Sorry, guys - business website updates taking more time than expected. (Anyone who tells you self-employment is a breeze is brain damaged.) Days of 17 to 20 hours are a real drag.
The XO's story will begin shortly. Your patience (and bumps!) are deeply appreciated.
Lackland, Krista B
Employee No. E-N7249830
Space Operations Division
Current Assignment: Executive Officer, ASV Aurora
By all rights, the alarm clock shouldn't be going off for another six hours, which is the second thing that makes Commander Krista Lackland want to pitch the damn thing through a wall. Its first sin is, of course, being an alarm clock in the first place. Of course, since the alarm clock is only a feature run by the ship's computer through the flatscreen mounted on the wall of her quarters, throwing it through the wall would involve first wrenching it off the wall, and that's just too much effort on only four hours' sleep.
Groaning, Lackland thumbs the pulsing icon on the flatscreen. It gives a soft chime and reverts back to normal operation, showing a digest of operating information on the Aurora. Engine output, life support and power generation status, a handful of systems that are generally less interesting than dirt, and the local gravity map. Everything is normal except, of course, the gravwell map. There's a deep one close aboard and getting closer.
She sits up on the bunk, stretching her spine. Alterra may be the ones writing the book on heavy-lift deep-space transports these days, but what they know about making a proper bunk would fit on an index card. With room to spare.
One advantage of starting a new day before the old one had finished cooling out of your boots is a quick morning. Fresh shipsuit and socks and Lackland was tugging on her boots, able - if not exactly ready - to get back to work.
As second shift, she's technically not on duty for nearly another seven hours, but Aurora is coming up on a critical moment in her flight, and even if the duty sheet didn't say she had to report, her sense of it nevertheless had her walking out her door.
The bridge is the captain's responsibility, and she knows that if Hollister wanted a hand up there he would've told her. So she instead heads for Engineering; a ship the size of Aurora doesn't have huge margins for error when it comes to pulling off a gravity-assist maneuver, so if something is going to go wrong, it only makes sense to have the command crew where they can do the most good; Hollister on his bridge, and her in Engineering. That way, no matter how catastrophic a failure might happen, at least one of them should be able to pull the ship out of danger.
"XO on deck!" The shout comes before the toe of her boot crosses the Engineering Control Room's doorway. If she didn't know better, she would've suspected Chief Åkerman had watched her make her way there on the camera feeds.
"As you were," she says automatically, waving the on-duty engineering staff back to their stations. With several megatons of titanium alloy hurtling toward a planet's gravwell, this is no time for the seat-jump-and-salute dance. Åkerman walks over to her and falls into step as she heads over to Bigboard.
"Didn't expect you, ma'am," he says as they cross the room, "Something wrong?"
"Nothing wrong, Chief, just here as a precaution. I don't like this maneuver coming up, so I'm not going to spend it in my bunk as a passenger."
"I hear that, ma'am," Åkerman says with more honesty than is generally wise where Alterra can overhear, "This would've been a lot easier if we'd just used the solar well rather than some mudball."
"Agreed," Lackland says as they step in front of Bigboard's data desk. The Engineering Systems Master Status and Operational Overview Display - usually simply called Bigboard for obvious reasons - is essentially the grown-up version of the digest display in her quarters. Rather than summaries, Bigboard trees everything out, allowing the Engineering crew to call up details on any system, calling attention to even the slightest setpoint drift, and generally being the obsessive-compulsive part of Aurora's brain. The wide touch-sensitive quasi-holo desk in front of them drives and augments Bigboard, giving the Engineering crew access to display details and diagnostics ranging from the routine to what would be embarassingly intimate if Aurora were human.
Scanning over the systems display shows nothing wrong to her eyes, but she asks Åkerman's opinion anyway. Åkerman rucks back his right sleeve to bare his forearm, the SECID embedded there coming to life. With a few finger taps, Bigboard shifts to a combined NAV/ENG display.
"Nothing particularly worrying right now. Engines are operating to spec, no drifts up or down the line. Squeezer sync is perfect - we had to compensate for local gravity, but the auto systems handled it without intervention. Bridge brought up maneuvering systems about twenty minutes ago and it was in hot standby up until three minutes ago when they went live. We're already rolling and yawing, so they're getting us into boost angle," he says, eyes dancing over the Bigboard display.
Abruptly, all of the engine displays shift: the four main engines shift into nav-fire mode, getting ready to ramp up from cruise to their higher-power course-adjustment output; the four aux boosters similarly shift from warm to hot standby; and the six emergency supplemental boosters come online.
"Looks like it's almost showtime," Åkerman observes.
"Yep," Lackland agrees, "Sooner done the better. Autonav handling this?"
"Uh..." Åkerman hesitates, tapping a few commands on his SECID. "No. Looks like they have it on semi-automatic only. Hideki's the navigator on duty; you know how he is about 'feeling the course' and all that."
"Very familiar, unfortunately," Lackland allows. Ishimura is an outstanding navigator, no doubt about it, but he definitely has to learn that the ship's systems are there because they're more precise than a human could be. When you're skidding several megatons around space, precision counts. When you're trying to flick those megatons through a planetary gravity well like a marble around a bowl, precision is mission critical.
Lackland nods at the board. "Good spool," she says. Sure enough, the engines are responding like the finely tuned machines they are, not so much as a hesitation or skip anywhere.
"We aim to please. Barring that, to wound," Åkerman says with a grin.
"Bjorn, you have issues."
"So the company psychs keep saying, ma'am."
Lackland rolls up her left sleeve and starts tapping commands into her own SECID. Bigboard's display shifts modes, apportioning ENG/NAV two thirds of the vast display and calling up a map of the Engineering spaces on the rest. Blue dots appear throughout the wireframe model.
"You pre-staged the drones?" she asks. Ordinarily, drones are kept parked on their charging cradles and only sent out on specific tasks or partnered with assigned crew.
"Yes, ma'am. It seemed...I don't know, prudent. If something goes wrong, we're not going to have enough time to wait while they get to a trouble spot. I figured if I spread them out, it'd improve response time if we do have a problem."
