Marcella
Marcella
By: Daniel Woods
The navigation deck terminal shuddered under the pounding fist. “Outdated piece of-”
SLAM
The issue was a hazy thing, a cluster of intermittent static in the corner of the screen that made one think a refractory chip had skipped a beat in the display. Solt’s meaty paw smashed it once more just to be sure.
“Will you stop that?!” The captain peered over Marcella’s perplexingly anti-technological helmsman. “It isn’t the Godsdamned screen, for the millionth time. Look.” Removing her hand from a restraining position on the man’s shoulder, she pointed instead to the edge of the staticy mass. “It’s stationary out there somewhere.”
“Looks like a belt to me,” Ainsley chirped from the crow’s nest planted in the hull above navigation, “though I don’t know which one it could be…” her words faded momentarily and long nails clicking across tempered glass filled in. “Nope, no fuckin’ clue.” The shrug from the observation bubble was palpable to all listening.
“Why do y’all think I’m hitting the damned thing? There isn’t a belt there.” Solt was sure of it.
“And we aren’t lost?” Cap knew this was unlikely, Solt was a decent navigator if a bit abrasive on the tools, but had to ask for posterity nonetheless. The answer she got was likewise for the small glittering orb listening from its cradle in the center of the compartment’s ceiling.
“There is no belt here.” Each word was clipped, clear for all to hear.
“Then what is it?”
“A goddamned malfunction.” He raised his fist to smash the flickering screen once more. “Think I can’t spot a cascade failu-”
A slam reverberated through Marcella’s exterior hull and cut him short, the rolling rattle of a shockwave nearly unseating him and successfully dropping the captain to one knee in the violent shudder. There was a brief moment of chaos as things improperly secured were thrown and pinged about as odd bits of plasti-cast shrapnel throughout the vessel. Then, silence.
“What the hell was th-“
Two successive chimes interrupted the officer and a calm, feminine voice came to life through the ship’s global chat. “An impact has been detected in hull-section D-3 Right. No critical damage detected to biological or technical support systems. Sighted review of exterior panels ordered and scheduled. Thank you!”
The cheery disposition and strange, Old-World accent pre-dating even the ship’s conscription grated the captain to no end. She scowled menacingly at the orb now pulsating gold and silver in its oversight position above their heads. “Yeah, do as the bot asks,” she reaffirmed, providing the legally requisite human confirmation to move forward with the process. Why had she ever taken this job? She looked to the voice-comm button on the dashboard and smashed it hard enough to grimace as her finger bent backwards a bit too far. A scratchy sound in the general vicinity let her know it was on and live across all compartments and decks. “Faustein, Ribble, Taureau. Get your asses up here.”
The three mechanics appeared just as quickly as they could through a primary translation corridor thrown into total disarray by what could modestly be described as a brief hug with the epicenter of a seismic wave. They arrived as a unit and shoved onto the nav-deck to array themselves before their officer and the glittering orb. “Sah!” they shouted as one.
“-and keep your eyes open up there!” Cap turned from berating Ainsley through the voice box at the sound. “Ah, fantastic. I see you’ve gotten the memo.” She noted half-assembled vacuum suits hanging in odd bits about their persons. “You’ll be climbing out of Access-4a and across to 34. Somehow this thing tagged us without Ainsley’s sensors picking it up, so I have no real clue what to tell you to expect.”
The issue with the sensors was puzzling, she had to admit. Anything large enough to cause that sort of impact should have been seen at least a minute out on even a poorly tuned array, and Ainsley didn’t work like that.
“No damage to internals?” Ribble, the tallest and most talkative of the three, quoted from the small tablet gripped in his long-fingered hands. He looked to the captain and helmsman. “You confirmed that on this end?” The officer nodded. “Seems unlikely with the carnage littering the halls back there,” he gestured back the way they had come, “haven’t felt a shock like that since serving in the war fleets. Felt like a ramming to me.” A few around nodded knowingly as they too thought on earlier years.
Having experienced the terror of a ramming attack in the vacuum of space on more than one occasion, the captain could only supply a grim nod. “That’s why I don’t know what to expect. I’ve seen entire compartments dissolved by a hit like that. By all means, we should be dealing with a depressurization incident at the very least, if not a total shearing.”
The engineers exchanged looks, steeling themselves for what had suddenly become a very busy and dangerous day for the mechanical crew. “Give us ten to get positioned.”
“At Access-4a.” The unmistakable gravel that was Taureau projected through the tinny speaker in navigation, “In position to open.”
Looking to the hull map, the captain could clearly see the three dots clustered around the labeled access port. She clicked on her own mic, “Alright, double-check your breathers and mag-boots if you haven’t already. And keep fiber-optics clear as you move, we can’t afford another sheared line if we want to eat this month.”
“Copy.” There were a few moments of silence. “Alright, clear to blast.”
A blast was exactly what it was, the air ripped from the room in mere seconds as the small lock depressurized for access to the void. Solt watched with a satisfied smile as the moment of torrential air threatened to topple Ribble from a brace he had supported himself against.
The door opened silently, four panels retracting to reveal the complete blackness beyond. One by one, with a final check of their tethers, the engineers hopped awkwardly into the nothing.
Despite the oddness of the conditions and circumstance, there was honestly nothing nonroutine about the exercise. Any day onboard a ship of any caliber could see a spacewalk as part of the day’s job whether it be replacing an old solar sail or recalibrating a long-range pathfinder, and the three members of the engineering bay set about the task as such.
First out the door was Ribble. Duly elected leader of the small department, he took his job seriously and jumped cleanly through the opening. Grabbing a large, handy eyelet just outside the portal, he pivoted easily rightward in the weightlessness and slipped from sight.
Next out was Faustein. The youngest of the small team and armed with the confidence of her age, she mirrored her senior’s exit flawlessly at the end of a long, thick tether. Reaching out as Ribble had before, she found not a large U-bolt but his gloved hand instead. They gripped one another in a handhold she’d practiced countless times in the week since recruited from that shitty moon off FIGO-196c, their thumbs interlocked and forefingers wrapping around one another’s canvas-encased palms in a monkey paw grip. With a flick and pivot from the leader, she was flung across and away in a smooth arc that sent her small figure rocketing down the long hull at the head of a flicking tail of cable.
