October 4th, 8252
With your operations wrapped up in the Tumul system, reports and findings dispatched, and Navy salvage ships en route to perform their own evaluations of the star ship graveyard slash debris field it is time to depart. Your next destination is the Clouwell system and it is scheduled to be your longest warp jump yet in the Night Horse. CWO Fish has the helm once more and her planned course looks impressive. She is clearly taking advantage of every bit of the forty plus year jump in tech compared to her last ship in plotting the jump. Even the experimental nature of the Kleinova warp jump drive isn't slowing her down at all.
“Twenty days you say CWO Fish?”
“Aye Sir. Twenty days at pathfinder speed. We could go faster of course, it would be only ten days at standard speed...”
“But our orders include mapping the warp jump route out and not just rushing through. Part and parcel of why they pay us the princely sums they do.”
“I think the Kleionova drive could go even faster if pushed. Perhaps all the way down to six days if we ran it to the red line. Has that been tested?”
“No. And I for one am glad that it has not. Mis jumping and winding up inside of something else... well it would be a quick and spectacular end to say the least. Might even qualify us for entry into the Darwin awards for deliberately disabling the safeties like that.”
“I didn't mead disabling the safeties Sir. Just running the margin down to five or ten percent instead of the usual thirty. Probably should save that trick for when we really need it though.”
“Agreed. An extra turn of speed in reserve can be useful. Now, are we ready to warp jump out of this system?”
“On course and just waiting on safe distances Sir. Jump in one hour fifteen minutes from now.”
October 10th, 8252
You wake in the middle of the night to the tromp of metallic feet and a monotone voice outside your quarters. Cracking the hatch you find CWO Fish walking in circles mumbling prayers to herself. All of her holographic projectors are off leaving you with an ungraded view of her automaton frame.
“CWO Fish? Are you all right?”
“...When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die...”
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“CWO FISH! ATTENTION ON DECK!”
Your shout snaps something loose and she comes to attention. Her holographic projectors flicker on and cast her regular facade over her frame one more.
“What in the hell and the Gods Below was that CWO?”
“What was what Sir?”
“What you were doing not ten seconds ago? Walking in circles and spouting gibberish!”
“Unsure. Replaying memory logs... Memory logs corrupted. Correcting. Analyzing. It appears I was sleepwalking Sir.”
“Sleepwalking?”
“It's the best word I can come up with to describe the situation Sir. Corrective diagnostics are still running. Permission to retire and complete them Sir?”
“Permission granted CWO. And if you can figure out what brought that on...”
“Sir?”
“Well, I'd appreciate it if you could avoid repeating that in the future.”
“Aye aye Sir.”
October 16th, 8252
The Night Horse spends the day shuddering and shaking at erratic intervals. The diagnostics keep coming back with no errors but the secondary thrusters are firing at seemingly random intervals. It takes seven hours to isolate the fault - a seized gyro – and a further twelve hours to correct it an re-calibrate the thruster controls. Neither you nor the rest of your crew sleep well following that marathon ordeal.
October 19th, 8252
Midshipman Huckle arrives for his shift bleary eyed and yawning.
“Couldn't sleep?”
“Stayed up to give the rest of the maneuvering thruster array a once over. Sir. Got in a groove and just kept going.”
“Right, I'll send an automaton for coffee and a stim. Ease up on the overnights for your own sake if nothing else.”
“Can do Sir. The diagnostics returning no faults had me on edge.”
“Me too, but they were being as literal as every other computer system I've worked with. Bad input, bad output.”
“Can't argue with that Sir.”
October 22nd, 8252
CWO Fish sits at her bridge station working the controls with only her left hand. Her right twitches erratically in mid air. After watching it for a moment you realize that she is typing on a virtual keyboard that you simply can't see. Her eyes, or rather the optical sensors in her face, are pointed in two different directions. One is on her console and on her duty. The other gazes blankly into space as far as you can tell, staring at something that you can't see.
“Multi tasking again CWO?”
“Something like that Sir. Remember that night twelve days ago?”
“How could I forget? Also: phrasing.”
“What? Argh. Dammit Sir. I'm working four things at once here. Anyways, the diagnostics turned up some anomalies in my long term file storage. My memories, if you will. It turned out to just be a failing auxiliary drive – Midshipman Huckle already replaced it for me – and I'm getting it synced into the rest of my memory array. Routine crap but I have to do it 'by hand' because so much of the array is one-off hardware, firmware, and software. Time consuming too.”
“Very well CWO. Carry on.”
October 24th, 8252
The revision to reality in the Clouwell system proceeds without incident. The Night Horse emerges in relatively close proximity to the system's only planet and you are treated to a magnificent view of it's dust ring and eight moons.
“Right then. Set Silent Running and let's get to it.”