"I'm not criticizing, Bjorn," Lackland says quietly, "Just observing. It's a good plan; I was going to suggest we get them moving. You beat me to it."
"Just trying to anticipate points of failure, ma'am."
Krista closes the drone display, and ENG/NAV takes over Bigboard again. The ship is still yawing.
"Comin' up on course burn," Åkerman announces to the crew in the room. His usually calm voice has an edge to it.
The captain's chime sounds from the ship's 1MC, the master announcement circuit, a calm tone which contrasts too sharply with the words that follow.
"XO to the bridge on the double!"
"Bjorn, feed me information!" Lackland shouts, pushing off from Bigboard's data desk to give her a boost for the door. She's already at a full run for the door when the sound she doesn't want to hear starts. It's worse than an alam clock by miles; the rising-and-falling shriek of the collision alarm.
The heavy Engineering Control doors are sliding open just as the 1MC comes alive again with a single shouted order: "brace for impact!" Behind her, she hears Åkerman shout "Brace! Brace! Brace!" to his crew as she starts to make the right turn to head for the bridge elevator.
And in that instant, Kirsta Lackland's world comes violently apart.
WOOOOOO! New chapter for Downward Spiral is here! *spins happily in place before crashing into the wall*
Ow...! So anyways! A new look at the fate of the Aurora's crew, but this time from the Engineering crew! I'm really fascinated with the lore of the story, and I can't wait to see the fate of our new victim survivor as she tries to help turn the fate of the Aurora. I'm really pleased to see a story focused on a female executive officer, similar to Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager .
The writing is as crisp as ever, with subtle nods to everyday life onboard the Aurora, and how technology prefaces everything. I have to say, my favorite line has to be this:
"We aim to please. Barring that, to wound," Åkerman says with a grin.
Clever with just a touch of dark humor, it made me giggle a bit. @scifiwriterguy, keep up the hard work! I and everyone else around here appreciate your stories and love how you spin them. I for one am eagerly awaiting to see what the next part brings into play for the beleaguered crew of the Aurora...
I'm new here on new grounds, came to know this place through Subnautica. And I came to know Subnautica through an episode of an old version of Subnautica, so everything was different for me. I've wrote one chapter to a Subnautica story I've come up with, which partially describes what it felt like for me playing the game for the first time, but with my own little twist. I'm looking for recommendations and ideas for the future of the story. The story will also progress when I've progressed in game. I've talked long enough, here it is:
Chapter One
My name is Jake Charlie Greeman. I was sent to do terraforming missions on a new planet for humans to colonize. I was on an Altera Corporation space shuttle named: “The Aurora.” To get to our destination faster, we planned to enter orbit on planet 4546B and slingshot to our destination. While in orbit, the Aurora was struck by a mysterious energy pulse. The Aurora headed straight down into planet 4546B. 25 life pods were deployed prior to impact. I was in life pod 5. I review this all slowey in my mind. My heads throbbing from something, and for some reason, I feel like i'm only half conscious.
I take in a deep breath, but I feel my lungs sting as they try to process the air. I look up slightly, my visions blurred, but I can still make out a bright, reddish orange light coming from the other side of my lifepod. And its moving. I snap back into reality, and discover that its fire. I hit my finger on my chairs control panel to release my confinement, but all I get is an error sound.
I hit the button on the control panel frantically, trying to release my confinement, but I get the same result. Eventually, I slam my whole fist down on the control panel, and only then does it release my chair confinement. I quickly get up and block my eyes from the bright light the fire gives of.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the lifepod fire extinguisher laying right next to me on the ground, it must've detached from the wall when the lifepod was launched from the Aurora. I quickly scoop up the extinguisher, and put out the fire as fast as I can. Once the fire's gone, I let out a half-stress and half-relieved sigh. My heads pounding even more now, probably because I got up from my chair way too fast.
I put the fire extinguisher down, and take a look around my lifepod. It's white on both the walls and roof, but grey on the floor. There's a hatch on the roof of the lifepod with a ladder leading up to it that releases you from the lifepod. There’s a similar hatch on the floor of the lifepod that releases you as well, and when I look down into it, I see nothing but water.
On the plus side, I can see the bottom of the water, so the waters shallow. Good. Right behind the hatch on the floor is a storage compartment, and right above that is a black screen that's suppose to tell you stuff about the planet your on, how safe it is, etc. But instead it says WARNING all in yellow at the top of the screen, and below the warning sign, it says in all red: Circulatory Test: Failed. Secondary Systems: Offline. Flotation Devices: Deployed. Hull integrity: OK.
I'm guessing the secondary systems mean the lights, because the only lights that are on right now are blue emergency lights. Well, at least the hull integrity's ok. There's a window to the left of the screen that lets in some sunlight, and to the right of the screen, I see wires hanging out of the life pod's components box, some are cut, and one wire’s letting out what looks like electricity and a small bit of smoke. That must be what started the fire. I could have sworn there was a panel that separates the components from the rest of the life pod, but, oh well.
I turn around, and I see the chair that I sat in when the lifepod was launched from the Aurora. There's restraints to keep you held down in your chair because, it's not exactly a smooth ride. There's a similar chair right across the lifepod from that, one lifepod can hold two people. But only I occupy it, and besides, I was the last one to escape the Aurora. Next to my chair sits a medical fabricator, a device that creates medkits overtime that have the potential to heal almost anything. And next to the chair across the room sits the fabricator.
A fabricator is an amazing device that can create almost any resource, tool, and even food provide that you give it the proper materials. Good, I have all the basic survival supplies.
As I explore the lifepod a little more, I find a panel on the right side of my chair. So that's where the component box panel went. And then, I remember. As my lifepod was launching from the Aurora, that panel came loose, flew around the lifepod a bit, then hit me, square in the face, knocking me out. That explains where the head pain came from.
Remembering this, I walk over to the medical fabricator to see if it fabricated a medkit to help me get rid of this head pain. I check the percentage of completion, since it's dangerous to open a medical fabricator until it fully completes fabricating. All it says is offline.
