Chapter 2: Something Familiar on the Long Range
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“Captain, we have something to present to you when you have time.”
Marissa stopped walking, the person who addressed her had been a white haired Adesse female. She had blue skin and piercing emerald eyes and the Captain recognized her as one of the poor academy students who had been on temporary assignment when it had all gone wrong.
“You have something for me?” she asked hesitantly, the last few days had been such a whirlwind that she couldn’t even remember if she had assigned them a task outside of studying the nebula from the astrometric lab.
“Yes sir, it’s kind of a whole presentation though, me and the other students set it up for you. When you have time of course.”
“I have time right now, gather your friends and meet me in conference room one.”
“Yes sir!” The young woman ran off and as soon as she was gone Tammie appeared from the other side of the hall.
“Captain, Alexander has finished her analysis on rebuilding the port engine. She’s waiting in conference room one.” she indicated the clipboard and numerous folders she had pressed against her midriff with her right arm.
“Oh, well I just sent the science team there too so I guess we can kill two birds with one meeting.”
“I suppose so”
The duo started moving through the ship together.
“I’m just getting on duty for the day, do you have anything new for me?” Marissa asked as they passed a crew in the finishing steps of repairing one of the sealed hull breaches.
“Nothing good I’m afraid, engineering decided to go with the plan of salvaging wiring and some power couplings from Echo-5 so we’ve lost power to a few rooms in the stern of 5th deck. Long range scanners should be back up by midday tomorrow. Short range scanners have detected that the nebula is made out of like one thing that we’ve seen before and maybe. . .370 that are unknown so the science department is having fun naming everything they find.”
“Has Clearwater verified our location yet?”
“No, and she won’t be able to, we’ve. . .decided to stop wasting resources on trying to unscramble the full logs.”
“Oh, have you now? Is that an order you decided to issue Commander Jalanta?”
“Yes, the files are just far too damaged for anyone shipboard to deal with.” Tammie sighed “Do. . .did I make the right call? Do you want us to continue?”
Marissa shook her head “I trust your judgment completely, I haven’t been working on that project so I haven’t had eyes on the logs. If you say they’re too far gone then I believe you.”
“I appreciate it, sir.”
“So there is still the possibility that everything is just fucked and we are still in explored space?”
“Language! Captain!”
“Answer! Commander!”
Tammie rolled her eyes and shook her head “Yes, there is a possibility that we haven’t gone as far as we first thought. We aren’t making that public knowledge though so we don’t get people’s hopes up.”
“10,000 years from home?” Marissa laughed “Shit, we should have figured that was a fuck up from day one.”
“Captain, I swear to god I will write you up.”
“What? Did I swear?”
“Yes, twice!”
“Shit I don’t even hear myself doing it.”
Tammie sighed, rubbing her temple with her free hand.
“Did. . .did I do it again?”
“We’ll work on it, Captain.”
“Once the long range scanners are back online we need to set a course for the closest mooring point and take a quick shuttle back out to 15, grab our equipment and quick shuttle to Earth.”
Tammie nodded “What about the Perseverance?”
“Call a tow, have it hooked up and taken back to Earth to finish the upgrades and repairs. She’s been good to us but I’m sure after this needless scare the crew will want to get home as soon as possible once we are docked.”
“Noted.”
“As soon as we get back get in contact with Neptune Station and arr--”
“Captain, you shouldn’t be getting your hopes up that much. Even if we aren’t actually 10,000 years from home we could still be. . .decades out.”
Marissa thoughtfully bit her lower lip “Yeah, you’re right, but at the very least at that distance we could get back home.”
“Well, I could, the ship could, but you full humans might not make it all the way.”
“Well when you get there check on my dog.”
“Aye, wait dogs don’t---”
“It was a joke, Commander.”
“Oh, haha, of course.”
They turned a corner and used an internal staircase to go from deck 4 up to deck 2.
“Captain, what do you intend to do about relationships?”
“Hmm?”
Tammie sighed “I have already been questioned by members of the crew about the possibility of this ship becoming a home, it’s only a matter of time before someone falls in love with someone else and then. . .you know, kids happen.”
“You’ve already been questioned if the crew can start slapping sex parts?” Marissa asked flatly.
Tammie actually swatted at her angrily for that one “CAPTAIN! YOUR LANGUAGE! We really need to work on what is appropriate and what is not.” she huffed.
Marissa chuckled, “Right, I promise, I will work on it.”
“You better.” Tammie shot “Especially if we are here long term, ESPECIALLY if kids do become a thing in the future. You aren’t an Ensign anymore, sir, or a Lieu. . .or a Lieutenant commander for that matter. You need to lead by example.”
