"This is most illogical captain" (editied)
Chapter 1, “This is most illogical captain”.
“Right, and is this system surveyed Doctor. That was the final asteroid scanned, with no exploitable worth”
Turning from her command desk, Dr Michelle Jones looked to the only other occupant of the science vessel; Sub Lieutenant Rachel Thomas, whom was wearing a pale blue uniform. Heaving a sigh of relief, Michael rubbed her head messing up her already unkempt brown hair.
“About time… what have we got; K Class star, three barren hunks of rock that have minimal mineral worth and a load of useless asteroids. The only use of this place is a few solar arrays around the sun”
“You know, I thought that exploring the stars would be fun and exciting!” exclaimed Michelle, before sitting back down, “I remember the stories my parents told me of when they watched the first ship leave our solar system. The stories of unknown danger, new species and planets- I was enraptured! This, this is just boring”
“You say that, but nothing beats seeing a sunrise on an alien planet”
“Hah. Anyway, I’ve plotted course to our warp point Doctor, ETA…. 86.5 hours. After that, a short run to E-17-21-9-19. It’s a recent discovery looking at the database, the observatory at Bernard have classed it as a G-VII”
Simply nodding in reply, Michelle stood up and left the bridge heading for her quarters. The UNS Campbeltown was a small recon ship, filled with scientific equipment and a shuttle filled with a handful of droids to aid exploration. The ship filled with state of the art equipment for science, had not so state of the art for creature comforts. What little room left over was given over to allow a nominal crew of two, with capacity for three if needed.
Passing the small galley, she entered her small 5 foot by 9 foot quarters. Spartan as everything else in the ship that wasn’t scientific equipment, with only the furniture not being made from Plasteel. Flopping herself down into the bed, Michael stretched, trying to get the stiffness out of her muscles.
Not one for idleness, she reached out to grab her holo-pic. Casually flicking through various news updates and emails, filtering them to deal with later for the tedium of the sub-light. Satisfied, Michelle let out a squeal of excitement as she accessed her film archive- an indulgence and reward for another system surveyed. Nothing better to tackle the tedium of waiting till the next system. She just hoped that Rachel remembered to adjust the AI notification settings.
APPROACHING DESIGNATED WARP WAYPOINT- ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO THEIR STATIONS
“Eeek!” screeched Michelle as the alarm made her jump out of bed, “Fuck sake….. Rachel you are so dead! You hear me?!”
Picking herself off the floor, cursing and she grabbed her clothes from the wardrobe. Quickly donning the scarlet red uniform over her tank-top and underwear, Michelle made her way to the bridge. As the doors slid open, admitting her to the bridge, it revealed a smug faced Rachel slouching in her chair.
“Rachel, you’re an arse” grumbled Michelle as she sat herself down in her chair. Grunting as the other occupant of the room let off a short giggle.
“Not my fault you’re a heavy sleeper. Besides, I thought you said you liked the AI’s voice”
“Yea, that was before you started to pull this crap with the alerts after our third cycle”
Rachel remained silent as the pair focused on their work. While the warp calculations were computed by the on-board Ai, the UNS had strict policies over warp procedure. Many of these stemmed from when most warp drives were still experimental. Numerous lives were lost in winding up for FTL travel, some in fiery explosions leaving ship debris scattered light-years in the intended direction of travel, and others simply lost to the warp never arriving at their destination.
Content that all the pre-warp checks, both women looked at one another. Both nodding, they pressed their thumbs onto their consoles simultaneously. Unlocking the capacitors, power poured into the warp drives pushing the ship into speeds once claimed impossible. Upon reaching warp speed the lights within the ship switched to red.
Michelle leaned back deeper into her command chair, passively viewing ship status feeds. She knew full well that the ship was now fully under the Ai’s control, and there was nothing the pair of them could do if something went wrong. Even after making hundreds of similar jumps, the subconscious found ways to gnaw at the mind about all the possible outcomes where something goes wrong.