Great, the medical fabricator is also part of the secondary systems. I walk over to the regular fabricator, hoping and praying that it isn't also part of the secondary systems. I click the button in the middle of the fabricator and watch in relief as the bottom of the fabricator opens up to reveal a small table, and the top opens up to reveal two small lasers that construct whatever resource you tell it to construct. Perfectly Functional.
I push the bottom of the fabricator back into place, and the top follows my lead. There's only one thing left to do now. But before I can reach the ladder, I hear two beeps come from my toolbelt that's wrapped around my waist. Oh yeah. I forgot that before I entered my lifepod, I scrambled to put on a diving suit and attach a toolbelt to my waist. The beepings coming from a certain spot on my toolbelt, and then I see it. How could I have forgot about it? It's my most important tool ever. Even more important than the fabricator. It's my PDA, or Personal Digital Assistant.
I pull out my PDA by the black and white handle from the special place in my toolbelt meant just for my PDA. The moment I bring it close to my face, a hologram appears from the handle. A picture of a spinning white triangle with Altera's symbol appears and below that, it says rebooting. The triangle spins a bit more, than I hear a feminine robotic voice say:
“This PDA has now rebooted in emergency mode with one directive: to keep you alive on an alien world.” I’d never think that I would ever need my PDA in emergency mode.
"You have suffered minor head trauma. This is considered an optimal outcome.” My PDA continues to say. Oh really? I wasn't aware.
“Please refer to the databank for detailed survival advice. Good luck." The PDA’s main interface opens up, showing six tabs, the blueprint tab, the ping manager tab, the photos tab, log messages tab, the databank tab, and finally, the inventory tab, which i'm on right now.
The PDA has an amazing ability to turn any item that you collect into a hologram and then store it in the inventory tab. And if you want that item out, you just click on the item in the inventory tab and the PDA sends out the hologram and makes it a physical item again all in about half a second.
I’ll check out the rest of the PDA later, right now, there's something I really need to see.
I start to ascend the ladder up to the hatch that leads out of the lifepod. I see what looks like a strange white bird fly by the hatch, then, I take a deep breath, and open up the hatch.
I climb to the top of the lifepod and look around. Water as far as the eye can see. "Environment: Uncharted ocean planet. Oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. Water contamination: high." My PDA proceeds to tell me. Apparently the thing still talks even when it's in the toolbelt. An ocean planet. Great. Couldn't have chose a better planet to orbit around. Well, at least i'm able to breath on this planet.
I keep looking in the same direction, looking for any sign of land at all. But it's no use, I heard what the PDA said. It's an ocean planet. I let out a sigh, then turn around. That's when I see it.
It's the destroyed remains of the Aurora.
That's part one for you all, if you have any ideas, let me know! Ill be making my own thread about this soon.
WOOOOOO! New chapter for Downward Spiral is here! *spins happily in place before crashing into the wall*
Ow...! So anyways! A new look at the fate of the Aurora's crew, but this time from the Engineering crew! I'm really fascinated with the lore of the story, and I can't wait to see the fate of our new victim survivor as she tries to help turn the fate of the Aurora. I'm really pleased to see a story focused on a female executive officer, similar to Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager .
The writing is as crisp as ever, with subtle nods to everyday life onboard the Aurora, and how technology prefaces everything. I have to say, my favorite line has to be this:
"We aim to please. Barring that, to wound," Åkerman says with a grin.
Clever with just a touch of dark humor, it made me giggle a bit. @scifiwriterguy, keep up the hard work! I and everyone else around here appreciate your stories and love how you spin them. I for one am eagerly awaiting to see what the next part brings into play for the beleaguered crew of the Aurora...
Was almost expecting another bump in this thread but I was pleasantly surprised
Great quality, quantity, and explosions of course.
Thought I was reading my morning routine in that first paragraph for a sec
Thank you, thank you, and
a major key of good writing is to make it relatable and to draw from one's own experiences. As someone responsible for the violent deaths of several alarm clocks, I can say that passage came quite naturally.
Her foot has just barely hit the decking in the corridor when the portside end, some hundred meters away, explodes. The overpressure wave, compressed and contained by the hallway's sides, rockets along the titanium tube looking for somewhere, anywhere, to go. The spacious Engineering Control Room and its wide open doors, therefore, make for a natural exit.
The blast wave lifts Lackland off her feet, launching her back into Engineering control, bowling over two junior watchstanders as her muscular 77-kilo body plows into them with no more control than a tornado-launched scarecrow. Every loose item in the room takes to the air as the blast wave gets under, along, or just plain against objects large and small, sending tablets, tools, and hardprints airborne. Even in the scrupulously clean control room, fine dust that had hidden in seams and crevices is blown into the air.
Lackland crashes into Åkerman, yanking him off the console he's braced against. Ultimately, this saves both of their lives. In near-unison, three of the four trunk bus lines on the starboard wall blow out, uncontained high voltage igniting cable insulation and sending a sleet of shrapnel that had been junction cases in all directions. Titanium shards scythe through the air where Åkerman's torso had been.
With the engineering corridor now open to space, the rush of air rapidly reverses direction and everything in Engineering Control is blown toward the corridor. The few engineers who still have a grip wherever they've braced themselves can only watch helplessly as the rest tumble toward the corridor door. It's closing per emergency protocol, but a large hole in a wide corridor allows a lot of atmosphere to escape very quickly. Loose tablets and hardcopies whip out into the maelstrom tearing down the corridor, joining a blizzard of debris from other compartments and the frantically thrashing four-limbed shapes being hurled toward oblivion.
One of the senior engineers skids across the threshold to join them.
Finally, seven long seconds after the blast upended reality, the doors of Engineering Control meet and seal off the compartment. Airborne bodies and debris drop to the deck, tumble, and are finally at rest again. Only a handful of seconds later, the compartment's pressure is back up to standard and the survivors can breathe comfortably again, as can the fires now taking hold in the high voltage switchgear.