Taureau monitored from hullside cameras interspersed along Marcella’s catwalks and access ports, ready to retract his team’s bio-tethers at the first sign of trouble. He sighed, then grumbled his relief as she chirped through the localized comms.
“At checkpoint. Tying in now.” The rookie was attaching a secondary tether to an eyelet further down. “Good to go!” She piped after a moment.
“Coming down.” With a kick, Ribble propelled himself along the now-secure guideline, keeping an eye on his own thick tether unspooling behind him. A pinched or cut line would kill out here, the wrong internal cable disconnect turning a pressure suit into an oven, freezer, monoxide balloon, or electrified coffin depending on the location or damage.
In a few smooth yanks, he found himself propelling toward Faustein. She crouched low against the hull, helm pointed straight at him, arm outreached for his reaching hand. “Don’t fuck this up, Rookie.” He muttered unheard.
Almost before he was aware of it, he was over her and away as she caught and released him smoothly over her head. He felt the click on his hip as she slammed the guideline’s magnetic carabiner to the neodymium disc on his belt. He sailed away, down the hull and toward the impact site.
Faustein couldn’t suppress a broad smile as she watched Ribble’s clean line sailing toward the next tether point, one hand giving an approving thumbs-up while his other prepared to grab an approaching grapple bar.
“Nailed it, Rook!”
“Yeah, we got compromised armor here.” Ribble wrapped up his preliminary report to the nav-bay. “Honestly couldn’t say what hit us. Could be ice, but I’m not seeing much evidence of tears in the outer skin like you might expect. Gonna be a big bill, Chief.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The captain glared past obscuring fingers at the can-tone voice chirping from the dash. She pushed the button to open the line. “Full panel?”
“Mhmm.”
“Shit.” She shook her head. “Alright, schedule a fill-and-seal job for tomorrow and wrap it up. Come on in.”
“Copy that, Boss.”
The images on the captain’s desk were nothing short of horrific. “What is that?”
“Uh, like I said, Boss, it appears to be some sort of organic matter.” Ribble repeated the euphemism once again. “Struck us at some speed, almost disintegrated entirely, but…” he gestured at the pictures scrolling across the display and went silent.
The officer stared at the man in disbelief then returned her eyes to the screen for the third time. “And you took these on your personal device?” The man nodded. “And the rookie?”
“Fine, cap. She didn’t see it, I set her to managing the tethers for return while I snapped a few…” he grappled for the word, “discrete shots.”
“Mmmm.” The captain’s eyes flicked up to the man. “Delete it from your devices. No souvenirs or the like. Understood?” The man nodded again. “Good. You’re dismissed, dinner call will happen shortly.”
The whistle marking evening crew meal sounded almost as if summoned by the shipmaster herself. The head of engineering gave a formal, if unnecessary and now anachronistic, salute, ducking out of her administrative offices into the tight corridor of A-Deck. He turned smartly to the left and proceeded to the ladder down to the crew canteen on B.
The captain didn’t make it to supper with the crew, instead choosing to remain in the private quarters directly affixed to her administrative offices. She technically had the entirety of the officers’ wing of A-Deck to herself, including the expansive kitchen and dining facilities reserved for the small corps of commissioned officers which would have once populated the Serpae-class ship in a time now best forgotten. But outside the odd social occasion, the crew largely preferred the more informal feeling of the common quarters a deck below. When alone, she sat here.
Crackers smothered in imitation-strawberry jam and rehydrated cream cheese-product proved unappetizing, a few nuggets of Salisbury “steak” swimming alongside an entire onion’s worth of swollen flakes in brown “gravy” appealed not at all. But the dull green of her monitor’s status light pulsed slowly through the doorway. Retrieving a highly prized bullet-can of Braunfel’s Bock from the freezer drawer she had placed it into when preparing her supper, she grabbed the plate of crackers and followed her incessant curiosity.
Pressing her thumb and forefinger together against the glass-plate identifier protruding from the keyboard, the machine chimed as it awakened to her prior session. It opened cleanly to the images: a dozen odd angles arrayed across the wide display. She selected one in the top right corner with a poke of a trim finger; it expanded to fill the screen.
Despite being jammed between one of the thousands of fins on a condenser module near the impact site, it was unmistakable: a human fingernail complete with brittle shards of nail bed attached at one end.
Ainsley’s write-up arrived at 07:59, pinging the captain’s watch as she stared into a cup of double-strength caff on her countertop. Of course the comms specialist would get her report in before any normal person was up and about. “We aren’t at war anymore, girl.” The captain said to her empty kitchenette. “Chill the fuck out.” With a sigh, she grabbed her tepid cup, the office door slid open.
The report was fascinating, she had to admit, and it had likely taken the chirpy tech most of the early-hours to get it here this early. She was an overachiever, the kind who strove to the point of exhaustion rather than dealing with anything “real” in life. The captain noted that the outcome, while nonideal from a health standpoint for the crewmember, produced consistently excellent results.
The first pages concerned a timeline: her first alerting of the “CLOUD” signal, its appearance on navigation consoles; a play-by-play of her perspective of the following interchange between herself and Navigation; the ensuing chaos of the impact, noting a complete lack of any indication on any instrument beforehand alongside corroborating reports from the machines themselves.
Next was her own internal damage assessment and debrief which included, as one would expect, a detailed report of the procedural post-surge/impact equipment reset she executed as a precaution against latent surging. Ever by the book.
Scrolling quickly down through the robust section of instrument and sensor wellness indicators and expectancies, the captain found what truly was the most fascinating of these reports from the ever-attentive Ainsley in the crow’s nest bubble atop Marcella: the section titled “NOTES”.
“Ainsley, you up?”
The crackle in the technician’s ear didn’t startle the woman as she sprinkled cardamom into a small bowl of crushed-grain porridge. Appreciating the scent with a deep inhale, Ainsley finished her routine breakfast with two drops of maple-flavor extract and a sugar cube before opening the line to the shipmaster with a button press on her omnipresent headset. “Mornin’ Cap! Hope I didn’t catch you too early.”
“Never too early for a report from you,” the Captain half-lied, “but I wanted to ask about your notes.”
“No prob whatsoever. What you need?” Ainsley pulled up her own copy of the report submitted thirty minutes ago and clicked the appropriate heading in her crafted table of contents. “Notes.” She parroted. “Go ahead, Cap.”
