[IC] Stranded in the Stars (Sci-Fi Survival)

[Inkdrop]

November 10, 2086 The SS Terra, a majestic, nine hundred and fifty foot cargo liner, slowly left Earth in her wake. Her huge engines glowed as the superheated plasma was vented from them in bright blue plumes, slowly accelerating her to nearly light speed. Off to one side, her port side, was the older liner named Edmund Fitzgerald II. She was about eight years older than the five-year-old Terra. Above the Terra, so to say, was the Dynasty, an ugly cargo freighter. The two ships were opposites. The Edmund Fitzgerald was a long, sleek ship shaped like a capsule, with flat sides, rounded belly and back, and a rounded nose. You could say she looked a little like Thunderbird II. She was a bright yellow and white with racing stripes painted down her sides... that was typical of her line. The Comet Transport Company prided themselves on speed. Terra was by no means slow, but the Big Fitz was already pulling out ahead of her. The Dynasty was no such speed demon. She had an ugly, pyramid-shaped nose, with a long, spindly neck extending back to Siamese twin engine pods. On that spindly neck, multi-colored rectangular cargo pods were arranged in triangle formation around it, attached by thin stalks. She was painted a light olive green. Terra herself was a citrus orange and white. This was not a good day, of course. The Big Fitz' namesake had sunk on this date, centuries ago, with no survivors and no bodies. Her sinking was still a mystery... this was dismissed as ridiculous superstition. Edmund Fitzgerald II was certainly not cursed... well... sort of. The champagne bottle had never broken over her bow. They had tried and tried, and it took five times before it broke. Now she was sailing on the date of her namesake's death. The Captain of the Terra wasn't even thinking of this, or how far behind Dynasty was falling. She was the slowest by far, and the ugliest, and the smallest. Terra was the largest, with the Fitz being a little smaller. On her high-tech bridge, the officers of the Terra chatted and conversed quietly. Terra herself, or at least her holographic avatar, sat in the Helmsman's chair. The anthropomorphic jaguar, dressed in a light purple robe right now, hummed "Drunken Sailor" as she gently tugged and pulled on the control levers. All of this was a clever illusion. Terra didn't have to use her steering levers but... she was known to be a little eccentric. A few of the younger sailors ogled at the female. The avatar was quite fair. Slender, subtle curves, perfectly rounded breasts and rump, a serene expression on her soft, smoothly-sculpted face... Terra was proud. The happiness did not last. The communications officer, bent over his console, pressed his headset into his ear. The young, dark-skinned man stood up and called, "Sir! Edmund Fitzgerald II, reporting engine troubles. She may have to turn back." Captain Tesla simply nodded and smiled. He was an aging man from Canada, starting to decline from youth at the middle age of sixty. He was very skinny and pale. His uniform seemed like it struggled to hug to him. He didn't seemed concerned and instead just watched the other ship slowly drop by the window... until... why was she getting closer? Tesla jumped up from his seat, "Comms! Tell the Fitz to back off!" The Lunan comms officer, pale as a ghost and with a skeletal structure made from toothpicks, relayed the message into his microphone. He listened again, "Sir! Their helm is not responding!" Tesla turned to yell at Terra, "Terra! Evasive maneuvers!" She looked over at him, panic on her face, "I-I can't get control, sir, my own body isn't doing anything." Tesla looked out of the window again, then turned to the Russian engineer with a royal purple uniform, "Get the controls back!" With his thick accent, the Russian said he would do his best... but something happened then. A huge explosion rocked the Edmund Fitzgerald II. A miniature supernova ripped her engine bays to shreds and consumed the fragments in a rapidly-expanding fireball. The shockwave rocked the Terra and set off her general alarm as objects fell off of shelves and she rocked violently. The bridge crew nearly fell out of their seats. The Fitzgerald rolled over and over, in a death spiral now, trailing vapors and flames from the wrecked engine pod, still approaching her sister ship. She was screaming a mayday now. Terra scanned her. One of her reactors had suffered an alpha-mode failure, and the other three were not far away. Terra screamed, "BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Just