Prologue: Despair III

Engineering, INS Gift, Somewhere in the Strunlek System

2966

“You ready?” asked me Alex Dereumaux over radio.

“Are you? We can still abort this.” I replied.

“You know there isn’t another way. The reactor starter is gone we have to do it manually. We have a duty to our frozen comrades.” There was a short moment of silence, then he continued silently. “Just don’t make me suffer.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Okay... start the procedure.”

I pressed the first button on the control panel. “Fuel rods are being injected… and they are in.”

I pressed the second button on the control panel. “Coolant circuit is coming online… Circulation looks good.”

I pressed the third button on the control panel. “Reactor is preheating… looks good.”

I looked at the fourth button on the control panel titled ‘ignition’. “Your turn Alex.” I said.

“It was an honor Commander.” Alex said and the reactor came back online to its second life, as he manually ignited the reactor from inside.

I jerked when I heard his screams over the radio and ran towards the reactor’s open maintenance hatch. I waited with the prepared medical equipment. I couldn’t enter myself and get him out. I had to wait that he made it on his own effort. If he made it at all… I waited and waited and was about to give up when a burned hand grabbed the frame of the hatch from the inside.

With all my power I grabbed and pulled him out from the reactor and on the ground. He screamed as his burned skin fell from his body under my touch. His hair was gone, what was left of his protective gear was melted to his skin, of which most was destroyed. I knew that these burns weren’t survivable. He knew it too. He looked at me pleadingly trying to get in a somewhat half erected position. I had made a promise.

“You won’t be forgotten Alex. I will make sure of that.” I said as I pulled my gun, held it to his skull and squeezed the trigger. The bang echoed in the room and Alex’s lifeless body slumped to the floor.

A single tear rolled down my face. I had shot my comrade. My friend. I had known him for years. He sacrificed himself for the greater good of the ship and its crew. And now I was alone…

---

I was standing inside of the CIC. Now, that the reactor was running again I could start to bring the ships systems online. Easier said then done. The Gift wasn’t exactly meant to be operated by a single person. Communication was first. I had to read through the manual for an hour as I wasn’t very familiar with this station but I was rewarded with a Connection to INS Gift established by Gerhard. The AI will be an exceptional help or well, the only help I got for the moment. It was able to follow simple instructions which I would otherwise have to execute manually at the corresponding stations. Gerhard will also help with keeping an overview. Making me obvious of any alerts or changed situation when I was asleep or when I was out and about on the ship, fixing things.

Second item on the agenda. Get the sensors online and find out where we have been drifting the last month. I worked with one of the backup sensor stations, as the main station had been disintegrated along with the sensor Lieutenant by the first railgun hit.

After some time the passive sensors started to drew a picture on the screen. I did my upmost to keep my fingers away from the active sensor suite. Its use could drew unwanted attention to the ship. What I saw on the screens… wasn’t good. The Gift was floating dead in space, surrounded by a field of debris and shipwrecks. Only the wide spread nature of the debris field likely prevented a major collision so far.

I took a look at the engines next. Most thrusters were faulty, but enough seemed to be operational to get the ship from A to B. I didn’t bring the thrusters online yet and only ran the system diagnostics, out of fear the drive plume would give away my position in the otherwise dead debris field. With no immediate risk of collision I would stay where I was and get a clear picture on the situation first.

I spend the next hours identifying wrecks with Gerhard and trying to find ships that could make a valid target for salvage. Life support parts were obviously on the top of my wish list but not every ship had compatible systems. So I cross checked the fleets manifest and other data that I had on the ships.

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I identified the INS Will of the Emperor relatively close to the Gift. The bow was missing, it seemed like her forward railgun batteries became instable and exploded. Probably that also took out the CIC. Main engineering seemed intact though. I plotted a course with the help of Gerhard that would take me close to the wreck without putting large forces on the Gift, as I didn’t trust her structural integrity one bit and I wanted to stand out as little as possible. Although the Will was close by, getting next to her would take close to 15 hours. As the sensors didn’t indicate any live ships nearby I instructed the computer to execute the maneuver.

I left the CIC and grabbed some food from the mess. We had more then enough MRE on board. Although I didn’t like them much, they were still better than starving. Today chili con carne was on the menu. After my solitary meal I checked the main airlock of the Gift. My spacer suite was fine for a vacuum, but outside of the ship I would need a more sophisticated suite. Those were stored in the airlocks of the ship. I found a suite that looked undamaged and put it on. Pressure check completed I connected and tested the jetpack next. The fuel container was punctured and I had to switch it with a spare one. All preparations done that I could, I retired to my cabin.

