Lying on a bunk aft of the shuttle, drifting half-asleep, still suffering the after-effects of the doctored drink two days ago. At least that's my excuse, though some of these thoughtless pilots aren't helping. Nor was the constant interruption of my sleep. 'veteron cascade emission please' 'of course why not?'. I really need to see the holodoc if err when we make it back.
A bright flash and a familliar sickening sensation brought me back to reality suddenly. I sat straight up, not a good idea when the bunks are only 18 inches apart. Ouch.
I stumbled forward to the engineering room, holding my bruised aching head.
'Engineer Thrakhath, that's a dangerous toy to be playing aroud with. I hope you remembered to set the destination dimension as well as our time-space coordinates?'.
'er um well I'
'Let's have a look, i've spent years trying to use these things to transport Starships instantly anywhere in the universe, but the spacio-temporal distortion field weakens at the inverse square of the distance from the generator. Using it on a shuttle this size any kid could do. Just try it on an Eternaty class ship though.'
'errr no thanks'
A few seconds told me that the destination was not correct, and more importantly, that this wasn't the generator I was looking for.
'I'll have this sorted in a couple of seconds' entering in the correct co-ords. I hit the engage button, which wasn't a good idea as it fell apart. Still, it must have worked as there was a brief sickly sensation nobody else would have noticed. We were back in our own universe.
'Give me a hand to get into this biosuit, I hate these things' I asked, but I was too late. The others must have had the comms systems switched to a different channel as they didn't appear to hear me. Though having seen the condition these spacesuits are in, maybe they just don't work.
Switching my portable scanner on, I was surprised to find many different power emissions from different areas of this very alien ship. Outside the shuttle airlock now, I used the rocket pack to move back from the alien craft. This was incredible, quite unlike anything I ever imagined travelling interstellar space. It seemed almost to have grown, rather than being built. Reminding me of an immense spider I felt a sudden urge to get back to the shuttle and take off for the safety of Proxima Alpha. I felt a cold chill of fear, not just due to the suit heater batteries failing. I had to find the rest of the crew, warn them something was waiting here for them. Loading my shock rifle in my right hand, I headed for the only visible opening in the dark ship ahead.
'DeaJae?' 'Thrahhath?' 'Anyone?' Nothing. My radio must be dud. Com badges were no use out here, they needed a central server onboard the space station to operate. I wandered through the glistening curved corridors as if lost inside some giant beast. The portable scanner was almost useless, so many strange power emissions swamped it, and I would have to be standing on top of one of our crew before it would detect them. Slowly I made my way towards the strongest of these signals. Almost there, the ship lurched forward, which was not too good for me, as I was facing backwards. I stood up again, holding a broken shock rifle and the scanner. Having no free hand to hold my now broken nose, I threw the rifle at the nearest pillar, cursing that n00bie engineer - could he not have checked the inertia dampers before starting the impulse engines?. This had not been the best of days up to now. It was then that I noticed the scanner display again. A new energy source had appeared, of course - the ship's engines were operating. But the signal I had been heading for had started to move towards the new signal. To engineering, and Thrakhath.
(ph34r the re-introduction of Imperial measuring systems in the 22nd centiury)
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