"LUNAR: Tales From Crystal Tokyo"
LUNAR:
Tales From Crystal Tokyo
By
Daryll Pung
Episode
2-12: Adrift
Rated:
R
An
unknown location in deep space, 11 January 2738
The
SLS Bahumat
The first thing he was conscious of was a dull, aching, throbbing pain,
from seemingly everywhere. He
latched onto that for a moment, using it to focus.
He became conscious next of a deep, bone-chilling cold.
It permeated him; like the pain, there seemed to be no escaping it.
His breathing was weird, too; he couldn't figure out exactly why.
He presently decided he should probably open his eyes.
It was dark.
Were his eyes even open? He
blinked a few times, and a few bleary shapes came into focus.
Two red lights dimly illuminated the area; the only other light source
was a panel off to the side, built into the wall.
And precisely why is the
first officer floating near the ceiling?
He slowly shook his head, realizing the air was becoming stale, and that
the while the pain was fading, the cold was growing even more intense.
The bridge. He was on
the bridge.
In a sudden burst of realization, prompted by the pain of his jammed leg,
it all suddenly became clear to him. He
blinked again, and looked around, able to discern other shapes on the bridge.
Grimacing, Wizard Duke shoved the wreckage of his chair off of his lower
portions, and sat up, slowly drifting upwards as he did so.
Life support monitor the only thing lit?
Air becoming stale? Surroundings
getting damn cold? Gravity seems
to be out, too. That is really
bad. That means emergency power is
almost drained. Just how bad off
are we? How long had this
situation been going on for? He
didn't even want to dwell on their possible location.
He grabbed the wrecked helm console, and gave himself a gentle push,
sailing towards the life support monitor. As
he arrived, a groan caught his notice; he looked up to see Commander Shelia
Thompson shaking her head. Her eyes
opened; it was then Duke noticed globules of blood in the air near her; probably
from the really nasty gash on her forehead.
More than that, in fact: there
seemed to be clouds of blood globs all over the place, in several different
colors, from the rest of the bridge crew. He
seemed to have gotten off lightly.
Duke shook his head angrily, cursing the fact that he couldn't seem to
concentrate. He forced himself to
study the readouts, and heaved a sigh as he wished he hadn't.
He slowly shook his head again, wondering if he had read it right;
wondering if perhaps this was all some damn crazy nightmare.
"What's... our status, Duke?" asked Shelia weakly, slowing to a
stop near him, grabbing his arm for support.
She still looked quite dizzy.
"Still trying to gather myself," Duke grunted.
"I can barely concentrate enough to read."
"Right. D- do what you
can... let me know when you figure it out," she groaned softly.
"Sai... Sailor Geminga?" Shelia
rubbed her eyes with her free hand, and tried to focus.
She sighed, and pushed off in the direction of the TPA chair, where
Sailor Geminga's shape still sat, upright, facing forward.
"Commander," Duke began, in a slightly firmer tone as he slowly
regained his faculties. "We're
in a bad way. Flatly, we have just
over three hours before emergency power is completely drained; after that, every
forcefield will fail and everything still operating will go offline. We'll be as good as dead.
I can't even get a read on how badly we're damaged; internal sensors are
offline."
Duke waited for a reply. Any
reply.
"Commander?" he asked, turning slowly.
Shelia sat, gazing at Sailor Geminga, before slowly looking up at him.
"She's dead. Sailor
Geminga is dead."
Duke sighed. "Must've
been some sort of backlash through the TPA."
Shelia frowned. "I
don't know... there isn't a mark on
her; it's as if her soul has simply left or ceased to exist."
"Maybe it has," muttered Duke.
"Point is, in about three hours time, we'll all be joining her.
That is, unless someone is alive down in Engineering."
"We have to know," murmured Shelia.
"Yeah, well, I don't think any of us is in any shape at the moment
to go exploring, and encountering whatever dangers await on a clearly trashed
starship," Duke muttered. "I
find myself hoping against hope that Sorcerer Derrelli's alive."
Silence prevailed, hanging thick in the air with the acrid smoke and
thinning oxygen. The shafts and
tunnels were roughly one meter wide, with lock-out points for both emergency
sealing doors and emergency forcefields every ten meters of their lengths; as
well as the occasional connecting tunnel or shaft, all laid out chaotically, yet
orderly at the same time.
These were the networks of maintenance shafts of the crippled Bahumat,
the real behind the scenes routings of everything vital to the ship's normal
operation. It was in these shafts
and tunnels, all small and uniformly cramped, that various conduits, bypasses,
and tubing ran, carrying energy, plasma, communications signals, and other such
things, between various sections of the ship.
