Dead ship, short bus

Posted on May 31, 2014 @ 1:28am by Commander Jacob Crichton
Edited on on May 31, 2014 @ 1:29am

Mission: All Our Yesterdays
Location: USS CENTURY
Tags: Jake, Stonn, Frozen dead guy, Exopods

= Dead Ship, Short Bus =

(cont'd from "All Our Yesterdays, Part 2")


LOCATION: USS CENTURY

SCENE: Corridor -> Bridge

STARDATE:



[[Proceed with your mission, commander.]]



“Understood,” Stonn said. “Away-team out.”



The Vulcan turned then to the assembled team. From behind the glass bubble of his helmet, Stonn’s face was passive, almost disinterested.



“We have our orders,” said Stonn. “I will expect status reports every quarter hour. Are there any questions?”



Nobody said anything. Crichton glanced around at the marines. They all looked grim and determined, exactly the expression Jake had come to expect from their type. The pulse rifles mounted to their backs brought back memories of the Dominion War, and for a moment Jake wondered if the CENTURY was another casualty, ambushed by Dominion forces and destroyed far away from home and any chance of help.



But that didn’t make sense- they were too far away from Dominion and Federation space for this system to have any strategic value, and the preliminary scans hadn’t shown any resources that might have been of interest to either side. No, Jake decided; whatever happened here was something else.



“Move out,” Stonn said. He turned to Crichton and nodded. “Commander, shall we?”



“We shall,” Jake said. “Bridge should be this way.”



Jake and Stonn left the rest of the team and moved down the corridor. Their flashlights illuminated the walkway ahead of them in two cones of light that bounced and jostled as they walked. Moving around in the environment suits was strange; no gravity meant that their boots magnetized to the deck with each step, making their progress slow and jerky. The inertia of their movement wanted to carry their bodies forward, but as their feet locked in place as they moved, Jake found himself constantly overbalancing forward, and frequently reached a hand out to steady himself against the corridor wall. For his part, Stonn moved forward slowly, carefully, but confidently, without any obvious loss of physical control or composure.



The helmet of the environment suit had a strange way of filtering out noise, too. The internal speakers made communication possible, but any other sounds were muffled. There was the faraway “whump ca-CHUNK” of their boots, their internal mag-clamps locking and unlocking with each step, but otherwise there was only the sound of Jake’s own breathing, which quickly seemed to fill the whole world. Jake wasn’t normally claustrophobic, and this certainly wasn’t his first time moving and working in an environment suit. But the empty ship around them- not to mention the lightyears of empty space that lay beyond- left Jake feeling trapped and alone.



“Shouldn’t be much farther,” he said, mostly just so there’d be something to listen to besides his breath and the sound of his boots.



“That was my assessment as well,” Stonn said. Jake waited to see if the Vulcan would say anything else, but of course Stonn remained silent.



“You don’t talk a lot,” Jake observed.



“I speak as needed,” Stonn replied. Again, Jake waited to see if he would elaborate, and again was met with silence.



“So not a lot,” Jake said.



“My duties as First Officer require a great deal of interaction with the captain and the crew,” Stonn said.



“That’s not really what I mean.”



“Then I presume you are referring to non-essential communication,” Stonn said. “What humans would consider ‘small talk’.”



“We also would have accepted ‘chit chat’, ‘chin wagging’, and ‘shooting the shit’,” Jake said. “Oh, uh… sorry. No disrespect meant.”



“I was not offended,” said Stonn. “You are correct, Mr. Crichton. I do not talk a lot.”



They continued without speaking for another several steps, the sounds of their boots bouncing around the walls of the empty corridor.



“You talk a lot,” Stonn said suddenly.



“Yeah, I guess I do,” Jake said with a laugh. “I like the sound of my own voice.”



“It seems to foster a healthy relationship with your subordinates,” said Stonn. “I have observed that your engineers trust and respect you.”



“Aww, you’re making me blush.”



“Though you are sometimes more familiar with them than is appropriate,” Stonn continued. “I have also observed you often address them without using their name or their rank.”



“The nicknames,” Jake nodded. “They’re not against regulation.”



“Not specifically, no,” Stonn said.



“You’re not ordering me to stop, are you?”



“No,” Stonn said. “It was merely an observation.”



Jake grinned. “You weren’t asking me to give *you* a nickname, were you?”



“That will not be necessary, Mr. Crichton,” Stonn said. “You may continue to refer to me as ‘Commander’ or ‘sir’.”



“Was that a joke, Commander Stonn?”



“I do not joke,” Stonn said, glancing back at Jake. It might have just been a trick of the light, but Jake thought he might have seen the faintest ghost of a smile playing at the Vulcan’s lips. Jake decided he was imagining it.



