I stared up at the blimp-sized Ulderani built jumpdrive and marveled at its elegance. If humans had built the thing, I thought to myself, they wouldn’t have made it into a perfect silver teardrop-shaped work of art. The lines of the device were broken only by gold etchings in geometric shapes and holographic displays featuring elegant Ulderani runic script. The only nod to human engineering was all the various cables and struts powering the device and holding it firmly at the starship’s center of mass.
“A beaut, ain’t she?” The rough voice of the third shift’s Chief Engineer asked from right beside my ear. Startled, I whirled to face him.
“Yes sir!” I replied sharply, thinking I was about to get reprimanded for standing around slack-jawed in awe.
“No need for sirs here,” the man laughed sourly, “I’m the least respected officer on the ship, and that’s even despite the fact that my bastard of a cousin, mister high and mighty captain himself, is a drunkard.”
I recoiled a bit, surprised at my boss’s casual tone and even more casual insult. Wasn’t he worried that it would get back to the captain’s ear? Something of my concern must of shown on my face, for the man gave a wry grin.
“Relax, it's the third shift, even the Shipbrain is sleeping. There’s no one listening in, and even if they did, he’s heard me say worse. I can’t wait to get off this boat. They put me in charge of the third shift for the last twenty years! Nothing ever fucking happens, its the most boring thing imaginable. Even routine maintenance tasks are done during first and second shift, third shift is just a few losers like me sitting around waiting for an emergency.” My boss continued in a different tone, obviously mimicking the captain; “Can’t risk doing any real work while the Shipbrain’s asleep, that’s too dangerous.”
I shook my head, at a loss as to what to say. Even I, an engineer on her first day on the job, knew that the Shipbrain was a real human who needed to sleep six hours a day to stay healthy, even if he was a brain in a jar. No amount of cyber tech had yet managed to completely remove that need. The Shipbrain might not have any organic body to wear out, but his completely human brain still needed downtime. A Shipbrain was the job title for the person hardwired into a ship, merged with the ship’s computer, not a piece of hardware.
With the human part of the hybrid cybernetic computer that ran the ship asleep, everything was running on autopilot. Without the Shipbrain, the ship’s computer was no different than any other computer, relying on preprogrammed instructions that couldn’t hope to handle unexpected situations.
While he was awake, the Shipbrain could operate the ship entirely on his own. He could feel every system as if it was his own body. He could react to problems faster than any human engineer could possibly even notice them. That safety net made it possible to operate a massive colony ship like this one with less than a hundred crewmen, despite being many times larger than the largest wet navy aircraft carrier.
The Shipbrain did most of the real work of engineering, everyone else was there just as backups to the automated repair systems that the Shipbrain controlled, systems that were offline while he slept. It was insanely dangerous to try to do any major tasks without the Shipbrain’s help, as problems could more easily slip by undetected and be much harder to fix without all the robots to help. In an emergency, the Shipbrain would automatically wake up, but he’d be as disoriented and confused for a few crucial seconds as anyone else pulled out from deep sleep would be. He was still human after all.
“You’re the new hire, Sam Deckart?” my new boss asked.
I nodded, “Yes…” I was about to say sir, but he’d basically told me not to. I had no idea how to continue. “...Chief,” I concluded after a pause.
He gave me a sour look. Taking my hesitation for lack of respect? Something ugly clouded his face, but then he looked at my contrite expression and decided I’d meant no harm, and he switched back to an easy smile. I should have been relieved, but I was worried. the man didn’t seem too stable.
“You don’t need to know my name, your assignment to the third shift is temporary. Chief is fine.” He said. At my worried look, he explained further, “My cousin will slot you into a real shift soon enough. He put you here so I could show you the ropes while nothing else is going on,” the man sneered. “I asked him to be put in charge of one of the real shifts, and what do I get? A babysitting job!”
My new and apparently temporary boss swayed unsteadily. For all his accusation of the captain being a drunkard, he himself was the one who looked a bit drunk. Drunk and upset. It looked like nepotism had gotten him his current job, but he wasn’t trusted enough for more important tasks, I thought to myself.