At the moment, they were almost uniformly dark; nothing was running
through the majority of them; in some places, huge chunks of hull and
structuring were missing.
In one such shaft, leading straight down from Main Engineering, there was
a crumpled shape, shrouded by a scorched gray cape.
In this particular section, there was some flickering of light; this
light came from both the starlight outside and the fizzling of the forcefield
upon which the shape lay.
It stirred.
After a few moments, there came a low groan, and a hand reached up,
feeling the wall, and finding the rungs of the ladder there.
It grasped firmly to that, and the shape struggled to pull itself up, a
surprisingly easy task without gravity. When
this was accomplished, the shape burst into a spasm of coughing from taking a
deep breath of the noxious smoke. When the coughing fit had passed, the individual glanced
down, wondering what the sizzle was.
It froze.
Oh, shit, thought Derrelli, eyes widening as he stared at the
flickering force field he was standing on.
The infinity of space was revealed beyond it.
He slowly, deliberately stepped onto the ladder, taking stress off the
forcefield, and not wanting to move far from lack of gravity.
He looked up, wondering why the smoke hadn't drifted up. He sighed as he realized another forcefield was in place.
Great, just fucking great. Trapped
between a pair of forcefields. He
didn't even want to know what had happened.
Of even more importance, in his stunned mind, as he struggled to regain
his senses fully, was why was there a forcefield above him?
The reactor had blown, he recalled.
Oh, damn, thought Derrelli, curses bounding through his muddled
mind. It took him a moment before
he remembered his microcomp. He
blinked, and reached for it, activated its scanning mode, and pointed it
upwards.
Main Engineering was open to space.
He frowned at the readouts. Apparently
the core breach had wrecked the emergency forcefield generators for a good
distance around the Engineering area. He
expanded his scan, and found the source of the breach; one of the engine grid
fins had apparently been completely removed from the ship, presumably from an
impact with something, considering the stress fractures, warped and rent metal
and crystal, and lack of energy signatures or charring within his scanner range,
and the fact that the associated systems abruptly ended.
At least that had provided a quick means of sanitizing Engineering;
closing the hole would allow Life Support to quickly render the area perfectly
safe and habitable.
Or not, he thought, seeing the dangerously low charge in the
remaining surrounding emergency systems. Damn.
What he needed now, he thought, was a little creativity, and magic. Fortunately, he had both; and although he hadn't utilized the
required spells in some time, being they were of the basics, they would
definitely be of help, here. And
the hole actually into the engineering area was at the narrow end of the rent
hull; it was a mere half-meter across. He
was fortunate enough to be right near a conduit junction for the emergency
systems; and a chunk of wall would do nicely to fill the gap in the hull in
Engineering.
With that thought, Derrelli brought up the required spell equations on
his backlit comp's display, and spent the next ten minutes memorizing what he'd
need. When that was done, he put
his comp away. He then pushed
lightly off the ladder to the other wall. The
panel covering the wiring he needed to access was about the right size; it was
also durable enough for a temporary patch.
He removed the section without hesitation; he set it above his head,
allowing it to float free and come to rest against the forcefield.
Okay.
He concentrated briefly, activating the newly memorized equations; he
then spoke.
"Air Shell," he murmured; as he did so, a shifting envelope of
force surrounded him; it bounded off his body by about 5 centimeters,
essentially providing him with his own atmosphere.
He took a deep breath of clean, strong, magically purified oxygen, and
set to work. He reached one hand
out to the ladder, and grabbed a hold, knowing how violent things were liable to
get. Stretched out like this was
highly uncomfortable, but necessary. He
touched the controls of the junction, and entered in the command to shut off the
forcefield above his head; his hand hesitated before pressing the final sequence
to activate that command, and he gripped even tighter with the hand he was
holding on with, clenching his teeth as he pressed the proper panel.
His arm was nearly yanked out of his socket as he was suddenly upended,
feet pointing up; the small amount of atmosphere in the shaft was abruptly
vented to space, along with the chunk of wall.
His hand nearly slipped free; he was just barely able to grab with the
other, and wrap his arm around the ladder, before the rush ended, the area being
equalized. He was protected from
the vacuum by the spell he was using; but it wouldn't last long, and he had a
lot to do. He looked up, wondering
how the panel had been placed; it was time to find out.
He brought his feet to a more normal orientation, and easily moved hand
over hand, not using his feet, up the ladder in the gravity-free environment.