As Krista Lackland regains her bearings, the first thing that takes her concern is a particular sound. The fires roaring in the background should be underscored by the incessant beetling of the fire alarm, or at least the teeth-jarring nasal shrieking of the collision alarm which, in the hierarchy of misery, is second only to a fire alarm. Except, and only in the Engineering spaces, there's one alarm that overrides them all. The two-toned, high-low, saw-wave Power Plant Casualty alarm that is currently drilling into Lackland's brain.
Aurora's heart has stopped.
Lackland drags herself to her feet, pain lancing across her body. Åkerman rolls to his side, slipping out from under her as she stands, scrambling to his feet.
"Almond!" he shouts.
"Here, sir!" comes a reply from a tall tech untangling himself from an unconscious junior watchstander.
"Get your ass to the RCB and start working around this damage and get me power! Watch what you're doing and do not crash polarities! You blow out my last remaining bus and I'm going to be pissed!"
"On it, sir!" Almond yells, taking off at a dead sprint for a rarely-used control board on the far end of Engineering Control.
Lackland shoves a fire extinguisher at a junior engineer. "Richards, get these fires out. On the double," she wheezes. Something's wrong in her chest. Richards, to his credit, doesn't even hesitate, yanking the safety cap off the extinguisher before launching his attack on the fires consuming the starboard bulkhead conduits.
"Lackland," Åkerman coughs, the air already stifling hot and going bad fast, "Your arm."
Krista looks first at her right, which is scraped but seems okay. Her left though, is a different story. The radius and ulna both suffered impacted fractures before another phase of her wild tumble smashed her arm again, driving the sharp proximal fragments through muscle and skin. The exposed bones are freely dribbling blood and have a peculiar glitter to them. Absently, she realizes that it's the embedded components of her SECID, the hair-thin wires and contactors pulled out of the flesh by the bone on its way through which, much like the bones themselves, were never intended to see the outside world.
"Reset it," she tells Åkerman, who has already grabbed a medkit. He looks at her, an instant away from questioning the instruction, before simply nodding. There's no hesitation as his off hand grabs her upper arm, his dominant hand grabs her left, and they jerk in opposite directions.
The blaze of pain defies analogy. There's nothing in Lackland's experience to compare it to. The shattered bones resubmerge. Before she can recoil, he wraps a flexcast around her arm, cinching it down brutally before it hardens in the air. With her free hand, Lackland grabs a Atixole autoinjector from the kit and presses it to her jugular. The shot of painkiller hits her like a prizefighter, but the roar of pain in her body subsides...at least fractionally. Enough to think, and for right now, that's all that counts.
Lackland is getting her brain back together as Bigboard flicks back to life. Moments later, his control board regains consciousness as well.
"Nice work, Almond!" Åkerman shouts, retaking his station in front of Bigboard. His fingers fly like a concerto pianist, partitioning Bigboard again and again, specific damage callouts and system status grids appearing in rapid order. Aurora bucks hard, the kick from underneath combined with a slipping yaw. Åkerman steadies himself against Bigboard's control desk while Richards, still battling the fire, loses his balance and hits the deck again. The extinguisher, its trigger locked down, skids away under its own propulsion.
Richards gets to his knees, yanks another extinguisher cylinder off the wall, and hits the fires head-on without pause. The power plant casualty alarm is still yowling under the roar and crack of the electrical fires.
"XO, bad news," Åkerman is saying.
"What? How bad's the damage?" Lackland says, dragging herself to Bigboard's command desk.
"Ship's dead, ma'am. But apparently, so are you," he says, pointing to a system alert in the lower right corner: TRANSFER OF XO AUTHORITY - LCDR KEEN - LACKLAND KIA
Funny, dead shouldn't be this painful. Or hot. Or loud. Or crowded, for that matter. Then it comes to her. When her shattered arm shredded her SECID, Aurora lost her biomonitor telemetry. As far as the computer is concerned, she died the moment her arm broke. This creates a problem.
Lackland attempts to key a command into Bigboard, only for the standard access denial warning to appear. Her codes are invalid now, all system access revoked. Dead people don't generally need mainframe access.
"Åkerman, I'm locked out of the system," she says. He certainly already knows it, but saying it out loud feels like she's rebutting the system's insistence that she's dead.
"No problem," Åkerman replies, not taking his eyes off the board, "I can manage. We have all four main engines down. Engine 1 is giving me nothing; I think she took it right in the head. Two is messed up. I have an offscale overtemp, so whatever got us passed right through the upper hull. We're lucky the ship didn't blow."
Lackland nods; one engine entirely blown out, another shot through the head and probably on fire, and the powertrain didn't go up? It borders on miracle. The miracle falls apart, though, with the other engine readings. Main 3 and 4 are still warm, but spooling down; when the power buses blew, their confining magnets quenched. Aux boosters one through four are all in error-reset, and the system has tagged them as "damaged, status unknown."
And all six emergency thrusters are stone dead. Aurora is deep in a gravity well without propulsion or power.
"Time to restart engines three and four?" Lackland asks. She knows the news won't be good.
"Five hours, ma'am. Three if we want to play it dangerous."
Lackland casts a glance at the nav display in Bigboard's upper right corner. They have three or four minutes, maybe five, tops. With her good arm, Lackland keys her epaulet mic.
"Almond, you still with us?"
"Go for Almond!" comes the reply, shot through with distortion but still understandable.
"I need you to route power to aux boosters. Steal it from anywhere, route it through anywhere. Just get it there. Power the aux boosters," Lackland says entirely too calmly.
"On it, ma'am!"
A feeling of tranquility is settling into Lackland's brain despite Aurora's situation.
"XO? Krista? What's your plan?" Åkerman asks, still trying to pull data on the powerplant.
"Surfing," she says, not taking her eyes off the board.
Another delightful entry in the story, this time showing more of the calamity as the emergency unfolds! What will become of this dogged crew, as they try to maintain stability and keep our beloved Aurora intact? I for one will be waiting with eager anticipation to see what the next turn of the story brings us!