“You say you lost the ‘cloud’ anomaly after you reset your instruments? This…” the officer fumbled to find the appropriate line and technical classification “this ‘AC-26144’ object just vanished after the reset?”
“That’s affirmative. Even infrared came back zilch when I re-queried the area. As I put there, Cap, I can’t tell you what sort of malfunction could do that to my sensors, let alone translate those errors into the so-called ‘cloud’ on the nav-displays.” Ainsley sat for a moment, contemplating. “Cap, feel free to come up for a sighted inspection of the equipment if needed.”
“Copy. Will note an inspection for later this morning. Thank you and enjoy your oats, technician.”
The “invitation” was strange. Regardless of being wildly unnecessary for the ship’s captain to be invited anywhere on the vessel, it implied something else was going on in the crow’s nest not included in the reports she had read through three times.
What was it? The officer paced her administrative suite with uncertain purpose, stale caff threatening escape from its mug in the wild swinging from side-to-side. Even through her decades at-sail, some fifteen years of which in direct command of Marcella, she couldn’t think of a similar instrument anomaly outside a direct cyber-attack. But that wasn’t possible, not after the final skirmishes at Kepler-62 over a decade before. And even then, the captain herself had personally disabled the external receiver prone to such attacks upon first assumption of command. She would have to double-check that, she resolved. “Ribble.”
“Copy and best of mornings, Captain.”
“I’m updating your personal schedule for the day. Note it on your scribe and redistribute resources accordingly.” A flick of her finger sent the update, paralleling their schedules. A chime heard from the engineer’s end confirmed receipt before he himself did.
“Copy that. We do have the epoxy job on B-34. An all-day affair.”
“It can wait.” It was a bet. “Reshuffle to get early breaks and schedule an overnight.” A groan in the background of the captain’s headset confirmed, as suspected, she had been placed on speaker for all on engineering deck. She addressed them accordingly. “Crew. Good morning and enjoy your extra time this morning. And,” she cutoff the rolling eyes palpable from her office, “nightwork is double-pay work.”
A brief moment of silence, then “Copy. Out.”
Pulling herself up into Marcella’s crow’s nest bubble, the captain met Ainsley’s prim form at her vast array of a control panel. She tapped purposefully on her keyboard, inputting some obscure string at a speed the officer found mildly unsettling. She stood and pulled her coat straight. “Mornin’ Ainsley. You invited a sighted inspection of your logs?” she motioned at the crystal-display on her wrist needlessly.
Ainsley nodded and pushed back from the console. “Sure enough, Cap. Over here.” With a kick, she rolled across the circular deck to a panel of incremental levers and knobs with various white dashes scrawled at certain positions. It had a singular white-turned-beige button which the technician pressed with an elbow in a practiced move as she passed. A paper printed further along, and she tore this from the machine as she coasted to a smooth stop before it. She stood precisely and handed it to the captain. “Here you are, ma’am.”
The image was confounding, a single blip from the long-range infrared printed as a small square in the center of the paper. It couldn’t be correct. The captain looked up to the tech hovering nearby with a smile that was simultaneously grim and thrilled. “What is this?”
“A technical anomaly on the IR sensor, sir.”
“I can see that. It doesn’t look like you described in the report, this..” she recalled the report “…AC-26144.”
“The Cloud” Ainsley affirmed. “While I didn’t detect it up here so to speak, the array did capture this just around impact.”
“Around impact?” The captain quoted.
“Give it a few milliseconds either way.”
What the hell did that mean? The officer peered closer at the paper. “Where was this tagged?”
“Somewhere deep in the region Solt kept punching and calling a ‘glitch.’” Ainsley frowned as she considered the state of the brutish helmsman’s equipment. “The Cloud.”
“Shit.”
Descending the isolating companionway that connected the crow’s nest to the rest of the ship’s interior, the captain began to piece together the bits which – like so many dice – had been cast before her approximately eighteen hours prior. The “object” which had impacted the ship had been a human, or at least the remains of one. There was little left to argue about regarding that. She resolved to schedule a mag-sweep of the area and proceeded to search out Ribble a bit earlier than scheduled.
She found him as she passed through B-Deck toward engineering. He was sat in the common canteen enjoying an early lunch before their meeting in a half-hour, her stomach rumbled as she thought of her discarded meal the night before. “Mind if I join?”
He nodded amicably and she looked around to find the aluminum carafe that was sure to have either caff or chai of some form sitting warmly within. She located it near the pantry drawers and retrieved it along with a blue and white-speckled mug, shuffling about in a small pullout for the hydrogenated “creamer” before spotting it where she had first retrieved the carafe. “Of course.”
“Every time, Cap.” Ribble smiled across the thin table. “Menu today is turkey stroganoff,” he gestured to a section of the kitchen where one of the communal micro-ovens contained a half-portion of pasta smothered in thick mustard-sour cream sauce and tiny bits of what was advertised as ‘premium turkey A+’. “Help yourself.”
The hungry captain could have eaten the entirety of the forty-five hundred calorie duo-meal, let alone the single serving she devoured next to her engineering chief. She half considered pitching him the idea of slipping up to the officers’ canteen for a second ration but decided to get to business as they fiddled in that silence that sometimes follows between a meal and the rest of the day’s work. “We need to do a mag-sweep of B-34 before the epoxy job.”
“You think we should delay the fill that long? We could already be developing microcracks in the pressure wall. We likely shouldn’t have delayed as it is.”
“I know it, Rib. But we may have a problem of a more immediate nature.” Looking around, she slipped him Ainsley’s reading, now folded into precise quarters. “This flashed on the IR at the time of impact, more-or-less. I don’t know what it is,” she cautioned, “but it was somewhere in that ‘cloud’ malfunction in navigation. Only there for a single frame and gone along with the anomaly itself following the impact.”
She waited a few moments for the information to sink in. Ribble was one of the few from before they departed the service at the helm of Marcella, he would tell her if she was reaching. His answer wasn’t comforting as he quickly folded the paper and pushed it back across the table.
“Looks… unfortunate.” He chose his words with care, “could be an asteroid. Perhaps a memory flash imposed over the data in a surge.”
“Could that happen?”
“Why not?” Ribble fully shrugged. “When was the last reboot? Before the procedural reset?”
