Fateful Journey (492 hits)
Category: GeneralLabels: SciFi
Rating: 2 on 8 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by shadow (View user info) at 2007-05-22 14:15:40 EDT
"This ship is the fastest hunk of titatnium this side of the Crab Nebula!" So claimed Captain Wren over the p.a. system. He was very proud of his ship, and inspite of his lack of an engineering degree, he would go on for hours about all of the fantastic features to be found on the Maven. "The Maven has a full crew compliment, finest men and women in the multiverse! And you'll never find a tool out of place or a coffee stain on the whole ship, she's spotless, fearless and peerless!" The crew smiled into their monitors numbly, waiting for this weekly motivational speech to be over.
Mark had given up smiling. He watched the monitor with half an eye, putting the rest of his concentration into his handheld datapad three inches below the monitor where hardcore porn was playing. The good captain really couldn't hold a candle the "Venus Anus" after all. When at last it was over, he turned off both devices and set to his work day.
Mark was one of five "maintainence engineers" in a crew of two hundred thirty scientists, data specialists and actual engineers.. He hated the title "maintainence engineer," he thought it sounded glorified and pretentious; he reffered to himself and his four colleagues as "space janitors." He was, among the five, the lowest ranking space janitor, having invested little time and effort into his career. He had hoped that by this point in his life he would have a better job, maybe a girlfriend or at least a worthwhile hobby, but for a high school dropout in a world of academy trained intellects, the prospects were slim.
Opportunities were especially hard to come by for Earthies.
In the three centuries following the development of the deuterium reaction engine, man had stretched his many colored fingers into the far reaches of space. Earth became the rundown neighborhood of the galaxy, a place known for piracy and lawlessness. The Earth Born Coucil had made repeated attempts at what could be likened to global urban renovation, attempting to take back the slum, revive the trade districts, return culture to the people. These programs had met with only marginal success. Mark at age sixteen had seen enough of Earth's ghettos, and had stolen just enough money to catch a ride to the Lunar Outpost. It had all gone south from there.
Ten years later, here he was. Space Janitor.
Daily he asked himself why. Why hadn't he found something else along the way? Why hadn't he been given just one opportunity to do something better? Why had he not been able to save a dime for school? All of these thoughts swirled round in his head as he boarded the lift for C Deck, and the row of toilets that lined the men's room in Corridor 12.
Little did Mark know, today was going to give him that opportunity he'd been waiting for; a chance to get noticed by his superiors, a chance to see what life is like when people look up to you, instead of pissing on your floor. Little did anyone on the ship know that they were heading into a field of micro singularitites, despite the "best sensor array in the known universe." Little did anyone know what to do when a quantum singularity got to close to a hulking titanium ship.
Humans had known about black holes for hundreds years. Hell, we have even learned how to track them on their birazze glutonous voyages through space. The problem is the sensors were geared to look for big threats, huge singularities that swallow up the space around them. Long range sensors constantly scanned for areas to avoid. Micro singularities were an altogether different problem. Sometimes they were no more than an atom's width accross; these were typically harmless. Sometimes though, they could be wider, the size of a datapad or a shuttle pod. Fortunately these are typically covered by a minature event horizon, allowing the short range censors to pick up a flux in scan-return time, letting the ship safely swerve out of the path of the gaping maw of gravity, like dodging a pothole in the road.
But then, there were naked singularities; black holes with no event horizon.
So rare that the best minds of the times could not create accurate computer models to account for their occurances. So strange that a team of four ships was once deployed to study a single occurance. Hidden in dust clouds, masked by radiation flux, the Maven was about to stumble across the single most important discovery of the last twenty years.
That is if they could survive it, of course.
Mark was scrubbing a porcelin thrown when he felt the first flux. Suddenly his head was swimming and his gut turned upside down. Then it was gone, just as fast as it had hit him. He shrugged it off, must have been that reconstitiuted breakfast burrito. He stood up and leaned back against the door to the stall, taking in a deep breath of amonia saturated air. Maybe all these years of inhaling cleaning products was begining to have an adverse effect on his health. He leaned his head back just in time to see a concave bubble of distorted air and ship pass over his head, deforming the ceiling tiles and replacing them as it went. That's just weird he thought, and decided to get some air.
"Getting air" on a space ship is a tricky thing as the odds are you've been breathing the same assortment of particles over and over since you left your last space dock. The only thing that keeps the crew alive are filters; massive coils of porous material through which the air of the ship passes in regular intervals. The "freshest" air one can find is near the exhaust of these coils on each level at the end of every third compartment. Mark made his way to Corridor 15 and resumed his leaning when he arrived. An announcement came over the p.a. system, "Attention crew, we are experiencing annomalous gravitational disturbances. All non-essential crew return to your quarters immediately, remain there until further notice." Mark was never one to second guess an excuse to get out of work, so he made his way back the the lift.
Along the way he came across Penny Benjamin, a biologist who studied extra terrestrial micro organsims. Toady she had worn her long brown hair in a loose ponytail, a little pink eyeshadow over her blue eyes. She seemed a bit shaken, apparantly she too had witnessed the concave bubbles of distortion passing through the ship. She had always smiled at Mark in passing, which he felt was a good enough reason to ask her on a date. Dates aboard the Maven typically revolved around a nice reconstituted meal and an archive film on one of the larger monitors. She had turned him down, saying at the time that she was "really into her career." Mark didn't take it personally, after all what would a biologist want with a space janitor.
