Anotherwhere Chapter 3: Distress Call

Rory gasped, eyes flying open, “Colin!”.

Behind her he shifted, mumbling in his sleep. Another fucking dream. She glanced at the clock in her personal screen. Barely two hours asleep. She closed her eyes.

“Emergency! Captain to the bridge!” Rock’s voice blared along with an alarm tone. “Emergency! Captain to the bridge!”

“Captain acknowledges!” Rory shouted, jumping out of her rack. Colin shook himself awake and was right behind her. Not bothering to dress, they rushed the very short distance to the command deck.

Astra sat in the left hand seat. Her normally unflappable demeanor strained.

“Report!” Rory snapped, running to her own station and calling up the screens.

“Warp failure imminent,” Astra said, working frantically. I’m instituting a controlled shutdown of the warp field.”

“Fuck a duck, warp fields don’t fail,” Colin muttered working his console with controlled urgency, “I’m in, Astra, Taking over shutdown procedures.”

“Thanks! Shifting to navigation. Keep it up as long as you can until I give the word or if it looks like it’s about to fail. I’ll try to keep us from popping into something solid.”

“Dee, what’s going on?” Rory asked, keying the intercom.

“Captain, it’s the warp drive. He’ll not take much more of this!”

“Hold on a bit longer Double D, We’re going for a controlled shutdown. Keep it lit as long as you can.”

“Aye Captain!” Dee replied, killing the connection. “C’mon Rocky, don’t let me down. Keep it together and I’ll give you a blowjob you’ll never forget.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, Dee, but I lack a penis,” the ship’s AI replied.

“Story of my life,” she muttered, diverting energy from the good warp generator to the one that was failing. “Finally find a guy that I could go for and he’s a freakin’ AI.”

“OK, OK, I’ve got a system with a suitable planet,” Astra announced back on the bridge. “Coming out of warp…now.”

She killed the warp generator and the view out the bridge windows shifted from glowing green to a star field.

“Fuck meeee,” Astra sighed, sitting back in the pilot’s chair.

“Status please,” Rory snapped.

“Life support, green,” Colin began. “Reactor is green. Propulsion is green. Warp 1 is green. Warp 2 has completely failed Captain. It’s gone into emergency shut down.”

“Rock, Warp 2 failure analysis,” she snapped.

“I’ve isolated the failure to the Q-36 modulator. It failed under load.”

“There’s like triple redundancy in those,” Colin said.

“No indications of impending failure prior to fault,” Rock went on. “Unit was not scheduled for maintenance for another ten activations.”

“Skipper, passengers calling on three.” Colin advised.

“Can’t you,” Rory began. “Nevermind. I’ll take it. This is the Captain,” she said, keying the intercom.

“Hello Captain. We’ve dropped out of warp. Are we at Nueva Espana already? I thought we had another day’s travel?” Dr Livingston asked.

“Hello doctor. I’m afraid we’ve had a malfunction that’s required we exit warp. We are in no immediate danger and we’re currently assessing the situation.”

“I see,” she said. “Could this be something that was…induced?”

“We know very little yet doctor, we’re working on the situation and we’ll brief you once we know more.”

“Thank you captain,” she replied and ended the call.

“Colin, scan the system and let me know what we’re dealing with. Astra, where are we?”

“I dropped us out in the Quarrel 12 system. There’s an M class planet that is listed as able to support human life for ‘brief stays’. There’s nothing poisonous about the planet, the biome is just incompatible with human life. So we can’t eat or drink anything there but the air won’t kill us.”

“Habitation?”

“None, Captain.”

“Colin, anything?”

“Scans show the system as empty skipper. There’s a gas giant with a ton of small moons and a small rocky planetoid close to the star plus the M class world. No beacons, no driver signatures, no evidence of recent warp transitions. Best I can tell the system is empty.”

“OK,” Rory said. “Astra, put us in high orbit around the M Class.”

“Should I send a distress call skip?” Astra asked.

“Let’s hold off until we see if this is something we can fix ourselves,” Rory responded. “Talk to me Dee,” she added, keying the intercom.

“The modulator is dead skipper, write it off,” Dee replied. “The good news is we kept the failure isolated to that module, replace it and we’re good to go. The better news is we have a spare. The less good news is I have to go outside to replace it.”

“Can you do it here?” Rory asked.

“Better if I do it in gravity,” she said.

“Then you’re in luck because we’ve got a planet you can borrow. OK crew, let’s hold a briefing in the passenger module. All attend. Rocky, you have the con during the meeting. Let me know immediately of any anomalies. I’ll tell the passengers we’ll meet in five.”

“Uh skip, you and Colin may want to put some clothes on before we meet,” Astra said wryly.

Rory looked down at herself. When the alarm goes off, you don’t take time to dress. She had been so focused on the situation at hand, she forgot they were naked.

“We’ll tell the passengers we’ll meet in fifteen,” she amended. “Colin, let’s get dressed.”

Exactly fifteen minutes later the crew, now fully dressed, and the passengers were gathered around the small wardroom table central to the passenger module.

“…and that’s where we are at the moment,” Rory concluded her outline of the situation. “We’ll make landing on the planet and once we’ve established things are safe, Dee will make the necessary repairs. Dee, give us an overview of what’s involved.”

“OK Skip,” she began. “So the module is high up on the port side outrigger and is about this big. It’s designed as a replaceable component so I don’t need any special tools other than what we have on board but it is delicate. I need to open the access hatch on the outrigger, disconnect the old module, get it out, put the new one it and hook things back up.”

“Sounds pretty straightforward,” Dr Livingston said. “How long does that take?”