She too had wondered of the session-duration during her late-night pondering and supplied the answer readily. “Thirteen days, about two-and-a-half hours.”
“Could be any of the millions of readings the array took in that time. A memory-leak and data trying to find its way back onto its rightful course.”
“And Ainsley wouldn’t already know about that?”
“Why would she? Hasn’t been relevant IR tech in what, thirty years?”
“You mean the old Andersen rigs? I don’t know that I’ve even seen one of those outside basic flight training.” The captain considered. “And why would that even matter?”
“Ship’s old, Cap. Wires get loose, adapters corrode together, connections end up spliced in places we could never guess. Just because the old Andersens are long gone, doesn’t mean similar problems can’t recur across similar systems.”
Typical engineer, the captain thought, all problems are the same problems in a different material. She looked to her watch instinctively, the singular tone indicating general meal rang throughout all decks. “Come along. We need to discuss why I waylaid your schedule.”
Pushing into one of the few places on the ship free of some form of surveillance – by crew, company, or otherwise – the pair arrived in the captain’s administrative offices. Gesturing for Ribble to take a seat in a plush, sapphire-hued armchair, the officer moved quickly to a drawer of long, carboard tubes. Shuffling through for a moment, she pulled the one she was searching for from its brethren and brought it to the low table before the engineer.
Unplugging one end, she produced a print map of the ship’s internal schematics from the tube’s depths. Unrolling it, she pointed to a location they both knew well. “I couldn’t say it before on B-Deck, but my main concern is a cyber-strike on our systems.”
“Impossible.” Ribble gestured to where the captain’s finger rested. “The beacon is long gone, as you well know.”
“So how else could we be targeted for a component-capture?”
“We can’t, Chief. Full stop. That was the point of the exercise to remove the thing.”
“I know it, Rib. But what explains it together? The ‘cloud’ static and/or anomaly, the impact, the flash-reading/memory leak.”
“I have little to add regarding the impact. You got your pic, I don’t.” Ribble clearly thought that was unrelated and not worth personally looking into much more. The captain empathized.
“Fine. But could your ghost memory theory apply to something like the beacon?”
“It’s been decades, Cap.”
“Look. If we can get hacked into, we can be tracked. You understand this needs all the priority. No chances.”
“You want me to take a look?”
The Captain nodded. “And set Faustein and Taureau on the mag-sweep in the meantime. They can handle it with a few of your bilgers reassigned for a bit.”
“Gonna catch some groans.”
“The pay is always good, Ribble. Make sure they remember, and get it done. We’re on some sort of clock here, even if we don’t know the time.
As ordered, Faustein and Taureau requisitioned a pair of low-level engineers called bilgers to assist in their new work detail. They were a filthy pair, their uniforms discolored to a point of sensual uncertainty by long days and nights laboring under the ship’s twin, two hundred-and fifty-ton Seong-un engines. Normally confined to the massive condensation bays beneath the two behemoths, the men were pleased to leave the dirty work of running the recollection pumps for the relative comfort of ‘deck work.’
“If all goes well,” Taureau grumbled to his three novice attendants, “only the rookie here and I should have to make the walk. You two will maintain cables, comms, and emergency recovery systems. Understand?” There was no answer, he deemed that good enough and carried on with his dry briefing.
To his rear, Faustein – well established in the work of lugging heavy machinery across the hull – leaned close to the two young bilgemen. “A thousand gallons an hour?” she kept her voice hushed despite her interest. “Off each panel?”
“On an easy day,” one bragged, “at speed we can push ten per.”
Even with more than half the tremendous engines exposed to open space, the fusion process necessitated immense cooling; in an inhabited, closed-cycle system, that means airborne moisture in unsettling amounts. The basins in which they maintained pumps all day had been huge, the look on the young engineer’s face said it all as she tried to imagine the water cascading from the massive fins of the Helium-3 compressors, condensers, and peltier regulators when under full strain.
“It’s your breakfast, drinking, and bathing water, all from sweat, steam, and breath. It all collects to be condensed under either Heungbu or Nolbu eventually.”
The other piped in now. “We make sure it gets back into the system clean and safe.”
“And fast.”
Bilging didn’t sound too bad to her considering the long day-and-night shift they would be clocking in for. She eyed the upcoming companion way to the rear of Deck-A and the location of Access-4a.
The mag-sweeper was bulky, cumbersome even in the vacuum, and Taureau and Faustein wielded it as such as they worked their way across the cracked panel B-34. Working together at each end of the long T-handle, they slowly collected anything with even the slightest magnetic attraction to the central bin in wide-arcing motions. Omnidirectional wheels at four points kept the rig from crashing directly against the hull the moment power was applied to the coil, instead providing a relatively smooth hover across the scarred metal.
What was being collected wouldn’t be known in full until it went through classification in the lab, but the panel on the machine indicated heavy inclusions of nickel, steel, and raw iron as well as traces of terbium, alnico, and some asteroidal gold which was mixed in somewhere.
“Could be a good haul, Rookie.” Taureau gestured to the cobalt and gold indicators. “We keep what we scavenge, so long as Cap don’t want it.”
The prospect of pocketing a few extra credits in a mineral bazaar appealed to Faustein. She glanced eagerly at the growing totals as they changed direction for another return sweep across the panel. “What do you think it’s worth?”
“Depends on the dealer. I’ll find us a solid one next land-rotation. Get us a good score, I reckon.”
“Guys,” a third voice, that of Ribble from wherever he was on his secretive extra duties, piped up in his supervisory role on the comm-link, “gonna need you to keep the line open for emergencies. You know that.”
“Local chat isn’t working, Chief. We can’t do this in silence.”
“You can and will, Faustein.” Ribble was firm. “We’ll get them sorted before next venture.”
“You mean in six-hours?” Faustein muttered to the privacy of her helmet. Something caught her eye, she turned her head to find Taureau giving her an “OK” sign. Thumbing over his shoulder, she gathered they had finished the first sweep. There would be three more before the shift was through.
The extra crew pay was looking like a good investment as the captain observed the haul moving through sorting in the lab. Already, a fair few rocks of iron, glinting with gold inclusions, leaked mercury into the deionized water in which the rocks were ultimately deposited. She would take Marcella’s cut, see if there was anything which might explain the organic remains and cracked panel, but most would go to the four crewmembers. A good payout indeed, she reckoned.
