Chapter 1: The Nebula
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She opened her eyes slowly and saw nothing but abyss. The world was pitch black, unrelentingly dark, and it took the young Lieutenant Commander quite a while to remember where she was and what had been happening the last time her eyes were open.
Slowly, she became aware of one thing after the other, the weightlessness of her body, the pain in her ribs, but one thing stood out above all others. There were no alarms, no engine sound. Nothing from the emergency thrusters; not even the life support system or climate control and briefly she wondered if this was the void between life and whatever came next.
“Marissa?” the sudden groggy voice gave her a start, she had not yet gotten to the part where she remembered what had been happening and didn’t even consider the fact that she had been with a crew. The hesitant female voice that had spoken only sounded vaguely familiar.
The Lieutenant Commander cleared her throat “I’m here.”
There was a sigh of relief before the voice spoke again “Do you have anything from the controls on your side?”
“I. . .I don’t know,” Marissa reached out a hand in the darkness and felt around, the craft had a physical wheel and physical foot controls deployed indicating that digital controls had either failed, or someone had shut them off. A panel of smooth, cold glass which should have been alight with digital buttons sat to her right and beyond that were physical switches and knobs.
“Mmmm, what are we in?” Marissa asked groggily as she continued to feel around.
There was a hesitation before the other person replied “I’m sorry, LC, I don’t understand the question.”
“What kind of ship are we in?,” she rephrased, her voice stronger as her fingers found jagged glass and what seemed to be loose wiring that had spilled out of a panel “What were we flying. . .doing actually?”
There was a long silence “W-w-we’re in a Columbian 610 luxury ship outfitted for combat, we had been battling Raptor forces just beyond Moor 15,” the voice replied uncertainty “Do you not remember this?”
“It’s all really blurry.”
“You must have hit your head when. . .when we. . .we. . .``There was a pause again in which Marissa waited, eager for this information.
“When we what?” she asked softly after the silence stretched on long enough.
The response came back just above a whisper “I. . .I don’t know.”
“We had two other people with us, correct?” Marissa asked, still trying to remember exactly who she was speaking to as she felt around on the panel next to her, selecting and flipping a few switches by touch.
“Yes sir, Private Carter, he hasn’t said anything yet, and PFC Jameson who had been attempting to repair something in the stern section.”
Melissa nodded Carter, Jameson and Tammie
“That makes me ranking officer, right I remember now, Jesus,” Marissa rubbed her eyes and sighed “Well we’re not going to improve our situation without getting things back online, can you tell how much air we have without the system running?”
“No sir, without internal sensors I can’t make that determination, although this ship should have 8 hours of oxygen for 150 passengers in the event of a failure as well as space walk suits and external air cans and generators,” several physical switches clicked as she paused, nothing happened, “I don’t know how long we have been unconscious.” she finished.
“What about the analog gauges?”
“Umm,” there was a creaking noise as Tammie leaned forward in her seat to attempt reading the gauges to her left. “Sorry sir, I just can’t see, this darkness is absolute.”
“Ok, then we need light, that’s the first thing.” Marissa stretched out a bit, regretting this decision as pain shot from her ribs into her right arm like lightning then slowly ebbed away causing her to recoil.
“We are in the Yangatz system which has a sun,” the Lieutenant’s voice returned. “I have to assume that our shutters slammed shut over the windshield to protect us from something which is why it’s so dark, I’ve already tried to raise them.”
“The shutters can be blown out, correct?”
“Yes sir, exactly for events like this, there should be a physical pull tab somewhere that will blow the louvers out of their frames with old fashioned plastic explosives. However, if the glass is no longer there. . .” her voice trailed off.
Marissa reached out as far as she could in front of her, her fingers came across cold, smooth glass “This side is still in.” she unbuckled her harness and leaned over, running her hand across the other half of the separated glass. “I think we still have both sides.” she reported, pulling herself back down into the seat and locking her feet under the console to prevent herself from floating away.
“I-I-If you’re sure there should be a physical pull tab that will blow the shutters, but only if you are sure.”
Marissa started feeling around, there were a lot of loose wires, entire instrument clusters floating around in front of her and she discarded string after string.
"You got a description of this thing, Lieutenant?" she called into the darkness.
"It's a very old design, thin braided steel cable with a T shaped handle on the end, it's supposed to glow for a couple of hours after being exposed to light."