Keep up the stellar work, @scifiwriterguy! We all really appreciate your hard work you put into these wonderful stories!
I see where this is going now...But, with all the thrusters dead, how can she level out enough to "surf" in the planets atmosphere? Also, she's going to need to go Pretty fast.
Well then! I was wondering how the XO survived when LCDR Keen got promoted due to her being KIA. (: Spectacular work on that twist, there, @scifiwriterguy - I legit thought she was dead at the end of last chapter and we'd be switching to Keen's story now.
Well then! I was wondering how the XO survived when LCDR Keen got promoted due to her being KIA. (: Spectacular work on that twist, there, @scifiwriterguy - I legit thought she was dead at the end of last chapter and we'd be switching to Keen's story now.
That would have been a quick chapter
Heist-style, edge of your seat stress has never been so fun
Comments
Sorry, guys - business website updates taking more time than expected. (Anyone who tells you self-employment is a breeze is brain damaged.) Days of 17 to 20 hours are a real drag.
The XO's story will begin shortly. Your patience (and bumps!) are deeply appreciated.
That's cool, I'll just wait for the drop with the rest of the crew, we're totally chill... really.
Lackland, Krista B
Employee No. E-N7249830
Space Operations Division
Current Assignment: Executive Officer, ASV Aurora
By all rights, the alarm clock shouldn't be going off for another six hours, which is the second thing that makes Commander Krista Lackland want to pitch the damn thing through a wall. Its first sin is, of course, being an alarm clock in the first place. Of course, since the alarm clock is only a feature run by the ship's computer through the flatscreen mounted on the wall of her quarters, throwing it through the wall would involve first wrenching it off the wall, and that's just too much effort on only four hours' sleep.
Groaning, Lackland thumbs the pulsing icon on the flatscreen. It gives a soft chime and reverts back to normal operation, showing a digest of operating information on the Aurora. Engine output, life support and power generation status, a handful of systems that are generally less interesting than dirt, and the local gravity map. Everything is normal except, of course, the gravwell map. There's a deep one close aboard and getting closer.
She sits up on the bunk, stretching her spine. Alterra may be the ones writing the book on heavy-lift deep-space transports these days, but what they know about making a proper bunk would fit on an index card. With room to spare.
One advantage of starting a new day before the old one had finished cooling out of your boots is a quick morning. Fresh shipsuit and socks and Lackland was tugging on her boots, able - if not exactly ready - to get back to work.
As second shift, she's technically not on duty for nearly another seven hours, but Aurora is coming up on a critical moment in her flight, and even if the duty sheet didn't say she had to report, her sense of it nevertheless had her walking out her door.
The bridge is the captain's responsibility, and she knows that if Hollister wanted a hand up there he would've told her. So she instead heads for Engineering; a ship the size of Aurora doesn't have huge margins for error when it comes to pulling off a gravity-assist maneuver, so if something is going to go wrong, it only makes sense to have the command crew where they can do the most good; Hollister on his bridge, and her in Engineering. That way, no matter how catastrophic a failure might happen, at least one of them should be able to pull the ship out of danger.
"XO on deck!" The shout comes before the toe of her boot crosses the Engineering Control Room's doorway. If she didn't know better, she would've suspected Chief Åkerman had watched her make her way there on the camera feeds.
"As you were," she says automatically, waving the on-duty engineering staff back to their stations. With several megatons of titanium alloy hurtling toward a planet's gravwell, this is no time for the seat-jump-and-salute dance. Åkerman walks over to her and falls into step as she heads over to Bigboard.
"Didn't expect you, ma'am," he says as they cross the room, "Something wrong?"
"Nothing wrong, Chief, just here as a precaution. I don't like this maneuver coming up, so I'm not going to spend it in my bunk as a passenger."
"I hear that, ma'am," Åkerman says with more honesty than is generally wise where Alterra can overhear, "This would've been a lot easier if we'd just used the solar well rather than some mudball."
"Agreed," Lackland says as they step in front of Bigboard's data desk. The Engineering Systems Master Status and Operational Overview Display - usually simply called Bigboard for obvious reasons - is essentially the grown-up version of the digest display in her quarters. Rather than summaries, Bigboard trees everything out, allowing the Engineering crew to call up details on any system, calling attention to even the slightest setpoint drift, and generally being the obsessive-compulsive part of Aurora's brain. The wide touch-sensitive quasi-holo desk in front of them drives and augments Bigboard, giving the Engineering crew access to display details and diagnostics ranging from the routine to what would be embarassingly intimate if Aurora were human.
Scanning over the systems display shows nothing wrong to her eyes, but she asks Åkerman's opinion anyway. Åkerman rucks back his right sleeve to bare his forearm, the SECID embedded there coming to life. With a few finger taps, Bigboard shifts to a combined NAV/ENG display.
"Nothing particularly worrying right now. Engines are operating to spec, no drifts up or down the line. Squeezer sync is perfect - we had to compensate for local gravity, but the auto systems handled it without intervention. Bridge brought up maneuvering systems about twenty minutes ago and it was in hot standby up until three minutes ago when they went live. We're already rolling and yawing, so they're getting us into boost angle," he says, eyes dancing over the Bigboard display.
Abruptly, all of the engine displays shift: the four main engines shift into nav-fire mode, getting ready to ramp up from cruise to their higher-power course-adjustment output; the four aux boosters similarly shift from warm to hot standby; and the six emergency supplemental boosters come online.
"Looks like it's almost showtime," Åkerman observes.
"Yep," Lackland agrees, "Sooner done the better. Autonav handling this?"
"Uh..." Åkerman hesitates, tapping a few commands on his SECID. "No. Looks like they have it on semi-automatic only. Hideki's the navigator on duty; you know how he is about 'feeling the course' and all that."
"Very familiar, unfortunately," Lackland allows. Ishimura is an outstanding navigator, no doubt about it, but he definitely has to learn that the ship's systems are there because they're more precise than a human could be. When you're skidding several megatons around space, precision counts. When you're trying to flick those megatons through a planetary gravity well like a marble around a bowl, precision is mission critical.