before the other three reactors went up in quick succession. The Fitz was incinerated. Terra was tossed off in the opposite direction with her frame creaking and groaning under the stress. Small fragments of the once great Edmund Fitzgerald II peppered the Terra, smashing huge indents into her armor and slicing through in some places. Alarms rang from the various consoles and the alerts on the touchscreen mounted to the Helmsman's console lit up like a Christmas tree. Terra still did not have control of herself. She was drifting out of control, at cruising speed. "Abandon ship!" The alarms rang and changed their tone. The Muster Alarm. A beeping, mournful tone. Passengers, those who hadn't been killed or injured, looked around in shock. The evacuation took nearly an hour, but there was bad news when they went to look at the cryopods. All dead. The Captain looked at the jaguaress avatar of his ship, and said, "Stay here, Terra, we'll send someone for you." As soon as he left, the monitors on the cryopods returned to normal, and so did Terra's readings on them. It was too late to call back the rescue crew. She found that her communications arrays had gone down too, somehow. She settled in for a long wait. ----------------------- Much Time Later Terra wandered her wrecked halls, blinking tears out of her eyes as she gazed into the derelict rooms and unused recreational areas. This had been a thriving place once. Now, she had no one but herself, staring at her own wrecked body. She could feel the memories that were out of reach, lost in corruption from neglect and damage to her computer core. She couldn't remember what had happened, or where her crew went. Thankfully, all of the holographic projectors that put out her hard hologram were still working. She flickered out of existence, then flickered back in, standing next to Reactor Two. It was slowly leaking molten fuel and control rods, bathing the shielded room in the blue glow of radiation and the orange glow of the lava. The hellish concoction flowed out of a crack in the metal cylinder that was the reactor vessel... this steam-filled room had enough radiation to kill someone five times over, but she was safe, since she was nothing more than light and sensor data. She shook her head as she watched the slow loss of one reactor. She had tried to save it, but it was now in a runaway state, slowly melting itself. She re-appeared again, this time on the observation lounge. The AI sat down and stared at the crypods from a luxurious leather-bound couch, just one of many dotting the observation lounge that ran along her own keel. It was an oval-shaped blister that extended from the great white ship's broad belly with floor-to-ceiling windows and two spiral staircases up into the first deck. The walls were paneled with wood, wonderfully dark oak that gleamed under the dim emergency lighting. The floor was some sort of dark grey carpet which muffled footsteps and felt wonderful underfoot, if one was barefoot. The cruise ship's avatar stared and stared, seemingly oblivious to the mournfully howling horns and slowly spinning beacons. Their yellow beams would occasionally cast themselves upon the jaguar, then onto the frosted metal tubes, then they would continue their journey around the room again. Outside the windows was the desolate rock by the name of Ceres on one side, and a field of asteroids to the other. The dim sun was behind Terra's broad stern, and the unknown void lay beyond her spade-shaped nose. Terra was projecting a hard hologram avatar of herself onto the couch, an anthropomorphic jaguaress with a white tunic and a flowing skirt. The female was fairly tall, standing at around five feet nine, with graceful, slender body lines and a nearly perfect face. She was dressed almost like she had come from ancient Rome. Her memory was spotty and failing, however. Sometime, in the past, something had happened to the ship. Something had struck the 950 foot long Terra, taken her crew and passengers, and left her wounded in the inky blackness. Her computerized mind slowly worked as she stared at the pods with a tilted head. Finally she sat up and approached the metal cylinders with their tinted glass, raised a hand, and started the defrost sequence. She stepped back and stood ramrod straight in parade fashion, her clothes flickering out of existence, then re-appearing as her uniform, with white trim. She waited for her chosen subjects to thaw, then said, "Welcome to the Terra! Excuse the mess." --------------------------- Remember the post order!

