CHAPTER 28 - RUNNING ON FUMES

"What do you mean: what now?" Patch queried as the engineer looked at it.

"Aren't we over now, chief?" Temo Sabauri said, gesturing by widening his arms. "Without a warp drive, do you expect us to slowboat to Ilsh-Vusbaw?"

Like all crewmembers, he was conditioned to accept the worst hardships and horrible experiences with at least a modicum of nonchalantness. But of course, he was still a human, and his humanity still glimmered through.

The robot emitted a few ever-lowering beeps, akin to a sad trombone. "If we assumed every setback led to doom, we would not have made it anywhere near this far. Ensign Mo Laren, what is the size of the crack in the crystal?"

"I've only noticed it because of my attentiveness enhancements. It's around as long as a human finger and really thin."

"Ensign Sabauri, follow me," the robot said as it entered the warp chamber, pulling the human engineer along with itself. The empty space where there was previously a door did not give him much hope.

What Mo failed to mention was the state of the maintenance corridor's walls. Where there were buttons, knobs, and screens, there was scrap. It looked almost as if a grenade exploded in the corridor.

A small shred of radiator capillary plating, looking like a scaled-up sieve perhaps thirty centimeters in diameter, was lodged into what was the largest screen on the wall. Or rather, it would have looked like a fragment of a sieve, if it had not melted and fragmented into dozens of little pipes that were melted, crushed, and wedged into various surfaces in the maintenance hallway.

"...holy shit. Lady Luck's evil sister really hit the bullseye with that one," Temo sighed. "Is this really fixable?" Temo said.

"Are you doubting me, Patch, one of the finest engineers of the TQPAAS-238-12-1-B compound? My abilities: so great that upon the obsolescence of my compound, I was let free rather than recycled, by the grace of QDNE-32 itself!" The robot beeped. "Informing: most of these controls are only to ensure the smooth operation of the drive. It may continue to operate, with many issues, without most of them."

"Okay."

They walked further in. Mo was there, after a bend in the corridor, staring intently at the ajar inner door. It did still look like a bank vault from when there was still paper money, but one that was broken into with explosives.

"It looks like the seal mechanism is compromised," Mo said, sweeping a scanner across the gnarled, thick door. "But there is little damage to the material itself, whether kinetic or thermal. It is not bent."

"Help us dislodge the door," Patch intoned. The three grabbed the edge, the servos in the organics' hardsuits complementing those in the robot's fractal arms. With a creak, the chamber opened.

The blue lights in it were still lit, yet of course there was no gas. The spiky cone of the warp crystal, nevertheless, was still as supported as it always had been. The crack was between two spikes. Its plane scintillated in a bizarre manner when looked at directly, the glimmers and blinks resembling telescope photos of galaxies and nebulas, only infinitely more intricate, with seemingly more detail than a three-dimensional space could allow, as if it was a tiny door into a parallel, eldritch universe… but that was most likely an optical illusion. Nevertheless, it did not grow in any way, and the area was minor compared to the rest of the unit. The orbs from the platinum trough were still attached, and did not even get cracked. They were misaligned, however, but that was not difficult to fix.

As before, standing in the sloped area, with the chamber being as conical as the crystal, was somewhat difficult, but thankfully the ship was on a straight trajectory this time.

"We'll need to seal this room back up," Temo said, looking away from the crystal. "Let's go up to the emergency storage… actually wait, let's first make notes of everything that must be repaired here. After I figure out how to wipe the tears from my eyes in this helmet…"

"Do not be sad. Human emotions are not known to have any structurally restorative properties upon Ugolnikov-Thompson crystals," Patch intoned. "I and Mo will inspect the crack after preliminary repairs are done."

"No shit sir, I meant that looking at that thing feels like a needle in my eyeballs!"

Mo, meanwhile, knelt down and stared. In the much softer lighting here, the golden-plated visors were semitransparent. The genemod's large black eyes did not even twitch.

Aside from the compromised door and thus depressurized chamber, the misaligned orbs, and the damaged crystal, the only serious problem was a shorted-out hydrogen pump that would fill the drive room.

