.
There's a downside, though. The fuel has to be kept in proper quantum oscillation and confined from exterior interference of a number of types. If one fails to do either of these, the Californium (itself highly unstable to start with and made only madder by constant quantum poking) tends to spontaneously react - spectacularly so. While not widely advertised, it's the reason Saturn suddenly lost a minor moon a few decades ago. Real estate lost, but lesson learned.
A lesson Michael Hollister is about to revisit in a very personal way. Aurora's reactor is nowhere near the size of the reactor that blew its stack back then, but it's plenty powerful to ruin the day of anybody within about a kilometer, and Hollister has a front-row seat.
The engineering displays are unanimously pessimistic. Apparently, Aurora has been bleeding radiation since the crash, and it's only been getting worse. That's the symptom of a larger disease: the oscillator field has been steadily weakening, dropping out of phase. It's correctible, of course, but requires something he doesn't have: an engineering crew.
Sweat starts beading his forehead. If this goes on much longer, the reactor loses stability, the fuel decides it's time to party, and the Aurora lives up to her name. Opening up a command-line subpane on the console, Hollister starts keying in commands; it'll be faster than trying to remember where on this focus-grouped interface the tools he needs are hiding.
ENG> list/drone_id sect:eng stat:ready
Drones available:
222906 - Ready
230121 - Ready
224536 - Ready (WARN: Nonstandard Software Detected)
221304 - Ready
218212 - Ready (CAUTN: Chassis Damage)
228943 - Ready
Six drones, two questionable. It might be enough. Should be.
...maybe...
Hollister starts feeding task lists into the engineering system, letting the local processor delegate specific functions to the drones. The top priority is getting the oscillators to resync; once that's done, most of the other problems should fall into line...more or less. He can't do a thing about the radiation leaks - couldn't even with an army of drones - but he can keep Aurora together.
After an hour of tense effort, the drones finally all arrive in place and begin to work together. The local engineering processors are able to coordinate the drones' corrections to the system far more effectively than Aurora's human crew ever could have (which is why the drones are aboard in the first place, of course), and slowly, painfully slowly, the engineering console's display of the oscillator system begins to normalize. Data points outlined in red ease back toward center, turning a friendlier shade of yellow, and ultimately a very friendly shade of grey.
Dawn is beginning to break as the last of the oscillator subassemblies resyncs completely with the rest of the powertrain. Hollister sits back and his spine protests painfully; he's been hunched over the console for almost nine hours and it's caught up to him, but Aurora - and by extension, his crew on the planet - are out of danger.
Walking around the bridge to stretch his rusty legs, he looks out at the #5 lifepod, still bobbing contentedly out on the ocean. It's a good distance away, at least a kilometer. It probably would've been safe, but it's better that the risk didn't need taking. Moreover, he's glad to have avoided the hard radiation, kinetic shock, thermal pulse, and other charming effects of a Strader-class reactor having a hissy fit.
Hollister rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. Even though it's morning, last night's complete lack of sleep is now rolling around inside his head. It's fighting with the tatters of adrenaline still in his bloodstream, so he's exhausted but not willing to sleep. It's annoying. Maybe a bite of food and some water will help.
Walking over to the cabinet (which he should clean up, he knows), his left foot slips suddenly as he walks past the chart table. Spinning in a short, graceless circle, he somehow manages to avoid landing on his ass. Still, it's disorienting and not the least bit confusing; he knows he hasn't spilled anything, which means that, on top of everything else, Aurora has apparently sprung some kind of leak.
He takes a step back the way he came. Or, more accurately, tries to. Looking at his own foot in disbelief, he finds his boot is firmly stuck to the deck. Two more tries cinch it: his boot's going nowhere. Undoing the laces, he steps out of his immobilized shoe and gets down on the deck. The bootsole is fused to the decking, the synthetic rubber clearly melted. In a moment, disbelief turns to pure concern; whatever's leaking is corrosive, and seriously so.
Looking over to the nearby plate he slipped on, he can see a semicircular slash of molten synthrubber drawn across the metal. It's bubbling. The stench of burning polymer is rapidly filling the air, making his eyes sting.