[CLIW]

Everything was black and empty. The first sensation to come was the feeling of a heart beating sluggishly somewhere, slowly gaining a normal speed. The second was an ache one could only get from not moving their body at all for a very long time. Finally fuzzy shapes began to form, and slowly, as Annet blinked a few times to clear her mind, focus came. I'm cold, she thought numbly, and then her memories started to come back. My name is Annet. I lost my arm at work. I am in space right now. She didn't know what to say to the talking illusion of an anthropomorphic jaguar, however. Relieved that her voice was seemingly unaffected, she said reluctantly, "Hello, captain." Immediately afterward, she stretched and half-winced at the cracking noises her back made. "We there yet?"

[Automaton]

The shock that overtook Kyles mind was easily iqnored by the thought of seeing his wife and child again, he looked around quickly before saying anything, and he saw that they wer floating around, not Mars. But instead Cerse. "what happened?!" his wided eyes looked around the room, past the Jaquar "why aren't we on Mars right now?, capitain!" he panicked. Then he steadied his breathing It's okay Kyle, your going to be fine it's probably nothing that terrible. They Probably ran out of fuel, or something malfuctioned and needed to land somewhere. Ya thats it, that MUST be it. He thought to himself as he wrapped his arms around himself trying to warm up from the cold.

[RogueDetective]

The last thing he had remembered, Nick was put into this cryogenic pod. It was cold as hell for that 10 seconds of consciousness before he fell into a deep slumber. He awoke just after the others did, and he rolled onto the floor, his arms in front of him. "What the..." He rolled onto his side, and then stood up. Frost was clearing from his hair and eyebrows. He looks around, and his gaze stops on Terra. "Where are all the other passengers? Last I checke, this wasn't some private, 5 person cruise."

[redrout]

Luke sucked in a breath of supercooled air a heartbeat before the small pod opened, and was rewarded with a fit of coughing as he stepped stumbled out of the pod, hacking and bending over as he leaned against the side of the door, now that it was open. He almost spit on the carpet now that he’d stopped coughing and his vision was returning, but remembered his manners and swallowed instead. He glanced at the other passengers emerging and glanced out of one of the large windows, seeing a strange world in place of the once-red planet. He addressed the captain, remembering the pictures he’d seen of the ship and her pilot before the journey. “Oi, cap’n, Whot’sis about not bein on Mars yet?

[Inkdrop]

Terra looked over her new subjects and tried to look like she wasn't nervous out of her mind right now. The blaring alarms didn't help matters. She didn't shut off the general alarm yet, choosing to glance down at the floor and scuffle her dress-shoe-clad foot across the carpet. A sigh left her lips as her tail hung low, and she finally said, "Well, I am sorry to say, but we aren't going home, people. I'll answer your questions. I'm... the only one left. This ship has... been damaged, somehow." She gestured to a cracked transparent panel and a spinning alarm beacon, "The crew is gone, so are the passengers." She paused again, then bit her lip and shook her head. The uniform vanished and in it's place was a monk-like robe. She crossed her arms, "I'm... the ship... is badly damaged. I can't fly home. I don't even know how long we've been out here, my memory modules are shot." Terra looked down at her now-bare feet that were hidden beneath the robe, took a breath, then went on, "I wasn't supposed to wake you, but I'm not the Captain, I'm the ship. I need your help. We need to get out of here, somehow." She stepped back a little now, looking suddenly timid and afraid to have an angry mob come upon her.

[CLIW]

Annet's mind was still working hard to recover its former sharpness. It took her a minute to take in Terra's news and process it, and when she did her shoulders visibly sagged. She was too groggy to feel anxious, but a dark gloom had settled over her that resigned her to the fact that she was going to die in the cold vacuum in space with a bunch of strangers. She looked to the ground, then back to Terra. "Do you know our specific location? Is it possible to send a distress signal?"

[Automaton]

Kyle heard the words but they didn't filter through "okay..." He said patiently "we need to get out of here". Kyle thought for a few moments "regardless, we need to get our Bearings" Kyle looked at Terra expectantly "do you have blueprints of the ship?." He asked looking around the room and at the new people who have joined the nightmare. "Once we can get things to help us survive on this ship we can figure out a way off of it."

[gojidorah]

James looked up at his brother Mark in his home on Mars. A cluttered mess, nonetheless, but definitely a messy representation of Mark's busy and disorganized personality. It was one of those things where you can go: "Yep, that's Mark for ya." James was more of a clean person, organized, and yeah, a little OCD at times. His brother's home kinda bugged him, it always has, it was just like when they were kids and bunked in the same room. Literally half of the room was clean and orderly while the other half was not. You could definitely tell whose side of the room it was just at first glance. Anyways, Mark sipped at some coffee, while James just sorta stared. Something was off. James looked around. Nah, just must be tired from the flight. "How's the flight over?" Mark had asked. "To be honest," James replied, "I don't really remember much of the flight. They put us in Cryo. You know how you don't remember going to sleep? That's what it was like. Though, I don't really remember waking up, or even getting here." Mark just sort of sat there, stared, and sipped at his bitter black coffee. Mark said with a straight, happy, unconcerned face,"But you need to wake up first, Jimmy." And sipped at his coffee again. James was confused, and for an instant, the room kinda changed shape as he looked to the left. for a weird moment, he almost forgotten what his strange robotic brother had just said, and wondered why there was a jungle cat walking across the room. Also, he could have swore the thing mumbled something as it trudged along, something like, "..passengers.....I need your help." Even weirder, the cat took the shape of a female humanoid bearing a tunic, it stopped and looked down at him...... James stared up at the thing and shielded his eyes, it got really bright all of a sudden...and cold. He then realized he was on the floor, shivering, and definitely confused. His left hip brace pained him. Catching the last part of the conversation, the part where the anthropomorphic jaguar, now revealed to be Terra's AI, explained she doesn't remember much and that they have been damaged and sent way off course, he just stood there and paid close attention to what was going on. How long was he out? what happened to Terra? And when will he ever see his brother, his family, and everyone else in his life ever again?