“Ok, ok, seriously I’m sorry. I just, I mean you know how fast I was kicked up the ranking system.”
“Yeah well, saving 3 admirals and 2 ambassadors will do that.”
“I just don’t want to lose my own personality to the ranking system, T.”
“You won’t, but there are things you need to understand that you have to keep behind closed doors. Even swearing is preferable over what you just said. So vulgar and rude, in a public hallway no less!”
They stopped at an elevator and Tammie scanned her palm print causing it to open, allowing them access to deck 1.
“I’ll work on it.”
“I know, but Jesus, Marissa. Where did you even get that phrasing from?”
The captain laughed, “I actually don’t know.”
“Well, find out so you can put it back and never touch it again.”
They stepped out of the lift and turned right, walking towards the bridge.
“I’ll keep you up to date on that. To answer your question though, advise the crew to wait. . .please. . .at least until we are on a planet or something. Or at the bare minimum not a spontaneous explosion risk anymore.”
“That I can do.”
Marissa pushed the door to the conference room open where the science students were already in the middle of a conversation with Alexander.
“That greatly raises our spontaneous explosion risk!” the engineer shouted as she examined paperwork that had been handed to her in a red folder.
“Which is why we need engineering to help us! Look at the numbers!” the white haired student pressed in a pleading voice.
“I am looking at the numbers sweetheart, the numbers are the part that make it look like you are going to blow us the fuck up!”
“CHIEF! LANGUAGE!” Tammie yelled exasperatedly as Marissa failed to contain a shout of laughter.
Samantha took the paperwork that the Engineer had been looking at and slid it over to her, today she was wearing a yellow sweater that was exactly like the last with a black skirt. “There is a math error Simon.”
One of the other students, a human male with black hair and brown eyes blinked in confusion “There is?”
“Yes, you didn’t properly calculate for the capacity of our pumping system nor the thickness of the containment tanks. Remember, all of that was upgraded when the engine pods were rebuilt during the renovations.” she flipped open a pen and started writing across the back of the sheet of paper when had separated from the folder, Alexander watched closely.
“There.”
“Well I’ll be damned.”
“That’s well within tolerance levels, Chief.” Samantha slid the paper over.
“What is this all about? What do you want to do to my engine?” Marissa asked as she took her normal seat at the head of the table.
Both the Adesse female and the chief engineer looked at each other.
“After you, child.”
“Oh, no, after you, sir. Technically speaking if you don’t solve your thing we can’t even do our thing.”
“Of course” the Chief turned to Marissa and Tammie “We finished the survey of the port engine, removed all of the foreign metals and I have a full report.”
“Excellent”
“It’s fucked.”
Tammie made a sound that was something between a gurgle and an angry hiss but Marissa spoke before she could say anything.
“How bad are we talking?”
“The dome is intact but the body is almost shredded completely. We have the materials to repair the inside of the unit. Hoses, mechanics, pneumatics, everything. . .but we don’t have the Eccenblim Alloy required to build the outside of the pod. We would have a skinned engine pod, not a good idea.”
“Easy fix, cargo bay 5 was designated for hazardous and explosive materials so the interior walls are made out of Eccenblim panels.” Marissa replied smoothly “Strip down the cargo bay to the primary hull and use the material to rebuild the engine pod.”
Alexander couldn’t help but jerk her head back and raise her eyebrows in surprise “Are you sure about that?”
“That cargo bay isn’t in use at the moment and we still have the other four to use.”
“Technically speaking that cargo bay can still function as a cargo bay without the panels as well,” Tammie added “In addition the ECC panels only exist because surface shields made explosive storage a bit more dangerous than the alliance liked. Now we have energy shields, so we should be ok.”
“The engine is a priority, get it built up and we’ll work on figuring out how to fuel it.” As she spoke she gave Alexander an affirmative nod.
“That’s our thing!” the Adesse woman said excitedly, raising her hand and hopping up and down in her seat.
“That’s your thing?” Marissa repeated, “Please take the floor.”
The young woman stood up, watched on by Samantha and her 5 other fellow students.
“As we have been studying the nebula we discovered over 300 new elements, knowing that ship fuel would likely become an issue Simon started a project matching these new elements up to ones that we already know of, specifically the ones that make up our fuel. He isolated 26 compatible possibilities.”
“Much obliged Mr. Simon.” Marissa commented with a mock salute.
The young man smiled nervously.
The Adesse woman pressed on “From there myself and Jacob started messing with numbers and mixtures while Juliet, Mark and John worked on a refinery process. Long story short we think we found a mixture that will work for the ship. We have been calling it “Banana Republic” because the dome will burn dark green and the plasma ports will be yellow.”