Like all journey’s, the ship cut off the warp drive ending the FTL propulsion. The ship slipped back into real space, idling waiting for the engines to cool. This was Michel’s least favourite moment in her travels, vulnerable and defenseless. One bad stroke of luck, she thought, and it’ll all be over.
Looking at the sensor readout, no space borne creatures or ships were detected in their immediate vicinity. An eerie silence descended upon the pair, both eager for the ship to complete its restart sequence. As the hours passed, their vigil continued though started to relax.
The air started to grow stale however as the hours passed, the scrubber having also to be reset due to the warp jump. Their breathing grew heavier as the pair’s bodies try to draw more oxygen out of the depleting supply.
With a snap-hiss and a clunk, the lights switched back to normal. Clean air flushed throughout the ship as the air scrubbers reactivate, shortly followed by other systems. Heaving a sigh of relief, Michelle powered up the impulse engine moving the ship towards the center of the gravity well- the white dwarf.
Michelle passively watched the diagnostic reports file across her computer screen, making a mental note that everything was running within the normal parameters. All she could do was simply wait for Rachel to finish the preliminary scan of the system, from which the pair would calculate the next step to take. Bored with inaction, Michelle started the boot protocol for the droids that inevitably be needed in the coming days.
While Michelle was activating the droids, Rachel was growing ever more confused. Unusual feedback in both the scan and visual reports kept filing themselves on her screen. With a huff of annoyance, she ran a quick diagnostics of the surveying equipment to ensure that there was no errors. Receiving confirmation that the equipment was working correctly, Rachel restarted the scans to confirm what she was informed of earlier was correct. Seeing the identical data, she raised her concerns with Michelle.
“Doc, I’m sending some data over to you. Umm, if what I’m seeing is correct, not even the Qieamulan Ascendancy can manage something like this”
“Rac- Sub Lieutenant, alright. Let’s see what we have here…..” as the minutes passed, Michelle wasn’t sure whether she was horrified or amazed at what was before her. “A system wide… shield?”
“Looking at its strength, personally Doc I’d say it’s more akin to the deflectors of old. The Qieamulan Ascendancy only just manage to shield their ringworlds, but an entire system is something else”
“I’m not seeing any information from within, guessing the energy field is blocking scans?”
“Yea. But we are able to get some visuals from within. There does seem to be at lest a sun and a single planet, can’t make anything else out though”
Taking a few deep breaths to help calm herself down, Michelle looked at the readings of the impossible feature, trying to make heads or tails of it. On her third read through something caught her eye;
“Lieutenant, have a get a more detailed scan of the energy field’s integrity. It looks rather low, would it be possible to push our way through?”
“Give me a few moments… hmmmmm, maybe? It’d be rather difficult, it would probably burn out our impulse drive…” replied Rachel. Biting her lower lip in concentration while absentmindedly tapping her foot. Running a few ideas through her mind, one struck.
“I have an idea, if we alter both the wavelength and frequency of our shield, we could slip through. There is still a risk of the drive dying on us, it’d be better than brute force”
“You’re the engineer, I’d say it’d be worth the risk. And you said that this work is boring” teased Michelle, receiving a glare for her comment. Chuckling, she wrote a short message giving a description of what they had discovered and what they intend to do. Satisfied, her fingers brushed gently against the send button on the screen, sending the subspace message back to Earth Command.
“Right, formalities done. Time to get our names in the history books girl. Make it so, Lieutenant”
With a smile on her face, Rachel made short work of the required adjustments. Upon completion, she gave a simple affirmative. Michelle increased power to the impulse drive, speeding the ship closer towards the energy field.
Anticipation permuted within the bridge, both being too excited and nervous to speak more than single words. Even the simple acknowledgement from Earth failed to break their concentration. Within an hour, UNS Campbelltown drew near the energy field. Slowing the ship to a crawl, Michelle wiped her brow. Sweat trickled down her back.