Marissa's fingers closed on a textured thin line that was cold to the touch, she slid her hand down until she came across a plastic handle. Marissa ran her thumb across the flat side of the plastic bit she had found and verified that it had “Shutters” written on it in raised lettering and pulled on it, hard. With a dull THWUP! noise the windshield lit up with pale blue light as the individual louvers of the blast shutters spun away into space.
There was silence before the Lieutenant spoke "Blue? There shouldn’t be a nebula anywhere NEAR us, not to mention a blue one!”
Marissa looked around as her eyes adjusted to the light. The bridge they were on was just above the size of a studio apartment and most of the available wall space was a button, monitor or station. Marissa herself was sitting in the pilot's seat which was front and center, taking up the entire windshield space with a large semi-circle control interface that was used to allow a pilot to shut down and control anything across the entire ship to allow more power for maneuvering, these controls could override any other bridge or command station.
To her rear left sat a young woman with short red hair. She was strapped into the seat of the communications and navigation station, and had taken out a hand scanner of some sort, she seemed to be attempting to manually match stars up to a star chart. The weapons station sat to Marissa's rear right and was separated from navigation by a walkway that also held the command chair.
Behind these stations sat a “situation area” where a large digital map table and chairs sat. Everything in the area was dark but the bookshelves that held all of their star charts, briefing notes and past logs had obviously collapsed as the silhouettes of paper, binders and writing instruments were visible in the space.
The ship had 5 decks and was modeled to look like a small ocean fairing Earth Luxury Yacht from the mid 22nd century. The lower decks all held luxurious amenities for passengers and the bridge sat in the middle. The upper decks housed the living quarters. The ship was white in color and said "ZLV Perseverance" on the hull in blue lettering followed by the tag number “H3VU.”
Perseverance had been recruited from an alliance impound station 3 years ago and outfitted with hideaway phasers, space torpedoes, mine launchers and a lancer cannon for use in pushing back hostile forces trying to take over Earth and Mars. A mission it had succeeded before moving on to protecting other planets in the alliance.
Marissa rubbed her temples "Is he alive, Tam?" she asked, indicating the unconscious man in the weapons seat.
"I don't know," the younger woman admitted "I'm sorry but that's not a priority right now, sir, if I can't revive life support it's not going to matter anyway."
“Can you tell how much power we are running on right now?”
“Uhh.” several switches clicked “Emergency power, but it’s at 5%, we need to get the mains back on line fast and that’s assuming this analog gauge is accurate.”
Marissa sighed “Keep trying to find our location, I need to get to engineering, we were strapped in and we got banged around. I imagine people that were on their feet probably didn’t do as well.”
“Stop talking about it and do it before we run out of air.” there was a paused “Uhh s-s-sir.”
Marissa couldn’t help but chuckle, she would never get used to Tammie calling her sir considering that she had once held rank over her. Marissa released her legs and allowed herself to float up then pulled herself along the room in the dim blue light as Tammie caught a star chart binder and started flipping through it with concern on her face.
Reaching the back door of the bridge Marissa pressed her fingers to the cold glass panel next to it that would usually cause it to roll back but of course, without power, nothing happened. She gripped the top of the panel and yanked it off causing it to float away until it reached the limit of its wiring at which point it just floated lazily about. Behind the panel was a physical lever that the Lieutenant commander pulled down on, the door ratcheted back a little bit. “Oh we are this low on power?”
“We are that low on power, please hurry up.” Tammie urged.
Marissa sighed and pressed the handle back up and pulled it down again causing the door to click back a little more, she repeated this process until she was allowed access to the hallway beyond it.
Displays on the walls were flickering half heartedly and red strip lighting pulsed slowly in the connection between the walls and ceiling even though the audible alarm was not running.
Marissa pulled herself along by the glow of the emergency lighting until she found manual controls that should switch the deck from emergency power to backup batteries. Her hopes were shattered when she opened the wall unit to discover the large red handle was already set to “battery”.
“Tammie! We’re already on fucking battery power!” she yelled back towards the bridge.
“LANGUAGE!” Tammie shot back angrily “Swearing is against regs!”
Marissa groaned and rolled her eyes “Noted, but the batteries?”
“Someone must have switched it over already! That means we have been out long enough that it’s the batteries that are at 5%.” Tammie called back “Ahhhhh, where areeee weeeee.”
“Lieutenant, breathe. . .”
“We are running. Out. of. Air. to. Breathe. Sir.”