I let myself fall in my chair at my desk. It was the first moment of real silence, calm and rest in a month of fighting for survival and suddenly everything that had happened came over me all at once. I had functioned because I had to. Because it was my duty to my ship and crew. I let the tears flow, here where nobody could see them. I cried for Dereumaux, my friend who I had to shoot to end his suffering. For the sensor Lieutenant, who never realized what happened to him. I never even got his name. I cried for my family that would get a letter stating, that I was missing in action. They will never have certainty. I cried for the men and women that fought and died on all the ships all over the fleet. I cried to lament my own destiny. Stranded in an unexplored system far away from charted space. Cried because of the terrible state the whole world was in. I even cried for the dead commissar.

I cried until I didn’t had any more tears to cry. I slapped my cheeks with my palms. Enough of this Rayku I thought to myself. There is no quit in an imperial spacer. First you will fix the life support, so you don’t have to be alone no more. And then… and then… and then there will be some other step forward to take.

I fell on my bunk and was asleep near instantly, as the exhaustion overcame me.

---

I woke up from an alarm chiming triggered by Gerhard. “Ugh, yes?” Commander, the INS Gift will reach the wreckage of the INS Will of the Emperor shortly. This unit suggests taking preparations for salvage operations.

I sad up with a groan. The night was rather unrelaxed and permeated by nightmares. Some of them were old companions. Some of them were new, like the dropping of Dereumauxs burned body when I had shot him. That scene had replayed over and over in my head. “Did anything else happen while I was asleep?”

Sensors indicate multiple minor impacts to the hull by debris. No damage detected.

“No ships on the sensors?” I asked just to be sure.

No active ships have been detected by the sensors, Commander.

I stood up and made myself ready for the day. I cleaned myself up with a bit of water. A proper shower was still out of question. The water tanks had been perforated in the battle and I was down to bottled water. I grabbed some bred and jam from an already open MRE package and ate while I made my way to the airlock.

There I put on the suite that I had checked the day before. I triple checked everything once more and then I let Gerhard put the sensor data on the helmets hud and took some time to read the map. Both ships were floating abreast in space. The distance was down to a few hundred meters. With a punch on a button I triggered the airlocks decompression phase and shortly after – with a second button punch – I opened the gateway to space.

This wasn’t my first walk in space but the moment one walks out of a ship into the void always feels special. The endless vastness of space. So promising, yet so dangerous. I grabbed my tools and the jetpack propelled me away from my ship. I steered for one of the holes in the Will’s hull, supported by Gerhard and the Gift’s sensor output. This support was what made the transfer viable. I had to fly smaller escape maneuvers to avoid some minor debris that would otherwise have killed me.

I reached the ship and with a clang my magnetic boots snapped to the hull. I pushed my tools in first and followed suite through the hole that was likely the result of a railgun round. The inside of the Will looked much the same as the Gift prior to its makeshift repairs. Holes, all over the ship. No atmosphere, no gravity and floating dead bodies. I made my way to the engineering bay.

Engineering looked fine at first glance. The Wills reactor compartment had way heavier armor compared to the Gift. She was a heavy cruiser after all. No obvious holes in the hull. I took a look at the reactor and it seemed ready for operation. It likely shut down automatically as an emergency reaction when the CIC went silent.

I checked the side room that contained the life support converters next. They were undamaged, just like the reactor. I cheered, laughed and giggled like a mad man when I saw that. No higher ranking officer near by to reprimand me, right?

I removed the converters from the ship and prepared them for transport. Zero gravity was a major boon! I wouldn’t have been able to lift them alone. I maneuvered the spare part through the Will and was half way to the Gift when I called for Gerhard to disable the artificial gravity.

It took me two complete days to make makeshift repairs to the Gifts life support with the acquired parts. The compartment was nowhere to be fully functional but the increased throughput should allow me to wake up some of my crew! “Gerhard, calculate how many crew the life support system can support.”

The current state of the life support systems allow for five additional crew members, Commander.

Finally I wouldn’t be alone anymore. “Time to get some help.” I said to nobody in particular and made my way to the cryo chambers.