It took only two-and-a-half hours to repair all of those, except of course for the crystal itself. Several trips back up to the emergency storage room were required, but overall the operation went without issues. Temp was somewhat weary, but as his shift was not over, he had to press on. For the good of the mission.

And then, the three brought a special toolbox. It was much bulkier than the regular ones, and was painted a reflective bright pink.

"Did a relmai design this thing?" Temo said as they hauled it into the chamber. It was weighty even compared to its size.

"It's for warp diagnostics," Laren explained succintly. "We'll find out if we're really stranded here. Don't you know magenta, pink, purple are warp colors?"

"Right, we were briefed on this… I think… weeks ago… and before that I faintly remember it from engi school… look, it's hard to keep in my mind when the chamber is blue," Temo placed the box down on the slope. It did not slide even though it was tilted, thanks to magnets on its bottom.

"Blue is reserved for medicine, and purple is considered 'mysterious'," Laren said.

"So you'll be finding out if we're really stranded here, or if it's just a flesh wound?"

"Yes."

Patch silently opened it. Inside were several tools that looked like small metal detectors, oversized stethoscopes that connected to a screen instead of ears, or elongated laser pointers. Temo had no idea what any of these were, and Patch and Mo seemed to be silently looking at each other. The latter knelt down motionlessly.

"...are we going to start any time soon…?" the human engineer said after half a minute.

"Explanation: Mo has a BCI. We are talking in concepts. Concepts are easier when talking about Ugolnikov fields," Patch explained.

Temo cleared his throat. "I was offered to get one installed for free back when they were doing that engi department reform… but then I felt queasy about having things stuck in my brain. Anyways, this is far from my specialty. Am I still needed here?"

"Verify all the seals and wiring. Then you may go," Patch intoned.

***

2 May 2231

The command crew, all the while, stayed up. They were already informed of the damage to the drive, but not the extent of it, and were all anxious and preparing for the worst. Elektra had already returned, and she was easily the calmest of the five present. The silence from the engineers was worrying.

"Maaaaybe they got killed somehooow?" Kuw said.

Elektra sighed. "This is the third time you ask me this… but I understand. This is the worst we had. And hopefully… no I won't tempt fate," she spun around in her chair. Of the twenty-five lines in the crew manifest, only a few had injuries, and none of them were Temo, Mo, or Patch.

The errand was not even done when a definitive diagnosis, not of people but of the crystal, was made.

Kuw's screen blinked and started showing a call without a prompt. This was because Patch was calling from inside the ship.

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"Apologizing for the wait," Patch's monotonous voice intoned. "We have discovered the exact amount and effect of the damage."

"Right," Kuw gestured. "Please just… keep it to the important details pleeeease."

Jamaad nodded in the background.

"Only minor structural damage to crystal. Effect: warp speed only somewhat affected. Mitigated by orbs. However: stopping warp mid-jump will destroy crystal completely. Voices may or may not get somewhat worse."

Jamaad sighed. "Well, that's nowhere near as bad as I feared. But the ace in our sleeve, the way we could evade a pursuer at the cost of some drive lifetime by changing course to a different system, has been taken from us. Anyways, thank you Patch and the others."

Artur slammed his muzzle into his desk. "It's my fault! I lost my shit and fired off the missile early. I'm a fucking moron."

The captain shook his head. "Who of us wasn't losing their shit? Patch? In your position I'd likely have caused far more damage. Don't worry."

Patch beeped. "As for myself, I admit: I am not fit for captaincy over organics. I admit this mission would not have lasted long with me at the helm."

"You too, don't be so harsh on yourself," Jamaad said. "No matter the truth of it, it's not good for anyone's morale. And we need morale the most. A self-loathing crew is a self-destructing crew."

***

They tried their best to recover said morale over the next seven hours that were spent during the drive's recovery time. According to Mo's calculations, the usual refractory phase was 'paused' while the drive chamber was depressurized. The causes went over almost everyone's heads, except for the summary, which he gave after being pressured a bit. Apparently, one of the causes of the drive needing 'recharging' was that the hydrogen gas had to diffuse through the crystal. Part of why the Pheidippides' drive needed so much less time to recover after each jump was a sophisticated microstructure that consisted of nigh-invisible, branching fractal capillaries to deliver the gas to every cubic micrometer of the crystal. The reason this was rarely used in most ships was that the difficulty and cost of creating this pattern rose exponentially with crystal size, rendering it impractical for anything larger than a scout. In addition, this porosity was what reduced the drive's operational life to such a low time.