In another basin, manufactured items were being collected: pieces of screws and clamps, bits of metal plate, random ends of antenna arrays, loops of chain and threads of cable-ties. It was here she reckoned she might find evidence of whatever plague of anomalies was suddenly infecting her ship, something to explain why a person had disintegrated against the hull in the middle of literal nowhere.
After hours, she couldn’t admit to herself or anyone else that perhaps all they had done was collect a modest, unscheduled pay boost for a few key crewmates. Even as Ribble trucked out to begin his work filling the cracked armor panel with epoxy sealant, all she could provide was a shrug. She had taken him off the job, some of this should, by rights, be his. Instead, he had followed her hunch on a wild goose chase deep in the internals of the ship’s ancient mainframe, finding nothing of value outside confirming that the original beacon was indeed absent from its mother-panel, silicon conductors still singed by generous application of blowtorch.
Now, she had nothing beyond an out-there idea involving ghost data in corroded terminals. She couldn’t work with that. Looking to the machine currently doing the work of cleaning and decontaminating the material, she noted they were about halfway through by volume. “Give me something, you clanky old shite.”
Daily briefing hit the captain like an osteo-shot, her wrist display buzzing adamantly at the head of a list of updates for her review. Marcella was a busy ship, and despite her relatively small crew membership, rather a lot was always going on. She sighed as she strode through the D-Deck translation way to the ladder leading up a level.
“Broken water pipe. Low stock of bulbs and inverters. Spoilage of rations in forward hold.” She took mental notes aloud. “Intermittent inbound comms. Insulation degradation on Engine-2. Panel loss on Secti-” The captain stopped dead as she arrived in the wide bubble that formed the nav-deck nestled under the broad ramming prow, the cracked, battered station and its gruff master coming into full view as she pushed through the gliding door. “Need some new screens on our next stop, Solt?”
The man only grunted in response as he pondered their coordinates.
“Something wrong?”
“Nah, nah. I think we’re good, Cap, just some weird readings.”
That didn’t sound ‘good’ by any measure. She said as much. “What is it?”
“I’m not picking up the signal for Tyrus-5e. We should be in range.”
The captain looked to the coordinate map and confirmed for herself. It was there on the map, sure enough. “You’ve hailed?”
“Four times already. Gonna get tagged by security if we keep floating aimlessly without making contact.”
“This to do with the intermittent-inbound problem?”
“Couldn’t say. Better not be this damnable display.” He eyed the offending monitor threateningly and the captain tensed.
“Careful there, helmsman. Need all the working equipment we’ve got.”
“Good afternoon, crew.” The captain’s voice came alive across global comms. “As I am sure you’re all aware by this point, investigations of yesterday’s impact and the standard damage assessment are ongoing at this time. While we don’t know the origin of the incident, any damage seems to have been largely superficial at this point, extending only to a small section of exterior armor plating and some ruptured waterlines. Regarding the former, you’ll be pleased to know Engineering is progressing ahead of schedule despite delays and should have the sealant curing by breakfast tomorrow.
“In terms of the latter, all water breaks have been identified and sealed. While repairs of damaged waterline and valve-housings is underway, some water access ports – primarily those affixed to rear stowage and medical – will remain offline while final updates and repairs are implemented. Everywhere else should have clean water as we repressurize the system deck by deck. Estimated time for full repairs is twenty-four to thirty hours.”
There was a crackly silence as the officer on the other end of the line scrolled her notes.
“Also: there are reports of intermittent communications outages and losses of packets en route. We are looking into this now and believe it to be unrelated to other events aboard.
“We should be approaching port at Tyrus-5e shortly. Enjoy your supper.”
The tri-tone marking the day’s final crew meal sounded throughout, the captain’s words timed perfectly for the ship’s supplied punctuation.
Any crew not thrown from their bunks or stations by the night’s first new impact were surely grounded by the second, third, and fourth. In a surge, blackness, then red light flooded emergency corridors and transitionways as a klaxon surged to life. A fifth ear-shattering crash rebounded through the thick armor of the ship’s ram as the captain stumbled into the navigation bay.
“The fuck is going on, Helmsman Zhu?!”
A middle-aged man with a bristle mustache turned from his post in the co-pilot’s chair with a horrified look on his face. “Gods know, sir! Some sort of debris field. We’re right in the middle of it.”
The captain needed no further detail. “Engage emergency RCS. Pitch up. Level three thrust.”
Any still supporting sea legs gave up entirely as the great Serpae-class ship sprang to life. Marcella nosed up smoothly, proud battle ram of a prow lifting with surprising litheness in a grand sweeping arc.
The sound of intermittent strikes became a hailstorm of tearing and screaming metal throughout the ship, the frequency increasing as they forayed deeper into whatever hell cloud they had inadvertently slammed into.
“Approaching two Gs.” The ship’s cheery attendant informed from her high cradle.
“Ignore. Pilot, prepare to pull left.” The captain waited. “Now.”
The man complied unthinkingly, sweating through his grey-tinged bristles and wrenching his joystick to the right, forcing the ship the opposite way in its path.
“Increase thrust, pull the arc through.”
“Two-point-three Gs.”
The cacophony was maddening, a succession of dull, soul-clenching slams as hundreds of objects were cast against the robust ship. She had to be coming apart. Not that the officer would know given the torrential impacts, shattering smallwares, and howling siren.
The only person not pinned to the deck or a chair somewhere was the captain. She braced herself with a wide stance, one hand on the back of the pilot’s well-bolted chair, the other pressing into her hip. She was a rigid object, one with the ship’s own beams and plates. “Hold the godsdamned arc, helmsman!”
With a final dejected byoop, the siren halted its wail. The silence deafened as the crew reformed themselves in every corner of the ship. Ainsley flew down the ladder and charged into the nav-bay at full tilt, almost running directly into the still rigid captain as she glared through the deck’s glass shielding. She turned toward the new arrival.
“What have you done to my ship, Technician?” Her voice was hard, forged by days of stress and tempered by the continuous damage assessments flooding her wrist-display. “What did we just fly into?”
Ainsley swayed from the shock of any one of many competing factors. Her officer’s rage bored through her like burning lithium. “I… I sent the alert, sir.”
The captain rounded on the co-pilot. “Helmsman?”