“You’ve done very well to take on such a big issue without being prompted,” Marissa said proudly, leaning forward, placing her elbows on the table. “What are your next stages?”
“Well, that’s where it becomes a big ask.” the woman said sadly, her eyes becoming downcast as she started fidgeting with her hands.
“Ask.”
“We need one of the Perseverance's shuttles and a pilot,” the teenager said abruptly “So we can test our theories before putting them to use on Perseverance.”
“Ahh.” the captain leaned back in her chair “A big ask indeed, we only have 12 shuttles.”
The teen nodded “Yeah, yeah we do.”
Marissa’s eyes moved over to the two members of her senior staff that were sitting opposite her “Alexander, Samantha? Opinions?”
“I mean I need time to go over these numbers myself and determine if our system can handle these new elements.” Alexander replied “With how few resources we have available to us we need to be careful, we can’t risk smoking a shuttle out for no reason.”
“I must agree with the Chief,” Samantha nodded. “While I believe in the work my students have done we need a little more time and a larger sample pool first. We also need to drain the current fuel from the shuttle which we might as well put into Perseverance's starboard tanks.”
“We can definitely work on this more, sir.” the Adesse woman smiled.
Marissa nodded “Chief, how long till you can fix that engine pod?”
“Well now that we have gone from no materials straight to a surplus of materials I’d say no longer than 15 days?”
Marissa turned back to the Adesse “Keele, you have 15 days to present a finalized version of this plan, get me all the numbers, what equipment you’ll need and all that.”
“We need more materials.”
Marissa unzipped her sleeve pocket and pulled out a black clamshell device which she flipped open like an ancient Earth flip phone. “Bridge.”
“Bridge.”
“I’m sending Keele from sciences to you, take the Perseverance into the nebula and fill our collection tanks with whatever it is she needs. She’s working on a fuel substitute for the ship.”
“Understood, sir.”
Keele clapped her hands excitedly with a large smile “Thank you, sir!”
“No, thank you, really. This is a great thing you are trying to do.” Marissa replied with a warm smile “Now go, all of you go.”
The teens filed out of the room with varying thank you’s.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“You two, work together on this when you can. For now I need that cargo bay stripped and that engine pod rebuilt.”
“One last thing, I know you’re not going to care but I figure I should say it.” Alexander sighed.
“Hmm?”
“We don’t have any paints or anything, nor a method to apply them so this engine pod is going to be silver instead of stealth black. It will stick out if we are ever trying to stalk, even in low power mode.”
Marissa nodded “A worthy piece of information, thank you.”
“I’ll be honest, not even something I was thinking about.” Tammie added “I assume the same is true for all of the breach patches as well?”
“The side of this ship will also be silver, yes, but only cargo bay 4’s tear.” Alexander verified “Everything else has been small enough that we can do it with our emergency patching materials that are already pre-painted to match the hull.”
“So we’re going to have a mostly silver engine pod on the port side and a big silver target board on the starboard side.” Marissa summarized.
“Yeah, but it’s what we have to do.”
“Good thing we have all those new weapons and shields then,” Marissa sighed “Do what you can, get the engine done first while we’re still alone. Start from the outside and work your way in, that way if we have to move we can move.”
“Yes sir, right away.”
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“Captain's log, March 14th 2970. . .I uhh, I think. . .it has now been 12 days since we’ve had long range scanners back online and the science teams have successfully created a fuel that we may be able to use in emergencies. It burns much stronger than our standard ships fuel and in the shuttle testing we achieved 177% engine speed before blowing the drive coils. The repairs to the port engine have progressed nicely with work to the outside having been completed as of 0500 this morning.” Marissa sighed “We still have not verified our location but hope is high that we are not where we thought we were, especially as our food supplies begin to dwindle and emergency rations start coming into play. The science team brought on by Ms. Clearwater proved themselves again, using the supplies we were supposed to be delivering to M15 they have created a garden in the cargo bay we stripped. They had been gathering seeds and roots from everything used in the kitchen that could produce them and now we wait to see if we have a renewable food supply. I want the record to reflect that no one authorized this project or conversion, they took the initiative to do it themselves just like their fuel creation project.” Marissa paced her room “Casual and non-uniform clothing on board has become increasingly more common and I must say that some of---”
“Captain come in”
“End log.” there was a dual chime from above her as she moved to a square wall unit and pressed a blue button. “Montgomery.”
“We have what appears to be a ship at the very tip of our long range scanners.”
“On my way!”