He moved carefully through the hatch, into the utter darkness of Main
Engineering; he carefully felt his way around, pulling himself through.
He reached the trashed center table console, and stopped, activating
another set of equations.
"Light!" he called; the wrecked display table abruptly burst to
life, shining with the incandescence of a powerful spotlight, in all directions.
Derrelli took a closer look around, noting with a sinking feeling the
huge hole in the reactor, and spotting the chunk blasted loose hanging up by the
ceiling near the hole, wedged in place. The
hole wasn't blocked, either. His
panel was stuck in it, all right, by one end, at an angle.
He uttered yet another curse, and carefully aimed himself at the area,
launching himself upwards. At least
it would be easy to move.
He arrived neatly where he wanted, and stopped before shifting the panel.
He paused, and examined the chunk from the reactor.
It was ordinarily heavy, being a specially reinforced reactor material;
if he set it in position now, it would be a lot easier to deal with.
He gently moved towards it; noting how it was wedged, he slid up against
the wall, braced his back against the corner of the wall and ceiling, and pushed
it with his legs.
The chunk easily and immediately came loose; there was nothing preventing
it from doing so. It spun slightly,
and Derrelli dived after it, correcting its course and aiming it to set in the
hole in the reactor as closely as he could.
It took several minutes to get it situated, and wedged in so that it
wouldn't budge. That done, he
kicked back off, aimed back at the panel and the hole.
He set the panel in position, pressing it in place; he then cocked his
finger, pointing at the edges.
"Cutting Beam," he said, modulating the magical energy beam to
weld the edges of the panel to the edges of the hole; there was even a bit of
overlap. Three minutes later, he
deactivated the spell, and was gratified to hear the hum of Life Support kicking
in, adding atmosphere to Main Engineering.
Even so, he knew it would be several minutes before he could safely allow
his air shell spell to drop.
In the meantime, he dived down to where the Life Support panel was
beginning to light up; he took a moment to examine the readings.
Shit; the power required to give him a workable atmosphere in main
engineering had now lowered ship's resources to just over an hour before
everything failed. And it would be
at least ten minutes before he had enough air in here to utilize fire magic to
melt the reactor together.
"Umm, Commander?" Duke said, eyeing the life support panel
warily. The lights in the area had
just flickered, and he had just investigated the reason why.
Shelia looked up from the center of the bridge; she had spent the last
half-hour gathering everyone they could find to the middle of the bridge;
several were severely injured. Those
who were deceased were piled off to the right side, away from everything. They were doing the best they could with the emergency
medical kits; Shelia had been trying not to think about the situation much,
trapped as they were. Duke's
judicious and cautious exploration ten minutes earlier had proved they were
irrevocably cut off from a safe passage to the rest of the ship; the corridors
and maintenance networks reachable from the bridge were uniformly open to space
and sealed by forcefield. The
damage had to be very bad, indeed, to do that, considering the bridge was in the
middle of the ship, in a specially reinforced section.
"Yes, Duke?" she said quietly.
Even the others who were awake and capable of helping looked up; despair
was beginning to set in.
It was about to get worse.
"Something just kicked off a huge drain on the Life Support
system," he reported. "The
power will now run out in just over an hour."
Shelia blinked, mind reeling from further bad news.
Hopelessness threatened to overwhelm her. "Oh, just lovely," she muttered.
"Duke? About your plan
to deactivate one of the forcefields with your blaster and hopefully make it ten
meters to the other one, deactivate it, reactivate it as you got through, all in
less than the thirty seconds that would kill you from being exposed to space,
and hopefully get somewhere from there that could possibly be of help to
us?"
"Yeah?" he replied.
"I'm seriously considering it, although I know it's a desperation
maneuver. I'm going to take this as
a sign that someone's working to do something to save us all; if our situation
does not improve in thirty minutes, we'll try your desperation move,"
Shelia said.
Duke grinned. "As I
said earlier, not all that desperate. It'll
be more than thirty seconds; I'll be able to breathe easily due to a spell I
know. The trick'll be avoiding
being sucked out with the atmosphere in the areas I intend to traverse."
Shelia nodded. "Whatever.
Let's see what the next half-hour brings."
Derrelli gazed at the still red-hot surface of the freshly melted
together reactor, and then looked down to his comp; the reactor vessel's
integrity was tight. It wasn't as
thick as it should be, but that could be fixed at a later date.
He scanned the rest of the engineering system; the reactant pods were
intact, as were the channeling paths to the reactor.