"Hi Penny." He said simply. "Weird stuff going on huh?" He shook his head, he must have sounded like a jackass.
"Yeah. Your quarters are on F Deck, right?" He nodded. "Me too. Would you mind walking with me?" He smiled.
"Sure."
The lift smoothly slid down the two floors separating C from F and came to a halt. They emerged and looked long down the corridor in each direction, like two kids about to cross a street. Tenatively, Mark stepped out onto the polished gray floor and offered Penny his hand, she took it with a nervous smile. They walked the long hall without looking at each other, without speaking. Just as they reached her door, Mark asked "would you like me to come in? I can wait with you until the whole thing is over."
"That would be nice." She replied. As the door opened, they heard a strange sound, something like twisting metal echoing around them. The sound grew louder and it was clear that it was getting closer. Penny opened the door and stepped in. The sound hit a crescendo. Another bubble was passing through very near them, this one much bigger than the others.
They stood for a moment, waiting to see where it was, where it was heading. Penny spotted it moving along the exterior wall of the cabin. "Look!" She pointed just as it was reaching her port hole window, it had taken spots and pieces of the wall with it as it passed, sucking them into its interior where they vanished, lost forever.
The porthole cracked. The singularity had taken a small piece of its structure away, just a tiny hole that would lead from the cabin to the vast empty vacuum of space beyond.
It was just enough.
Suddenly the entire porthole shattered and blew out into space. Penny was sucked back immediately, but caught herself on the bolted-down steel bedframe. Mark was caught on the jamb of the door, panic stricken and mute. Penny screamed. She screamed a terrible high-pitch terror laden scream that let Mark know she was in pain and afraid; she had broken her wrist when she caught herself. For a moment, he just stared, not knowing what to do.
The hole widened as the force of air and debris tore through the room. Penny's feet lifted from the ground, pointed in the direction of the rift. Mark reached for her, impotently, his arm hardly covering the four foot gap between them. "Mark help! Help me! Please Mark!" She was holding on by her left hand only, the right dangled miserably behind her, the snapped wrist flailing like the joint of a discarded marionette. Mark knew what he had to do, he had to swing around the door frame and catch the bed where she was, then grab ahold of her, gripping her like there was no tomorrow! It was only four feet, he could make it!
Except...
He couldn't move. He tried. His face contorted with the effort of fighting his instinct to just hold on. Her eyes, blue buttons wet with agony, met his, and he knew that she knew he wasn't going to save her. She cried out to him, one last time, as she lost her grip on the bedframe. She disappeared through the rift, lost to infinity beyond.
The Maven's auto sheild system clicked on just then, sealing the gap in a transparant orb. It had been less than ten seconds since the hull breach, up to twelve was considered acceptable for non military ships due to the infrequency of impacts. Elsewhere on the Maven, other gaps and holes were being closed, other breaches sealed. Mark fell to the floor, his eyes fixed on the spot where Penny had been. He was shocked, in utter disbelief. It couldn't have happened, it shouldn't have! It wasn't his fault! Why couldn't the sheild have come on just a half second sooner? Why didn't he take her back to his quarters instead? Oh God why did we have to come through this part of the galaxy?
It didn't matter, and he knew it. This was his moment. This was the moment that would define his entire existence. Nothing he could ever do again in his life would be as important as saving Penny Benjamin, and he had failed. The p.a. crackled to life "Attention all crew, get your asses to the interior of the ship now! We have recieved reports that the residential quarters are NOT safe! If you're not on my bridge, get to decks C through J, interior corridors ONLY!" Mark stayed where he was on the floor. There was a door way eight feet away that would lead him to safety, but he did not want to take it. He wanted to die. He wanted to stay here until another anomaly tore him from the womb of the ship and killed him. It was the only acceptable conclusion; he just couldn't live with the knowledge that he had let Penny die.
Fate is a cruel mistress.
While Mark remained on F deck in the unsafe quarters, the men and women in command had navigated the dust cloud and brought the surviving crew to safety. He heard them cheering in the background when the captain made another announcment, "Attention crew, we are in the clear. Thank the stars that we have such a fine and brilliant command and crew, and that we are blessed with this phenominal ship. I shall write you each a letter of commendation. I'd also like to thank our science teams for risking their lives to record data from the cloud, you have ensured that no one here died in vain. Please report all incidents and injuries as quickly as possible, the Med team is standing by. All Crew return to your stations."
Down in F deck, Mark held his head in his hands and cried.
User Reviews
Submitted by DirtyHarry (user info) at 2007-05-23 14:54:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
More sci-fi, yay! Venus Anus, yay!
Submitted by ChaosJester (user info) at 2007-05-23 14:17:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hmmm...finally got around to reading this.
The beginning was a little slow, but the ending saved it.
As others have said, write more...
Auto +2 "Venus Anus"
Submitted by sweetcheebs (user info) at 2007-05-23 13:26:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is a gem. Keep em coming.
Submitted by czwij (user info) at 2007-05-23 09:16:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
wicked
slackers in space.
finally something down to earth, pardon the pun
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-05-22 18:04:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by firefly (user info) at 2007-05-22 16:53:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by bob (user info) at 2007-05-22 16:26:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2007-05-22 14:27:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
ok. I spotted two typos and one grammatical error.
I'm sorry. Sue me.
I proofread it on my lunchbreak. Apparantly I needed some more coffee.