Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

EFS Enterprise, October 17th, 001 SDE:

Sali set the cart down and stretched a little. Things had been rather quiet lately, but that didn’t mean she was without things to do. There was always something needing doing aboard this ship. The incident notwithstanding she still found herself working menial jobs aboard the ship. Thinking of the incident, that was something she found rather... embarrassing. She had the perfect opportunity to get off this ship, and she had squandered it by getting lost. At least they hadn’t punished her for that. In fact, the guards were still telling jokes about it much to her chagrin.

Sighing, she turned away from the cart, and made her way out of the room. Her task here was done. She’d brought the full cart her to the cargo bay, so now she had to collect an empty one, and head back to the factories. Where someone would be waiting for her with a cart full of crates. It was kind of boring, but at least she didn’t really have to think about the work she was doing. Not to mention it could be worse, they could have just left her in that cell with nothing to do.

Getting her empty cart she made her way back towards the factory, and let her mind drift to other issues. Strangely enough escape wasn’t on her mind at the moment. Besides she just didn’t see it working out. Not right now, too many eyes, too many unknowns. More importantly, she had already worked out her plan for that. So here she was stuck playing the painful waiting game. Time would eventually grant her another chance, another opportunity to get off this ship.

Instead, she found herself day dreaming about other issues, and trying not to think about how long she'd been here. It didn’t help that she had lost count of how many days had passed since her capture. Sali just knew that it had been long enough that she was starting to get used to her life here.

The trip back wasn’t too long, and before she knew it she was dropping the empty cart she had grabbed off. A young man with a pad was waiting for it. “Great work, Sali. I’ll mark this off. You can head back up to the cell block, you’re done for the day.”

She blinked, “Already? I didn’t realize it was that late.”

He sighed, “Actually we are letting you off early, today. Things are winding down for the day a bit early.”

“I see. Any particular reason why?”

“Just the usual reasons. Now get going before the boss starts nosing around. As much as I’d like to chat...”

She nodded and left the room. He was one of the few people she could talk to. Unfortunately, the boss was a bit strict, so that meant she didn’t have much time to chat. It made it difficult to gather information on anything. Worse no one ever told her anything on this ship, and it was always dark. She didn’t even know where in the galaxy they were.

Sali made her way to the lift, where a guard followed her aboard. Escorting her back to the cell block. Something that reminded her of another fact. She didn’t always see them, but she was always being watched. They rarely let her go anywhere without supervision, and it was often hard to tell when she was being supervised and when she wasn’t. Something that was going to complicate escape.

In the meantime, she got to enjoy being back in her cell early today. While that was okay, she hoped it wouldn’t be a regular thing. Oddly enough Sali kind of liked spending her days doing menial jobs. It was no replacement for the joys of flying, but it was infinitely better than rotting in her cell all day.

Countryman shifted in his command chair. It was late in the evening, nearing the end of his shift. Today they found themselves in an uncharted system. They were conducting a basic survey of the system, while Richards did some basic maintenance on the warp engines.

The system wasn’t all that remarkable with one exception. It had two large gas giants, and six rocky planets orbiting a binary. One of those planets was habitable, barely. It was a hot barren world dominated by vast stretches of desert broken only by the occasional mountain range. Volcanic activity on the planet was also high thanks to local gravitational conditions. The planet had hundreds of active volcanos. As a result, the atmosphere was barely breathable and choked with toxins. Surface water was practically non-existent, but scans did pick up a few large subsurface deposits, which played into the planets unique weather patterns.

What made the planet so notable however was that its geological conditions resulted in its upper crust being remarkably rich in valuable mineral formations. Some of which they could use. Technically they could use all of them, but they had to pick and choose what they take. They also had to work out a mining plan, as the geological activity would complicate mining efforts. In every sense of the word. Still, they had found a few promising sites with low-risk factors. No reason to get greedy.

At the moment he had department heads working out exactly what they needed, what they could use, and what they could do without. The Coto had been sent out to the larger of the two gas giants. That gas giant was notable only for the high concentrations of deuterium in its upper atmosphere. As such he had ordered Reynolds to conduct a fuel run. To help refill their tanks. Fleet fuel reserves were actually sitting pretty well at the moment, as they hadn’t even touched the reserve tanks. That was no reason not to pass up a perfectly good chance to refuel. The last year had shown that refueling opportunities were precious few and far between. Especially out here where friendly ports weren’t easy to come by.

As for the Umikaze, he had assigned that ship to keep an eye on the perimeter. Honestly they just didn’t have enough ships, but there was little helping that. Maybe if they had stayed in the Sol system a little longer things might have been different, but that was risky. Even in hindsight, he agreed with it being a risky. It would have taken far too long to refit those sublight ships for warp travel. Part of why they had been forced to pass up that other opportunity at Alpha Centauri.

Suddenly he heard footsteps, and looked over to see Greyman coming up the stairs with a pad. “I have the requested report on our supply needs, sir.”

“Anything of note?”

“We are low on several forms of carbon. Which shouldn’t be a problem as we have already identified a few rich carbon deposits including diamond.”