Marissa pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh “Bad choice of words.”
There was a chime sound and a voice started speaking from above them, heavily distorted by static and interference.
“All decks, sw--tch to --ain power, I re---- all dec--s switch to main power.”
Marissa grabbed the large T-shaped handle in the wall and pulled it out towards her, it extended slowly with steady clicking noises. She then rotated it 90 degrees and pressed it back in.
On the last click the entire area ignited, the audible sirens blared to life as wall panels popped into full color.
“FUCK YEAH!”
“LANGUAGE!”
“Tammie, please w--” it was at that moment that gravity switched back on and, forgetting that this was likely to be a thing, Marissa was not prepared for it and slammed into the floor followed by all of the loose control panels, wiring and broken fragments of wall and monitor.
“You ok, Lieutenant Commander?” Tammie called from the bridge as the sirens shut off.
“Yeah! Yeah, I am, are you? There was more shit floating around in there than out here.”
“Indeed, but I was still strapped in.”
Marissa got to her feet, surprised that she hadn’t earned another lecture on language from that statement. “What’s our status?”
“Several of my monitors are broken, please give me a second.”
There was a pause, a long one and then Tammie spoke again “We are still not producing oxygen but whoever brought main power back online released the last of the emergency 02 into the ship. Looks like we have about an hour of breathable air left, power levels are stable on all decks, no hull breaches reported but most of the crew is still probably unconscious so no one is reporting anything at the moment. Person to person communications are offline, the only option we would have is talking through the PA to the whole ship, Weapons are disabled and the port engine is completely out of drive plasma”
“What? How?”
“Checking, our logs are pretty scrambled right now.
The engine pods that the Perseverance was using were of an old design, they stuck out from the sides of the ships 3rd deck on massive pylons with an aggressive downward swoop. The engine pods were somewhat modeled after an old Earth science fiction show and were long ovals that reached nearly the front and back of the ship, these ovals were jet black with a thin glowing purple rectangle running horizontally down their length to the front where deep blue hexagon domes rested.
“According to the sensors she took a torpedo.”
“A Marksillian torpedo shouldn’t have been enough to get through the plating, or the shields for that matter.”
“The logs aren’t legible past that point, sir, I’m sorry. Whatever happened to us happened soon after that and the system apparently went haywire.”
“See if you can extrapolate anything usable from the logs.”
“Yes sir.”
“Jameson to the bridge, please respond on the PA system. Are you guys alive up there?”
“Uhhh yes, yes we. . .are. . .” Marissa looked across the various angry red displays that now filled the hallway.
“Bridge, please, we need guidance down here.”
“The PA is the panel closest to the door of the bridge, LC.” Tammie called.
Marissa jogged back towards the opening she had come from and pressed down a green button “Jameson, this is the bridge, what’s your status?”
“Thank god, ok, I’m sure you’ve noticed that among many other things we are still not producing oxygen?”
“Yes, we made notice of that fact.”
“We don’t have time to bring the system back online properly, run all the checks and balances and ensure th--”
“Get to the point, James, we don’t have much air left.”
“Right, sorry, we need to pressurize the system immediately. We can’t. . .we can’t afford the time to ensure that the system will handle it.”
“Fuck.”
“LANGUAGE! That’s the PA, LC, the whole ship can hear you!”
“Shit.”
“COMMANDER!”
“Fuck, sorry! Oh, shit.”
“STOP TALKING, RESET YOUR BRAIN!”
Marissa nodded, backing away from the PA.
“Uhh. . .yeah so if the system can’t handle it--”
“You are going to blow a hole the size of Rhode Island into the side of the ship.” Marissa interrupted, holding the button down again.
“Yeah, it’s a rock and a hard place, LC. Emergency bulkhead control is offline, if we do pop a hole through this baby we’re going to be seeing stars. We won’t be able to control the depressurization.”
Marissa released the PA and took a deep, steadying breath. “I assume you’ve checked some of the system at this point?”
“Yes sir, but only. . .maybe 35% of it, with no power.”
“If we don’t do this we all die, if we do this wrong we all die.”
“Commander, again, that’s the PA, try to be a little more encouraging” Tammie hissed.
“Do it, Jameson, we don’t have a choice.” Marissa commanded “Pray to whatever you believe in that none of the systems are compromised and do it.”
“Activating the system now.”