Only a moment later Marissa emerged onto the bridge and took the command chair in the center, deploying a monitor from the side of it on an articulating arm and looking at it “Talk to me, guys.”
“Whatever it is it’s massive and the alloys seem to conform to allied construction standards.” Tammie reported “We’re way too far away to make a full determination on it.”
“Communications?”
“We’re out of range, this thing is within the last 0.5% of our sensor range, sir.”
“This could be the sign we were looking for that our initial assessment was horribly wrong.”
“It’s definitely a. . .uplifting reading,” Tammie agreed “From what we can see. . .I mean. . .”
“What about the big ass nebula with 344 unknown elements though?” Jameson asked from the weapons station “Don’t get your hopes up too much.”
“Jameson! Your language!” Tammie hissed.
“Oh, sorry sir.”
“He’s right though,” Marissa sighed, she hit a button on the chair “Bridge to engineering.”
“Engineering.”
“Do you guys think this bitch is ready to move?”
Tammie emitted a gurgling noise, making strangling gestures at Marissa but she ignored her, swiping through the available displays on her screen.
“This bitch has always been able to move, just not fast.”
“I swear to god I’m going to have to start slapping people.” Tammie muttered.
“What’s our best speed?”
“We’re still an engine down but with the hull work finished I’d say nearly top speed, maybe mark 7 to be safe.”
“Alright, get ready for the engines. . .uhh. . .engine to go hot.”
“Aye.”
“Helm, set a course, bring us up to mark 7 gradually. We don't want to stress the one pod that we have left.”
“Course set sir, engines are warming up.”
For the first time since their arrival they were moving more than 30 feet, the hum of the starboard engine added to the ambient sound of the ship sending a tingle down Marissa’s spine for some reason.
“5000 KPH” the helmsman called “10. . .20. . . 30. . . “
“Engage the primary drive coils and take us to mark 1, 1078 million KPH and hold for readings.”
“Yes sir.”
The stars outside seemed to blur as the ship accelerated, but to their starboard side the nebula did not fade away.
“Engine readings coming in on tactical.” Jameson announced “We’re running a bit hot.”
“We only have one engine, give it time to cool down.”
“Engineering to bridge.”
“Bridge”
“I must amend my last recommendation now that we have some running numbers. I advise you not to surpass mark 5.”
“Noted, thank you Alexander. Helm, take us to mark 3 and hold.”
“Mark 3 aye, holding at 42,000,000,000 KPH.”
“Estimated time to arrival?”
“8 hours and 32 minutes, sir.”
“8. . .this thing is 360 something billion kilometers out?” Marissa asked, turning to Tammie.
“Yeah, we wouldn’t even have seen it without the upgraded sensors. The old ones could only scan a third of that distance, and I remind you that we also just barely saw it and that’s probably because of its size.”
“So give me a scenario where we could still be close to home.”
“Captain.” Jameson sighed.
“It’s unhealthy to set yourself up for such crushing disappointment.” Tammie scolded.
“Hey you said that the thing looks like it’s designed with allied construction standards.”
“Right, but it’s. . .do you know how far 360 billion kilometers is?”
“Come on Tammie, humor me.”
The human hybrid sighed, rubbing her purple eyes "Ok fine, lets say. . .we got spit out in the middle of known space, continued in a tumble at what? 430 trillion KPH? We could have been placed just outside the farthest reaches of deep space. That would be the only way we are the first people to see a nebula this large, the first one to discover its elements, and what we are seeing on scanners could be the back side of one of the deep space mooring points. . .maybe M102 or M103.”
Tammie's station alarmed and she looked down at it.
“See Jameson? It could be a station.” Marissa said proudly, turning to the weapons station.
“It’s. . .moving.”
Marissa turned back to Tammie “It’s what?”
“Yeah, it’s traveling at about 55 KPH.”
“A ship then?” Jameson asked.
Tammie nodded “I’m guessing a deep space survey ship maybe? That’s the only reason why anything would be moving that slowly.”
“It could be the 9HA3097 Spirit, or the 3667 Legend.” the helmsman offered, pointing at a graph on the screens that had deployed from the ceiling over the windshields for faster than light travel. “Only ships that would be out this far right?”
“You’re not wrong, but the size profile doesn’t fit.” Tammie muttered “It’s the size of a destroyer, maybe larger?”
“The Enterprise?” Marissa offered “She’s a big girl and the only destroyer I can think of that would be in deep space.”
“The new Enterprise is a cruiser.” Tammie muttered “It would have to be Yorktown or Essex.”
“The new Enterprise?”
Tammie nodded, “The destroyer class was. . .destroyed about 6 months ago.”