“There was no alert, Cap’n. None.” He pointed to the monitor which displayed active notices and clicked a button to bring up the history. “There, you see? Nothing down here.”
The crease in the captain’s brow threatened to split her skull. “What did you see – physically see – Ainsley?”
“Noth- nothing out of the ordinary. I was just returning for fifth rotation... I only saw shards over the bubble before we pitched out.”
“Shards? Shards of what? Metal? Ice? …What?”
“Metal, steel or the like. Dull pieces too… could have been red-rock, Cap.”
“Fine.” The officer returned her gaze to the empty void beyond and took a deep breath before returning to Zhu. “Maintain bearing while we get this sorted.” She turned to the pale comms specialist. “Ainsley, with me.”
The captain all but kicked her way past the sliding door into the officers’ wing of A-Deck. She wasn’t surprised to find Ribble already seated at the small bar in the commons, she had summoned him almost before escaping the debris. “That alright?” she asked gruffly, noting a tight bandage with a splotch of red stretched around his exposed forearm. He nodded.
“Aye. Just got myself with a screwdriver. Don’t think I hit anything critical.”
The captain was relieved, even if it didn’t show. “See Doc Urul after we’re done.” She gestured Ainsley to join him, herself shoving into her personal offices. “Pour something for yourselves.” Her voice floated back.
She returned bearing a plasti-cast crate stuffed full of all sorts of unidentifiable miscellany. Placing it down with a huff in the grandly appointed kitchen area and digging for a moment, she produced two pieces of paper. She brought these to the bar, setting them between three pristine cocktails in stemless, Old World-style cocktail glasses.
The officer grabbed one of the drinks and stared at it for a moment, appreciating the rare slice of lemon and the sheen its oils left over the thin alcohol.
“Tombaugh’s Gold Rush.” She sighed appreciatively, breathing deep of the spice of real ginger and the acerbic freshness of lemon spritzed over the glass, the unfathomable richness of fine Earth-side bourbon rich in notes of dried currants, dark chocolate, and charred white oak. “You know my heart, Rib.”
“Drink to that, Cap.” Ribble, and after a moment Ainsley, lifted glasses to the leader.
“Live together. Die Alone.” Three voices proclaimed as one.
They enjoyed the complexity of tobacco, brown sugar, and caramel cut by spice and acid. Decompressing with a collective sigh at the signature cocktail from a different time and a small dive called the Heart of Pluto.
The captain made a decision for them all. “Work can wait. Rib, mix up another round – heavy ginger on mine, if you don’t mind. Ainsley help me in the kitchen.”
It didn’t take long, and with most ingredients for anything out here coming either freeze-dried or as paste, it was largely a matter of gathering and mixing powders and liquids. The captain appreciated the help, and soon a rich niboshi dashi was simmering on the expansive range. She set about mixing a pile of flour with alkaline water and salt in slow methodical motions on the countertop. She began to speak as she kneaded the pile into a shaggy ball of dough.
“Something is dangerously and catastrophically afoot aboard Marcella. We have to figure out what it is tonight.” She motioned to the papers where they remained facedown and untouched. “Pick those up.”
They were her only pieces of hard evidence that something beyond a standard debris strike had occurred the day prior: a single blurry frame of an IR feed showing an indistinguishable dark shape in the far depths of space, and a pristinely shined fingernail still sporting bits of pale cuticle and bright pink eponychium. Ainsley gasped, Ribble grimaced and averted his eyes once more.
“We need to sort this out.”
“It’s gotta be a ship.” Ainsley was adamant after three previous rounds of fruitless arguing. “Look at the antenna arrays on the prow.”
“What kind of ship do you know looks like that?” Ribble repeated himself in return.
“Well, I would expect the engineer to know.”
“And what does it tell you that I don’t?”
The captain shook her head and groaned. “But what else could it be if not a ship, Rib?”
Looking to the comms specialist across the table, the engineer shrugged.
“And what does it tell you that I don’t?” Ainsley mocked quietly. “Look, I’m telling you it’s a ship. A dead one – even long dead, maybe – but a ship.”
Ribble grumbled to himself but this time remained silent, looking instead to the picture he himself captured following the initial impact. “That where that came from, then?”
The answer came over the wire just as the captain began collecting bowls of ramen remnants. “Captain to the lab. Captain to the lab, please.”
The harsh lighting of the lab functioned as an unwelcome return to reality after the warmth found in those brief moments sharing a meal on A-Deck. Now, the three stood before a table, a round bit of metal in a glass specimen dish, and the sole lab tech in their stark white uniform standing across from them. Functioning as head scientist aboard Marcella, bio-medicine specialist Dr. Urul hovered a compact device nearby. It chirped sporadically.
“We got something to worry about?” She eyed the instrument.
“No, nothing serious.” He thought for a moment. “Well, not serious like that.” He smiled like he might laugh but resolved himself. “No, this is a scintillation detector. Cerium bromide,” he added unhelpfully, “detects and measures low-level gamma radiation.” Waving it over the miniscule bit of metal in the dish, he indicated the illuminating LED atop the device. It pulsed erratically, in time with each pass over the disc.
“What is it?” The captain leaned closer. “A rivet head or something?” Indeed, the bit of corroded steel looked smashed, a bit like a mushroomed shotgun slug but without all the tearing that often occurred in soft-metal projectiles. “Can I touch it? You said gamma rays?”
Urul nodded, a confirmation of both. “Cobalt-60 contamination based on the readings, inflated background levels but very low and nothing harmful. Go ahead.” In emphasis he plucked the item from its dish and held it out for the officer. “Here.”
She accepted it warily and held it close to her eye, moving it about. “Is there something imprinted on it?”
Ainsley leaned in close “U” she read aloud, scowling where a second appeared to lie somewhere in the corrosion. “C, maybe?”
“That’s a button.” Ribble fingered the cheap ones lining his chest coat for emphasis. “Old-style, and metal, which is rare these days.”
A look dawned on the captain’s face at the thought. She turned it over once more and looked a little closer at what she presumed was its back. Sure enough, a small rough patch at the center where some sort of eyelet was once attached. “A button…” She looked to Urul. “You’re sworn to secrecy. Lock the lab, now.”