All around them the sound of a low humming started back up, this was a sound that everyone on the ship was so used to, along with the engines, that it was commonly ignored. It wasn’t until it started up again that Marissa realized exactly how odd it was for it to be gone.
“Tammie?”
“The monitor that the air system is assigned to is broken, but according to the backup gauges we’re sitting at 5% and rising steadily, we won’t know if this has worked until we hit the jump at 20%.”
“Pressurizing to 10%, bridge, are we venting any atmosphere?”
“Tell him I don’t know, most of my systems are still down, I’m working on it.”
“Sorry James, we don’t have any way of knowing right now.” Marissa called.
“Alright well, here it goes.”
“11%, 13%, 15%” Tammie called off of the gauge, it was at this point that one of the blank monitors lit up and she looked up at it “O2 monitoring is back online, we must have hit some sort of mandatory minimum.”
“This is the part where we might explode.”
“20%, the system is holding and charging.” Tammie reported.
“Preparing”
“Why does it do this again?” Tammie asked.
“It normally doesn’t, it’s because we don’t have the time or manpower required to do this properly.” Marissa replied tensely.
“Now.”
The room immediately felt heavier and Marissa’s ears popped as the air pressure spiked, blue lighting and a crystalline bell alarm started sounding and strobing throughout the ship.
Marissa waited hesitantly, aside from the alarms the ship was dead quiet.
“We didn’t explode.”
“Clearly.”
“Oxygen production is operating normally,” Tammie reported “Emergency O2 supply is refilling.”
Before Marissa could reply a man came around the corner into the hallway she was in.
Gregory Marks was the ships doctor, he was normally seen as eccentric, odd and a little bit of a jackass but all of that normal nonsense was wiped from his face. He was 63 years old now, his square jaw was covered in thick gray stubble and his matching long gray hair was disheveled and messy. He wore a partial ships medical uniform, black pants, black boots and a black belt with a golden buckle however his pure white coat was gone leaving him with a dark blue under shirt that was stained with blood.
As the doctor drew closer Marissa noticed that he had a chunk missing out of one of his ears, bruising around one eye and many smaller injuries.
“LC!” he barked in a gruff voice “Do you have any injured?” as he spoke 4 medical staff came around the same corner with a gurney, most of them also had minor injuries.
“Yes, private Carter is unconscious, but doctor you yourself--”
“I am aware, I got myself to the point where I’m not pissing blood anymore which is good enough for now. My people are finding injured all over the ship, out of our current complement of 150 we must have at least 77 in need of care.” the doctor sliced smoothly across her “I need anyone with medical training down at the medbay now to assist, we’ve already hit capacity of both the bay itself and the emergency extension, we’ve taken over the 3rd deck lounge and most of the hallway.”
Marissa watched as the gurney passed by her at full speed with the bridge officer strapped to it “Tammie, go.”
“LC, with all due respect--”
“Tammie, the crew needs you, we’re screwed to hell whether you figure this out now or later. Some of these people probably can’t wait till later.”
“I. . .you’re right.” Tammie finally unstrapped herself and got up, as she stepped into the doorway the doctor cringed “LIEUTENANT!”
“What?”
“Oh. . .Tammie, fuck.”
“LANGUAGE, L. . .oh.”
A jagged piece of metal was sticking out of her upper left leg and teal blood was slowly leaking from the injury.
Tammie’s purple eyes grew extremely wide “I. . .I. . .I didn’t even notice.”
“Adrenaline” the doctor said simply. He stepped forward and knelt down, scooping her off her feet by her waist and throwing her over his shoulder.
“DOCTOR!” the 5 foot 8 human hybrid yelled indignantly “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?”
“You walk, you injure it more,” he replied simply.
“I AM NOT A BAG OF RICE! PUT ME DOWN THIS INSTANT!”
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Marissa sighed “Don’t put her down, that’s an order, get her to medical and don’t let her leave until you don’t need help anymore.”
“I PROTEST THIS ORDER!” Tammie shrilled.
“Your protest is noted and will be logged. . .probably. . .doctor, get her out of here.”
“Aye.” the doctor stalked off with Tammie still trying to wiggle free.
Marissa on the other hand stepped back onto the bridge, here most of the working displays were also red and under gravity a variety of wires, hoses, panels and even some of the lights were now hanging in place and the books, binders and writing instruments as well as broken plastics and glass had fallen to the floor.
The lieutenant commander moved to the pilot's seat and shoved it to the side on the track it sat on, she then pressed a button and the pedals and wheel retracted, replacing smooth black glass with touch controls. She used these controls to stop the slow rotation that the ship had apparently taken on while it was adrift and brought it back to an upright position as defined by an onboard gyroscope that was installed and locked down while the ship was under construction.
Next she moved to weapons and stood down all of their armaments, starting a self diagnostic. Once the weapons were in standby, still charged and waiting but no longer on a hair trigger she sat down at Tammie’s station and started working on bringing communications back up. Internals came back easily as did person to person, a confirmation chirp from the comm unit in the sleeve pocket of her uniform sounded as this was repaired. When she looked at ship to ship she found that it had never gone down and both short and long range communications were online.
“Well shit.” she pressed the buttons to activate long range which sounded a trill throughout the bridge “This is the H3VU Perseverance to moor 15, we have taken damage and navigational sensors are offline can you please send us a guide?”
There was no reply.
"Blue? There shouldn’t be a nebula anywhere NEAR us, not to mention a blue one!”
Marissa looked up, the nebula was blue and purple with streaks of sterling silver speckled in dark greens. She had never seen anything like it before and given how far and wide she had traveled in her 27 years of life that was not a good thing. She looked down at the controls and altered her settings, expanding her range of frequencies to encompass all Earth and allied used channels.
“This is the H3VU Perseverance on all standard and emergency channels, we are code 4 and in need of assistance and direction. We have injured and we have damage. Any area ships you are required to respond, this is a distress call. Again, this is the H3VU Perseverance, in distress.”
Again, there was no response.
The Lieutenant commander’s heart was gripped by panic, where in the fuck were they? Those frequencies were supposed to cover every inch of explored space, especially anything within the range that they could have drifted from the mooring point.
“Lieutenant commander?”
Marissa jumped.
A young man with sandy blonde hair and brown eyes entered the room, he looked around briefly before his eyes rested on his commanding officer “Are you ok?”
“Of course.” A blatant lie, but he had no way of knowing that.
“That is a blatant lie.” Jameson replied immediately.
Marissa scowled at him “What? How dare you?”
“You’re doing that thing you do with your hands when we play poker, LC.”
She looked down, her hands were clasped together tightly on the communications panel.
“Do you want someone to talk to?”
“No, Jameson,” Marissa sighed as she released her hands “I’m just, there’s a lot going on right now. I’m worried about a lot of things but I can’t let it affect me or allow it to show in front of the crew. I am lining everything up in my head at the moment.”
“Understood, sorry sir.”
“No. . .thank you for your concern,” Marissa’s eyes brightened “What news do you bring from engineering?”
“As you might. . .assume nothing good I’m afraid.”
“Make it sound good.”
“Uhh, oh. . .umm. . .well we still have one working engine and we only lost 14% of our fuel. The battle damage to the ship isn’t bad and while there were several serious injuries there were no fatalities.” he hesitated for a while “I don’t know how to say this next part positively.”
Marissa sighed with a half smile “Well, thanks for trying for the first half, give me whatever you’ve got next straight.”
“According to our direct sensor logs the port engine was involved in a massive collision, in fact, from what I can tell it went through another ship. The damage is severe and without external supplies we can’t repair it fully. A patch job will get us up to maybe mark 3 or 4 but we won’t be able to achieve mark 5 through 10.”
“Mark 4. . .”
“Maybe, maybe Mark 4.”
“So assuming we are anywhere near Mooring point 15 we are 30 years away from Earth.”
“Yes, but with supplies from the Mooring point we can probably get her going to the point that we can limp home at mark 7 or mark 8 to get the pod replaced or rebuilt.”
“Alright, then we have to make getting back to the station our number one priority. How are our damages?”
“What we sustained in battle still remains,” Jameson replied as he sat down at the weapons station. “Hull breaches on decks 2, 3 and 4 that have been sealed off by emergency doors. I think we have 5 rooms on 2 decompressed, 6 on 3 and 2 of the cargo bays on 4. We need to deploy the worker bees to patch the damages so we can access our cargo or enter the areas with our space walking equipment.”
Marissa’s heart fluttered at the idea of decompressed zones “Are we missing anyone? Did we lose anybody?”
“I. . .I’m sorry but I don’t know. . .we are in such bad shape right now that we have no way of taking a head count. We have a significant chunk of our population receiving medical care and whoever is left standing is running around trying to get our systems online.”
