Darkness Within

Darkness Within (10): Revisions

Posted by

MET 187-5+3

Or possibly I don’t need a new plan. Since I can’t think of a new plan, just a variation on the old plan, it would be very desirable that this is the case.

To make it to the stargate, I would need a vector-control core, and one that can fit on this hypothetical candle. That might be possible, since the cutter has one… had one. The break in its midsection looks like a clear break when the impact snapped the ship in two, so its at least possible that the after section is intact out there along with its core.

But I’d need a candle to go and look for it. Convenient, that.

If it isn’t nearby – well, I can at least get closer to the earlier parts of the search cube, and burning the candle should make me show up nice and bright on passives, more so than the hulk, so it will still be progress of a sort.

I have a design roughed out. Nothing that would win any design competitions, but it will serve for this.

First step: gather parts, starting with a drive. All the tactical platforms have are station-keeping arcjets, so my best option is retasking the for’ard ACS motors of the cutter. Better yet, looking at the aft end of the wreckage, one of the cutter’s remass tanks looks to be in one piece. If Athneél’s smiling today, I’ll be able to get it out still so, and holding pressure.

Time to carve.

MET 187-5+11

I need a bigger hullcutter.


(Author’s note: ideally, I should like to accompany a rapidly upcoming piece in this series with an actual sketch [meaning, y’know, sketch, not my usual “cross-sectional hack”] of Isif’s candle.

So, if anyone or anyone(s) out there feels like lending their artistic talents to the cause drop me a line, and I’ll send you the relevant art notes. Sadly, I can’t actually commission art for this, being a little on the starving artist side this month – and so I am just looking for a quick sketch, you understand, nothing too fancy, for the sake of the size of my guilt complex about asking people to work for little more than the love of it – but full credit will be given, along with the strong probability of actual commissioning of a fancy full-bore version if and when this sees print.)

 

Darkness Within (9): Miscalculation

Posted by

MET 186-23+4

So I’ve been running some numbers.

At a best guess from the nav data available, Gutpunch had 18.5 hours1 to run at standard cruising acceleration, 9.6 standard gravities effective2. That in turn implies that I need something approaching six million m/s of delta V effective to make zero-zero with the Kerjejic stargate.

These are not happy numbers.

Actually, let me rephrase that: these numbers represent a six-species clusterfuck at a Clajdíän clambake.

The candle plan will not work, obviously, hope and head injuries notwithstanding. Samildán could bring his traveling Heaven alongside and hand me a dreadnought-sized fusion torch with all the trimmings, and I couldn’t squeeze 6e6 out of it. That’s why we had to learn to cheat in the first place.

I need a vector-control core. So let’s hope Kirchev parked the cutter facing aft the last time out.

MET 187-4-32

Well, damn.

I have half a cutter. Snapped in two at the shear line, clean as you like. Not, however, the half with the core in it.

I also have two racked tactical observation platforms, neither of which has a core, along with some spare parts racks, tools, and plenty of debris. Everything I could need to build a candle, if that would help.

I need a new plan.

  1. 20 of your Earth hours, for anyone who wants to check my numbers.3
  2. 9 of your Earth gravities.
  3. I always wanted to use one of your Earth “of your Earth”s.

Darkness Within (8): Overdue

Posted by

FROM: CS UNDERBELT (FIELD FLEET RIMWARD)
TO: FIELD FLEET RIMWARD COMMAND (CS ARMIGEROUS PROPERTARIAN)

*** ROUTINE
*** FLEET CONFIDENTIAL E256
*** OVERDUE

1. CS GUTPUNCH ATTACHED TO TASK GROUP R-4-118 HAS MISSED THREE (3) ROUTINE STATUS UPLOADS AND IS NOW CONSIDERED OVERDUE.

2. CS UNDERBELT AND COHORT PROCEEDING FROM CURRENT LOCATION (PARDERIC SYSTEM) TO CONSTELLATION-EXIT RENDEZVOUS POINT TO PERFORM BACKWARD-SLANTED COURSE SWEEP, STAGGERED-SECTOR SEARCH PATTERN, AS PER STANDING ADMIRALTY INSTRUCTIONS.