"...of course, I dumbed everything down by an order of magnitude," Laren finished.

"This makes sense," Elektra said. "And I didn't pick anything not related to biology or the humanities from highschool on. You did fine."

***

The battle still raged in the distance, visible as the swirling plumes of torch drives interspersed with flashes that got rarer and rarer. All other fleets in the system avoided the confrontation in general and the scout ship in particular, so eventually the ship reached the coveted boundary.

As the ship entered warp, the hull groaned and whined like a pig, and the crew almost felt their bodies and minds be turned inside out for a tiny fraction of a second. And again, and again, and again, for ever-tinier fractions of that same second, which seemed to gradually die down yet never stop, the inversions increasing in frequency as to become infinite while decreasing in intensity as to become infinitesimal, yet never quite reaching these values...

But before even a single thought of impending doom could cross anyone's head– even Patch and Mo's optimized minds– this asymptotic echo melted into the familiar voices for humans on board, stronger and even more disjointed; an even-more-dissonant melody for the relmai; and jittery and glitchy white noise for Patch.

And yet, it seemed… normal? Nobody felt nauseous. Nobody felt like they were losing their mind. Nobody was afflicted with a nosebleed. They quickly managed to mitigate the voices, however: some by drowning it out with music or binaural beats, others by rapidly counting under their breath or reciting poetry or song lyrics, while yet others simply steeled themselves through the cacophony.

***

"Please don't tell me this will be another akyzh system," Rachel said as she stood up from her console. She was preparing to go to bed. The course was set earlier, but due to the right mess that the ship underwent, she forgot where they were meaning to travel next.

"No. Well, remember what I told you about the peyrhyll?" Jamaad said. "We'll be getting to the edge of what used to be their empire. The system is called Doyr Mnyl. It, and really the whole sector, is in a state of chaos and disputed between: the Ypikysuny Vice-Empire, a dal-ghar puppet state; an akyzh collective, one with black spiral markings; a yollkul warlord with some crazy ambitions; and the forces of Peyr Lakba, a peyrhyll organized crime leader who is rumored to have ties with the Sharkteeth Syndicate. You know, Akshaya's gang. He likes collecting precursor artifacts. The last one is in decent control of the system, and he's probably the least bad option, but he's still a greedy bastard. Keep on guard."

"...we're really on the dal-ghar doorstep aren't we? It just gets worse and worse. Ypik… what are the ypik like?" Rachel asked as she sat back down. She anticipated yet another astropolitical discussion with the captain.

"We'll probably not meet one, and neither will you. I'll keep it short. Cow-sized, bright yellow, sulfur-dependent bird-hippos. Willingly collaborated with the dal-ghar, and thus they became a Vice-Empire instead of a Viceroyalty. They enjoy a lot of autonomy, but really they're getting culturally genocided as much as the syanndree or the rrktq are. It's just more insidious. Subtle propaganda instead of book burnings. Bribes and conditioning instead of public executions. And so on, and so forth. Fewer dal-ghar noble families have a presence there," Jamaad said.

"So why do the dal-ghar do this? Why invade half of the Oval? Why strive to wipe out alien cultures…? If they are so afraid of competition, wouldn't it be easier to simply kill the others and settle their land?" Rachel said, somewhat exasperated.

Jamaad leaned back. "Essentially, it's species-wide trauma, and a desire for revenge, tempered by pragmatism. I actually forgot, is this in the exocultural studies curriculum in school? Or in university? It has to be."

Rachel shook her head. "Sir, I admit… I kinda remember that, but I forgot everything from school by now, and our exohistory professor was a bore. We hear so much about the Iron Empire and its crimes, but we don't really learn the whys of it from the media."

