Another day at the office

2. Another day at the office

• Ding-dong, “Arrival in 1 minute” — passenger announcement brought John out of his deep reading.

His assignment arrived weeks ago to his inbox with attachments of ship specifications, logs of station communications, everything easy to collect but nothing that can tell what actually happened to the ship, that is his job to find out. It isn’t his first barbecue though as serving for the Galactic Transportation Safety Board for his entire adult life, leading dozens of investigations, he knew he need to find evidence in the wreckage.

Just as he memorized the relative positions of a hundred data and voice recorders positioned over the vast ship lost in the accident, his thoughts were interrupted by the flight attendant prompting him to put away the large electronics. Old protocols die hard, however exiting from faster-than-light travel was comparable to those old airplanes’ landing. Just as said, felt the slight vibrations on deceleration.

Looking out the window to his left, seeing the stars blurring back to dots instead of wooshing lines, a moment after that noticed another passenger shuttle just like his chartered one passing by, “little bit too close” thought to himself as he heard a muffled beep-beep from the cockpit. Recognizing the proximity alert in it, John got his confirmation, he is as precise in estimations as he ever was. A soft, practiced voice came on:

• “Dear passengers, we are docking in 10 minutes at the FNA carrier stationed in orbit, for those who continue to other destination, we wish a safe and relaxing journey, thank you all for choosing our services!”

John was fiddling with the onboard entertainment system and managed to switch to external sensors and while these screens were rudimentary, he was eager to learn more about the situation with his own eyes, scrolling and zooming all around, he could see that the majority of the structure was still in tact on the moon’s surface. Surprising, true, not even improbable if they managed to slow down the drift before impact, will see more from the examination of the wreckage around the impact sites. John can see hundreds of smaller vessels like bee hives working around the wreck, drawing lines to and from the carrier and the surface, rarely if ever seen this monumental operation though for his knowledge, this scale of event never happened in human history.

The Federal Navy Arm’s carrier was still orbiting the wreckage and coordinating clean-up months after the incident mainly ended, as the shuttle was taken to berth and secured in an internal docking pier exposing them to minimal, almost no gravity as the vast carrier body was spinning to provide long term living space on the outer hull. John clicked open his seatbelt with one hand, took his personal bag with the another and got up so fast, the flight attendant almost jumped to get out of way. John barely noticed people around him when this excited, with fast and confident pushes he was out the shuttle an in the hallway toward the dock center, a cadet shouting:

• “John Sotomayor?” — actually the cadet had to pursue him,
• “Please wait, follow me to…”
• “The flight deck? Need to get to the surface as soon as possible, are you the guide assigned?”
• “Yes, and yes, to the left at next”

They were flying through tubes that served as passenger hallways, getting closer and closer to the outer hull and feeling an increase in gravity, allowing them shortly to walk on their feet next to each other. John still in a hurry, asking:

• “What are those ships doing out there?”
• “Mostly salvage crew from ISV, they started to tear apart the wreckage for metals and reusable equipment, sir.” — a well-informed cadet on the point.
• “They have to stop now, evidence is already damaged as it is. How can I communicate with the bridge?”
• “Just enter 111 while you are on-board, sir.”
• “Drop the ‘sir’ part please, call me John” — reminds me of being old, last part only thought to himself, quickly entered the numbers on his watch, his contact lense showing the outgoing call and response coming through his earring from the Shipmaster:
• “We were waiting you, Mister Sotomayor, hope our cadet found you and please before you leave drop by the bri…”
• “You need to order the civilian ships to immediately stop the salvage operation” — interrupted the shipmaster — “Excuse me, each second counts”
• “All right, issuing order.” — switching to the carrier’s comm center, an immediate buzz and chatter from all ships around as they have to halt their operation InterStellar Vacations ordered them to do, though no-one had the guts to deny a Navy carrier’s command.

Few minutes later John and the cadet arrived to the bridge, dozens of officials around screens barking orders in monotonous voice, only a few people standing out of the crowd at the center, much less talking, more listening, the Shipmaster, acting as fleet commander, the first mate and second mate, next to her. The Shipmaster, a brunette lady in her forties looked up from her screen toward the entering investigator, sipped from her coffee and dropped a side-look:

• “Would appreciate some politeness on a first call but I understand the hurry.” — snarked at the investigator. — “Most ships acknowledged and stood down, but I believe we located 3 small vessels still operating in the wreckage. And a shuttle is ready in bay A for you.”
• “Thank you m’am, any other activities going on?” — and John turned toward the exit immediately
• “There are still dozens of mobile hospitals working with long term patient care, however we don’t expect more survivors at this point”
• “Understood” — barked back to the shipmaster as he left, cadet still following in his wake.

He did this part so many times, not even remembering all details, few moments later he was already at the crash site on the surface and the shuttle bringing him down was gone with the pilot and cadet, leaving him alone in the bustling central hospital, the facility closest to the wreck’s secured entry points. His first objective, finding one working data and voice recorder and start from there, remembering from the blueprints, there are 4 units close to the entry point, he took his environmental suit and walked out to the cold vacuum toward the once beautiful lines of the largest luxury liner ever built.

He got a dozen calls on his way here, even as high up from the GTSB board of directors, whom he never talked with in his decades of service, so feeling the pressure to find out what happened that caused so many lives lost, his steps toward the entry seemed longer and longer. And not just the lower gravity of the moon and the bulkiness of the suit, the immense feeling of a turning point of his career slowed him to almost a crawl. A group of workers with their bright orange environmental suits jumped passed by him to the other direction as they finished their shift, they seemed careless to him as the near-range radio of John’s suit played the group’s laughing and chatter though he could not understand a word.

“Let’s focus on the task at hand” thought to himself and regained footing as he entered the wreckage, arrived to a pressurized area again. His mind back in the moment again. Quickly located the supposed positions of the recorders. A quick jump to arrive at the first column, opening the hatch. First recorder is broken to pieces, another jump. Second hatch opened in moments, empty space behind.

Third hatch did give easily as the plate deformed, using his multi-tool, prying open the hatch revealed another recorder smashed to pieces. He took photos and video recordings for later analysis, though so far no luck.

• Bang, bang… — loud metallic noise reaches John from the direction his memory pointed for the next recorder, as he approaches and counts 6 more bangs, notices another worker in the distance, hammering a column that might hold a working recorder.
• “Stop!” — shouts John into the near-field radio, but the figure swings again, bang, bang…

John flies into the worker, knocking both of them down a few meters along the wall, the frightened worker swings again and John flies to the other direction a few meters, feeling burn and pain in his side, a thump in his back as he lands, but he is up in a moment to wave stop and lower his both arms signaling he is not a danger. The worker raises his hand and shows two fingers, then three and the old call sign putting his hand to his head.

John takes a few moments to realize, then quickly turns a knob, his radio is now on channel 23,

• “What the hell, man, who are you? Scared the drop out of me”
• “I’m investigator John Sotomayor, GTSB, I had to stop you, a vital data recorder is in that column you were hitting” — seems the worker is now frozen, can’t see his face through the tinted helmet glass though.

Next moment, the worker swings again toward John, now aiming to the head and while it connects and knocks him down, the helmet does not crack, it still takes seconds for John to recover from his stun, by this time the worker is gone. John gets up and opens the last hatch, the recorder is seemingly intact as he removes it from the cushion bed, and so he takes some photos again.

He takes a small device from his vest pocket and connects to the recorder. His old habit to optimize for efficiency and to avoid data loss as much as possible, the small device connects the recorder to his GTSB computer and slowly starts copying from the beginning. Quantum entanglement comms are not cheap, but a friend of his works as an engineer and custom made a pair for him as a birthday present. As the pair of the drives work to move data bit by bit over 40 light years, he hears multiple steps coming toward him.