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| We’re what you call professionals | |
| Facts | |
| Author | monbvol |
| Series Name | Revenants of the Star League Anthology of short(er) stories |
| Alternate Universe Name | |
| Year Written | August 10th, 2023 |
| Story Era | Republic Era |
Rescue Party Arrives[]
Bonaventure Class Corvette, OWS Phoenix
Unknown system - Periphery
11th September, 3132
Immediately upon jumping in at Erin’s last known position it did not take long to figure out why she had missed her last scheduled check in.
There was a rather obvious incident.
“What the hell could even begin to break up a planet like that?” Ensign Tanaka gasped from comms.
“Nothing natural, that’s for sure.” Phoenix answered.
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Human-like robotic done, Phoenix
“How can you be so sure?” Tanaka asked.
“Speed of the debris. If it were tectonics of a planet ripping itself apart, even in the most generous theoretical models, would not produce debris with those kinds of velocities and Erin would have seen signs of it well in advance and not approached. While a natural impactor theoretically could, again we run into the problem of anything natural would not be able to build up sufficient velocity to escape Erin’s detection well in advance and thus she would not even approach.” Phoenix answered.
“And since she didn’t send out a message before the blackout updating their itinerary we know they were in this system last.” Tanaka nodded.
“Bingo. They may be eager explorers but they’re also consummate professionals operating outside the ranges of normal HPG relays and would absolutely keep to their time tables without updating us about changing them.” Phoenix affirmed.
“Sending out a hail.” Tanaka worked her panel.
“Okay, planet below me is blowing up. Assume my sensors are pretty effed up. Where would I hide…” Phoenix began to concentrate.
Over the next six hours and much use of the optical telescopes they finally found the wayward ship using the mass shadow of a gas giant to protect themselves from the fragmenting planet.
It took a further five days before contact was established.
<<“Honestly, I did not expect anyone to come looking for us so soon. We were getting ready to settle in for a long haul.”>> Esme Gomez’s voice crackled slightly from the interference.
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Esme Gomez
“Consider it a small silver lining of the news I’m about to break. Something has caused a massive number of the HPGs to go down. We don’t know what yet. It has impacted even the fleet. So we had to send an early dispatch.”
<<“And thanks to me filling out when and where we’d be in triplicate you knew which system to find us in.”>> Esme chuckled.
“Congratulations. Paperwork just saved you and your crew from a very uncomfortable and potentially ugly fate.”
<<“I’m never going to complain about a papercut again.”>> Esme laughed. There was a hysterical note to her laugh.
"What happened?"
<<"Planet blew up, fifty of the best minds we could recruit were on the surface. I lost my survey team, Phoenix.">> Esme said shakily, <<"and I have no idea how, or why…or who. There's nothing I can find that can explain it. The energy release was several hundred kliks out, and it fried most of Erin's sensor and comm arrays and we think it might've screwed up the drive core.">>
“Then I’ll get extra hands over stat. The list of possibilities are not great and since we don’t know…” Phoenix didn’t want to finish the thought.
<<"Yeah, what do you do, when your yardship needs a shipyard?">> Esme's voice was clearly in that shaky near-hysteria tone of someone on the edge of an emotional breakdown-or someone already experiencing it.
“We’ll start with the ‘Engineers Mantra’.” Phoenix tried to sound reassuring.
<<“Right. Fix one problem at a time, starting with the most immediate one.”>> Esme nodded.
“So start telling me what you’ve already managed to fix.”
Nature of Relationships[]
The big issues had been addressed-water supplies and sourcing, repurposing waste collection and disposal to be broken down and purified for fertilizing the hydroponics bays…and the construction of additional bays using frames and sheet-materials on a nearby rock had been done, and most of the aviators had been repurposed to finding things that can be used.
At some point, Phoenix noted, they'd managed to get the Fusion reactors on the lone station in the system going well enough that it was on a ballistic course for orbit near the same gas giant they were hiding behind.
There are three basics when you don't have an earth-like planet available that must be met.