Jamaad smirked. "The media gets engagement from shock and horror. I mean, in this case there really is horror, but that doesn't change the fact that history doesn't keep viewers reading or watching. Anyways, the dal-ghar are not the only species on their planet. The saacxit-jxuumzu were, or rather are, just like them… four-eyed snake people, red or bronze scales… but the saacxit not only were slightly more intelligent, but their natural habitat was not only separated by a great desert– they have death-deserts instead of oceans, being from the arid planet Bhoz– but had many more natural resources compared to the dal-ghar habitat. When the saacxit reached a level of development roughly similar to Earth's Renaissance era, they crossed the desert and enslaved the dal-ghar, which had just reached the iron age by then. The dal-ghar were used as slave labor, and many colonies were set up to effectively exploit them. And then… well, the saacxit unearthed a precursor vault that was apparently in their heartland. The vault had a bioweapon in it that the dal-ghar happened to be immune to due to a mutation present in much of their population. Saacxit society collapsed, and as the masters overseeing the mines and plantations melted into piles of blood and ruptured organs, a dal-ghar warlord, or rather warlady– they're very matriarchal– named Pqaa-mul-ghor rallied the former slaves, forming a huge army that conquered the remnants of the devastated saacxit kingdoms. Those saacxit who also had the mutation and thus survived the plague were enslaved in turn, as the system of serfdom was turned on its former masters. The dal-ghar began using them as administrators, scientists, bureaucrats, and domestic servants," Jamaad explained.

Rachel nodded. "Thanks!"

"What about the vampiiiires? I heard they have 'vampires' hiding in their population. Is thaaaat just an excuse for them to execute people?" Kuw said.

The captain chuckled. "Some saacxit, instead of dying, had their brains altered heavily by the bioweapon. They became semi-sapient, cannibalistic, murderous mutants. They were slaughtered by the dal-ghar army, but some fled to the vast caves under Bhoz's deserts and bred there. The current dal-ghar government, still under the Mul dynasty, has flooded the upper levels of the caves with neurotoxic gas, destroying the cave ecosystem in the process, but… apparently… some of the vampires managed to, well how do I say it…" Jamaad looked upwards.

"Whaaat?"

Jamaad coughed. "...I'll drop the formal dialogue here. Some dal-ghar have slept with some of the vampires at some point, getting the affected DNA into the gene pool. Thus some dal-ghar act like the vampires did, yet are able to hide better. They are scarily effective serial killers, often with hundreds of victims. Some even get into leadership positions. There's a reason the dal-ghar are famous for their paranoia."

"...wow."

Rachel thought for a bit. "I suppose that's part of why they haven't moved away from feudalism. It's easier to make sure rulers don't have vampire blood when they're of the same bloodline."

"Yeah," Jamaad said. "They do screen their eggs' DNA, but the half-vampires are crafty enough to trick the tests."

Artur laughed. "What if, somehow, a hidden vamp inherits a whole sector, because someone in the noble family got frisky a few centuries ago?"

"That hasn't happened yet, so far as we can tell," Jamaad said. "But if, or when, it does… there will be blood. I know you guys don't study much human history, but do you know the Roman emperor Nero? Or Caligula? Imagine those, multiplied tenfold."

The conversation gradually winded down into unrelated, and rather mundane subjects, even after Rachel and Kuw left. The captain and the weapons officer had to pass the time somehow, and distract themselves from the babbling voices.

***

The warp was akin to the early days of the mission: an utter pandemonium.

3 May 2231

Eleven hours passed. Rachel had already woken up four hours before, then went back to eat. Kuw, meanwhile, was relaxing in the entertainment room. There was nobody to call or receive calls from, after all.

The warp ended right as they came back. The gravity kicked back in quickly as Patch, somewhere below in the engineering bay, turned on the engines, letting the ship travel along its in-system course.

Rachel launched the scan. It finished quickly.

She inhaled deeply, then sighed and closed her eyes.

"The yacht is here. Yes, that one, the Greenish Pearl. The one we had to evade into kjee space. It's fucking here. I don't know how. But it arrived seemingly right before we did. It's… in a different quadrant of the system, but…"

She slammed her face into the keyboard and whimpered incoherently.