[RogueDetective]

Nick has a temper, incase that wasn't mentioned. And this is a time where that temper shows. He paces back and forth, giving quick glances to the other strangers. He turns to Terra. "Look, I don't know about you, but I don't plan on dying on a spaceship, a couple of god damned PLANETS AWAY from Earth! I worked hard for my money for my ticket, and I'm gettin the cold vaccuum of space for all that? There has got to be some sort of way for us to get off of this thing!" He pauses, looking around. "Look, I got a family, alright? A wife, two beautiful kids. Pets. A house that I worked hard to earn, alright? I don't want to lose that just yet." Nick refuses to mention that he was kicked out by his family, and instead, seeks sympathy.

[redrout]

“Oi, We all go’ fam’ly, mate,” Nick said, turning to look at his wife’s cryopod, which was adjacent to his. The cryopod was cracked, just a hairline fracture running diagonally along it. Along with that, the control panel was caved in, dented and crushed by a couch that was upturned next to it. He rushed to it and moved it, slowly, away from the cryopod, looking at the sparking control panel in disbelief. He turned to the projection, yelling. “Oi! ‘As me wife in ‘ere, you go’a get ‘er out, you ‘ear me!”

[Inkdrop]

Terra observed the various reactions by the passengers and wondered if this truly was a smart idea... she started to doubt that. The jaguar started to pace back and forth with her tail sweeping the floor and her computer mind whirring somewhere deep in the ship. She wanted to comfort them. She really did... but now was not the time. "Look, folks, I know you are upset. The fact is, the engines have overheated and blown several parts, so I need to repair them. However, one of my reactors has melted down in a textbook Delta Mode failure and is currently spilling molten corium into it's compartment with enough radiation coming off of it to turn someone into a gremlin. The other two are barley doing better, so, unless you want to go wading through an almost tangible soup of gamma, beta, and alpha radiation, I don't think we can do much for now to fix the engines. And yes, I'd love to go through myself, but I have no hard-hologram projectors back there. Safety measure in case I ever went rogue." A deep breath, "Now, as for communications... my long-range antenna was knocked off at some point, and something is blocking me from using any of my remaining communications systems, even the ancient radio I have. Don't panic, I have emergency solar panels, and two damaged reactors can still spin turbines. I have power, and I have life support, we are safe. If you don't know, that is Ceres, so we are technically one planet and one dwarf planet away from Earth, Mister Clinton." She gave a harsh glare to him before her ears perked and she noticed Mister O'Brien fawning over his crypod. Terra padded over and peered across his shoulder at the cryopod, going silent, then telling him, "She's hurt, but alive... I am sorry, sir, but if I thaw her she might die. She needs to be in the hands of medical personnel when she is thawed... something went wrong with her control systems. She'll be okay but... only if she stays frozen." Terra started to float then, allowed by her holographic body, hovering above them all and saying, "I need your help to get me and all of you back home... there are escape pods on this vessel, but they only last for a week away from their mothership, and we are well beyond a week from Mars... or even any Orbital Guard patrol lanes. To answer your question, Mister Allen, yes, I do." A hologram of her blueprints appeared, floating in the air beside her, "I thawed you all out because I am lonely, I will admit. But, I also foster hope that perhaps you can help us get home..." she flickered and her voice garbled, then she came back, looking distinctly concerned, "...before it's too late." She landed on the ground, looking around at them with a desperate look.

[CLIW]

"This is just perfect," mumbled Annett at a barely-audible volume. She fought back the certainty that they were going to die out here and tried to shift her focus towards solutions. The commotion with the damaged cryopod drew her attention and made her step back in alarm. They were just going to leave her there? Well, if she'd die otherwise... Focus. Her voice came out sounding doubtful. "Maybe we could use the gravity of Ceres to fling this thing toward Mars. If it's in the right position. And if this craft is able to."

[gojidorah]

James wondered for a moment. "Well, if my high school physics class meant anything, it really depends on the magnitude of it's pull." He said in reply to Annett. " If I remember correctly, when you are in orbit you are really falling, but the rotation of the planet keeps you from falling straight down. That is, if you don't force anything. So, I think if we find out the rate of Ceres pull, we could probably handle being thrown back on course."

[Automaton]

Kyle Analyzed the blueprints "well, How about we try and get something to eat and drink first" Kyle said pointing at the kitchen "hopefully something in there for us to eat." Kyle looked at the exit "radiation... There has to be a safety procedure to lock down any irradiated area's" he said looking at Terra expectantly "we should work on that afterwards".