The man hardly blinked as he complied, punching a few codes into the door side terminal to disable the entry and black out all communications. He returned to the table with a couple easy strides of long legs. “What’s the deal, Cap’n?”
She pulled the images from her breast pocket and spread them out for fresh eyes yet again. Urul looked between them, his face stone beyond a raised eyebrow upon seeing the nail and a brief glance at the officer. “Now I’m really confused.” He looked to Ribble, who frowned, and Ainsley, who smiled grimly. “There an accident I wasn’t informed about or…” he grasped about for anything to go off of and ended up staring blankly at Ribble’s bandaged arm.
“We were impacted by a human body yesterday.” The captain was concise in catching up the medic, distilling her thoughts for all present. “Based on issues since, I believe the shock disrupted sections of our communications and navigations systems opposite B-24.
“We received this at the same time as the initial impact.” She poked the scan image. “Then, undetectable.”
“And that’s… what?”
Producing a marker from a pocket, the captain added a rough sketch of where the rear half of the ancient ship should have been, completing the dark shape’s silhouette in the frame. She took a step back. It was rough, but served the purpose.
A gasp was heard from Ribble as he leaned closer for himself. The captain was hardly audible. “A demi-gorgon.”
“Thaumoctopo-class.” Ribble released a tense breath. “Shit.”
The doctor and comms tech exchanged unsure looks. “What?”
“A ship from a time before. Look.” The captain flipped the small button and scratched quickly at the corrosion. A large flake fell away revealing the deep impressions left from its life before.
“USSC.” Urul looked at the item now held forward for all to see. “I don’t know what that is.”
“United States Space Command,” explained Ribble, “Ancient military organization. You’ll know it as pre-Dark Ages from your time in school, Doc.”
Indeed, a small frown of enlightenment crossed the doctor’s face as elementary school history crept back from wherever he had buried it under decades of biochemistry and emergency management. “That was, what? Two thousand years ago?”
“About twenty-seven hundred.”
“And it’s been out here all that time?”
“Who’s to say? The last three dreadnoughts like that,” Ribble pointed to the paper, “slipped out of Sol and into the void in the final months of their wars. Just disappeared when the tide turned too hard against even the United States empire.”
While Urul may have been inclined to discuss military history, Ainsley most certainly was not. “What does that mean though, Captain? Like, why should we be worried about where or when it came from?” The comms specialist wasn’t a novice by any stretch, but her ignorance of finer aspects of law and command often pushed her to the most pressing material concerns. “Are we going over there or what?”
The captain stared over Ainsley’s shoulder as she typed a dizzying array of prompts, commands, and queries into the crow’s nest command center. It was honestly a wonder how she could maneuver through her systems with such ease, communicating on a plane the captain was barely competent enough to interact with to confirm crew pay slips at the end of the month. Did this qualify for emergency pay?
After a moment, a chime erupted from somewhere in the console and a flashing red point appeared on a dark green nav-screen nearby. “There.” The specialist pointed. “That is where the signal came from, give or take a few thousand klicks.”
“And we can get to it? If we so choose?”
“I would certainly think so, assuming we can hone in on it and that whatever debris we are in can be avoided.”
“And you’re still not picking that up?” By way of an answer, the specialist waved an arm at her console of empty, illuminated screens. “I see.” The captain was clearly considering the venture despite the unknowns. “Look, do what you can to refine your signals and ge-” A tone in her ear stopped her midsentence, Ribble’s voice filled her headset on a private line.
“The damage out here is bad, captain. Real bad.”
The officer took a step away from Ainsley, turning her back to her curiously raised eyebrows and clicking her own mic open. “I need specifics, crew chief.”
“We have spiderwebbing across most of the right-side hull plating. Nowhere near enough filler or sealant for even an emergency job. Let alone the stress that would add to the subframe.”
“Fuck me.” She breathed a slow, purposeful breath and opened the line once more. “Get all crew back indoors. Prep for bulkhead failure in whichever areas you think most crucial.” Turning back to Ainsley, the captain barked, “Get me a path, technician. And do it now.”
The slow alarm of partial evacuation pealed mournfully as the captain strode through mess of E-Deck stowage. She pointed at critical gear and issued orders on where to take it and how quickly to do so in concise, sharp snaps. She hadn’t intended an impromptu audit of the lowest storage compartment, but as it seemed likely to be the first to fail under the current circumstances she figured she might as well.
They had found a surprising amount of equipment which had all but quit being physical objects in Marcella’s hold, simply existing as obscure figures and non-essential reserves in spreadsheets. Things like tow-cables and launchers, bags of insta-set cement and cans of compressed pressure-seal could come in handy. She sent these and the like to the centrally-located lab area alongside extra food and medicine, outdated-but-spaceworthy suits, and any equipment which had been retired before being truly worn out.
Minute-by-minute reports streamed into the captain’s headset and scrolled across her wrist. The bracing of critical areas of the subframe was going well, the engineers working triple-time to install the expansion girders at the most critical fail-points. It was strange to harden against implosion in space, to treat the ship as a submersible rather than as a starship in the void. But that’s what was required. If a failure was going to happen, it would come into the ship before it ripped outward, the collapse first occurring internally before external supporting and plating fully surrendered to the plucking talons of the nothing beyond. A single brace in the right place could prevent an entire deck from being expelled into the void, she was happy to have Ribble at the head of the task as she was demanded everywhere.
“We use trace gamma rays coming off all that steel out there to find a way out! It should be simple,” Urul pressed the scintillation detector into Faustein’s arms and turned her toward the small gap they had exposed in a technical diagnostics panel. “Should just need to wire this into the matrix between the crow’s nest and navigation.” With a gentle push, he propelled her forward.
The task involving integration with her arrays, Ainsley took lead to offer the finer details. “It should be just like… wait, where did you skill?”
“Orson’s.”
The comms specialist whistled. “Not bad, Rook. How’d you end up on a half-barren FIGO moon?” She laughed at the scandalized look of the youngest engineer. “I’m not teasing. It’s a compliment, honestly.”
With a smile, Ainsley continued. “Look, like the doc here said, it should be pretty straightforward. We have exposed the relevant circuits on the detector, all you need to do is find the right chipset and ribbon it in. Simple. And we’ll kill power so you don’t have any accidents in there.”
It certainly sounded easy enough, Faustein considered, but was that just them trying to get her into that cramped access corridor? She took a breath, had one last thought of saying no, and pushed into the cramped, dark opening.