They rounded another bend in the corridor. Their destination was the main bridge, which meant they would need to locate a turbolift which led there, and then it would be a climb up several decks to bridge level. Jake wasn’t looking forward to substituting the space of the corridor with the smaller one of a turbolift shaft.



“Hey, Commander,” Jake said, hoping to fill some of the emptiness of this place with speech. “You have any theories how this ship got out here? Kinda’ far away for a simple wrong turn, you know?”



“Speculation is pointless,” Stonn said. “Once we restore power to the main computer, we will surely find answers to many of our questions. The only logical course is to proceed, and to reserve judgment until the acquisition of relevant data.”



“Betcha it’s a transwarp malfunction,” Jake said. “You don’t keep an eye on them, those systems can ruin your day. Something goes wrong with the navigation system, there’s a warp core overload, the ship winds up way out here.”



“Unlikely,” said Stonn. “That would not explain the power failure.”



“So take the bet then,” Jake smirked.



“Are you referring to gambling, Mr. Crichton?”



“Let’s call it a gentleman’s arrangement, Commander Stonn,” said Jake.



“Such an ‘arrangement’ would be in violation of at least six different Starfleet regulations,” Stonn said.



“Permission to call the commander a wuss?” Jake asked.



“Permission denied,” Stonn said. “And I should point out that you are less endearing than you think you are.”



“I don’t know,” Jake said. “I think I’m *exactly* as endearing as I think- …oh.”



They had just rounded the bend, and Jake had to cut both his sentence and his step short to avoid bumping into the form that floated before him in the corridor. It only took a moment for Jake to identify it as a human corpse. It looked was bloated, its skin puffed and tinted blue, a result of its exposure to the vacuum of the dead ship. It was suspended at the center of the corridor, arms and legs splayed out like a starfish, a grim reminder of one of the dangers of space travel that Jake had been trying not to think about lately.

“It would seem the ship was not abandoned,” Stonn said.



“Yeah,” Jake said. “He’s pretty far away from any escape pods. Rank pips say he’s a junior-grade lieutenant, so he probably wasn’t the last one to leave the bridge. For him to be dead here… I’m guessing a rapid decompression of the ship’s internal atmosphere.”



“Astute observations, Mr. Crichton,” Stonn said. “I am not an expert in human physiology, but his injuries seem consistent with exposure to vacuum. Cause of death is likely suffocation, with additional damage to the body occurring post-mortem.”



“We should tell the others,” said Jake.



“Agreed,” Stonn nodded. “Stonn to away team. Commander Crichton and I have discovered a human cadaver. It would appear that this ship was not evacuated before it suffered a system failure.”



[[Acknowledged,]] came a woman’s voice. Jake guessed it was the new marine captain that had come aboard at the UFP-855 station. [[Marines, don’t get trigger-happy. Do not engage without leave, repeat, do not engage without leave. Thytos out.]]



Jake blinked. “Engage what?”



“The marines have assumed a defensive posture,” Stonn said. “It is not unusual, given the circumstances. Major Thytos is simply managing her forces to avoid unnecessary weapons-fire.”



“Not sure why we brought so many weapons in the first place,” Jake muttered. He and Stonn stepped carefully around the floating corpse and continued down the corridor. One more corner, and they found themselves facing the turbolift doors.



“We have reached our destination,” Stonn said. He stepped forward, wedging his fingers into the gap between the turbolift doors, and began to pull them apart. He was strong, like all Vulcans, and the doors began to part almost immediately. Behind them was the hollow length of the turbolift shaft, with a ladder on the inside wall to allow for progression between decks. As soon as the doors were wide enough to allow him to pass through, Stonn stepped into the shaft and began to climb up the ladder. Jake followed him, and after another few minutes they had reached Deck 1. Stonn reached out again, lacing his fingers into the tiny gap between the turbolift doors, and after a moment they too began to part. Another minute or two of exertion saw Stonn and Jake pulling themselves up into the main bridge.



“Stonn to away team,” the Vulcan began immediately. “We have reached the bridge. Stand-by for further reports.”



Jake looked around the bridge. There were a few more bodies, some floating freely but most strapped into the chairs in front of their workstations. There didn’t seem to be a lot of damage, mechanically, but the signs of rapid decompression of the ship’s atmosphere were all there. Jake didn’t look to long at the corpses- they all looked the same as the first, all bloated skin covered with bruises- but what *did* catch his eye were the several small machines clustered around one of the computer consoles at the rear of the bridge.



They were the size of small dogs or large cats, with two mag-clamp legs not unlike the ones fitted into Jake’s environment suit, and a semi-conical chassis that ended into a small multiphasic matter replication emitter, which Jake recognized to be capable of creating a relatively limited collection of engineering tools that would allow the device to diagnose and correct an impressive number of hardware/software-based malfunctions.



“Exocomps,” Jake said, with a wide grin.