“The repair itself? Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour and a half depending if it scorched and I have to replace some of the couplings. I won’t know until I get the panel open. The real time is calibrating the bitch, er the module, once it’s in. Rocky and I can get her done in install time plus maybe five hours.”

“That’s a long time for us to be on the ground,” Luke observed. “We’re sitting ducks down the gravity well.”

“If I tried to do it in free-fall triple the install time and you still have calibration. While I’m calibrating, we can’t break orbit as we need constant velocity and direction anyway so not a ton of difference.”

Luke grunted.

“That brings me to a question I’ve been meaning to ask,” Rory said. “Why ask that? Do you have reason to be concerned?”

“Captain, I’m paid to be concerned,” Luke replied.

“Cards on the table please, what’s going on?” Rory asked. “I understand OpSec but we’re in the middle of this now and what I don’t know might get all of us killed. It’s time to share.”

“Right,” Dr Livingston said. “OK. I shared what I’ve been working on; that other universes exist and that not only do they exist, but that beings have traveled between universes and those beings aren’t what we would consider human. Well we have reason to believe that these same beings are…influencing let’s say, certain parts of the Gubernamento and are…unhappy with what I’ve found.”

“Unhappy,” Colin said, frowning.

“OK, all in,” Luke said, coming out of the parade rest stance he had adopted for the entire meeting so far. “We believe that elements foreign to this universe are attempting to influence and possible overthrow the existing government. My partner and I have been tasked with, quietly, bringing the doctor to Nueva Espana where she can present her findings to the Junta, hopefully to get some of the fence-sitters to move forward with doings something. These elements wish to prevent that from happening and have already tried to kill or kidnap Dr Livingston. Your mechanical breakdown while we’re on board seems a bit too coincidental. An isolated system like this would be the perfect place for her to disappear.”

“So you’re not mercenaries?” Rory asked. “Colin said you might be active duty.”

“I’m Coronel Luke Anderson, Fuerzas Especiales Federales.” He gestured to Lee. “This is Tieniente Leonora Anderson de Mendez. We are indeed contracted and our cover is that we’re mercenaries, but we’re very much active duty Federale military.”

“You’re a little young to be a Coronel,” Dee said.

“Special forces is a young person’s field,” Colin answered her. “Most don’t make it to old.”

“Overly dramatic but accurate. Most move on into another role versus dying,” Luke said.

“Uh huh,” said Colin.

“Anyway,” Dr Livingston said. “I’m very sorry this has dragged you into my problems. I got so excited about my findings, that we could PROVE the many worlds hypothesis was more than just a hypothesis that when strange things started happening around me, well, I mean I just thought it was…”

“What Dr Livingston means is she started having ‘accidents’,” Luke explained. “The local law enforcement AI picked up on the anomaly and flagged it. Luckily the Federale on her planet was on the ball and was able to determine that not only was she coming in at the less that one percent of statistically likely for simple bad luck, but the last two papers she had published disappeared. He flagged Special Branch and their AIs concluded that, as absurd as it may seem, an outside actor was working to a) suppress her findings and b) eliminate her. Things got really ‘interesting’ when someone in Special Branch tried to squash the inquiry but wasn’t quite adept enough to succeed completely. An AI named Forrest was able to alert Nueva Madrid and get the ball moving. The fact that the Special Branch operative disappeared shortly after Forrest got the word out was enough for Nueva Madrid to send us to bring the doctor home.”

“So you can see why we’re concerned at yet another ‘accident’,” Lee added from where she slouched in the corner. “In our world accidents are rarely accidental.”

“Fucking spooks,” Astra muttered.

“Accurate on both counts,” Lee smirked.

“Enough,” Rory said. “Our immediate problem is getting Dragonstone repaired and getting to Nueva Espana, in that order. I suggest we focus on that.”

“Captain,” Rock interrupted. “I’m afraid I have an additional problem. We’ve received a distress signal from the planet’s surface. I’m showing wreckage of a warp capable pinnace at the origin of the call. They identify themselves as members of the crew of the Dreadnaught Assencion.”

Luke and Lee looked at one another.

“They’re our escort,” Luke said. They’ve been paralleling us under stealth.”

“Ha, told you I saw something,” Colin smirked.

“Well this pretty much rules out our malf being an accident,” Rory said. “But it’s not like that changes things. Put us down close to the wreck but not too close. Dee, fix that fucker as quickly as you can. Rock, weapons free while we’re on the ground. Anything locks onto the ship or crew, waste it with the grav cannon. Anything gets within five hundred meters of the ship, waste it. Shoot first, questions later.”

“Captain, I suggest you use your cannons’ full capability as opposed to what you claim on your manifest,” Luke said.

Rory raised an eyebrow.

“We’re fully aware your ships armament exceeds that allowable as a civilian vessel. We’re not concerned with you turning pirate. It’s part of the reason we chose you.” Luke touched his wrist comp. “I’ve just transmitted your Letter of Marque as a Naval Auxiliary vessel and reinstatement of your naval ranks with no loss of seniority.”

“Confirmed Captain,” Rock said.

“Fuck a duck,” Colin swore.

“Fuck a duck indeed,” Rory said, angry and pleased in almost equal measure. Rock, prepare to take us down, we’ll be back on the bridge shortly. Once we’re down, we’re going to need to investigate the distress call. I’m assuming you want to come with us?”

“We will,” Doctor Livingston said.

“No, you will not,” Luke replied.

“You all may be military, I am not and if I’ve put these people in danger than I will BLOODY well help get them out of it!” She fumed.

“If my rank is restored with no loss of seniority then I believe I’m ranking officer here Mister Anderson,” Rory said. “Sheila, we would love to have you along with us.”

“Thank you Captain.”

“Please call me Rory.”