Mind rapidly clearing, Lydia Bracken, Captain of the
Starcraft Defiance, and Lukazj Woiczek, flight specialist -
she kept rehearsing the things she could be sure she knew, and with
each rehearsal, came more certainties - made their way down the
central shaft of the ship towards the aft section, containing the
Science Lab and the living quarters.
The drugs Lukazj had jabbed her with were doing wonders for her
powers of concentration, and with each passing moment, and each
mental affirmation of the things she thought she knew, the fabric of
her reality was flattening out, where before it had seemed twisted,
folded, and confused, like the core of a lettuce.
They passed a dented access panel, evidently blown out of place by
an exploding capacitor in the Fusion reactor output regulator
cabinet. The panel gently tumbled, showing a scorched "#3".
Other pieces of dented and smashed debris tumbled around the
shaft, dissipating kinetic energy even now, a good hour after the
power surge had instigated the uncontrolled acceleration.
The hatch to the aft section had been sealed for transit, but it
took what seemed like a herculean effort from both of them to open
it. It was dented and dinged by the impact of pretty much all the
detritus they had just passed.
Finally, it hissed, the pressures equalised - that in itself was a
relief, she had begun to fear what they might find on the other side
- but at least it was still pressurised. Lukazj hauled the door open
on its battered hinges.
Salinas came barelling out of the lab door, puddles of tears
welled around her deep brown eyes, and blood on her hands and torso.
"¡Dios mio! Oh thank heavens you two are ok!" She
plowed into Lydia, smothering her in a hug, smearing the back of her
flightsuit with the grime on her hands. Lydia had to hold onto the
hatch frame to avoid tumbling back up the shaft.
Clinging to Lydia, right up in her ear, Marta Salinas sobbed
"Malik just..." she slurped a messy intake of breath and
whimpered.
Bracken wilted. "No, oh gods, no."
Lukazj pulled himself through the hatch, and glided to the rim of
the Lab door.
He just whispered "Jesus fuck.", and
silently closed his eyes.
With Marta insensate, weeping, clinging to her like a baby
chimpanzee, Lydia peered over his shoulder.
Malik Abbal, Science lead, had met a similar fate to the aft
console back in the cockpit - he'd taken an impactor to the stomach,
and burst like a water balloon. The shock had torn his G-seat off its
bearing, and had evidently sent him bouncing around the cabin like
the debris in the central shaft. He was covered in lacerations, blood
still bubbling out of most of them... but he had, somehow it seemed,
lived until only a few moments ago.
The scene was outlandish, parts of Malik's digestive tract hanging
out of him, pieces of him adhering to the walls, the whole lab
smashed asunder by the bouncing of him in his chair. Marta's seat
spattered on one side, but otherwise undamaged.
Lydia reached in and closed the door. She couldn't keep seeing
that. She looked at Lukazj's ghostly face.
"Come on, let's get cleaned up."
Friday 31 July 2015
Wednesday 29 July 2015
Untitled Story part 1
WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP
What the hell is that?, Bracken wondered as she blinked to clear her vision. The mess of coloured lights were a watery blur. As she tried to get her bearings, she realised her left temple ached, and she was not entirely sure where she was or what was going on - just the sense that she did know, and that that was important, but no specifics were forthcoming.
She pawed at her face, noticing when her hand was close enough to her face to focus on with some reliance despite the incessant wheeling of her surroundings, that it was gloved.
Gloves.
She registered the pressure across her torso.
Harness.
Her gloved hand came away from her face dappled with dark spots where the fabric had absorbed beads of perspiration - and one larger red wine blotch... her temple.
Gloves., she thought again, Harness.
Flightsuit!
The logical dominoes fell, and bolstered up the disarrayed structure of her memory.
Cabin!
The WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP continued.
Master Alarm!
With enough of her wherewithal restored, she blinked again to crush out the blurriness in her vision. The control console was wheeling around her and bobbing back up repeatedly, but she could make out the flashing red text in the centre screen.
She realised that it wasn't the cabin that was spinning, but her eyes - fighting some illusory spin that was not actually ocurring... this must have been a hard knock on the head... as she concentrated to overcome it, the throbbing pain in her temple flared in objection, and she spotted globules of undulating blood floating between her and the next seat.
The figure in the next seat was not moving...