Lackland nods at the board. "Good spool," she says. Sure enough, the engines are responding like the finely tuned machines they are, not so much as a hesitation or skip anywhere.
"We aim to please. Barring that, to wound," Åkerman says with a grin.
"Bjorn, you have issues."
"So the company psychs keep saying, ma'am."
Lackland rolls up her left sleeve and starts tapping commands into her own SECID. Bigboard's display shifts modes, apportioning ENG/NAV two thirds of the vast display and calling up a map of the Engineering spaces on the rest. Blue dots appear throughout the wireframe model.
"You pre-staged the drones?" she asks. Ordinarily, drones are kept parked on their charging cradles and only sent out on specific tasks or partnered with assigned crew.
"Yes, ma'am. It seemed...I don't know, prudent. If something goes wrong, we're not going to have enough time to wait while they get to a trouble spot. I figured if I spread them out, it'd improve response time if we do have a problem."
"I'm not criticizing, Bjorn," Lackland says quietly, "Just observing. It's a good plan; I was going to suggest we get them moving. You beat me to it."
"Just trying to anticipate points of failure, ma'am."
Krista closes the drone display, and ENG/NAV takes over Bigboard again. The ship is still yawing.
"Comin' up on course burn," Åkerman announces to the crew in the room. His usually calm voice has an edge to it.
The captain's chime sounds from the ship's 1MC, the master announcement circuit, a calm tone which contrasts too sharply with the words that follow.
"XO to the bridge on the double!"
"Bjorn, feed me information!" Lackland shouts, pushing off from Bigboard's data desk to give her a boost for the door. She's already at a full run for the door when the sound she doesn't want to hear starts. It's worse than an alam clock by miles; the rising-and-falling shriek of the collision alarm.
The heavy Engineering Control doors are sliding open just as the 1MC comes alive again with a single shouted order: "brace for impact!" Behind her, she hears Åkerman shout "Brace! Brace! Brace!" to his crew as she starts to make the right turn to head for the bridge elevator.
And in that instant, Kirsta Lackland's world comes violently apart.
Stay tuned for Part II...
ASKDBREISKBQIWPDLLFBFKFLSN
Ow...! So anyways! A new look at the fate of the Aurora's crew, but this time from the Engineering crew! I'm really fascinated with the lore of the story, and I can't wait to see the fate of our new victim survivor as she tries to help turn the fate of the Aurora. I'm really pleased to see a story focused on a female executive officer, similar to Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager .
The writing is as crisp as ever, with subtle nods to everyday life onboard the Aurora, and how technology prefaces everything. I have to say, my favorite line has to be this:
Clever with just a touch of dark humor, it made me giggle a bit. @scifiwriterguy, keep up the hard work! I and everyone else around here appreciate your stories and love how you spin them. I for one am eagerly awaiting to see what the next part brings into play for the beleaguered crew of the Aurora...
I'm still holding out that she's of Chinese descent, and her family name is Tani... which would then make her "Yu Tani" and would be an additional delicious reference to another sci-fi space travel odyssey I hold near and dear to my heart...
Chapter One
My name is Jake Charlie Greeman. I was sent to do terraforming missions on a new planet for humans to colonize. I was on an Altera Corporation space shuttle named: “The Aurora.” To get to our destination faster, we planned to enter orbit on planet 4546B and slingshot to our destination. While in orbit, the Aurora was struck by a mysterious energy pulse. The Aurora headed straight down into planet 4546B. 25 life pods were deployed prior to impact. I was in life pod 5. I review this all slowey in my mind. My heads throbbing from something, and for some reason, I feel like i'm only half conscious.
I take in a deep breath, but I feel my lungs sting as they try to process the air. I look up slightly, my visions blurred, but I can still make out a bright, reddish orange light coming from the other side of my lifepod. And its moving. I snap back into reality, and discover that its fire. I hit my finger on my chairs control panel to release my confinement, but all I get is an error sound.
I hit the button on the control panel frantically, trying to release my confinement, but I get the same result. Eventually, I slam my whole fist down on the control panel, and only then does it release my chair confinement. I quickly get up and block my eyes from the bright light the fire gives of.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the lifepod fire extinguisher laying right next to me on the ground, it must've detached from the wall when the lifepod was launched from the Aurora. I quickly scoop up the extinguisher, and put out the fire as fast as I can. Once the fire's gone, I let out a half-stress and half-relieved sigh. My heads pounding even more now, probably because I got up from my chair way too fast.
I put the fire extinguisher down, and take a look around my lifepod. It's white on both the walls and roof, but grey on the floor. There's a hatch on the roof of the lifepod with a ladder leading up to it that releases you from the lifepod. There’s a similar hatch on the floor of the lifepod that releases you as well, and when I look down into it, I see nothing but water.
On the plus side, I can see the bottom of the water, so the waters shallow. Good. Right behind the hatch on the floor is a storage compartment, and right above that is a black screen that's suppose to tell you stuff about the planet your on, how safe it is, etc. But instead it says WARNING all in yellow at the top of the screen, and below the warning sign, it says in all red: Circulatory Test: Failed. Secondary Systems: Offline. Flotation Devices: Deployed. Hull integrity: OK.
I'm guessing the secondary systems mean the lights, because the only lights that are on right now are blue emergency lights. Well, at least the hull integrity's ok. There's a window to the left of the screen that lets in some sunlight, and to the right of the screen, I see wires hanging out of the life pod's components box, some are cut, and one wire’s letting out what looks like electricity and a small bit of smoke. That must be what started the fire. I could have sworn there was a panel that separates the components from the rest of the life pod, but, oh well.
I turn around, and I see the chair that I sat in when the lifepod was launched from the Aurora. There's restraints to keep you held down in your chair because, it's not exactly a smooth ride. There's a similar chair right across the lifepod from that, one lifepod can hold two people. But only I occupy it, and besides, I was the last one to escape the Aurora. Next to my chair sits a medical fabricator, a device that creates medkits overtime that have the potential to heal almost anything. And next to the chair across the room sits the fabricator.
