16. Final jump

Vince turned to his another side, again for the tenth time in an hour. On a normal night he would annoy Maria to hell and back. Not this…

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

Vince turned to his another side, again for the tenth time in an hour. On a normal night he would annoy Maria to hell and back. Not this time, Maria lay on her back with eyes open, staring the ceiling. Or the wall, it is always a matter of perspective in space. The room’s structure changes as frequently as they switch from thrusters to rotation and back giving the interior designers a whole lot of new challenges unique to space dwelling. After years of living on a long distance space vessel, these minutia of life becomes unnoticeable until a long sleepless night full of anticipation.

“Thank you” — Maria spoke softly.
“For what, dear?”
“Believing in me.”
“Always, dear. Would not do otherwise.”
“Careful about what you promise!” — Maria chuckled, so many years together, she still had her fears, her inner demons always chipping away into her confidence. Yet to get used with Vince’s support. — “Have you ever thought about building a house?”
“Those reusable ship panel houses freak me out to be honest.”
“Not those, a real house, from wood, bricks, away yet near a settlement, next to grassy hills as far as eye can see… sigh…”
“Maria, dear…” — Vince turned again now to face her longing gaze still fixated on the ceiling — “You never mentioned that you want home on land.”
“I don’t think I even knew before we left for this run, I just picked up Eddy from his friend’s place and their house, it was just so pretty to look at. Sigh… Comp, how long until arrival?”
“17 minutes at current speed” — replied the ships computer interface after a few seconds, it was rarely used by the crew so it took a bit of time to load the subroutines.
“Let’s get to the bridge.” — Maria jumped out of bed with the energy of a kid promised to go to candyland for breakfast.

Vince led their arrival to the bridge, as he crossed the bulkhead, a low roar travelled through the ship’s structure. Then the sound of light summer rain knocking on aluminium roof.

“Micro-meteors. We will need a new paint after this detour but we will be fine, plating holds and sensors show we clear the field in moments.” — Greg welcomed the couple, he kept watch for an hour already.
“And the roaring? That could not come from the impacts.” — Vince shot a glance to Maria.
“Let me check something before I speculate.”
“Arrival to programmed coordinates in 2 minutes.” — interjected Greg as it was preferred on the bridge instead of the computer. — “By the way it wasn’t the first roaring, I felt a stronger one half an hour ago. Didn’t you?”
“Well, we must have been too much in our thoughts.”
“I… I think I have a theory… but not sure, could be something totally different too…” — confusion sitting on Maria’s face for a moment until she composed herself — “Okey, the most probable version is that these gravimetric waves still come from the Giant of the Stars’ damaged rings that may still be active.”
“At least would mean they are not a dust cloud floating around.”
“A good news at this point, bad news is that never seen anything like this, we can learn more when we find the ship.”
“We are at… the coordinates, full stop. Check visuals, and open channel to Zodiak-12.”

As Zodiak station came online in the background and Vince got through the polite chit chat to establish they will be in continuous comm from now on, tension in the air could be felt rising throughout the Perseus Train’s bridge. The anticipation to find a dust cloud with no soul to be saved to an intact cruise liner, with anything still on table, waiting for the identification systems to scan around was just unbearable. Maria held her breath back for long seconds.

“Contact, ship class match the disappeared ship, we get only the outline on visuals. Near that moon.”
“How far are we? Zodiak, do you see what we see?”
“This is Zodiak-12, yes, we see.”
“Here is Captain Victoria Sebes, we see it too” — she turns to her first shipmate — “Ten minutes counter starts for the analysts.” — then Greg joins in:
“6 light hours distance to the ship. Woow, we found the needle in the universe of haystacks, this goes to the history books.”
“Indeed, nice work Maria! But our work just starts, lay in new course, we need real time comms with them.”
“Course laid in, engaging thrusters…”
“We don’t have days to get there, we execute a micro-jump. I take conn.” — Vince took nav to himself, while not unusual maneuver, for a freighter it was rare to be in such a hurry.
“Proximity alert!” — the computer woke from its slumber as Vince executed the jump and the vast ship appeared just in front of them in an arms length virtually.
“Getting the transponder codes, it is the Giant of the Stars, Zodiak-12, Irondome, please verify.”
“This is Zodiak-12, code verified.” — Vince was the man of procedure and even he thought about the newbie Zodiak-12 operator to just drop the unnecessary identification, these radio protocols from the early 20th centuries worked well with open channels, were useless in point to point comms knowing they have only a low number of people on the channel.
“Irondome en route to your coordinates, estimated arrival in 3 months, general directive to nearby ships, jump to Perseus Train’s position and assist in rescue. Captain Sebes out.” — As Victoria finished, Vince broke the line too, could not leave it without a comment to his team:
“3 months, I knew the navy had faster drives but never confirmed how much, it is crazy, it takes 9 months for us to cross the same distance.”
“Still a very long time to wait for them.”
“Indeed, let’s hail the cruiser then. Giant of the Stars, this is Captain Vince Pier from the Perseus Train, how can we assist?”

The only response the ship gave was deafening silence. On the Perseus Train’s bridge they could see the majestic, sleek lines of the ship, the small details of its hull rotating, so they knew they had gravity. Though they could not know if anyone on board was still alive, the ship could start its rotation automatically following protocols. There were no other ships in a half an hour light distance detectable, though this capital ship had dozens of not hundreds of support ships, shuttles and landing ships in its complement.

“They are awfully silent, no life-signs outside, no movements, no workers.”
“Keep hailing them with same message on repeat. Let’s do a full orbit, maybe we can see any damage or clue outside.”
“Okey, we are orbiting.” — Greg took the joystick and gently spun the freighter around the giant cruiser.

Despite their heavy load, only a few minutes were necessary to execute their elegant dance move. Greg’s face lit up as he was a child again in a long time forgotten Christmas fair fishing for a teddy bear in the claw machines.

As they emerged onto the other side, the damaged rings and the floating bodies came into the crew’s view.

“Glad that Eddy is still asleep.” — came from Maria as the first and only comment regarding the brutal reality they all witnessing at the very moment.
“Still no answer, we know they didn’t answer on any quantum comm hails, and no answer on radio, not sure if their comms work at all. We need to dock and see if anyone is still alive. Options?”
“Two, their main dock at the centerline or the stern rings maintenance hatches. Main dock’s rotation could make it tricky.” — Greg ideated based on what he saw through the screens.
“Not our only problem…” — Maria interrupted them — “Our computer uses tiny corrections and I checked, we are in the moon’s gravity well.”
“Meaning…”
“Yeah, we are slowly falling into it, rough estimations show if the Giant of the Stars won’t use any thrusters, they fall onto the moon in less than 2 months…”

If you enjoyed this scene, read the story leading up to it so far here: