Volume 5: Gamma-20, Chapter 5.34

As fast as we all could, we returned to the command center to discuss what the hell we were going to do next. All throughout

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those warning lights and alarms rang out, and every few minutes there was another power surge that shut everything down for a few moments, sometimes causing the ship to rumble so hard I thought it might start breaking apart soon.

Gadow took his spot at the head of the table and activated a hologram to display the system,

Jessipie-90

, and the void singularity.

“With the current rate we’re getting pulled towards the singularity, the computer says we’ve only got 164 hours until we fall into the event horizon.” Gadow confirmed.

“Shit, that’s just barely over 5 days.” Num added.

At least we were dealing with standard Imperial days here to give us the extra time.

“So obviously we’re going to have to abandon the cargo and start working on escaping the system in the emergency shuttle.” Fierra told the crew.

“There’s absolutely no chance you’d be able to repair the warp reactor at this point?” Durgo asked.

I turned to him and threw my hands out in exasperation, “Are you fucking serious dude? You saw how it got blown to shit back there.”

Durgo glowered at me but didn’t say anything else.

“Yeah, what exactly went wrong? I get there was no guarantee we’d be able to get the reactor working again, but for it to blow up like that—and then right afterwards the void singularity formed. Is it possible we caused it?” Reim asked.

Gadow shrugged, “I have no idea what went wrong—I didn’t even think it was possible for a warp pulse to cause the destabilizing of a warp gate.”

I shook my head slowly, “Honestly, I’m wondering if Gamma-20 somehow had a hand in what happened; maybe when she felt the warp pulse, she did something to the collapsed warp gate to fully destabilize it.”

Zemman looked like he could hardly believe that, “Seriously, what kind of fucking monsters are these?” He started ticking off fingers, “It can shapeshift and create smaller soldier forms, can survive out in the vacuum of space, and even destabilize warp gates? How were you

ever

supposed to contend with a creature like that?” He pressed.

I just sighed, “They’re extra dimensional beings

waaay

beyond our mortal comprehension—like gods actually. They exist in our physical space while having some strange, otherworldly connection to the void that gives them powers I can honestly only describe as magic.”

Zemman laughed bitterly and shook is heads, “Fucking gods, really? So what kind of hope do we have against them?”

Zyno shrugged, “Not much.” He admitted.

“Look, it doesn’t matter what kind of monster’s out there or what they did to sabotage our ship, we’re in survival mode now and we need to focus.” Gadow said, looking around at his crew, “Our mission failed and we’re going to have to abandon the cargo, but we need to stay strong and work together if we’re going to get through this.”

I could see the news hit the crew hard, 20 years of work down the drain in an instant, no hope of salvaging anything at this point either. But still, after everything they suffered through and all they’d done to make it this far, they weren’t about to just give up and die.

“Then we’ll all start working on the emergency shuttle and get the G-drive fixed so we can escape the system before the singularity destroys

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, right?” Lummy reasoned.

Gadow nodded once, “That’s all we can do now.”

I cleared my throat delicately, wondering how I was going to break the news we probably wouldn’t survive in the shuttle either.

“There’s one more problem we need to worry about; the emergency shuttle doesn’t have repulser shielding, right? That means the second we head out into space we’ll be totally vulnerable if Gamma-20 comes after us.” I told them.

Pretty much everyone groaned in response, losing what little hope we had then.

“We

cannot

catch a break here man…” Zemman grumbled.

“If we leave

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, Gamma-20 can just destroy the shuttle, and obviously if we stay on the ship we’ll be killed by the void singularity.” Gadow said, mostly to himself.

Zyno sat upright, “Not necessarily.” He said abruptly, suddenly looking quite animated. He stood up and activated his tablet to display a hologram of his own, the lifepod we took from

Krook Hook

, “Our lifepod has portable repulser shielding; it’s not regenerative like

Jessipie-90’s

, but if we rig it up to the shuttle, it could give us a at least a few days of shielding—more if we can bring some extra power cells with us.”

My eyes grew wide, “Really, you could do all that?”

Zyno waved it off, “I might not know anything about fixing warp reactors, but retrofitting portable shielding from one ship to the next should be simple enough.”

Gadow looked between Zyno and me, “What about the communications system in the lifepod? Remember, our shuttle’s comms are relayed through

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, so even if we were able to repair our system, once the main vessel is destroyed that would prevent us from sending out any long-range distress beacons.”

Zyno shrugged, “They were pretty fried last I checked, but not unsalvageable. Worst case scenario, we strip the system and bring the gear with us in the shuttle and work on trying to fix it while we’re escaping the Derrion System.”

Lummy started listing things off, “Now we need to work on fixing the emergency shuttle’s G-drive—run tests to make sure all the other systems are working to ensure we’ll be able to survive the trip, then we’ve gotta strip your lifepod of its shielding and communications system and transfer it all into the shuttle.” She said.

Fierra nodded along, “All within 164 hours.”

There was another long power surge that shut off all the lights and even the displayed holograms fizzled out before they flickered back on.

I pointed up towards the ceiling, “Are we going to be safe with all those power surges? Will the repulser shielding stay active?”

Gadow nodded, “There’s a few systems on the ship with redundant power support to prevent them from going offline—life support, defensive shielding, artificial gravity, etcetera. We’ll be safe and secure at least until the singularity starts ripping apart the entire ship once it falls into the event horizon.” He confirmed.

Fierra clapped her hands together, “Alright people, we know what we need to do, time to get it done.”

Everyone stood then, looking nervous but determined; we’d dealt with so much over the last couple cycles, just barely surviving it seemed, but for those of us who remained we weren’t about to just give up now.

And for me, there was no world where I was ready to die; no matter what I suffered through or how hard it was to survive, there was nothing that could stop me from reuniting with my Evie.

***

We split apart into a couple teams, either focusing on stripping the lifepod or fixing the emergency shuttle. Zyno of course was in charge of the lifepod, and he got Saba to help him. Me, Willa and Durgo stayed with them too, running any stripped gear back and forth between the pod and the shuttle—working as mules at this point, but it was important nonetheless.

Lummy, Zemman and Num worked on the emergency shuttle, and I was glad to hear fixing it and the G-drive weren’t outside their wheelhouse at all—Num especially had prior experience working on smaller drives like that; he said we should have it up and running in just a couple of days.

Reim was quite busy as well for once, needing to make sure the emergency shuttle would have enough supplies to support us. She doublechecked the hydration filtration system, the food synthesizer, and then the extra supplies like medications and protein rations. Before I’d been concerned if we needed to escape we wouldn’t last long or would start killing each other so we could survive longer, but now with only 11 of us left, Reim confirmed we’d be able to last over 10 cycles—a decacycle, so long as we rationed carefully.

Considering it would take a couple cycles traveling in G-drive to make it out of the Derrion System, that meant we’d have a decent chance of surviving this mess, either by making it to a rescue station, or if we got the communications working properly we might even be able to get

The Radiance

to pick us up.

Only question would be if we could escape Gamma-20 by the time our repulser shielding wore out, hopefully she would just give up on us and return to whatever mission she was on to achieve perfection.

Even with everything we were dealing with, Gadow and Fierra had administrative duties to attend to. While everyone else was working on getting the shuttle in working order, Gadow and Fierra were following along with the protocols for when a deep space freighter was about to be destroyed and the cargo was going to be lost; they needed to download and log data from pretty much every system on

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, catalog all the crystals they’d be losing, even write up reports on what happened that led to such a catastrophe that would cause the mission to be completely unsalvageable.

Part of me thought it was stupid for them to still be worried about mere operational responsibilities when we had such a limited window for surviving all this, and yet another part realized this was Gadow and Fierra thinking ahead beyond just surviving. It was obvious they were going to lose out on all their profits for the contract since the cargo was going to be destroyed, and even though it wasn’t their fault, Gadow was sure they’d be let go from the company, but by following proper protocols and having records for everything that happened, the crew wouldn’t be blacklisted from ever working on deep space freighters again. In a different kind of way they were protecting the crew—protecting their future and allowing them to hold onto some career prospects.

As always, Gadow was concerned with the crew’s morale, and with fulfilling the last of his captain duties now, he was giving them a small ray of hope.

Still, there was no denying all they lost, wasting 20 years on this tour with nothing to show for it except bad memories and dead friends. People were naturally on edge—anxious and angry. I’d been surprised how well everyone seemed to work together before, having to live with your coworkers without any breaks, and yet I never saw them fight or argue much. Perhaps after a couple decades they’d fallen into a good rhythm, but now we were riding the edge of survival, that rhythm had been disrupted.

Half the time I went into the emergency shuttle I heard the engineers shouting—Lummy, Zemman, and Num fighting over every little thing while trying to fix the G-drive. Their individual patience had run out, and oftentimes they even yelled at me to hurry up and get back to helping Zyno too.

Actually, Zyno wasn’t doing so well himself either, and he snapped at me more than a few times when I picked up the wrong panel or part—threw some future-tech screwdriver at my head once even.

However, despite the high tension, the frayed nerves and all the stress that would overwhelm most people, we seemed to be making solid progress.

Nights were certainly different as well while everyone was so focused on their projects; no more cutting out early or relaxing after dinner. Now, everyone worked until they were exhausted, grabbing a quick meal or sometimes just eating while working without a break. The Empire ran on 32-hour days, and now people were simply running as long as they could until they were too tired to go on and had to crash for the night, only to get up just a few hours later and start it all over again.

Thankfully, the G-drive on the emergency shuttle wasn’t anywhere near as complicated as the warp reactor, and after taking it apart over a couple days the engineers were able to properly diagnose the problem, fix the fried parts, then put it all back together. After that they spent some time double-checking the rest of the systems, making sure everything would be fully operational.

Zyno made great progress retrofitting the lifepod’s shielding onto the emergency shuttle, though he hit a snag over properly sizing the shield against the shuttle’s hull so it wouldn’t waste any energy since it was quite a limited resource. Zyno took as many extra power cells as he could manage to supercharge the shield so it would be able to last a full cycle; he was very proud when he explained how he altered the output so it would optimize the energy drainage. It all sounded like techno nerd talk to me though.

They seemed to be having a little more difficulty integrating the communications system into the emergency shuttle, and as the days started ticking away, Zyno gave up on having it fixed before we departed and instead grabbed all the extra parts and tools he’d need to work on it while we were traveling in the shuttle.

We ran a few more tests on the shuttle, and everything seemed to be in working order; the G-drive was fixed, life support was good, food and supplies were plentiful, and the repulser shielding was working great.

With only 18 hours to spare, we were just about ready to leave the Derrion System.