“I suppose I should prepare for the worst.”
“Yes sir.”
It was almost 24 hours later that Tammie called a meeting in the conference room behind the bridge and when Marissa arrived she found her senior staff ready and waiting.
Along with the doctor, Jameson and Tammie was the head of the sciences division.
Samantha Clearwater was very young, in fact she was only 18 and the only reason why she was head of sciences on this ship was because the Perseverance didn’t normally function as a science vessel. Her crew was a collection of academy students that were learning the ropes on the ship during their break.
She was a caucasion human with yellow eyes and neck length blonde hair. At this time she was wearing a pretty form fitting bubble gum pink long sleeved turtle neck sweater and a waist high burgundy skirt that reached just below her knees. Her head was hunched over what looked like every book and binder from the bridge and she looked as if she had been crying recently and also like she would start crying again very soon.
Sitting to her right was the chief engineer, Alexander Raymond, a woman of African American descent who was just over 55 years of age. She was built strong and wore yellow coveralls that were absolutely spotless, her hair was tied back into a ponytail and she was pointing something out to Tammie which was lending to the pained expression on her face.
Marissa herself was about 5 foot 6 with dark skin typical of pacific islanders. Her almond shaped eyes were, for some reason, an electric blue color. Her hair was black and only shoulder length. Her uniform consisted of black pants, black boots, a black belt with a silver oval buckle and a black and yellow top with long sleeves. Her rank was displayed by horizontal bars on her right shoulder while her left carried a patch with a silhouette of the ship against a red nebula with the name embroidered on it in white. This uniform was what she had been expecting everyone in the room to be wearing but now wasn’t the time to go after people for uniform code.
“Where is Carter? Still recovering?” the Lieutenant commander asked lightly as she took a seat
What little conversation there was stopped and everyone's eyes trailed to the doctor and Marissa felt the bottom drop out of her entire soul.
Doctor Marks sighed and leaned forward, he was clean shaven now which made a few more injuries on his face more prominent. “Scott Carter is one of 32 fatalities we experienced, Marissa,” he spoke in a soft warm voice that the Lieutenant commander had never heard him use before, he had also never once called her by her first name. “I deeply apologize that this is the news that I have to give you.”
“32. . .fatalities?”
“Yes sir, that is 14 confirmed dead and 18 missing, assumed lost to space due to decompression during our fight. Medical is working on a list of names.”
Marissa let out a shaky breath Tammie sat down next to her and placed her hand on top of hers.
“I have never lost anyone under my command before,” Marissa explained “I know I’m supposed to be. . .basically a statue. . .but in this case I must. . .acknowledge my feelings of this news.”
“No one expects you to be a statue,” Tammie said softly, taking her hand instead of just resting hers on it. “I’m afraid most of the news we have is---”
“Carter, how did he die?” Marissa asked suddenly.
“Sir, I don’t--” the doctor began but Marissa waved him off.
“I just, I need to know, we graduated together. We shared almost every class, please.”
The doctor sighed “Blunt force trauma to the back of the head, judging by the damage I can assure you that he felt no pain, he did not suffer. The Perseverance likely came to a violent halt before gravity failed and he was struck by a panel or a monitor from the briefing room.”
Marissa nodded as a single tear escaped her eye, Tammie made a move like she was going to wipe it away but Marissa did so herself first. “Thank you doctor, Tammie, what is our location?”
Tammie looked down the table “Ms.Clearwater?”
“Yeah, umm, I still haven’t verified the numbers. Well I mean I have but they’re impossible and the readings can’t be correct either.”
Marissa sighed “Sam. . .”
“Ok, ok, I uhh. . .” she took a deep breath and let it out “We are outside of explored space.”
“We are what?”
Samantha stood up “Lights!” The lights in the room went out and a holographic projection appeared, taking up the entire table, hovering above it in full color.
“The Perseverance was in battle, she took a Talasie torpedo to the port engine.” the hologram animated, showing the ship ducking and diving enemy ships, carving them up and disabling them until a teal ball slammed into it causing the ship to spill a deep purple trail that followed it around like a kites tail.
“The explosion was enough to briefly take manual helm control off line and we went into an extremely wide port sided arch. . .this is. . .this is where. . .” a massive dark blue and brilliant yellow mouth opened and consumed the ship.
Everyone at the table gasped.