“That’s all I’m good for,” the man continued morosely, “Babysitting. I get all the rejects from the main shift. Punishment detail. And fresh out of engineering school new hires like you. First time seeing an Ulderani jumpdrive? Bleh! I’ve been staring up at that thing for decades and I never get to actually use the thing. All jumps scheduled during the main shift! Captain gets to press the button himself, rank has its privilege! Well, this time, I’m going to teach him!” The third shift chief engineer announced angrily. Then, he turned and walked over to the main console underneath the jumpdrive.
“Chief!?” I trailed after him anxiously. I was the only one who could stop this drunken engineer from doing something stupid, but he was my boss! Did I want to get fired on my first day? Eight years of engineering and space training thrown away because of one idiot?
“Don’t worry. The nav coordinates are already programmed in, all I have to do is just use this terminal over here to hit the go button. Won’t that be something? Me pressing the button while the old man’s asleep. See how he likes all the alarms going off in the middle of his night instead of my night! Every fucking time, I’m the one that has to lose sleep when they do maneuvers and jumps, not today! I’m quitting anyway, might as well pull one last prank while I still can.” He mumbled to himself.
I followed him up two flights of stairs and across a walkway. We were heading right up to the jumpdrive itself. The room containing the massive device was a multi-story affair the size of a stadium, there were only a few other bored engineers in the room, and they were all on the ground floor, blissfully unaware of the rapidly developing drama that was unfolding.
The terminal we were about to reach was the emergency control console meant to be used in case of emergencies if the bridge crew was dead or some other calamity. It was built into the side of the jump drive itself and wasn’t designed with nearly as many safety protocols or user-friendliness as the main navigation terminal up in the bridge. It was even displaying raw information in Ulderani script rather than translating automatically.
“This is a terrible idea, Chief,” I told him. “Please think about it, they’ll definitely fire you if you do this!” I told him urgently. I was seriously considering tackling him, but we’d probably both fall off the narrow walkway if I tried.
The chief engineer smashed his finger into the console, “Don’t care anymore.” He muttered angrily. “Either way, this is going to be my last trip.”
Nothing happened, an error message flashed across the screen in Ulderani, a direct prompt from the jumpdrive itself, unfiltered through layers of human interface. The Ulderani were notorious for not including any idiot-proofing on their technology, they seemed to assume that the user always knew what he or she was doing. The error prompt that flashed seemed like a miracle, a rare instance of Ulderani tech bothering to try to stop you from doing something suicidal.
“Capacitors not fully charged, jump aborted,” it read, in the Ulderani script.
“What the hell? What is this thing trying to tell me?” He asked in confusion.
“The capacitors aren’t full yet,” I told him, mildly surprised he didn’t know how to read Ulderani. Starship engineers were taught the written language since a lot of the high-tech devices used on board came from the Ulderani. Many crew, myself included, learned to speak it as human ships routinely stopped at Ulderani stations and we were allowed “shore” leave if we could prove we knew enough not to get into trouble. I hadn’t had the chance to actually see an Ulderani station yet, but I’d been top of my class in the language course at my university. It had been taught by the only Ulderani I’d ever met, and I had pestered her with endless questions about their culture. You could say I was an Ulderani fangirl, I’d even watched a lot of their entertainment programs, even though they were pretty weird by human standards.
After first contact sixty years ago, the Ulderani had introduced humanity to FTL. Our species was still centuries behind the Ulderani's tech level, but they were happy to sell us their machines. Humanity mostly did mercenary work to earn the credits we used. Overall, it wasn’t a terrible deal, the Ulderani paid our soldiers well enough that they could retire in modest luxury after a five-year tour by converting their earned Ulderani credits to dollars or euros. There was no shortage of volunteers, but I’d never wanted to be a soldier and had studied hard to earn a slot on one of humanity's few civilian starships instead.
My boss, who had clearly not worked nearly so hard to get his slot, pointed his wrist comp at the terminal’s screen, prompting the translation function. “Huh, you’re right, I guess you probably know how to read that gibberish. Yet another reason I’ll never get promoted, no one bothered to teach me that in school when I was your age.” He complained, never stopping to think that in the decades since, he could have just learned on his own. “But I do remember that this is the override button,” he told me with a grin, pressing a big yellow button labeled “Emergency Jump”.
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“Chief!” I exclaimed, reacting too slowly to stop him.
“Relax, the capacitors are at 90%, most jumps only take 60 to 80% charge anyways, we’ll be fine. Bet they don’t teach you that in your fancy school.” He told me smugly.
“Emergency Jump Initiated.” the screen now read.