Stonn followed Jake’s gaze to the collection of machines at a console at the rear of the ship.



“I believe those are called ‘exopods’, Commander,” said Stonn.



“Pods, schmods…” Jake said. “They’re based on the same technology. Some scaling back in terms of software to prevent that icky self-awareness issue, but they’re close enough for government work.”



He went immediately towards the console, his attention fixed on the collection of exocomps, while Stonn went towards the center of the bridge. In the captain’s chair was the corpse of a human male, strapped in to avoid floating free in zero-g. Stonn’s eyes were drawn immediately to the rank pips on the cadaver’s collar.



“An admiral,” Stonn said. “Fascinating.”



Jake looked over at Stonn. “You think he’s gonna be okay?”



Stonn’s perpetual expression was such that “scowl” didn’t mean much, but the Vulcan commander almost managed it.



“Your flippancy is inappropriate, Commander,” Stonn said.



“Dead people don’t get more dead,” Jake said. “Unless you think there’s a medical reason why this ship’s atmosphere suddenly vented.”



“That is unlikely,” said Stonn.



“All respect to the dead,” Jake said, waving vaguely in the dead admiral’s direction. “But for an engineer, they’re not so interesting.”



Stonn almost managed another scowl. “I am sure they are sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Crichton.”



“For a species that doesn’t joke, you sure have sarcasm down pat,” Jake said. “What is interesting to me, though, is *that*.”



Jake pointed, and Stonn turned to look. At the far end of the bridge, in front of an opened access-panel mounted into the floor of the bridge, sat a lone exocomp.



“Curious it was not attempting to affect repairs with the rest of its like,” Stonn said, turning to look back at Jake.



“He’s an anomaly,” Jake said, moving over the lone exocomp. “Makes me curious.”



“*It*, Commander,” Stonn said, coming up behind Jake. “The machine is without gender.”



Jake picked up the exocomp, turning it onto its back to gain access to the access panel on its underside. He grabbed a tool from his kit and started removing the panel.



“Commander Stonn, what do you know about exocomps?” Jake asked as he worked.



“I am familiar with the history of the device,” Stonn said. “Originally developed in 2369 as part of the Particle Fountain mining project, built with an axionic chip network that allowed for adaptive reasoning, eventually the device was determined to have gained sentience. Alternations to the schematics were said to have removed the possibility of self-awareness while suffering minimal reduction in problem-solving capability, they were re-christened as ‘exopods’ and a compliment were assigned to several Starfleet vessels as a backup emergency-maintenance protocol. Their production and use has since been discontinued in new Starfleet vessels.”



“Thanks to the Dominion War,” Jake said as he worked. “The incident was classified, but the word is that a changeling masqueraded as one of the little tykes and brought down a Federation battleship.”



“An insightful history, Commander,” said Stonn. “Though I do not comprehend your interest in this specific device.”



“They changed software to prevent sentience,” Jake said. “But at a hardware level, they’re practically identical. That includes subjective processing of information.”



“What do you mean?”



“Exocomps have a link to the ship’s main computer,” Jake explained. “But they don’t depend on it. They have all the equipment to function without a link to the computer, or even each other. That means that each exocomp is capable of an individual perception of the world around it. They can independently recognize, diagnose, and correct mechanical and software errors in the ship, and they have the capacity to adapt to environmental factors with only their own subjective experience to draw from.”



The access panel on the exocomp’s underside popped open, and Jake turned to grin at Commander Stonn.



“That’s all fancy-talk for ‘they’re not alive, but they’re close’,” said Jake. “They each see the world in their own way, shaped by their own unique experiences, which means they can arrive at their own conclusions.”



“You believe this device has seen something that its counterparts did not,” Stonn said.



“Exactly that, boss,” Jake said. “Either this one rode the short bus to work every day, or he was miles ahead of his brothers and sisters. And since he’s the only thing on this bridge besides the dead admiral that looks out of place, I’m thinking he’s our best lead.”



“A sound conclusion, Mr. Crichton,” Stonn said. “Well done.”



“There’s something else, Commander,” said Jake. “These guys have an internal power supply. They’re meant to function independently of the rest of the ship, in times of emergency. Without recharging, their power cells are good to last over 24 months, at least.”



Jake turned to look back at Stonn.



“They’re all out of batteries,” he said. “If they were activated, they worked at least a few years trying to restore power before they shut down.”



Stonn stared at Jake for a long moment. Then, he nodded.



“Continue your work, Mr. Crichton,” he said. “Hopefully, your device can point us in the direction of the answers we need.”



=================================================

NRPG: Sorry for the wait, some IRL issues cut into my writing time so I couldn’t get it done by the time I first quoted. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy it!



Shawn Putnam

a.k.a.

Jake Crichton, Commander,

Chief of Engineering

USS DISCOVERY