Countryman nodded. Diamond had its applications mostly industrial, but it was used in other applications. Although the other carbon forms would be more useful for their purposes. As carbon was a very useful element with a very wide array of applications.”

“Noted, anything else?

“A few items of note actually.” replied Greyman as he hand Countryman the pad, “The planet is rich in several minerals key to the production of Rydium, which we have a severe shortage of thanks to all the recent hull repairs. Engineering also reports that the Rydium crystal core for the number three engine is degrading, and needs to be replaced.”

Countryman looked up from the pad, “Did I hear that correctly? The crystal core for the number three engine is degrading?”

“Unfortunately yes. Engineering believes it was an undetected manufacturing defect.”

“It would have to be. Those crystals are rated to last fifty years without being replaced, and that crystal is barely two years old.”

It was quite shocking honestly to hear one was degrading. They went through a rigorous three-month testing period intended to detect defects and flaws in the Rydium-infused crystal lattice. It was practically unheard of for a defect or flaw to go undetected after going through the testing. Propulsion crystals needed to be precisely calibrated and shaped before being installed into an engine. The slightest flaw could have serious consequences if it wasn’t detected. They were lucky that only issue they had was a degrading crystal.

“I concur, it does seem unlikely to be anything else, but I’m having security review the sensor and maintenance logs for the engine just in case. I can’t ignore the possibility of sabotage.”

Countryman gave him a look, “I highly doubt that. Although if a second degrading crystal shows up it might indicate otherwise.”

“The rest of the list is fairly normal. Items the various departments would like on hand for equipment repairs and maintenance.”

“I can see that. I want the factory level to make ready to produce a replacement crystal,” he said while mentally raising the priority of obtaining certain materials. Particularly carbon, as it was suddenly several levels more important. Carbon was one of the materials typically used in the construction of a Rydium crystal lattice. They did not use pure carbon, but a mix of carefully selected minerals infused with Rydium to produce a propulsion crystal. Due to certain realities of the process a Rydium propulsion crystal was remarkably valuable. They were the single most expensive crystal on the market back when Earth was still around. Now they were virtually priceless. Especially seeing that the Enterprise had the only foundry capable of producing one.

He glanced back over the survey reports, while Greyman said, “I’ll get right on it. Quick question though, do you want me to make sure the Valorian prisoner miss Arimae doesn’t see us making it?”

Countryman gave him a look, “They don’t use family names like we do. Arimae is her clan name, and in their culture its correct to refer to her either as Sali or Sali of Clan Arimae. As for your question, there is no point in restricting her from observing. That wouldn’t tell her much of anything about it, in the first place. In fact you might as well have her assist.”

He nodded, “you might be right about that.

The young officer stepped away from her console, and tried not to show her frustration. It had been months since they left port, and they had to even find the elusive aliens they were looking for. Evidently, they were pretty much impossible to find when they didn’t want to be found. That spoke volumes about their stealth technology.

She sighed, although that didn’t mean all their prospects had come up empty. They had managed to find signs of where they had been. Even learned a few things about these aliens, but nothing really substantial. They didn’t even know where they came from. What they did know were little hints gathered from their behavior.

The aliens did show up on occasion, which had given them chances to gather insights on their behavior. Unfortunately they had yet to directly observe them. A big part of the problem was that they were fast, very fast. The Bok’wa had an upgraded hyperdrive capable of roughly six hundred times the speed of light. An impressive speed by any metric, one competitive with most major powers like the Valorians whose ships were often slower than that. Yet that wasn’t fast enough. The aliens from what they could tell seemed to use warp drive technology. As such they couldn’t directly compare their own hyperdrives with the alien drives, but speed was a metric they could compare. If they could get an exact reading that was, they couldn’t. From observations based on data that was sketchy at best they had concluded these aliens could travel at roughly 1000 times the speed of light. If true it would mean the aliens had somehow cracked the warp five barrier, something the major warp drive using powers had not done.

Thankfully their typical cruising speed seemed lower than that, but it hadn’t helped them with catching up to these strange aliens. Catching up to them was in fact their only current goal. To that end she had been using their sporadic sightings, and locations that she suspected they had been to reconstruct their course. Using that data she was hoping to project their course ahead, and predict where they might go. The idea being that if they knew where they were going, they could get ahead of the aliens, and observe them.

Which brought to mind why she was feeling frustrated. By the great divines these aliens were endlessly frustrating to track. Worse they apparently couldn’t fly straight. As near she could tell they had a rather winding course that sent them to countless systems. Most of them worthless, uninteresting or unremarkable. Yet they never seemed to enter a system that was actually inhabited. If anything they would go out of their way to avoid such systems. Although they did apparently answer any distress call they picked up. That was where she had obtained most of her sightings, and that fact also complicated projecting their course.

“No luck?” asked her mentor as he walked into the room.

“I’m afraid not.” she sighed, “The computer has identified three possible general headings for them, and identified nearly two hundred likely systems on those headings for them to visit. “

“I see. Well sometimes there is no obvious path, and one must make a choice. This may be one of these times. Pick one.”

She blinked, glnaced back at the monitor, and sighed. After a moment she pointed at a system. One not too far from the last sighting, and in line with the heading she felt most likely. For some reason it just felt right to pick that system.