I gaped in horror. “What have you done?” I whispered.
The jumpdrive was humming now in rising pitch, the air around us filling with a palpable feeling of static as enormous amounts of energy flowed into the jumpdrive. I tried to run past the man and press the Abort button, it was our only chance!
“Hold on there, newbie!” The chief grabbed my arm, “What are you trying to do?”
“Gotta stop it!” I said, struggling to pull free, “We’re going to die if we don't!”
“I already told you, capacitors are fine.” He told me angrily. “I know what I’m doing!”
“You triggered the EMERGENCY jump! Not the normal coordinates! We’re jumping to our preset emergency jump location. The Ulderani always preset that to a species's home planet! Earth! You’re sending us to Earth!”
“What?” The man frowned. “But we’re already in orbit around Earth.”
“YES! You fucking idiot! You just triggered a zero-distance jump. You can’t jump any distance shorter than half a lightyear! The jumpdrive is going to rip us to shreds trying!” I yelled, my patience finally snapping.
The man let go of my arm in shock, and I rushed to the console, desperately hitting the Abort button repeatedly.
“Error, gravity coils have already begun to spool up. Unable to abort, gravity coils can not be discharged without finalizing the jump. Jump will occur when gravity coils are at full charge.”
It was too late. We were all going to die. I remembered being told that the abort sequence would only work within a few seconds at most. Clearly, I’d already missed that window. I racked my brain trying to think of what else we could do to stop the jumpdrive, but panic was clouding my thoughts. I set the display to show the status of the gravity coils to see how much longer we had to live.
“Gravity coils at 12%... 15%... 18%...”
This wasn’t a scenario I’d ever run in the simulator, what did you do when your boss just doomed your entire ship out of sheer stupidity? Wait! I can’t believe I’d almost forgotten. There is supposed to be a manual power decoupler switch around here somewhere...
I glanced at my chief, he was pointing his wrist comp at the Ulderani screen, translating the messages. He was as pale as a ghost, he knew the abort had failed. But rather than take action, he was just gaping like a slack-jawed idiot as the drive hummed in increasing volume as it spooled up. “Where is the manual power decoupler?” I asked him, pointing at the massive power conduits running into the jumpdrive.
“What?” He asked, stupidly.
“The trigger to the explosives on the cables! Physically separates the jumpdrive from our power, so we can stop the jump!” I shook him, trying to trigger some semblance of intelligence. The room was full of panels and I didn’t have time to guess where the hell the right one was. It was my first day on the job, and I’d never had time to learn my way around this unfamiliar ship.
Alarm claxons began to sound, and the voice of the Shipbrain came on the speakers. “What the hell have you morons done?” He asked, sounding a bit groggy. Not how I wanted to be introduced to the second most important person on the ship, after the captain. “Shit, nevermind I’ve just replayed the footage. For fucks sake, this is why nepotism is bad. I’m shunting power, rerouting and engaging all the circuit breakers...”
“No!” I yelled up at the speakers, where I knew one of the Shipbrain’s many electronic eyes to be, “You’ll fry...” I started to explain, but it was too late.
For a brief moment, as I tried to warn the Shipbrain, the jumpdrive went completely silent, as if the energies inside had been turned off like a misbehaving motor and harmlessly shut down. Everything went dark, as all the ship’s power systems began to fail, starting with the simple lights that kept the engineering area lit.
Then with a thunderous roar, the power conduits connecting to the drive became incandescent with crackling lightning tearing through them. They should have melted, the discharge from too many electrons trying to take the path of least resistance through the superconducting cables but overflowing into arcs that tore through the room, bathing everything in a flickering rave of blinding light that sounded like a million bug zappers stacked together. It was a deafening, blinding assault on my senses. But the power conduits were made from an Ulderani alloy that was basically impossible to overheat, so instead, every human-built circuit in the ship took the brunt of the damage, being the weaker link in the hybrid human/alien power system.
Right before the room became an electric disco, the chief had started to point at a panel on one wall, two floors up. It must be the manual power decoupler, I thought to myself. It was the only way to end this ongoing power surge.
The Shipbrain was screaming over the speakers as I raced up the stairs, distant explosions shook the metal stairs as circuit breakers all across the ship exploded. Part of the feedback from the nightmarish electric storm we’d unleashed had run through the neural interface and physically cooked the organic tissue. I didn’t know it then, but that sound over the speakers was the death cry of a brain being boiled alive inside its own jar.