Lukazj. Flight specialist Lukazj.
She assured herself he was just unconscious, and, shaken into some state of autonomic alertness, she robotically tapped the panel in front of her to mute the Master Alarm, and call up the sitrep.
Eyes wide, she glanced at the Mission-Elapsed Time clock.
For reliablility, it was mechanical, setting it apart from the myriad smooth touchscreen and depth displays that surrounded the forward viewports.
Below it was the Earth-Elapsed Time clock, also mechanical - but the numbers printed on its rollers were nonsensical, scuffed and smeared, as if from being scrubbed too hard or rubbed against something - and the right-most roller appeared to have been friction-welded to its faceplate, the perspex fronting showing signs of heat-degradation. There were thin wisps of smoke inside the unit, floating disorganised in the microgravity.
Bracken unbuckled her harness with only slight difficulty, confusion and alarm overcoming the pain and disorientation as her primary concerns.
Grateful for the lack of gravity - in her condition, she would surely have crumpled to the ground under any significant g-load - she gently floated over to Lukazj, and gripped his shoulders to steady herself. With relief, she noticed his eyelids undulating in REM sleep.
"Lukazj." she croaked. Her throat was bruised... when she thought about it, her everything felt bruised. Lukazj had blotches across his face, minor sub-dermal haemorrhaging.
She cleared her throat uncomfortably.
"Specialist Woiczek." she mumbled, wobbling his slack shoulders. "Wake up."
His face furrowed, and he started to groan.
She looked past him, surveying the cabin. There was a vivid, energetic spew of red painted in an arc across the rear bulkhead, and a ceiling-mounted touch panel appeared to have been shorn in two by an object embedded in one of the rear status panels - bent and fritzing from the impact.
The pain in her head and the blood on her glove accounted for the red, and the object in the rear and the sitrep's "g-limit" warning accounted for the pain in her head (and everywhere else).
She squinted to focus her still-bleary vision on the object embedded in the rear wall. She could make out the blood adorning one corner, and the text on the cover - "flight manual". What kind of g-force could plunge a navigation textbook through an inconel alloy console mount?!
The two other crew seats were empty - Salinas and Abbal would have been in the lab. Strange, how easily some thoughts came.
The blood stain put her priorities in order, and she clamped a hand against her head, looking around for the first-aid box.
Floating over to it, she caught her reflection in its cover, and lifted her soaked glove - there it was, a small, deep, triangular gouge in her left temple, visible in a collapsed shell of a bubble cragged with semi-coagulated blood, held to the wound by surface tension until her glove had crushed it, now refilling in its absence - a glowing globe of crimson, undulating with movement and her pulse. It tickled.
The hard cover of the manual must have caught her with a corner while the g's were still building. Her hair behind the wound was streaked with an arrow-straight course of browning dried blood.
Everywhere there was such evidence of absurd acceleration.
As she removed the necessary items from the box, she struggled past the fog in her mind and the ache in her skull to recall what had happened.
It was like recovering lost data from a corrupted drive - unrelated, disordered images - Alice kissing her on their fourth anniversary; tumbling out of control during basic; Garibaldi, their retreiver; The Tomatina with Marta; A dark circle rimmed by piercing blue light; Lukazj giggling like a schoolgirl at the Paris taxi-driver story during the Neptune-assist;
And there it was. She had just applied the coagulant spray to the wound when something about the pressure and the spume of misty particles through the light tripped some vaguely related strand of memory.
Kepler 438.
Not the star system, nor the mental image, nor the tantalizing spectral analysis, nor even the words - but just the concept, the goal, the crushing but exultant purpose that had hung over everything for the last 12 years of her life.
She was momentarily stunned by the vagaries of human consciousness. Its unbounding complexity, but also its comical capacity for derailment. How the hell could she lose track of 438?!
"Lydia."
Her name in Lukazj's groggy Baltic voice shook her to an embarrassing degree.
"What happened?" He was unbuckling his harness.
"I, um..." she struggled to word some response, spinning awkwardly with the inertia imparted by her involuntary jerk at hearing the voice.
Hands full, she couldn't steady herself. Head full, she didn't think to try. You're the Captain, Lydia, say something.
"Fuck, are you alright?!" he piqued, spotting the partially-patched gore as the left side of her head spun into view.