1. Shelter from radiation
2. Air to breathe
3. Food and Water.
Those three mostly satisfied, you can begin to look at improving your actual situation and figuring out what else you still have to work with.
Determining if your yardship is still a yard, that seemed to pass. The ship part however…
"Three fourths of your power distribution and cooling system!?"
"About that, yeah." Esme commented, "We've started pulling burned sinks and racks to see what can be salvaged, and what has to be remanufactured. Some of it is probably compatible with the spare stores on the Station, but we'll still need to make or get brought in replacements for a lot of it. The nav arrays along the forward and side arcs are mostly ruined, whatever it was was so intense it burned up telescope mounts and radio telescopes, lidar receivers, and Radar installations that weren't even active."
“Confirms some of the observations I’ve made based on size and speed of the planetary fragments. Yeesh. Honestly it’s going to take a lot of effort to bring in everything you need.” Phoenix shook her head.
"We'll be making a lot of it, we still have workshops and a labor pool, just…" Esme shook her head again, "...not as much as when we started."
“Well now that we know where you are we can at least rotate people. Should help a little.” Phoenix tried to offer.
"Right now, we've got two worries; worry one, is making sure we can feed the people we have. The bays are ready, but it's going to get lean on food before they're producing enough. Second worry, is that until we've got the power distribution net restored and functional again, we can't run a proper survey on the jump-core. I don't know if we're truly stuck here or not, Erin doesn't either because she's getting swamped with BITE alerts from other systems. If we have a core, we'll still need the sensors to plot any jumps."
“Worst case scenario we can bring in anything you need. Erin is simply too valuable not to move heaven and earth for when it comes to making sure you and your crew come home.” Phoenix smiled. "There's a third worry." Erin's voice came over the comm. "Whatever took out the planet. Phoenix, there's no precedent for what happened. I have no idea how it happened or whether it was intelligently directed, but there's nothing even in the theoretical databases Kolossus loaned me to suggest it could happen."
“Yeah. I came to a similar conclusion. If it were a natural phenomenon you really should have seen some sort of indicators well in advance. I mean maybe nature finally found a way to speed one of its own rocks up fast enough your sensors couldn’t have picked it up in time but that seems rather unlikely to say the least.”
"A lot of unlikely. This world, it was Terra-like, Terra-sized, the biology was a non-nutritious analogue of Terran life, using left handed sugars instead of what humans were evolved on, but it was Terralike. That's a lot of mass converted to energy directly to cause that explosion…and the explosion was…it looked like a column or beam."
“The numbers are frankly insane. To do what we can observe would take either an awful lot of anti-matter, more than even Kolossus has produced, or something even nastier.”
"Something even nastier seems likely, but there's been no sign of anything like that before." Erin noted.
“And with no crime scene to examine, at least in a practical fashion, we may never know the truth.”
"Kolosssus would ADORE this puzzle." Erin concluded, "That Station is bored, something like this would keep Kolossus busy for YEARS just figuring it out, and we can't communicate."
“Yeah something’s knocked out the HPG grids, even our local relays. Part of why we found you so fast was because we wanted to let you know.”
"So another puzzle, fixing our FTL communications, just in case we're in the position of 'now colonizing this system'."
"That might end up being what we do anyway." Esme said darkly, "Depending on how much in terms of spare parts, and whether the Core has to be rebuilt-and if it does, then that means we'll have to fabricate a Core-casting or core-forge, pull the jump core, process it and re-cast it here…which means we may well end up needing to build a shipyard to get Erin un-stuck."
“Which as Phoenix pointed out the Ravens will support. I am simply too valuable as a yardship to leave in a crippled state.” Erin picked up on Phoenix’s earlier comment.
"Fuel? We've got. So first order of business is getting food brought in and enough of it to feed additional labor." Esme was in problem-solving mode, "Those convoys will have to come up from Port Orphan, or from Murakami's outfit, and she doesn't deal in moving biological people, but she might have a source of spares. Which means we'll need trade goods, which is more people and more food…Erin, we're going to end up with a colony here whether we wanted to or not."