A fabricator is an amazing device that can create almost any resource, tool, and even food provide that you give it the proper materials. Good, I have all the basic survival supplies.
As I explore the lifepod a little more, I find a panel on the right side of my chair. So that's where the component box panel went. And then, I remember. As my lifepod was launching from the Aurora, that panel came loose, flew around the lifepod a bit, then hit me, square in the face, knocking me out. That explains where the head pain came from.
Remembering this, I walk over to the medical fabricator to see if it fabricated a medkit to help me get rid of this head pain. I check the percentage of completion, since it's dangerous to open a medical fabricator until it fully completes fabricating. All it says is offline.
Great, the medical fabricator is also part of the secondary systems. I walk over to the regular fabricator, hoping and praying that it isn't also part of the secondary systems. I click the button in the middle of the fabricator and watch in relief as the bottom of the fabricator opens up to reveal a small table, and the top opens up to reveal two small lasers that construct whatever resource you tell it to construct. Perfectly Functional.
I push the bottom of the fabricator back into place, and the top follows my lead. There's only one thing left to do now. But before I can reach the ladder, I hear two beeps come from my toolbelt that's wrapped around my waist. Oh yeah. I forgot that before I entered my lifepod, I scrambled to put on a diving suit and attach a toolbelt to my waist. The beepings coming from a certain spot on my toolbelt, and then I see it. How could I have forgot about it? It's my most important tool ever. Even more important than the fabricator. It's my PDA, or Personal Digital Assistant.
I pull out my PDA by the black and white handle from the special place in my toolbelt meant just for my PDA. The moment I bring it close to my face, a hologram appears from the handle. A picture of a spinning white triangle with Altera's symbol appears and below that, it says rebooting. The triangle spins a bit more, than I hear a feminine robotic voice say:
“This PDA has now rebooted in emergency mode with one directive: to keep you alive on an alien world.” I’d never think that I would ever need my PDA in emergency mode.
"You have suffered minor head trauma. This is considered an optimal outcome.” My PDA continues to say. Oh really? I wasn't aware.
“Please refer to the databank for detailed survival advice. Good luck." The PDA’s main interface opens up, showing six tabs, the blueprint tab, the ping manager tab, the photos tab, log messages tab, the databank tab, and finally, the inventory tab, which i'm on right now.
The PDA has an amazing ability to turn any item that you collect into a hologram and then store it in the inventory tab. And if you want that item out, you just click on the item in the inventory tab and the PDA sends out the hologram and makes it a physical item again all in about half a second.
I’ll check out the rest of the PDA later, right now, there's something I really need to see.
I start to ascend the ladder up to the hatch that leads out of the lifepod. I see what looks like a strange white bird fly by the hatch, then, I take a deep breath, and open up the hatch.
I climb to the top of the lifepod and look around. Water as far as the eye can see. "Environment: Uncharted ocean planet. Oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. Water contamination: high." My PDA proceeds to tell me. Apparently the thing still talks even when it's in the toolbelt. An ocean planet. Great. Couldn't have chose a better planet to orbit around. Well, at least i'm able to breath on this planet.
I keep looking in the same direction, looking for any sign of land at all. But it's no use, I heard what the PDA said. It's an ocean planet. I let out a sigh, then turn around. That's when I see it.
It's the destroyed remains of the Aurora.
That's part one for you all, if you have any ideas, let me know! Ill be making my own thread about this soon.
Downward "Spiral"?
Get it?
Oh nevermind grumble grumble grr...
Great quality, quantity, and explosions of course.
I didn't...
Thank you, thank you, and
*psst* "Yutani" is a Japanese surname. So Yu Tani would probably have a pretty interesting family history!
Guess it wasn't that funny
*violin plays*
Oh well I'll get it next time
*applause* Well played, sir.
So I'll just leave all of them.
Her foot has just barely hit the decking in the corridor when the portside end, some hundred meters away, explodes. The overpressure wave, compressed and contained by the hallway's sides, rockets along the titanium tube looking for somewhere, anywhere, to go. The spacious Engineering Control Room and its wide open doors, therefore, make for a natural exit.
The blast wave lifts Lackland off her feet, launching her back into Engineering control, bowling over two junior watchstanders as her muscular 77-kilo body plows into them with no more control than a tornado-launched scarecrow. Every loose item in the room takes to the air as the blast wave gets under, along, or just plain against objects large and small, sending tablets, tools, and hardprints airborne. Even in the scrupulously clean control room, fine dust that had hidden in seams and crevices is blown into the air.
Lackland crashes into Åkerman, yanking him off the console he's braced against. Ultimately, this saves both of their lives. In near-unison, three of the four trunk bus lines on the starboard wall blow out, uncontained high voltage igniting cable insulation and sending a sleet of shrapnel that had been junction cases in all directions. Titanium shards scythe through the air where Åkerman's torso had been.
With the engineering corridor now open to space, the rush of air rapidly reverses direction and everything in Engineering Control is blown toward the corridor. The few engineers who still have a grip wherever they've braced themselves can only watch helplessly as the rest tumble toward the corridor door. It's closing per emergency protocol, but a large hole in a wide corridor allows a lot of atmosphere to escape very quickly. Loose tablets and hardcopies whip out into the maelstrom tearing down the corridor, joining a blizzard of debris from other compartments and the frantically thrashing four-limbed shapes being hurled toward oblivion.
One of the senior engineers skids across the threshold to join them.
Finally, seven long seconds after the blast upended reality, the doors of Engineering Control meet and seal off the compartment. Airborne bodies and debris drop to the deck, tumble, and are finally at rest again. Only a handful of seconds later, the compartment's pressure is back up to standard and the survivors can breathe comfortably again, as can the fires now taking hold in the high voltage switchgear.