“We hit a wormhole,” Samantha stated simply, though her voice sounded hollow. “The metals and fragments recovered from the front of the port engine suggest that it tore through a vessel or debris inside that corridor.”
“Our bodies couldn’t handle what was happening,” the doctor continued “No human, no humanoid has ever been through one of these things and survived and whatever radiation or magic or whatever was inside there took us all out.”
“When the Perseverance emerged we were thrown in a tumble at speeds equivalent to mark 25, we tore through asteroid belts, multiple nebulas and other anomalies but our Yangatzy shields held. Without them we would have been shredded.” Sam continued and they watched the animation continue.
The small ship emerged in a spin trailing a much larger tail of purple gas, the same engine now also spewing blue and green into space.
“We ended up here where the ship drifted for a total of 16 hours before sensors stopped logging.”
“Have you managed to work out how far away we are from home?” Marissa asked softly.
“Yes.” Samantha replied with an apologetic tone “At maximum speed we are 10,894 years from the edge of known space. From there, at maximum speed, we are a year and 3 months from Earth.”
A silence filled the room while Marissa and the others who had not been told this news absorbed the situation and came to grips with the gravity of it.
The Perseverance was not equipped for a long journey, she had been dispatched for battle. The 150 man crew was small for her ship size, their provisions were at a minimum as was their cargo to aid in maneuverability and several systems had already been offline when they had launched due to time constraints on the ongoing upgrades that had been in progress.
In addition the damage from both the battle that they had been in plus an apparent wormhole meant the ship was crippled and could only manage a fraction of its normal speed, long and short range scanners were down, they were now low on fuel and had no materials to patch the hull.
The only thing the Perseverance currently excelled in were her armaments. The ships weapons had been brought into the current century, energy shielding had been added and she was holding a full complement of over 500 torpedoes. The armory was fully stocked with handheld weapons as well and the ship had mines and depth charges waiting in her bays. The energy beam weapons, or phasers, were prototypes of the newest generation and were the strongest ever made by an Earth allied faction and an experimental invisibility device was partially installed as well.
However if the crew succumbed to hunger or exhaustion then none of that mattered. . .there would be nothing for those weapons to defend.
Marissa swallowed “We need to activate the lost in space protocols, code 77. . .return to Earth impossible.”
The tension around the room seemed to tick up a few more clicks.
“We can’t even Star Trek Voyager this, gang, we are 156 times the distance away from our solar system. . .and. . .no matter how much of it became a reality the truth of the matter is that it was still a work of fiction. There’s no point in trying to find a way back, even to the exit of the wormhole which is. . .how far?”
The young woman in the pink sweater sighed “About a decade away at our top achievable speed in this condition. We were spit out at two and a half times our maximum engine speed, our maximum engine speed which is currently not usable. There is also no guarantee that the wormhole is a two way passage so we could travel for 10 years and end up with nothing.”
“With no star charts of this area we would never be able to pinpoint its location to check anyway,” Tammie added sadly “Our sensor logs are so fragmented and corrupted that we could end up an entire sector away in any direction.”
“Another trip through could tear this ship apart as well.” Alexander said, finally breaking her silence at the table “Especially if you add 10 years of daily wear to her.”
“Tammie, what’s the protocol?”
Tammie cleared her throat “C-code 77”
“Tammie, it’s ok.” Marissa said in as soothing a voice as she could manage.
Tammie let out a shaky breath as she opened up a red binder that had numerous pages in plastic sleeves.
“Lost in space, code 77, return to Earth not to be attempted/not possible.” she swallowed “Hello senior staff. If you are reading this outside of a training scenario then we here at Main express our deepest condolences for whatever situation has led you to the activation of this protocol. We wish you the best, please continue on in your lives with the values we have trained into you in your hearts. Wherever the stars may take you next.” she flipped the page “The acting commander of your ship will immediately assume the rank of captain, the first officer will assume the rank of commander, remaining senior staff will move up as required to create a full ledger.”
“We can deal with that later,” Marissa said softly “What does it say about getting underway?”
“Launch the ship's emergency beacon in the general direction of Earth, traveling at speeds of Mark 66 plus this small capsule can alert ships that you are alive at some point in the future.” she looked up. “What direction is Earth?”
“We uhh. . .we don’t know.” Samantha said apologetically.
“With the distance we are from home that capsule would be better served getting stripped down and used to patch the hull.” Alexander put forward roughly. “What use is informing home that we are alive? It will still be hundreds of years from now.”
