Thrill of the Rescue part I
Captains Log — 3
The following Data excerpt was salvaged from a large cluster of floating debris and damaged satellites in the outer reaches of the unmapped and unruly High Risk Zone. The exact co-ordinates have been scrambled but what we have managed to decrypt may be valuable.
In accordance with MUD Governance Code #32334, this information is highly classified.
Log ID: 260193
Captains Log: 003
Enlisted Earth Days: 16
ATLAS payload: 1112
Ship: VZUS Opod
“Captains Log. Today, the crew and I were tested in more ways than one. In retrospect, the events unfolded with enough panic to disturb a clear recounting, but I made a promise to log especially during troubled times.
I had almost counted six restless hours of half-sleep when the violet distress light on the monitor in my personal quarters began blinking. I hurried to assemble the crew with my eyes half-closed as some small corner of my consciousness still wrestled with the events of the past week.
Dr. Valster, lively and alert with her medic’s disposition, had already synced an image of the distressed ship to the largest monitor on the bridge. She had recently jerry-rigged our thought-to-be-deceased warp drive onto a small drone, proving to be more of an unconventional mechanic than even the foreman. The image on the screen was strangely clear, and I was unsurprised to learn Valster had tinkered with the components in the drone’s camera. When I asked her what kind of tinkering, she wryly smiled and mentioned that the ONI makes far better lens components than any human faction in the metaverse. The doctor seems rather fond of alien tech.
Corporal Cort, Derranis and a narrow-eyed Lieutenant Nader stared at the monitor, their eyes simultaneously taking in the image and wandering in worried thought. After a quick scan our data rack and AI pulled up the ships design specs.
I recognized the ship immediately — a Fimbul Packlite. Its oversized thrusters burned dully in the still image, and its hollowed out belly looked strange without its collection of cargo containers that typically fill Packlite storage bays. Blackened burn-marks stained the metal shell just below the observation deck. It looked worse-for-wear, even for a Build-Your-Own-Scrapyard vessel.
The crew had already begun debating over the whereabouts of the cargo when the doctor informed us that the image wasn’t the only piece of data we should be analysing.
She played us the drone’s audio feed, whose signal was patchy at best; its syncopated crackle made it hard to decipher the voices within. After a haunting silence, we heard two voices mumbling, and agreed that the words “power supply” and “ rapidly depleting” could just be made out. That was enough to have Corporal Cort pacing the bridge frantically.
She was no doubt planning some series of complex search-and-rescue flight manoeuvres in her head when Foreman Derranis curtly reminded us that the coordinates of the Packlite were closer to the edge of the High Risk Zone, nearer to certain danger.
Though I knew Nader and Cort could pilot Shinobi as if it were a Calico Evac, the VZUS Opod was not designed to rescue wayward cargo vessels, at least not alone. Heading toward the distress call began to seem like a primary mission compromise. Our compass had been firmly fixed on valuable data toward the heart of the MRZ, not some fumble on the outskirts where even the quiet and cunning Shinobi was easily outgunned.
Naturally, young Cort felt otherwise, and shared some form of agreement with the usually neutral Dr. Valster. The Doctor’s secondary data reading suggested that no ships in nearby sectors MU1 and OM1 had been logged responding to the call — it was us or it was no one. Cort looked me right in the eyes, and said with the conviction only a hungry recruit could muster,
‘it is our faction.’
Between the corporal’s sense of duty, and Valster’s figures, I had no choice but to fall in with facts and instincts. Lermnis too seemed swayed to rescue the stranded vessel, though only I could spot the small creases of worry that began to form above the old pilot’s brow. Foreman Derranis alone seemed undecided, though I knew he would follow orders without question.
The final test came right before lights out. Dr. Valster received another image from the drone that had photographed the lost Packlite. A second ship filled the screen , and the crew fell in eagerly to inspect the monitor again. Radiant silver casing, sleekly turreted and built for sharp, rolling turns, this did not appear to be a ship lost in space.
Dr. Valster claimed it was a newly developed Busan Thrill of Life, forged out of the same alien secrets as her homebrew drone lens. I knew better than to question the Doctor’s seemingly infinite source of classified information.
Corporal Cort whistled at the fighter before swallowing nervously. I had never seen a Small Class like this before, and it certainly looked ONI by design. It was small and somewhat stout for a fighter, strangely reminiscent of the hulking stag-beetle on old Earth. There was no mistaking it for anything but a fighter, its otherworldly fabrication seeming only to enhance the deadliness of its appearance. The drone’s guild insignia detector blinked a frame around the shadowed side of the ship’s hull and zoomed in. It zoomed close enough to reveal an insignia of a black moon hiding behind a dark blue fist. I knew that emblem — it was the mark of Captain Jurinia Tusk. It was I who then swallowed nervously.
By actual lights out, the crew seemed a little more resolved, though the journey to rescue the forsaken Fimbul Packlite will be long and likely treacherous, especially without our warp drive. I only wish the Ogrika Miks who escorted us from homeport had stuck around. That, and if we do encounter Captain Tusk and her menacing Busan fighter, she lets us leave willingly, with what little data we have aboard.”