Hobbling over to the fire extinguisher under the aft end of the chart table, his single-booted gait making him slow, he runs through various mental files. For the life of him, he can't think of a single conduit, pipe, or device in the ceiling of the bridge that could contain a liquid that vicious. Since the extinguisher's COB gas is blended with a low-grade neutralizer, he can at least get a handle on the situation. He stumps over to the offending deckplate and lets it have a blast from the extinguisher. The boot residue stops bubbling; mission accomplished. Another little crisis solved. He leaves the extinguisher on the chart table and goes to fabricate himself a new boot.
Returning a few minutes later, he sees the rubber has resumed its slow boil. Another shot with the extinguisher settles it back down. He tears open a ration block and starts chewing on the Alterra-spawned horror that is KIWI/FISH, mulling over this new development. By the second time his gag reflex almost rejects the food, an uncomfortable realization dawns: the deckplate is the cover of the aft cableway, the one that was burning yesterday. Passing a hand over the plate confirms it: the deckplate is hotter than a griddle.
The fires aren't dying down. So much for taking a patient approach.
A quick inventory of the bridge turns up a total of five extinguishers. Sadly, these include his original one, with a whopping 1% of its COB gas left, and today's is just under half. The bold approach clearly won't work, either.
And on top of it all, thanks to his bootsole, the bridge reeks of burning rubber now, which has rendered his unpalatable ration into a truly foul KIWI/FISH/RUBBER combination. Today just keeps getting better.
With nothing else to do and desperately wanting to focus on something - anything - Hollister sits down at the engineering console and pulls up the ship's specs manual. Like every other ship he's flown or commanded, he already knows the manual backward and forward. But there's a possibility that review might bring some sort of miraculous revelation that will save his crew.
Probably not, of course, but there's hope.
A thud from somewhere belowdecks jerks Hollister awake with a start; only by grabbing the engineering console does he manage to stay in the seat. The sky is a deep cobalt blue, with the last fading light of sunset lending any color. The broad, copper-hued dome of the planet's moon is cresting the horizon. Blinking a few times to wake up, he's annoyed that he nodded off so easily, but grateful to no longer feel so dead tired. Glancing at the console, he'd only gotten to the third page of the spec book:
Page 3 - Structural Materials (cont'd)
Hull composition (primary): spin-locked homogenous titanium alloy/plasteel substrate
Exterior hull coating: RA/CS collector compound (ref. 9-3-a)
It takes a few moments for his sleep-scattered memory to gather enough bits to recall that RA/CS stands for Radiation Absorbing/Conversion System. While he can remember it, he still flips to the referenced manual page. RACS is pretty clever, really; deep-space ships like Aurora constantly fight a battle with entropy. They use energy in huge quantities, and need even more once parked at a mission site. Usually, this means having to lug tons of effectively useless solar gear along to build a power plant. Aurora did one better: in addition to her reactor, her entire hull surface is coated in RACS compound, which converts radiation into useable power. Better still, just about anything in the EM spectrum is game - Aurora just drinks it in. About the only thing her skin does reflect was light, and only because it's more efficient to convert gamma rays, alpha particles...hell, even stray radio...noise...
Hollister's train of thought grinds to a halt. Ice slithers down his spine. With shaking hands, he brings up the comm records. They agree with the fear coiling in his gut.
RACS is going to kill him. It's going to kill everyone.
The nav data attached to the mayday was only a partial. Enough to find the right system, maybe the right planet. But there's no telemetry being broadcast from the lifepods or Aurora herself, no transponder pings, no lifepod emergency beacons. As far as Hollister can see, there's nothing to home in on. And with Aurora's RACS coating, radar scans of the planet would come back nearly blank; the tiny amount of radar energy reflected by Aurora will be lost in the water scatter, and any fragments the ship did lose during the crash would be either too small or sunk too deep to give a usable reflection. A rescue ship might come, but they'll never find the wreck. They'd have to visually scan, and a ship even the size of Aurora is nothing compared to a planet's area.
He sits back, staring blankly ahead.
It'd seemed like such a stroke of luck that the ship had survived the impact. But it isn't, he realizes. It's not luck at all. It's his crew's death sentence.
Stay tuned for Part VI.
Anyways, I'm eager to see how things continue to unfold with the awesome Captain Hollister! @scifiwriterguy, you have a wonderful talent for writing such interesting stories - keep up the awesome work!
Well spotted, I hadn't thought of that as a possible explanation for 224536's non-standard software warning.