The ship’s shield made contact, arcs of plasma and electricity as the two fields merged together. Power surges flowed throughout the ship, threatening to overload the shield emitters along with various other systems. As the ship itself started to pass through, it slowed further, shaking vehemently. Grunting with annoyance, Michelle gently increased the output of the impulse drives.
Soon, as the ship forced its way though the energy field, arcs of electricity started to strike the hull. They danced across the exterior, bringing light to where there was darkness, causing no damage by searing the paint work. Yet this harmless light show foreshadowed the plasma. Great welts of hull was melted or outright destroyed as the plasma rippled along the hull.
Klaxons walled, while numerous warning popups covered Rachel’s screen. Sensing that it was do or die, Michelle diverted as much power to the impulse engine as feasible. The craft received numerous other plasma arc hits before it managed to push its way through. Smoking, damaged but still operation, UNS Campbelltown shot forward having the resistance of the energy field no longer impeding its progress.
Michelle reigned back the impulse drive. Heaving a short lived sigh of relief, she cast her eyes to the diagnostic reports. A groan crossed her lips, she guessed looking at the tip of the reports the ship would need months in one of shipyards for a comprehensive repair. I suppose the droids could do a patch job, thought Michelle.
“Miche- Doctor, can we not do that again? I know that I wanted some excitement, but, well, I think I may stick to the hyper-entertainment forums next time,” joked Rachel.
“Sure, hell, I’d pay for the both of us” chuckled Michelle. Sighing turned to face Rachel, “we took a lot of superficial damage making our way through there though. We may have some issues getting out… We’d may have to message for help if you can’t get a more accurate scan of the field since we’re now on the inside. Anyway we’ve got a job to do, so get those sensors working. I’d want to know what the hell is important enough for such drastic endeavor to shield an entire system!”
Rachel nodded vigorously, and with a goofy grin turned to her work. Looking back at her own console, Michelle activated a pair of Droids and set them to repair the hull with what supplies the ship had on hand. Within half a minute the droids were online awaiting for input. Scrolling through pre-loaded program options, she finally found the mode she was after.
The droids jerked into action, with one heading to the airlock while the other to the stores. Michelle stretched knowing that she had little to do while waiting for the droids to complete their task. Keeping an half an eye on the vid feeds of the droids, she started to draft a preliminary message back to Bernard.
“I, er, what, I, Doctor…… I, what?! This, this is most illogical captain!!” the panicked and confused voice of Rachel rang out, breaking the silence of the bridge.
“Will you stop quoting that damn show! What’s illogical, just send it to me” Michelle irritably replied.
As Michelle viewed the data being sent over, astonishment slowly filled her mind. As all she could see on her screen as a lone planet in the center of the system, with a K-VI class star distantly orbiting the planet.
Sound of rushing hooves echoed within the corridors Canterlot Castle. Staff and visitors alike were shoved aside by the cantering form of Princess Luna. Sweat started to speckle her haunches, running the maze of corridors trying to take the quickest route to the throne room. Her concern visible to any whom could see her face as she sped by.
After having accidently defenestrated a noble, Luna arrived at her destination. Not waiting for the guards to open the double doors for her, she pushed the doors open with her magic, only just managing to open them wide enough that it lightly scraped her barrel as she charged through.
She looked towards the throne, glad that her sister wasn’t holding court. Returning her gaze, Celestia momentarily looked relived for a distraction from the mountains of paper work that surrounded her. Upon seeing Luna’s expression however, this soon changed to worry.
Trying to regain her breath, Luna sat down onto the marble floor keeping direct eye contact with Celestia. Satisfied that she could speak normally, she took a deep breath.
“Something hast pierced the void sister. I dost not know what however, bar it was quite small” tersely informed Luna.
Celestia looked at the handful of guards within the room. Following an unspoken order, they left the Throne Room leaving the two sisters alone. Clearing her throat, Celestia descended from the throne, trying to avoid the stacks of paper, to where her sister sat. Embracing her in a hug that would put many cwtches to shame, she nuzzled Luna who gladly returned the gesture.
“Be strong lulu, for it seems that we now live in interesting times”