There was no way I should have made it to that switch. I didn’t know it then, but I know it now; the lightning arcing through the room should have fried me as surely as the backlash fried the Shipbrain. But I was so focused on reaching that switch that I simply didn't notice how multiple arcs of lightning smashed into an invisible barrier that formed like a bubble around me. I was shielded somehow, protected against the impossible storm. I’d focused so hard on my one task, I didn’t even realize that I’d awakened something inside me to achieve it. Some hidden power that gave me dominion over electric forces even when blissfully unaware of what I was doing.
Impossible of course, no one can awaken magic in our universe, there’s no such thing. But… in that space, in that room, we were already partly outside of my old reality. If I could have seen the ship from the outside, I’d have seen it as already translucent, flickering in and out of existence to the alarm of every observer in Earth orbit. The null jump had already begun.
Ignorant of the drama all around me, I reached the panel, opened it, broke the security glass, and pulled the red lever inside. It resembled an emergency fire alarm, but it was clearly labeled with warning signs as the power disconnect switch. I prayed that I wasn't too late. With a muffled pop, small explosives severed the cables from the jump drive, causing them to fall away, ending the electric light show.
Silence again. Did it work? Was the jumpdrive going to safely stay dead now that it no longer had direct access to the juicy electrons of the rest of the ship? For a brief moment, I hoped that this would be enough, that I’d saved the ship. Then, of course, I died, but that’s the last thing I remembered, that second of hope before being engulfed in darkness.
--- Shipbrain's commentary ---
Hi. This is me from the future, providing optional technical reading material. Feel free to skip if you don't care.
First, let me address what is likely a common question. I suppose you might be wondering why I, a fresh graduate from engineering school, with no real-world experience on a starship knew better than the old Shipbrain, a person who should know everything about the ship they are in as if it were their own body. The biggest reason for that seeming contradiction is that humanity has been using Ulderani tech for about sixty years without understanding it.
The first generation of engineers had no idea how any of it worked. By the second generation, humanity had pieced together some clues, just enough to think they had a handle on things. But it hasn’t been until my generation, the so-called third generation, that we actually understood what was going on inside the jumpdrives, and it was terrifying.
We were taught to be cautious of Ulderani technology in ways previous generations had not been. The second generation had no respect for the forces involved, a cavalier attitude about the machinery that, in a situation that was unexpected, led them to think common-sense solutions like rerouting power and putting some flimsy circuit breakers into play would be a good idea.
It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. I can even tell you why.
You see, inside the jumpdrive are coils made of neutronium, only a few nanometers thick, but still several tons worth of material. Through a process we are only barely starting to understand, the jumpdrive breaks down that neutronium into protons and electrons. What you are left with is an impossibly tightly packed macro-atom with far too many protons trying to fission rather violently, and a lot of electrons in an impossibly confined space. The electrons are so confined that they are way past the Pauli Exclusion Principle’s limit and somehow that forces them to decay into gravitons.
Thus, a gravitational field is generated, and as a side effect, you end up with a multi-ton macro-atom with a ridiculously positive charge. The incredible gravitation field generated by the process held that monstrosity together just long enough for the gravity to rip a hole through the fabric of spacetime, pull the ship through the hole, then the process reversed itself. That reversal needed a LOT of free electrons, as there was no way to convert gravitons back into electrons. The jumpdrive consumed a ton of hydrogen just to recover enough electrons to re-neutronium-ify the gravity coils. The free protons produced were then just vented into space while the electrons were used. If there isn’t enough power to strip the hydrogen “fuel”, then you are left with an imbalance of charge. And that’s really bad news for a power system that runs on AC, because you are looking at a DC power drain of massive proportions.
Well, you don’t need to understand all that, humanity certainly didn’t and we could use the tech just fine. The important thing is, If you tried to interrupt the process, you needed to be very damn thorough about it and physically separate the power cables from the jumpdrive. Because when the jumpdrive lost power, it didn’t react well. It really wanted electrons. If you pictured a stormcloud and remembered that it was just a cloud with a slight imbalance of electrons that shot lightning bolts to rid itself of them, then pictured that times a few thousand and in reverse, you’d have an idea of most of the engineers in the room died. Although, interestingly enough, I died for a slightly different jumpdrive-related reason...