As Krista Lackland regains her bearings, the first thing that takes her concern is a particular sound. The fires roaring in the background should be underscored by the incessant beetling of the fire alarm, or at least the teeth-jarring nasal shrieking of the collision alarm which, in the hierarchy of misery, is second only to a fire alarm. Except, and only in the Engineering spaces, there's one alarm that overrides them all. The two-toned, high-low, saw-wave Power Plant Casualty alarm that is currently drilling into Lackland's brain.
Aurora's heart has stopped.
Lackland drags herself to her feet, pain lancing across her body. Åkerman rolls to his side, slipping out from under her as she stands, scrambling to his feet.
"Almond!" he shouts.
"Here, sir!" comes a reply from a tall tech untangling himself from an unconscious junior watchstander.
"Get your ass to the RCB and start working around this damage and get me power! Watch what you're doing and do not crash polarities! You blow out my last remaining bus and I'm going to be pissed!"
"On it, sir!" Almond yells, taking off at a dead sprint for a rarely-used control board on the far end of Engineering Control.
Lackland shoves a fire extinguisher at a junior engineer. "Richards, get these fires out. On the double," she wheezes. Something's wrong in her chest. Richards, to his credit, doesn't even hesitate, yanking the safety cap off the extinguisher before launching his attack on the fires consuming the starboard bulkhead conduits.
"Lackland," Åkerman coughs, the air already stifling hot and going bad fast, "Your arm."
Krista looks first at her right, which is scraped but seems okay. Her left though, is a different story. The radius and ulna both suffered impacted fractures before another phase of her wild tumble smashed her arm again, driving the sharp proximal fragments through muscle and skin. The exposed bones are freely dribbling blood and have a peculiar glitter to them. Absently, she realizes that it's the embedded components of her SECID, the hair-thin wires and contactors pulled out of the flesh by the bone on its way through which, much like the bones themselves, were never intended to see the outside world.
"Reset it," she tells Åkerman, who has already grabbed a medkit. He looks at her, an instant away from questioning the instruction, before simply nodding. There's no hesitation as his off hand grabs her upper arm, his dominant hand grabs her left, and they jerk in opposite directions.
The blaze of pain defies analogy. There's nothing in Lackland's experience to compare it to. The shattered bones resubmerge. Before she can recoil, he wraps a flexcast around her arm, cinching it down brutally before it hardens in the air. With her free hand, Lackland grabs a Atixole autoinjector from the kit and presses it to her jugular. The shot of painkiller hits her like a prizefighter, but the roar of pain in her body subsides...at least fractionally. Enough to think, and for right now, that's all that counts.
Lackland is getting her brain back together as Bigboard flicks back to life. Moments later, his control board regains consciousness as well.
"Nice work, Almond!" Åkerman shouts, retaking his station in front of Bigboard. His fingers fly like a concerto pianist, partitioning Bigboard again and again, specific damage callouts and system status grids appearing in rapid order. Aurora bucks hard, the kick from underneath combined with a slipping yaw. Åkerman steadies himself against Bigboard's control desk while Richards, still battling the fire, loses his balance and hits the deck again. The extinguisher, its trigger locked down, skids away under its own propulsion.
Richards gets to his knees, yanks another extinguisher cylinder off the wall, and hits the fires head-on without pause. The power plant casualty alarm is still yowling under the roar and crack of the electrical fires.
"XO, bad news," Åkerman is saying.
"What? How bad's the damage?" Lackland says, dragging herself to Bigboard's command desk.
"Ship's dead, ma'am. But apparently, so are you," he says, pointing to a system alert in the lower right corner: TRANSFER OF XO AUTHORITY - LCDR KEEN - LACKLAND KIA
Funny, dead shouldn't be this painful. Or hot. Or loud. Or crowded, for that matter. Then it comes to her. When her shattered arm shredded her SECID, Aurora lost her biomonitor telemetry. As far as the computer is concerned, she died the moment her arm broke. This creates a problem.
Lackland attempts to key a command into Bigboard, only for the standard access denial warning to appear. Her codes are invalid now, all system access revoked. Dead people don't generally need mainframe access.
"Åkerman, I'm locked out of the system," she says. He certainly already knows it, but saying it out loud feels like she's rebutting the system's insistence that she's dead.
"No problem," Åkerman replies, not taking his eyes off the board, "I can manage. We have all four main engines down. Engine 1 is giving me nothing; I think she took it right in the head. Two is messed up. I have an offscale overtemp, so whatever got us passed right through the upper hull. We're lucky the ship didn't blow."
Lackland nods; one engine entirely blown out, another shot through the head and probably on fire, and the powertrain didn't go up? It borders on miracle. The miracle falls apart, though, with the other engine readings. Main 3 and 4 are still warm, but spooling down; when the power buses blew, their confining magnets quenched. Aux boosters one through four are all in error-reset, and the system has tagged them as "damaged, status unknown."
And all six emergency thrusters are stone dead. Aurora is deep in a gravity well without propulsion or power.
"Time to restart engines three and four?" Lackland asks. She knows the news won't be good.
"Five hours, ma'am. Three if we want to play it dangerous."
Lackland casts a glance at the nav display in Bigboard's upper right corner. They have three or four minutes, maybe five, tops. With her good arm, Lackland keys her epaulet mic.
"Almond, you still with us?"
"Go for Almond!" comes the reply, shot through with distortion but still understandable.
"I need you to route power to aux boosters. Steal it from anywhere, route it through anywhere. Just get it there. Power the aux boosters," Lackland says entirely too calmly.
"On it, ma'am!"
A feeling of tranquility is settling into Lackland's brain despite Aurora's situation.
"XO? Krista? What's your plan?" Åkerman asks, still trying to pull data on the powerplant.
"Surfing," she says, not taking her eyes off the board.
Keep up the stellar work, @scifiwriterguy! We all really appreciate your hard work you put into these wonderful stories!
That would have been a quick chapter
Heist-style, edge of your seat stress has never been so fun
You know it's coming...
It's time to DO THE BUMP!
(We can bump it high, and bump it down, while we wait for Lackland to save the day!)
Here I am! The forum's bad developer, Googler of bump memes(thats going on my CV), and a random guy!
This will hold us off for awhile