“First order of good news is since we’re running more peace time cargo fractions I do have a few spare supplies on hand to take some of the edge off. Still only a fraction of what you’ll need long term but enough to hopefully get you by until the first proper relief ship shows up.”
Ensign Tanaka looked concerned, "What if it happens again?"
"What if it does? We don't know what 'it' was, only what it did, and we don't know why, so that's a bit like worrying about something you can't plan for." Esme answered.
“And this world is a gas giant. It won’t shatter like the other one did anyway.” Erin confirmed.
"That much energy might ignite it instead." Ensign Tanaka was clearly shaken.
“If it had enough combustibles to be dangerous it’d already be a Brown Dwarf, nah this world would just kind of poof. Maybe a few rocks from the solidified noble gasses at the center but nothing like what happened before.” Phoenix educated her young comms officer.
“The gravitational forces and vectors of the debris also mean anything that would just ‘push through’ the gas giant has already done so. Everything else is swallowed, and digested by now, or thrown into the outer system. Don’t misunderstand, transit is still going to be an absolute bitch for probably centuries but we’re as safe as we can be here.” Erin anticipated the next question.
“Right. Which makes our next topic prioritizing who needs rotated out now because let’s be honest the only reason I’m not completely freaked out is because I’m an AI and even so this comes damn close to scaring the shit out of me and I’m seeing just the aftermath. People are going to need evaced for mental health and I only have so much room even if I offer volunteers, which I’d have to limit because I need enough crew for, well I’d rather not say but after something like this we will need suicide watches and guards to stop any annhiliationtionists.” Phoenix grimaced.
"Get your medical officer, Mine was on the planet." Esme said, "we do need to start screening…"
“Okay. And we’re starting with you, Esme.” Phoenix nodded.
After several days of interviews Phoenix, Erin, and Esme had their lists.
“You two look out for each other.” Phoenix looked at Esme.
“I know my results, you’re not even going to try and convince me?” Esme seemed surprised.
“By all rights I should pull Erin too, but that is well beyond our current engineering abilities. So I make the next least terrible decision. I leave you two together. You care enough about each other that I feel confident you’ll keep each other in check and look out for each other. If I separate you there goes the closest thing to an emotional support structure each of you has. And well it’d be like asking me to leave Saya if I knew she needed me. You two are too close to each other.” Phoenix shook her head.
The tired, vacant expressions on those boarding her for rotation out however…
“These people don’t have that and so I have to get them out of here before they start seeking permanent solutions to temporary problems.” Phoenix nodded at the group.
“They might never be the same again but thank you for at least giving them a fighting chance Phoenix.” Esme nodded.
“Well, I remember a time not so long ago where I needed a second chance and a certain hellion gave one to me. So now I pass that opportunity along whenever possible. Like I said, you two look after each other. To be honest I expect population growth by the time I rotate through again and not from convoys!” Phoenix giggled as she boarded her hull..
“She isn’t trying to suggest we make a baby together is she?” Erin asked Esme.
“I was going to ask you the same thing!” Esme looked puzzled. "She DOES realize I have been in a relationship with a man, doesn't she?"
“She has too and well I’m built for a slightly different interpretation of that concept.” Erin added.
Esme sighed, "Yah, mommy to a whole world or three. We might as well get started, maybe they'll convince Seron to come visit."
"You should have tried harder to keep him. It's 'romantic' that you didn't get clingy, but you were happier when you had him…"
"It has to be both ways or it doesn't work, Erin, humans are just…built that way."
“I guess so. The nature of relationships, well it’s something Helena’s AIs do have a lot more experience with than I do. So I am still figuring out what rules I even want to live by.”
"Let's get to work, okay? I don't need to feel worse."
“Agreed. And that sneaky little AI… That’s what she was really doing… She distracted us. I’m not sure if I should feel angry or thankful.” Erin realized.
“Both.” They said in unison.
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