Darkness Within (2)

Flight data logs, CS Gutpunch, MET 184-11+04:17: Text entry, Capt. Isif Alclair

This is Acting Captain Isif Alclair, CS Gutpunch, two hours after regaining consciousness and approximately eleven hours after the kinetic impact that destroyed the ship.

Herewith an asset/liability analysis while I devise some sort of plan. Assets, first:

Well, not being dead and splattered across the bulkheads in bloody chunks is probably the big one.

The emergency life support built into each crew pod lasts twelve hours. This one is almost exhausted, but since no-one else seems to have made it to their pods, I have five more sets of tanks and scrubbers to cannibalize.

I do have a fully-charged vacuum suit in here with me, so I can move around.

(Have you ever tried donning a vacuum suit inside a crew pod? [If by some chance whoever ends up reading this isn’t a spacer, try putting on a wetsuit inside a wardrobe. In the dark. Covered in sticky goo.] The Bureau of Equipment assures us that they have been carefully tested for this exact scenario. I should very much like to know if the Bureau of Equipment have ever tried it for themselves.)

Some jackass in a watchvid I saw said “At least we’re still flying half a ship.” If what I’m getting from mesh probes and the surviving cameras is accurate, I have something under a quarter. Gutpunch on this deck now consists of the port crew pods, an airlock that now opens from vacuum to vacuum and its conning station, and the for’ard mess – which may even still hold air, and does hold emergency rations. On the mid-deck, there’s a chunk of the mass driver barrel, part of the server room, and the auxiliary battery room. Breakers have tripped on the mains, so at least there’s plenty of power stored. And most of the hangar remains attached below, surviving contents unknown.

Liabilities, though.

As far as I can tell from the remaining aft-facing cameras, the debris of the after section has drifted far enough away to not be visible as more than a speck. So as far as I’m concerned, it and all its surviving resources might as well be in another system – blind-jumping after it would just be a slow way to die stupid, and I should at least aspire to die smart.

So. No sensor domes. No communications section. No reactors, no fuel tanks, no life support systems, no…

Enough of that.

No accurate navigation fix, and no way to get one. Although since even this much of the ship survived the impact, we can’t be too far off the brachy course to the Kerjejic stargate.

Whoever hit us could still be prowling about out there, waiting to attack any rescue vessels, or any wreckage that shows a sign of life. But that’s not worth worrying about, because it’s not like I could do anything about them even if they were hove to at spit range.

And flying high on cranial trauma, painkillers, zoom-juice, and mixed euphoriants. Which always helps.