“Lord, that’s going to be like the 20th one.”
“Ships have been using the name “Enterprise” since 1705, captain, in no small part thanks to the show.” a green light popped on next to her right hand “We’re in communications range already.”
“Hailing Frequencies, commander.”
“Open.”
“This is the H3VU Perseverance to unknown Allied vessel, we have sustained damage, casualties and fatalities and are looking for help, supplies and assistance with repairs. We would appreciate anything you can offer.”
There was a soft buzzer from Tammie’s station “Sorry, we’re out of range again, something is wrong with the long range antenna.”
“Yeah, it’s bent pretty severely.” Jameson sighed
Tammie squinted at him “The antenna is made of reinforced titanium alloy encased in 15 layers of Tungsten.”
“Yeah, it’s bent.”
“It’s rated to withstand the ship impacting a planet!”
“Yeah, it’s bent.”
“It’s within the shielding”
“Yeah, it’s bent.”
“B---”
“Oh my god, Tammie, it’s bent.” Marissa interrupted
“But. . .” the purple eyed woman sputtered “That--”
“How bent is it?” Marissa sighed, turning to Jameson.
“It’s touching the main hull, that’s probably why our connection is intermittent.”
“Can we bend it back?”
“N. . .no. . .it’s rated to withstand the ship impacting a planet.”
“What if we turn it so it’s bent the opposite direction of the hull?”
“That would work.”
“Have engineering get on it when they have time.”
“But how. . .what did we do that led to this result?” Tammie cried in an almost pitiful tone of voice.
“It probably had something to do with us tumbling ass over tea kettle through asteroid belts at twice our normal travel speed.” Jameson offered.
“Language, Lieutenant.” Marissa scolded, crossing her legs.
“Excuse me?” Jameson laughed
“Tammie wasn’t going to say it, she’s too depressed about the antenna.”
“I’m not depressed, I’m just. . .this has never happened before, that design has never failed and has been in use for over 8 decades.”
“Well, we make history once again.”
“This is not the kind of history we want to be making.”
A laugh was shared around the bridge.
Over the next few hours nothing much happened aside from the heads of department flickering in and out to get work orders approved.
“Sir, we are in visual range.”
“Throw it up on the monitors.”
Several screens changed including the one on the articulating arm in front of Marissa, she pulled it closer to her face “Fuck off.”
“Captain!”
“That’s a Roddenberry class starship, look at the silhouette.”
Jameson grabbed his monitor immediately, pulling it down so fast that the accordion arm holding it to the ceiling almost broke.
“Roddenberry class?” Tammie asked quizzically.
“It’s based off of a Constitution Class Starship from Star Trek,” Marissa reminded her “Massive saucer section connected to a cylinder body by a neck support, engine pods out and over the port and starboard sides of the ship. The design was found to be extremely inefficient and is plagued with structural weaknesses in battle and high speed maneuvers.”
“What do you think it’s doing? A survey?”
“Tammie, you know our ship line history, how many Roddenberry class ships do you know of?”
“Umm. . .well,” Tammie sighed “I think there were only 3. . .the USS Enterprise was destroyed in a battle over Zaffiro Prime, the USS Calypso is in the fleet museum and---” Tammie gasped, looking over at Jameson who was staring at his screen with tears in his eyes.
As if verbally prompted the young man spoke “The USS Treasure Island, lost with all hands 20 years ago in the same sector of space we were fighting in. My father’s ship.”
An absolute silence blanketed the bridge for a solid 20 seconds.
“Tammie, see if the transmitter is up.”
Tammie worked her controls as Jameson put his monitor back up and sniffed, wiping his eyes.
“You ok, hon?” the softness in Marissa’s voice surprised even her, and “hon” ? Where the hell had that come from?
“Yeah, I’m just. . .I. . .the last time I saw that ship I was 10 years old. I grew up on board the Treasure Island and the only reason I wasn’t on board when it vanished was because I was attending a conference with my older sister. Both my parents were on board when it disappeared.”
“The transmitter is running, I’m trying to pull the ID. . . .got it, RLS-1850. . .the USS Treasure Island.”
Marissa uncrossed her legs and opened a control panel in the arm rest of her seat “USS Treasure Island, this is the H3VU, ZLV Perseverance, we are an allied vessel from Earth. Please respond.”
There was no reply.
“We are transmitting sir and she is receiving.”
Marissa sighed “Yellow alert, shields up and standby weapons, we don’t know who or what may have taken residence in that ship over the last 20 years.”
“Yellow alert, shields up, preloading weapons.” Jameson called.
“Helm, take us to her.”
“Aye”