Marissa nodded, “Get to work on that when you can, start with the cargo bays if you have enough material.”
“Capsule is about the size of this conference room, maintaining the hull thickness we can probably patch the breach in bay 4.”
“Make it happen.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Jameson crossed his arms looking deep in thought and just when Tammie was about to continue speaking he spoke instead “Why can the engine on a capsule exceed the speed of an entire ship? Can we integrate that engine technology into our own drive system?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Alexander admitted “All these capsules and probes, they’re all so new we’re lucky we even have them in the first place. The engine components will definitely help with the reconstruction of the port side engine pod but I don’t think we’ll be achieving those speeds any time soon.”
“Hmmm. . .” Jameson frowned but did not speak again, his eyes lost in thought once more.
“Disengage all external transmitters, no not start an emergency broadcast unless you are in critical shape or until you can prepare for a fight in the case that you are in hostile space. Should a confrontation occur with a new species do not attack unless attacked.”
Everyone’s eyes went to Marissa.
“Our transmitters are still up, but we haven’t started an emergency broadcast.”
“I recommend you get them down until we can get our scanners back online.” the doctor offered “If we attract any unwanted attention I can’t accommodate any more injured.”
Marissa nodded, she placed her hand flat on the table and an outline appeared around it “Lieutenant Commander Marissa U. Montgomery, commander.”
There was a chime.
“Verified, what can I do for you, Lieutenant Commander Montgomery?”
“Give me command functions.”
“Please enter acce---”
Marissa’s fingers flew over the small number pad that popped up.
“Command functions unlocked.”
A majority of the table turned into a digital touch display, Marissa searched it until she found what she was looking for and toggled the ships ID transmitter off.
“We are now invisible.”
Tammie looked back down at the binder “All allied ships carry 12 months of emergency food in their primary cargo bays at all times. Access the locker using the Captains access code.”
Well ok, we have food we didn’t know about I suppose that’s good.” Marissa muttered.
Alexander nodded “Gives us even more reason to patch that bay.”
“Find a home, look out for each other and live life looking forward not back. Godspeed, crew.”
She closed the binder “That’s literally it.”
“Of course it is. . .” Marissa leaned heavily on the table, rubbing her temples. “Alexander, patch the hull then get the forward long range scanners online.”
“Yes sir.”
“Samantha, see what you can do about. . .about finding us a new head of security.”
“Yes sir.”
“Doctor, back to the medical bay, do your best.”
“Aye.”
“Jameson, go get some spacewalk gear on and start searching cargo bay 2 while they repair 4. Take Ghales with you. He should be in engineering.”
“Yes sir.” he got up and walked out as well.
Tammie let out a massive sigh and collapsed onto the table.
“Same.”
“I can’t process this, Captain, I really can’t.”
“I know, it. . .it’s going to be a while before this truly sinks in.” she rubbed Tammie’s back lightly “Are you leaving anyone back at home?”
“No, thank god, I. . .I never allowed myself to get into a relationship or something. Not with our line of work. What about you?”
“Max and my parents.” Marissa said softly “They’ll take good care of him though, Dad can handle him.”
“I guess we kind of luck out then,” Tammie replied sadly as she sat up “But we do have crew that have spouses, kids, even a newly wed.”
Marissa nodded “The crew. . .” she pressed down on a green circle on the desk and a whistle sounded throughout the ship.
“Attention, this is the captain speaking. There is no easy way for me to deliver this news, but you need to be kept informed. . .you need to make decisions. The Perseverance is officially lost, missing with all hands. We were pulled through a spatial anomaly and thrown so far out of explored space that we have no choice but to declare a Code 77. For those of you who may not know, Code 77 is ‘Lost in space, return to Earth is not possible.’ We are over 10,000 years from home at maximum speed, with the speed we are capable of achieving that number gets higher by multiples. We have no choice but to repair what we can, rest, heal, then find a new home. I. . .I’m so sorry that this is the news I have to deliver. I know you have families. . .I’m sorry. . .” she shut the PA down.
“I was going to ask how you were going to inform the crew.”
“There’s no beating around the bush for something like this and everyone would have found out anyway throughout the course of the next few days. It’s better for me to be direct and honest immediately than for them to find out on their own and think I was trying to hide the situation.”
“What are your orders for me, sir?”
“Get some tools and a vacuum, you and I are going to put the bridge back together.”
“Yes sir.”