"I'm, eh..." The captain, dammit! "We need to check on the others." she stated, mustering as much dignity as she could, and every ounce of situational awareness she had, to make that command.
"First thing's first- let's get you patched up, let me help." Lukazj placed a hand on her to halt her pathetic pirrouetting, and smiled that half-smile of his.
Part II
What the hell is that?, Bracken wondered as she blinked to clear her vision. The mess of coloured lights were a watery blur. As she tried to get her bearings, she realised her left temple ached, and she was not entirely sure where she was or what was going on - just the sense that she did know, and that that was important, but no specifics were forthcoming.
She pawed at her face, noticing when her hand was close enough to her face to focus on with some reliance despite the incessant wheeling of her surroundings, that it was gloved.
Gloves.
She registered the pressure across her torso.
Harness.
Her gloved hand came away from her face dappled with dark spots where the fabric had absorbed beads of perspiration - and one larger red wine blotch... her temple.
Gloves., she thought again, Harness.
Flightsuit!
The logical dominoes fell, and bolstered up the disarrayed structure of her memory.
Cabin!
The WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP continued.
Master Alarm!
With enough of her wherewithal restored, she blinked again to crush out the blurriness in her vision. The control console was wheeling around her and bobbing back up repeatedly, but she could make out the flashing red text in the centre screen.
She realised that it wasn't the cabin that was spinning, but her eyes - fighting some illusory spin that was not actually ocurring... this must have been a hard knock on the head... as she concentrated to overcome it, the throbbing pain in her temple flared in objection, and she spotted globules of undulating blood floating between her and the next seat.
The figure in the next seat was not moving...
Lukazj. Flight specialist Lukazj.
She assured herself he was just unconscious, and, shaken into some state of autonomic alertness, she robotically tapped the panel in front of her to mute the Master Alarm, and call up the sitrep.
MET17d6h11m23s : MASTER ALARM triggered.CONDITION(S) VIOLATED:MET17d6h11m23s : 'voltage limit - NFR1 Output #3'MET17d6h11m24s : 'cabin g-limit'MET17d6h11m26s : 'graviscan fix invalid'MET17d6h11m32s : 'EET calculation mismatch'
Eyes wide, she glanced at the Mission-Elapsed Time clock.
For reliablility, it was mechanical, setting it apart from the myriad smooth touchscreen and depth displays that surrounded the forward viewports.
MET|17d|7h|2m|15sBelow it was the Earth-Elapsed Time clock, also mechanical - but the numbers printed on its rollers were nonsensical, scuffed and smeared, as if from being scrubbed too hard or rubbed against something - and the right-most roller appeared to have been friction-welded to its faceplate, the perspex fronting showing signs of heat-degradation. There were thin wisps of smoke inside the unit, floating disorganised in the microgravity.
Bracken unbuckled her harness with only slight difficulty, confusion and alarm overcoming the pain and disorientation as her primary concerns.
Grateful for the lack of gravity - in her condition, she would surely have crumpled to the ground under any significant g-load - she gently floated over to Lukazj, and gripped his shoulders to steady herself. With relief, she noticed his eyelids undulating in REM sleep.
"Lukazj." she croaked. Her throat was bruised... when she thought about it, her everything felt bruised. Lukazj had blotches across his face, minor sub-dermal haemorrhaging.
She cleared her throat uncomfortably.
"Specialist Woiczek." she mumbled, wobbling his slack shoulders. "Wake up."
His face furrowed, and he started to groan.
She looked past him, surveying the cabin. There was a vivid, energetic spew of red painted in an arc across the rear bulkhead, and a ceiling-mounted touch panel appeared to have been shorn in two by an object embedded in one of the rear status panels - bent and fritzing from the impact.
The pain in her head and the blood on her glove accounted for the red, and the object in the rear and the sitrep's "g-limit" warning accounted for the pain in her head (and everywhere else).
She squinted to focus her still-bleary vision on the object embedded in the rear wall. She could make out the blood adorning one corner, and the text on the cover - "flight manual". What kind of g-force could plunge a navigation textbook through an inconel alloy console mount?!
The two other crew seats were empty - Salinas and Abbal would have been in the lab. Strange, how easily some thoughts came.
The blood stain put her priorities in order, and she clamped a hand against her head, looking around for the first-aid box.