The system had failed with the reactor breach; and only after that had
the refined reactant conduits out to the engines been damaged.
It's like they knew exactly how to hit us, he mused.
The upshot was, by closing off the valves that led to the engines, he
could safely confine the reaction to provide power to the ship; and he didn't
have to take his time about it. This
was a good thing, considering he now had almost forty-five minutes before time
was up.
After the reactor had noticeably cooled, Derrelli leapt to work, knowing
he would have to draw further off the life support to get the reactor going.
By that time, though, it wouldn't need much.
His fingers danced over the panel as he worked; despite the chill in the
air, perspiration soaked his brow. He
hated racing the clock!
There was a low hum as the lights flipped off momentarily, followed by
silence; after a second, they came back on, albeit at a lower intensity.
"Now what?" whispered Shelia.
"I thought we had just over a half hour left?"
Duke launched himself towards the life support console, letting his
spellcomp drift where he had been, studying the spells he would require. He arrived, and examined the displays with a curse.
"Commander," he began, trailing off as hopelessness took him.
"Yes, Duke?" Shelia said mechanically.
His shoulders slumped. "It's
a moot point, now. I might as well
not even bother. I can't get
anywhere in five minutes; which is precisely what we have left of emergency
power."
He heard nothing; he turned to see Shelia staring blankly at him, her
mouth hanging wide open. After
about ten seconds, she closed it, along with her eyes.
Tears trickled out from under her eyelashes.
Shelia sat down slowly, and put her head on her arms.
"T- that's it then," she murmured, sniffling.
"We're doomed."
Duke sighed, lowering himself. "Yeah,
I'm afraid so. We'll hold out for a
little bit, but then..." His
eyes went to the display, now counting down from three minutes. He scanned the group of dejected individuals, drawing
shallow, raspy breaths, as the air got dangerously thin, shivering due to the
cold. None of the surviving bridge
crew said anything; what was there to say?
Duke waited a short while, then shrugged fatalistically and stood, eyeing
the timer. It began to flash.
"Sixty seconds," he said in a monotone, watching the numbers
spiral down to nothing.
"Thirty seconds," he reported.
The numbers still spun down.
They became highlighted in red.
"Ten seconds," he sighed, closing his eyes, drifting slightly
upwards as he let go, not caring.
Here it comes, thought Duke.
I had hoped this day would never arrive.
Oh, well. I guess I won't be
able to accomplish all that I wanted...
He waited for what seemed like an eternity before a beep came to his
ears, followed abruptly by a loud, rising hum; he was suddenly dropped on his
ass, and shouts of joy, accompanied by the clatter of falling objects and the
splatter of falling blood, rent the air. He
opened his eyes, and was nearly blinded as all around the bridge, consoles
flickered; the main bridge lights had burst to life.
There were a few sprays of sparks from damaged consoles; one could
already feel the temperature rising, and hear the air hissing from the primary
environmental systems.
They sat in stunned disbelief for a moment, and then Shelia leapt to her
feet.
"ALL RIGHT! I love you,
Derrelli!" she shouted. Within
a second, the bridge was full of shouting, celebrating people, hugging and
dancing around, saved just seconds away from the end.
Duke grinned as he broke away, retrieving his comp; he bore a huge smile.
"Damn, that boy's timing is good."
The man in question stood before a now vigorously working reactor,
watching the elements pour in, stabilizing it at a low level; just enough to
provide main power to the ship, and recharge all depleted energy reserves. He would shortly have to power up the sublight reactors; but
the ship was in good hands until then. He
just didn't like the thought of having no one here to monitor; but he didn't
have a whole lot of options at the moment.
Engineering was now brightly lit; the temperature was now nearing
something quite comfortable. He
grinned.
His smile slowly disappeared as a beep showed internal sensors coming
online; he braced himself for the damage report, knowing what his priorities
would be.
He was stunned to see just how massive the injuries to the ship were.
"Mother of Serenity," he muttered.
He almost submitted to a feeling of despair, but stubbornly shook it off.
It didn't matter how bad it was; they were alive, and that's what
counted. He lowered his head to
examine the sensor readouts, deep in thought.
Determination burst through him.
By all that's sacred, he thought, we will recover! He looked up with a smile.
They had been right in the jaws of death, but had slipped free, to heal.
And when they were better, the enemy would fall before their retributive
fury like houses to a tornado!
He set to work, moving for the equipment lockers; he needed to clear a
path to all the sections of the ship that still had life.
It could take awhile.
But, by the Crystal, this
dragon would live to chomp the DK another day!
STAY
TUNED!