[RogueDetective]

"i don't know much about space or the physics of Gravity, or how much radiation can do what to who... But there should be some way to lock down an irradiated area, right? I mean... It only makes sense. If not, maybe we should try to get as far away from it as possible." Nick looks around the room theyre in.

[redrout]

Luke stared at the crack in his wife's cryopod as if looking away for more than a second would cause it to shatter into a million pieces. He briefly considered attempting to replace the control panel, but his knowledge was of explosives, not cruise liners, and with the ship's AI seeming a bit insane, he couldn't take the risk yet. His mouth was dry as he finally turned; he needed to get his wife out of that pod, and the only way to do that was to get as much functionality back to the ship as possible. He sighed. "If we be locked in a steady o'bit like I think, ain't no way we gettin' out o 'ere without propulsion to break the gravitational field."

[Inkdrop]

Terra walked over and sat down on the chair, listening to her passengers chatter for a moment. Ceres wouldn't work, she knew it wouldn't. All four of her massive main engines were damaged and couldn't start right now, lest they risk an explosion or a fire. She took her time to think and sat silent for many, many seconds. Finally, she stood, smoothing her robe and crossing her arms. She starts to say, "Ceres might be able to slingshot me out of here, but, that needs precision maneuvering. The bridge controls haven't been touched in who knows how long, and my guidance systems need some calibrating. That all can be done but... all four of my main drive units are down. We can start them, but there's a big risk of an explosion or a fire. Could use my maneuvering and station-keeping thrusters but... those aren't nearly as powerful as the main drives." The mention of a radiation lock-down made her think, and she projected that blueprint into the air again. This time, it was an X-ray hologram of the ship, with red-to-white squares and rectangles all over. She looks up at it, then starts to point to various areas, "I do have a bulkhead system, but there must have been a fire or an explosion when the crew evacuated. The emergency doors were locked, but, some are jammed open with things, overridden, or just aren't working. These red areas show the highest radiation. As you can tell, it's all mostly kept to the back of the ship, in Engineering." She gestured at the rear eighty feet or so of the ship, " We are in the Observation Lounge," A finger was pointed at a blinking red dot, in one of the white rooms. It was an oval bulge from the ship's belly, and was about halfway up the ship from the very rear end. A gesture to the protrusions at the rear of the 3D model followed, "The drive unit nacelles are at the very back of the engineering section..." A hand wave towards three dome-shaped rooms, one in the center and two on the sides, positioned at the top of the ship to take advantage of her natural curves, "...and these are the reactor containment rooms. Each one contains a Whittfeld PBB-2002 atomic fission reactor. Numbers One and Three are just barley avoiding meltdown. I've got them mostly stable now. About ninety gray of radiation floating around, so, don't go in there. Number Two will cook you instantly, I'm getting around a hundred and ten gray from in there. There's also this square room below it, the core has melted through and escaped into there. It's nearly as bad. Those long, rectangular rooms to the front of the containment rooms are the turbine halls, which are filled with radioactive, superheated steam. It's best to avoid those too." Terra stepped back, sighed, took a breath, and continued, "Now, all those bulkheads have made this an interesting situation. You can see just what kind of honeycomb the engineering part is. Here, we are safe, I have so many sensors all over the place that I can tell you how fast you are breathing and what your heartrate is. The main bulkhead separating the engineering section from the passengers section has blocked most of it. Inside, though, there are hotspots, safe areas, all kinds of situations. If we want to get back and fix the engines, we will need to take a specific path. Drop into a hotspot.. well... there's nothing we can do but escort you to the Great Beyond." The cat turned to face the people who had spoken about the radiation, "There are radiation suits, but none are invincible to this stuff, and there are compromises with all of them. If you guys want to go ahead and try to fix those engines, I'll tell you about them, but I can show you all to the kitchens if you are hungry." She started to walk towards the spiral staircase that led up into the corridor, glancing over her shoulder to see if any were following her. The general alarm rang on with it's low, mournful tone, accomplishing nothing now.

[CLIW]

Annett took a reluctant step after her, then another. She hadn't realized how hungry she was until Kyle had mentioned it, and food was a much easier topic to focus on than the fact that they were trapped in Ceres' orbit in a humongous, irradiated death trap. "Let's eat," she agreed. "And maybe turn off that alarm? If you can."

[gojidorah]

Anxiety was kicking in. James began to seriously worry. Trapped aboard a flying Chernobyl a whole solar system away from home, and God knows how much time has passed since the flight began. Oh, and with a rag-tag gang of strangers too. Just the atmosphere of the whole situation put him in an insta-bitter mood. The kind of mood where you hate everything yet you sympathize....*growwwlll*...and feel a tad hungry. He followed Terra, in the hopes that none of the food on board has spoiled.