“Hey,” the voice said as I finished up my checks of the slipspace drive’s compression units.
“What? I’m busy, gotta finish the inspection,” I said, annoyed. Performing the post drop inspection of the slipspace drive had been trying to say the least. Running a one thousand three hundred ninety six point inspection over the course of six hours while continuing to monitor the overall status of the thing you are inspecting is a trying task. So, of course, I was feeling a bit prickly at being interrupted when I was so close to the end.
“Damien, it’s Galina,” she said, as I finally got out of the zone and recognized her voice. “I can finish the inspection. It’s your first time, and you’ve done most of the work already. You’ll get faster with the inspections eventually, I can cover the slack for now.”
As I scooted myself out from underneath the drive, I was met by a frowning Galina with folded arms, incredibly short, quite skinny, and radiating an aura of such absolute authority that I had no other notion in my mind but to obey every word out of her mouth.
“Your watch ended fifteen minutes ago Damien, go eat.”
“What? But I-”
“Yeah I know. I’ve been trying to find you for the past twenty minutes. Go, you’re done for today. I already went over the logs while I was looking for you.”
“...Okay,”
I scooted out of my little cubby where I had been testing the drive components and stood up, smiling sheepishly.
“EN3 Manelis you are relieved of duty, I have the watch,” said Galina.
“EN2 Romanova, you have the watch,” I stated, following the script. “And… thanks.”
“Get out of here, it’s fine. Get to the mess quick, they’re going to stop serving food in like, ten minutes.”
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I made the lonely walk up to the mess, having missed the others on my watch, as unlike me they had actually finished their watch on time. I was listless and unprepared for the sight that awaited me upon reaching the mess hall. As I entered the room, I was greeted by the sight of John and three other members of the crew sitting in what appeared to be a spare algae vat, full of steaming water.
I stared at them.
They stared at me.
“You know what? I don’t even want to know,” I sighed, crossing through the mostly empty mess hall to grab something to eat.
—
The ship had been drifting in the void for two weeks when I was pinged by Chief half an hour before my shift would begin with a message asking me to come down to engineering for a moment. I was slightly concerned, but as far as I knew I hadn’t fucked anything up, so that worry was limited.
“You called, Chief?”, I asked, poking my head through the doorway to see Chief Rokundo tapping away on a tablet.
“Ah yes,” he said, looking up and turning his tablet towards me, where I saw a diagram of the ship with several dozen points highlighted along the structure. “I’m taking over your watch on sublight propulsion today, there’s another task you’re taking care of. The reaction mass feed for aft RCS unit 3 has sprung a leak,” he tapped at one of the highlighted points. “ You’re going to EVA out to the unit and patch the leak. The feed has already been shut down, so you don’t need to worry about getting a faceful of reaction mass. Once you’re done, you can take the rest of your shift off.”
“Yes Chief,” I responded, and left to grab the equipment I would need. I found an emergency maneuvering unit, a mountable toolkit and a full O2 tank in one of the equipment lockers and headed up to the main airlock to gear up. Once I had done so, tightening the hooks of the maneuvering unit and attaching the O2 tank, I pinged the bridge.
“EN3 Manelis to the bridge.”
“This is the bridge, go ahead EN3 Manelis.”
“Permission to perform an EVA in order to perform unscheduled maintenance on aft RCS unit 3?”
“Permission granted.”
As soon as the airlock cycled I tipped forward making the nausea inducing maneuver for planting your mag boots on the outer hull. The outer hull had been black before, back before I had boarded, but now? Now it was as dark as space itself. The only things indicating that the ship was there were the stars abruptly cutting off along a line, and a helpful wireframe that my suit’s HUD began projecting. I glanced up at the blackness of space spread out all around me as the airlock door closed.
All around, stars shone faintly, with the band of the Milky Way peeking up near the artificial horizon created by the hull. I was about to make my way to the rear of the ship when I noticed a small yellow splotch off to my right. I stared for a moment, then had my HUD zoom in on it. It was a strange, shimmering yellow sheet, slowly billowing its way through space. It looked almost paper thin, and seemed to be slowly undulating. I snapped a quick picture and pinged the bridge again.
“Uh, EN3 Manelis to the bridge?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m seeing something weird out here, picture attached,” I said, and sent it.