E.E 113.
Two years before the scheduled IFM/CC.
Ryuzu was forcefully yanked from her slumber into blaring alarms and warnings of the utmost urgency. Fearing the worst for her passengers, Ryuzu overclocked her processors and readied herself and the entire ship in a matter of microseconds.
The on board gravity scanners indicated an entire celestial body in the flight path of Seedship. A rouge planet and its satellites, amounting nearly three standard Earth masses in total, threatened to pulverize the entire ship and crew into cosmic dust.
Whilst Seedship was considered a marvel of human ingenuity and the pinnacle of human technology, spotting such a 'tiny' object in the vastness of the void was nigh impossible so many light years away. That being said, encountering a planet like this in deep space has such a low probability of occurring that it could be said it was impossible... Until this day.
The velocity of Seedship was, relative to the rouge planet, nearly 0.5c or 539,500,000 kilometers per hour. So there was no way the planet was going to escape without being torn in half or at least have another crater blown wide open across its barren and ragged landscape by the sheer kinetic energy of the vessel.
Unfortunately, the ship would inevitably be destroyed in such a massive collision so such an option was not a valid one. Analyzing the situation at hand and the status of the craft, Ryuzu came up with two options.
They were as follows.
1) Ryuzu would reignite the fusion engines, overriding all safety protocols in place and violently maneuver the ship entirely off course, thereby dodging the rouge planet completely and preventing near certain destruction of the vessel, saving the 1100 lives on board the ship. However this would burn up all maneuvering fuel in the ship's liquid hydrogen tanks leaving the bear minimum amount of fuel required to slow down to a slow enough velocity for a safe injection into solar orbit of another star system. Furthermore, Seedship will miss her destination by a large margin with no fuel to readjust course. Meaning that the ship will be left drifting for an undertimined length of time before encountering a star system close enough to visit.
2) Ryuzu would engage the chemical RCS thrusters and maneuver the ship into a path of lowest risk, away from the planet itself but through the dust clouds surrounding it, testing the bow armor of the vessel against debris as small as microscopic dust particles to large and potentially hazardous pebbles millimeters in diameter. This would allow the vessel enough fuel to remain on course and reach the desired G class main sequence star hosting the selected planet. Seedship will be slightly delayed by the maneuvering but they will arrive nonetheless. However, the destruction of the vessel is a very significant risk to be taken into consideration. Furthermore, while the damage sustained during the passage may not destroy the vessel outright, it will most certainly cause considerable damage to at least two systems on board the ship.
Time passes. With each passing nanosecond, the dark shadow grew closer and closer. The window of choice grew narrower and narrower. Ryuzu ascertained, purely on her logic circuits that the former option was the most ideal choice. It was the safest and least risky. Her empathy circuits had other ideas. To encounter a rouge planet in deep space was nearly impossibility itself. That being said, to be thrown off course and to never encounter another star system ever again till the end of time was thus also a possibility.
To shoot off into the endless void, to the edge of the universe... A destination which they will never reach was a notion that was as chilling as deep space itself. To have taken the safest option only to end with nothing achieved... Was that something that Ryuzu really wanted for her passengers? To have the ship become their eternal graves, their bodies permanently frozen in cryo...
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Gritting her electronic teeth, Ryuzu activated the RCS thrusters and prepared herself for the upcoming battle. She will pull through the field. She had to. For the sake of the 1100 people on board. For the future of humanity.
The RCS thrusters fired silently in quick, controlled bursts of monopropellant. As soon as the maneuver was completed, the dust cloud was right before Seedship. Ryuzu diverted all power to the ship's anti-debris laser system (ADS) and to her own computer core. Electronic impulses fired wildly all across the ship as Ryuzu, managing both ADS and thrusters at the same time, pushed her own processing powers to the very limit.
The massive dust cloud glowed a dull red from the exhaust of the RCS thrusters with occasional flashes of bright blue from the ADS laser. Target after target, Ryuzu shot down. Rock after rock, the ship avoided. Seedship tumbled around in extremely erratic movements as its speed ever so slightly increased as it neared the periapsis of the planet.
Half way done. Half way more to go. Ryuzu told herself. The whole frame of the tiny ship rattled fervently as its hull groaned against the force being exerted against it. Smoke filled the ship cavities as a fire broke out in the reactor room. Alarms blared. Alert came after alert and Ryuzu was almost sure that the whole ship was being torn apart by the stress it was taking.
But alas, Seedship was built rugged and thick. The industrial design was ugly but very effective. This was proven once again as the shaking stopped and the dark shadow receded behind the plasma wash of the Seedship's engines. Ryuzu breathed an electronic sigh of relief and assessed the damage done to the ship.
Ryuzu breathed another sigh of relief to see that all 1100 passengers on board the vessel were all safe from harm. Not a single one of the cryosleep chambers had been damaged and all of them slept peacefully, ignorant to the crisis that nearly claimed their lives.
The reactor room was ablaze from the over exertion of the ship's feeble reactor, resulting in a crack in the magnetic confinement field. That could be easily patched up by temporally deactivating the reactor and patching the crack up with self sealing polymers. No major problem there. However, Ryuzu was a little bit more shocked to see a gaping hole in the port aft section of the ship.
Ryuzu's maneuvering was not perfect. Multiple dust particles had struck the outer hull, riddling the graphene reinforced ceramic armor plaiting with numerous cracks and craters. In most locations, the armor was not penetrated and the hull underneath it was unscathed. But the port aft section was struck by a rock, a mere 0.9 millimeters in diameter, and the energy released from the impact vaporized the rock and the armor layer under it. The resulting spalling ripped the hull wide open and blew apart nearly 30% of the scientific data storage subsystem.
Seedship's radiators were still glowing bright orange from built up heat. Tiny metal fragments were still flowing from the hull breach in the ship's hull, glistening like a thousand crystals under the light of the fusion engines. It will take long to repair the breach, but the scientific database can never be recovered.
Terabytes of data. Terabytes of scientific discoveries leading all the way up to the day of the exodus. The lives of millions of scientists. The dedication of that number, all lost in a blink of an eye. Their work was in vain.
Was this the correct decision to make? Would the outcome have been more ideal, if Ryuzu had chosen the former option? The AI could not help but contemplate to herself. But, it was too late to regret anything. What is done, is done. All Ryuzu could do now, is to push onwards and carry on with the journey.
Ryuzu did the necessary checks and repairs. She began the resealing of the hull using self-sealing polymers. It will set in 25 years. Seedship's course was readjusted and set back on track towards the G class star. With the reactor damaged, consequently the plasma injected into the engines will be limited. The maximum speed of 0.5 c cannot be achieved and hence, ETA to the destination will be longer than expected.
Ryuzu calculated that they will arrive in no more than 92 years.
The march of time continues. And Seedship will remain silent until the 92 years have passed. To the silent humans on board the ship, it will pass in no more than a blink of an eye.