12. Lost in the dark

After 6 hours at the conn, spent mostly in silence besides the regular status checks and manual heading corrections, their shift neared its end. Silence broken by the bridge door pneumatics hissing, Greg walked in with a cup of steaming coffee in his hands.

• “Cap, reporting for duty, ready to take the conn.”
• “Not in a million years with that in your hand.” — Vince’s rule of no food on the bridge got his crew annoyed from time to time, Greg still regularly tried this boundary. — “Thanks for the coffee. Greg has the conn.” — Vince had no intention to sleep after this shift, instead going through the latest shipping manifests, tables and accounting numbers floated already in front of his mental vision.
• “Taking the conn.” — sounded the legal confirmation. May be just a small hauler, Vince still took the job seriously and demanded procedures by the book.
• “Maria, don’t you take a break too?”
• “Uhm, oh, I am gonna finish something, go ahead.” — her glaze strictly fixated on her instruments, calculations and star charts running so fast, it seemed cryptic alien language for the uninitiated.
• “Sure, gonna be in my office.”

Vince took a stroll with the coffee, strictly keeping himself away from any control surfaces, still remembering clearly for an embarrassing incident decades ago. Though he met Maria thanks to that so it might not be all that bad as outcomes go. Still, being broken down for weeks at this point would be his final nail in the coffin, he would be stuck at whatever last port they could find, and he may never get to fly again. As his thoughts turned against him, his focus on reality slipped and his rhythm increased, his legs lead to his private office, a cramped little room, full of paperwork and a tiny rounded window looking onto the stars. Stars zooming past them as they speeded toward the supposed location of a ship in emergency for the better half of a day.

“Ah, better prepare for all.” — thought to himself, may have even said it out loud. Old habits die hard, especially with a limited social circles a small hauler like the “Perseus Train” could provide. Only a dozen crew members and families on a few hundred meters long ship, mostly dedicated to non-perishable cargo, running back and forth the central worlds and the furthest of the colonies in the Perseus Arm. Like old train lines of the east-west of americas, steaming endlessly round and round on the vast plains. May their wonders of the vast space come as often as a cactus or a buffalo could be seen from those trains.

As Vince was closing down the manifests, memorizing the key items they had on cargo, emergency supplies they could utilize if needed and filed the necessary inventory reports so later they can claim insurance or refurbishment from the government depending how much they use up in a possible rescue mission, Maria appeared in the opening doorframe, with large pupils, rapid breathing, she hurried Vince back to the bridge.

• “What is it? Haven’t seen you like this for a long time.”
• “I think the ship is not where we are heading. And they may be in a bigger trouble too.”
• “What do you mean?”
• “We have to change course.”
• “But hon’, regulations require us to head to given coordinates or they sue us later. Skipping providing help out here is a serious crime.”
• “We have to change course, Vince and don’t patronize me.” — Maria started to fume too. — “I have evidence too just they might not have the time to wait for our direct approval.”
• “Okey, show me what you have. Greg, conn is still yours.” — as they arrived back to the bridge, Vince’s by the book approach never left any holes in communication and any doubt who is expected what.

Maria pulled her research up to her screen and Vince bowed over her shoulder to see, and enjoy his wife’s lavender smell a bit. He had his sweet spots too.

The screen showing logs, enormous amount of logs, communications all over the Net, from thousands of ships, forums, some private chats too as Maria reached out to confirm leads and deepen her investigations.

• “The fact that even a Zodiak station could not track the lost ships position stuck with me” — Maria pointed to a few message on a forum — “This forum was created in minutes of the emergency call went out. One of the user is from a station called Kodiak who said they picked up the transponder signal of Giant of the Stars a few months ago.”
• “I can’t follow you, what does it have to do with the current emergency call? It was months ago.” — Vince was good at running a team and a business, and he knew when to defer tech details to the experts.
• “I checked the vessel specs of the Giant and the planned route, takes 6 months for them to cross between Orion and Perseus Arms, and Kodiak station lies way outside of their usual route. Their estimated position right now is on the filed route, but I think they took a direct line from Kodiak to Perseus Arm.”
• “Which means? In standard language please.” — Vince started to loose some patience as he valued efficiency and the info dump did not get him closer.
• “Okey, they are here, based on my estimates. Report verified by multiple sources, transponder signal can be picked up under…”
• “Under light minutes distance, they had to be there.” — Vince opened his mouth to speak and then forgot to close it. The map pulled up to the main screen on top of their visuals monitoring their current route. And the distance was light years from where they were heading.

No-one will find them in the vast space in a search pattern, scanning back and forth even above light speeds would take an eternity for thousands of ships. Especially if they are looking at the wrong place.

• “Are you sure?” — still vacillating between outright breach of command from a military installation and the facts laid out in front of him, his mind raced through their options.
• “Yes, and even with this, the space they can be in… is a thousand light years across.”
• “That is still one fifth of the entire distance between the arms, quite the place to search for a few km large object.”
• “Like finding a needle, between the Sun and Pluto… but I think I have an idea to pinpoint their location down to a lightyear or two.”
• “That is insane, without communicating with the ship to be found, it was never done before.”
• “I know, and we never had this developed observatories before. I could use the gravimetric observatories data streams to correlate them and pinpoint a…” — Maria stopped, could not finish her sentence with the horrific possibility she knew was needed for this technique to work.
• “You mean locating a ring explosion? If those Alcubierre rings exploded, the ship is just a dust cloud now.” — Vince was now agitated, finding a dust cloud really did not seem to worth the consequences of denying an emergency command. — “I can’t bet our business on your hobby, hon’.”
• “If it is OUR business, how about listening to your PARTNER?” — Maria’s face color outmatched her flaming red hair, Vince though recognized he stepped over a line, his ego in the heat of the moment fought with his rational mind.

And between the two of those, stood his caring for Maria, the roots of an initial business partnership, mentoring her, then slowly getting closer until his most beautiful day, the birth of his son. He got so much yet he provided may be too little at times. Not an easy task to keep acting professionally with so much emotions going on, Vince still calmed his voice down,

• “Please continue your research, if you can point to a few dozen light-minutes cube, we file the evidence and change course. What do you think of that?”
• “That is reasonable.” — though her redness did not subside, Vince knew he will have a fight later when they are in private, wouldn’t be the first time. And he hoped it wouldn’t be the last either.