“And if you find a loose cable that might explain certain comms failures both generally and in navigation, go ahead and plug that in for me.” Ainsley’s voice followed.
This is it, the captain thought, our only chance to get out. She checked the time. They had to spring the engines the moment Faustein was free of danger. “Ready down there?” She yelled into the darkened depths of the engine room.
“Ready, sir.” Taureau rumbled from below.
“Ribble?”
“Aye, Cap.”
Turning her head, the officer shouted down the long corridor to the figures huddled at the far end. “You good?”
“Just about, Captain. I can see her headlamp.” Ainsley called back.
“Let me know when she’s out.”
A few tense moments passed, then a small figure emerged from the wall to stand with the others.
“Got Faustein, Boss.” Urul shouted back down the line.
“Now, boys!”
Two great clicks sounded, then a low hum.
“Jump on it, bilgecrew!”
Grating noises crept up from the cooling bays even further below.
“Got flow!” A voice called back.
“NOW!” The captain, Ribble, and Taureau all shouted in sync.
An ear-splitting buzz filled the engineering bay before consolidating into a series of deep, resounding booms. The hum faded back in, the rear of the vessel returning to a state of normalcy as the mighty Heungbu and Nolbu returned to full operation.
Marcella flooded with light and sound as thousands of sensors and regulators reset en masse across her decks. A hiss emitted through grating as oxygen began cycling through now-active ventilation ducts.
“Did it work?” Faustein shouted to the officer now silhouetted against the bright red accent lighting of the engineering bay.
“We have full operations. We need you up here STAT.” Despite having a restored system, Solt did not sound pleased.
“En route.”
The news was bad. The captain stared at the navigation console in disbelief. “We’re where?” The helmsman gestured uselessly to a point on his map. She didn’t know it. “And that is?” She gestured to another display which appeared to be a solid mass of the ‘cloud’ glitch from before this all began. His answer was as she had feared since the last meteoric assault.
“That’s us in the so-called cloud.”
They were in it, and deep. How they could have maneuvered to their position stretched her positional imagination. More importantly, it was, as expected, a debris field of unimaginable proportion. How something so omnipresent could be entirely invisible through the viewing window until it was too late was an aspect of space nobody ever got used to. They just didn’t think or talk about it.
The captain clicked on her comms. “Ainsley. You back at station?”
“Yep, just performing a last reset and updating some parameters. Need a few.”
“Understood. Reach out when you’re ready.”
“Copy that, Cap.”
The officer returned to the task at-hand. “Solt, Zhu. You two are about to have a hell of a job. You will get us through that field; the crew depends on it. Once we have confirmation from the crow’s nest that Urul’s detection plan is working, you are going to pick a way through this mess. Just track the greatest concentrations of that Cobalt-60 signature and avoid the largest ones.” She looked to their flat, grey faces, they understood what was at stake.
Opening global chat, the captain leaned forward to issue her final orders to the crew before she would be relegated to simply reacting.
“All crew performing non-essential functions for the coming action are to report to Dr. Urul in either the lab or AIC immediately. Set to bolstering equipment and get yourselves positioned for high-G maneuvers. We have no more time. Do your duties.”
The speakers buzzed for just a moment before they went dead with a click.
If the crew expected an earthquake, they got a volcanic eruption as Marcella boosted her engines to full for a final mad dash through the debris cloud. Even with the radiation detector and the supreme flying of the two navigators, the threat and fear of the entire vessel ripping apart under the strain was universal. A deluge of ear-shattering screeching and pounding along the entirety of the hull flooded every ear, the ship doing her best to shear through the mass before she too joined the floating mass of metal and meat.
Deep in the bowels of the engines, Faustein, Ribble, and Taureau worked tirelessly alongside the bilgers as the great fission engines shed water in torrents about them. The water was rising despite their efforts, the strain heating the engines beyond specifications. They scrambled to attach secondary pump lines, fighting the filling tanks from within as the ship coursed to safety outside.
Dressed in full vac-suit, Ainsley peered past her console in the isolation of the crow’s nest. The speed of the ship was magnified by the infinite objects whipping past and over her exposed bubble atop the ram. A direct hit would be catastrophic, atomizing her and the station in a microsecond. Dying in a flash didn’t bother her as much as she thought it might when considering such things from the comfort of her bunk at night. She grimaced at the likely useless thin canvas covering her uniform, only regretting her choice to scavenge the command decks systems for the crow’s nest rather than the other way around.
Assuming command of the non-essential crew hunkering down across the lab and Action Information Center, Dr. Urul strode confidently through rooms crammed with what must have been the majority of the supplies and replacement equipment left aboard the vessel. He checked straps with strong, sure hands, employed his dashing attendants from crash seat to emergency medical cache to strategically placed oxygen and fire suppression canisters with calm, crisp directives. Any of the engineers aboard would appreciate the systems-first approach of the medical officer at work; not a few specialists currently checking pressure suits and positioning themselves in crash seats stopped to watch as he whisked by.
It was an odd moment of powerlessness for Captain Tereshkova as she listened to the controlled chaos through newly empowered comms. Her crew was executing flawlessly, throughout a maelstrom of uncertainty pushing themselves and their vessel to limits not seen since Marcella had been a member of the 32nd Reconnaissance Group. Most of the crew aboard now wouldn’t know anything about then, just herself, Ribble, Urul, and Solt could count days in the service anymore. It had been a long run, she considered, a dash from place to place and job to job since they had made their choice in that war so long ago. She looked through the windows of the airlock labeled Access C-2. Counting seconds until silence – whether of the vacuum or refuge.
Marcella charged into the fray at the fore of her crew’s efforts. Her engines glowed ferocious, cooling fins and shielding flaring through phases of straw yellow, cherry red, and tangerine-white as they strained against forces internal and out. Her end had come, an awaited and long foretold conclusion which statistically should have happened decades ago at the hands of some door gunner or a particularly nimble missile. It was fitting, perhaps, that she sailed her final sinuous course toward an end in the remains of what could well have been a friend as much as a foe in a time so long ago, seeking rest in the bowels of a dreadnought predating her own manufacture by tens of generations. With the resolve of those powering her from within, she raised her nose proudly and positioned her ram for one final breach.
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