3. REMAINDER OF TASK GROUP HAS BEEN ISSUED ORDERS TO PROCEED TO LAST KNOWN LOCATION CS GUTPUNCH TO PERFORM FORWARD-SLANTED SWEEP, OTHERWISE AS ABOVE.

4. MORE FOLLOWS.

5. AUTHENTICATION MORAINE HAMMOCK VAULT SIMMER GOLDEN PAWL / 0x9981ABD43E3ECC22

ENDS.

Darkness Within (7): Headaches

Posted by

MET 186-14-2

I have now completed a dead-reckoning navigational fix using the surviving server rack and data stored in the logs. The good news is that the kinetic impacts do not appear to have significantly altered Gutpunch‘s trajectory.

The bad news is that while the shit-pile’s no deeper than I’ve been assuming, it’s also no shallower.

Gutpunch was on a brachistochrone course for the Kerjejic stargate. Kerjejic’s an untenanted system but a major gate intersection, which made it the perfect place for the task force to meet back up after sweeping the Loop. Trouble with a brachy is that making your zero-zero counts on maintaining continuous deceleration throughout the second half of the course, so the moment your ship gets broken, you’re off on a long ride to nowhere. One of those ways in which space travel became less safe when better drives were invented, the irony of which is rather less appreciated when you’re experiencing it personally.

On my present orbit, I’m heading off into the Shards without intercepting anything further in this system. If these calculations are correct, I should reach another star system – IGS 88-99172-B, given some dubious assumptions about the emptiness of the deep black – in roughly 875,000 years.

I’d like to be rescued before then. Well, I would be rescued before then, but by the time the squadron notes that we’re overdue, comes looking, runs the search pattern, and so forth, they’ll be rescuing my backup out of my space-chilled skull. That seems rather unsatisfying, even if no unofficial salvors find us first. Narijic System isn’t what you might call the good part of town.

That defines the next problem, then:

I have four and a half days to build a candle, sufficient to move myself, the substrate, and preferably the FDR, that can produce enough acceleration, and have enough delta-v, to reproduce the second half of the brachy plus correction (although at least for lesser mass) – close enough that I can survive it without a vector-control core. The closer I get to the Kerjejic gate, the quicker I’ll be picked up once they start coming; and if I’m under thrust, I’ll be easy to spot.

Time to check out the remains of the hangar deck.

…and then there’s another impediment. Which I will not call a problem because there’s very little I can do about it that’s not already being done.

The impact evidently shook something loose in my own hardware that my medichines can’t find, or at least can’t fix, because drugs or no drugs, this headache is not going away. And now there are little light-haloes around characters I’m reading, and other irritating visual glitches. Which might mean that I’ve got a slow leak bleeding into my brain, except the ‘chines would have fixed that by now, but in any case, something is wrong upstairs that a good scanner and a healing vat could probably fix overnight, if I had either a good scanner or a healing vat.

As it is, there’s not much to do but hope that I don’t stroke out or go insane before I get the candle built, and that whatever it is doesn’t react too badly to being put under multiple gravities of thrust.

On I go.

Darkness Within (6): Memories

Posted by

2

MET 185-18-6

In the ongoing list of people to whom I owe profound thanks –

Everyone back at BuShips and the people who write the ISDPs, such that the pipes are color- and texture-coded, the fittings are standardized and snap-together, and all the other features that make it possible for an ensign in a fragmented hulk to patch enough of it together to stay breathing. 

All of which is to say – pump is installed. And I shall complain no more about the size of the crawlways. 

MET 185-20-14

I’ve crawled down to the server room, or what’s left of it. To be precise, what’s left of it are the for’ard two racks and a pile of debris. Coolant pressure tank for the quai must’ve exploded. So much for the safety systems. 

Maybe I’ll mention that to BuShips. 

First task – get the substrate out. 

MET 185-20+7

First subtask – find a bloody hullcutter. 

MET 185-21-15

Okay. Opened up the subfloor rack and got the substrate out. Which should make the rest of the crew happy. Continuity dates on these backups are all up-to-date, give or take a watch or two. 