Floating over to it, she caught her reflection in its cover, and lifted her soaked glove - there it was, a small, deep, triangular gouge in her left temple, visible in a collapsed shell of a bubble cragged with semi-coagulated blood, held to the wound by surface tension until her glove had crushed it, now refilling in its absence - a glowing globe of crimson, undulating with movement and her pulse. It tickled.
The hard cover of the manual must have caught her with a corner while the g's were still building. Her hair behind the wound was streaked with an arrow-straight course of browning dried blood.
Everywhere there was such evidence of absurd acceleration.
As she removed the necessary items from the box, she struggled past the fog in her mind and the ache in her skull to recall what had happened.
It was like recovering lost data from a corrupted drive - unrelated, disordered images - Alice kissing her on their fourth anniversary; tumbling out of control during basic; Garibaldi, their retreiver; The Tomatina with Marta; A dark circle rimmed by piercing blue light; Lukazj giggling like a schoolgirl at the Paris taxi-driver story during the Neptune-assist;
And there it was. She had just applied the coagulant spray to the wound when something about the pressure and the spume of misty particles through the light tripped some vaguely related strand of memory.
Kepler 438.
Not the star system, nor the mental image, nor the tantalizing spectral analysis, nor even the words - but just the concept, the goal, the crushing but exultant purpose that had hung over everything for the last 12 years of her life.
She was momentarily stunned by the vagaries of human consciousness. Its unbounding complexity, but also its comical capacity for derailment. How the hell could she lose track of 438?!
"Lydia."
Her name in Lukazj's groggy Baltic voice shook her to an embarrassing degree.
"What happened?" He was unbuckling his harness.
"I, um..." she struggled to word some response, spinning awkwardly with the inertia imparted by her involuntary jerk at hearing the voice.
Hands full, she couldn't steady herself. Head full, she didn't think to try. You're the Captain, Lydia, say something.
"Fuck, are you alright?!" he piqued, spotting the partially-patched gore as the left side of her head spun into view.
"I'm, eh..." The captain, dammit! "We need to check on the others." she stated, mustering as much dignity as she could, and every ounce of situational awareness she had, to make that command.
"First thing's first- let's get you patched up, let me help." Lukazj placed a hand on her to halt her pathetic pirrouetting, and smiled that half-smile of his.
Part II
Monday 27 July 2015
Captain's Blog, Stardate 1.0
Captain's Blog, Stardate 1.0
"...See?"
I believe I said something about it being unlikely that I'd post anything anytime soon. Or... maybe I didn't word it like that... this is a computer - I could go check with some minor hand motions. If I didn't, that would indicate that I am very lazy.So anyway, yeah, It's been a while.
To be honest, I haven't been completely committed to this laziness thing.
My real life has been uncharacteristically busy.
I took a holiday for pleasure that didn't involve my family at all. I am slowly preparing to move house.
SpaceX had a very public rocket failure literally moments after I got off the plane home from my holiday, which thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I was able to gape slack-jawed and traumatised at live in the arrivals hall of the airport via my phone. So that'll probably figure into an article at some point.
Blog-side, I've been doing various ill-coordinated things behind the scenes, such as collating my prior writings from Reddit on various topics, and actually writing creatively (that's what you say when you never finish anything, because saying "I write stories" implies that they are complete) fairly often.
I also have a partially-written article on the TV show Community, which just wrapped its 6th season in a pretty unique way, or rather, had just wrapped when I started the article. That might appear some time.
But yeah, I haven't been too committed to those, either. It's like me and laziness have this comfortable, open relationship, and I have the occasional casual fling with productiveness that rarely goes anywhere.
But I suppose I'll start publishing things here.
I think you can time your releases, so since I have this story I've been sitting on - inspired by a prompt from the excellent does-what-it-says-on-the-tin subReddit /r/WritingPrompts back in January - and I have... some pages... written, I'll start dribbling it out here every few days for whatever reason.
Enjoy, whoever you are!
And you, who wants the EMdrive article... I don't want to do an injustice to what is an evolving situation, so... it'll just take a bit of a surge of confidence some day to tackle that beast. Hopefully that's some day soon.
Right. I've run out of things to say. Stop error-checking this, Destructor. Hit the publish button before you start insulting yourself, you idi- shit.
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