Assuming I make it out of here, that is. 

MET 185-21+4

If these diagnostics are right, I might be able to get a single rack working with parts from the other. I need to get a navigational fix worked – well, some dead reckoning, with the navigational sensors aft of the fracture and the inertial platform so much scrap. 

That can be next watch’ problem. 

MET 185-21+19

Mm, the delicious yeasty taste of rat. 

Headache’s still there. 

Darkness Within (5): Sandwich

Posted by

MET 185-14+10

So the air, not so delicious, and getting less so by the minute. What is delicious?

This sandwich, battered as it is.

Alwyn, I recant every harsh thought I ever had about you. Or about your lamentable taste in lóskith-stinking food from the Dominions. One decent sandwich pays for all.

In related news, I have completed the inventory of food available in the mess. I have five bottles of various liquor – which might pass for rocket fuel in an emergency, or a worse emergency rather, but which it would be a very bad idea to start drinking with this much pharmacy in my brain – three cases of rat bars and three water packs from the emergency-rations space, and the stone bread in the walls.

Things to do, now:

  • Blow the lock. Can’t think of any practical way to clean this air even if I could save it. Or blow the ball, rather: go outside, leave the door open, punch some holes in the half-ball, and let the air out slowly.
  • Pull the floor panels, and install this blasted airlock-style pod-depressurization pump.
  • Float the rat packs out, tether them up, open a case of bars, and divide them up among the pods so I have handy snacks.
  • Then check out whatever’s left of the server room.

Headache’s getting worse.

Darkness Within (4): Air!

Posted by

MET 184-17-12

Air!

Delicious air!

…well, no, not delicious air, but I get ahead of myself. I made accessing the for’ard mess my third priority after rigging the air feed for the pod, rigging the k-blanket, and pulling the hardware, because rebuilding these scraps into an airlock-style depressurizer will go a lot more smoothly without suit gloves on, even skinsuit gloves.

Here’s how you build an airlock out of a rescue ball. First, pull out your pocket laser cutter, and chop it in half. (Try not to cringe too much at the thought of cutting one of your vacuum-tight spaces apart, despite the fact that if you’re even contemplating this crazy plan you must be almost out of things that’ll hold air in the first place.) Make sure the entrance flap is in the middle of one of the halves. Stash the other half for later.

Then you need a tube of bioglue, or whatever vacuum-safe glue you have handy, preferably of the kind that sticks to itself, too, as well as metal because you want a good, thick bead of the stuff all around the spacetight door you’re using as the other end of your airlock that you’re going to push the cut edge of the ball down into. Once that sets, slather another layer on top of that, because you need to be damn sure the bond will hold pressure. You now have a door with a bag on it.

Check your work.

Climb into the bag, and seal the flap of the rescue ball. Check that it’s sealed properly. Now check your work again.

Offer up your most profound and fervent prayers to Mahánárel and Athnéël, who between them look after engineers, gamblers, and the poor bastards who have to be both at the same time.

Then open the spacetight door, and hang onto the wall while you do, because air will be coming out in a hurry, and the wire-and-tape-job you just rigged will be under enough stress inflating with a bang without you falling ass-over on it, too.

Now step inside, and close the spacetight door again. Feel greatly relieved that this insane plan worked at all and that you didn’t manage to vent all that precious oxygen overboard. You may permit yourself a caper or two.

Suffice it to say: it worked. Once. I don’t feel confident enough in its reliability to use it more than once, so unless the situation changes, I’ll be staying in here until this air fouls; the air that escaped into the ball is going to have to be written off, but that’s better than all of it.

As far as the local situation goes: the mess is surprisingly orderly; the stowages mostly held. Some floaters to clean up, but not too many. The food situation may be a little better than I thought, but that’ll have to wait on inventory.The telltale on the emergency hatchway down-deck confirms there’s no air below me in the server room.

Finally, I must now formally log confirmation of the temporary deaths of Lieutenant Leresif Inachios, Sailing Master, and Sublieutenant Alwyn Lelad, Power/Thermal Engineer, present in the for’ard mess deck at the time of the recorded impacts, who both appear to have been killed instantly by massive kinetic trauma. As is standard protocol, I have removed and taken possession of the vector stacks and command keys of each officer, and recorded this in the flight systems log.

(I also took possession of Leresif’s locket. He’d never forgive himself if he lost that.)

Darkness Within (3): Breathe Shallow

Posted by

MET 184-12+34

Got out of my pod.

Expenditures: one podful of soured air, and a can of Quicksilver Quaff I’d forgotten which didn’t take well to depressurization. That’s not going to be viable in the long run, especially since it’ll be fresh air unless I wait exactly 12 hours-and-some in between every time I take a walk.

That, at least, should be easy enough to fix. There are five other pods on the port side, each with its own emergency oxygen tank and dioxide scrubbers. If I pull the access panels, I can unhook them and link them into the feed for my pod – well, not my pod, one that I’ve not bled all over – and scavenge their scrubber cartridges, likewise.

At least with the ship shot all to hell like this, it’ll be easy enough to scavenge the necessary pipework. The floor of what used to be the axial corridor is ripped up; I can see down through the plenum cable bundles as far as the mass driver coils. The battery room’s missing its deckhead, just a fragment left curling up from the outer hull fitting, leaving all the accumulator coil-stacks exposed to space. I should rig a k-blanket over that to prevent further damage, but air first.

Where was I? The twelve-hour wait problem. Rigging the scavenged tanks and scrubbers will provide more air, but won’t solve air loss from entering and leaving, and the pod system isn’t designed to depressurize and depressurize unassisted. I do, though, have an airlock that isn’t useful any more. If I pull the backup atmo pump and a gas backflow valve from that, then put the existing regulator on a toggle, it should be possible to rig a manual system.

The for’ard mess is holding air, by the hatch telltales. Getting in without losing it will be tricky. I do have a couple of rescue balls…

Darkness Within (2)

Posted by

1

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.

Darkness Within

Posted by

Narijic (Freeport Loop) System
CS Gutpunch

I woke to the worst stabbing, throbbing headache of my life, nausea, and the stink of burnt insulation, stomach twitching with the electronically-repressed urge to vomit – all of which was helped immensely by the ship screaming at me, the piercing electronic screech of the general quarters signal.

At least the ship shut the hell up when I told it to.

— Isif? Are you back on-line? –

Sort of. Almost. What – I went to rub my eyes, encountering the gummy feel of clotting blood and another jolt of pain – aaah! What the hell?

— Your internal diagnostics suggest that you have a concussion and many contusions. Repairs are underway, but you shouldn’t move yet. –

No choice. Can you damp this pain, maybe clear the fog out of my brain?

— Pain damping is already enabled at the highest automatic level. And it would be most inadvisable to administer stimulants in your present position. –

Something must have happened to the ship. Maximum damping and a shot of zoom-juice. Override code… agh. Override code whatever. Hit me.

— This is against my better judgment. Enabled. –

I opened my eyes as the relief flowed in, blinking them against a light that wasn’t there. My pod was dim, lit only by the faint glow of starlight. That was a relief; some of the sticky wetness must be the bio-gel from the emergency light, rather than my blood, although the splatter across the deckhead looked dark enough.

Do you know what happened?

— I recorded three sharp kinetic transients. They were what knocked us both off-line. No further information. –

Can you raise the bridge? Or damage control central?

— No. Isif, the ship’s mesh isn’t responding. The carrier is up, and a few local nodes, but none of the servers are responding.  I can’t find any crew presence, even on broadcast. –

My finger stopped half an inch from the hatch release. Starlight gleamed weakly silver through the translucent door of my pod, but the crew pods opened into an internal corridor. That suggested it would be a really bad idea to open the door, even before checking the pressure warning…

…and then it caught up with me. I couldn’t hear anything.

The general quarters signal had stopped.

The general quarters signal had stopped when I told it to.

But an Ensign can’t do that. That meant the local processors had run down the command-succession tree, and not found –

“Well, shit.”