Into the Void

Chapter 7

Nate floated alone in his quarters, mindlessly plucking at the strings of his old guitar. The Dauntless had her faster than light drive engaged which disabled the gravity. It used a mass altering field to envelop the ship in a nearly massless bubble then used the ship's thrust to accelerate the bubble faster than light. It was complex math involving imaginary numbers for the ships mass, and bending the rules of physics. It sailed far above his head, all that really mattered to him was that ship couldn't run artificial gravity and FTL speeds at the same time. The door at the end of the room slid open and Izzy flung herself into the chamber, drifting towards the back of the room.

"Hey," she said, catching herself on the bed so she didn't slam into the back wall. "You worked ship construction for a bit right?"

"Sure did," said Nate. "You need help with something?"

Izzy nodded. "There's a retractable panel on the outside of the ship that's stuck. It's throwing a warning and driving me completely nuts. The rest of the engineering team doesn't want to deal with it unless it starts actually causing problems, when we drop out of of FTL want to go for a spacewalk?"

"After being cooped up indoors for over a month, I'd love to go outside" he said, smiling. "Get some fresh air so to speak."

Izzy laughed. "More like fresh vacuum."

Nate shuddered, his mind drifting back to the memory of drifting, cold and alone with no oxygen, lungs burning, skin freezing, wondering whether the he'd freeze before he suffocated. "I've had a breath of fresh vacuum once," he said quietly. "I'd rather not do it again."

Izzy's eyebrows shot up. "I'm sorry," she said. "You didn't serve on the Pegasus did you? I think I salvaged your ship after an assault on a space station. It was from gunship squadron Halberd, whole ship was ruined, both pilots declared dead on arrival."

"That was me, technically dead for a few minutes, I got better though. Small galaxy eh?"

"I guess. The airlock we need is in engineering, let's get down there."

Nate sat the guitar on his bunk and kicked off the edge of the bed gliding towards the door. Moving through the Dauntless in zero gee was tricky. The smooth walls and floors were much more aesthetically pleasing than the bare metal found on most ships, but they lacked handholds for moving around safely when the gravity was off, it was a serious oversight by the ship's designers. He kicked gently off a wall, sailing towards the opposite wall at an angle. Zig zagging his way down the hall until he came to a ladder. Pulling himself hand over hand he crept slowly up the ladder, hoping that the gravity would stay off until he reached engineering. If the gravity were to suddenly turn back on he'd be sent plunging head first down to the next deck.

After a brief detour to grab his exo-suit and some tools, he joined Izzy at the heavy sealed door that led to the engineering deck. She keyed in an access code on a small touchscreen set into the door, unlocking it with a harsh clack. The door rolled away, revealing a long open space with grated metal floors, and pipes and electrical conduits running across to the ceiling. The rest of the space was filled with machines, shelves full of power tools, and rows of computers.

"I expected it to be busier down here," said Nate.

Izzy shook her head. "It's normally quiet unless something is going wrong. The Dauntless is a pretty amazing ship, it's got some of the most advanced drones I've ever seen, they take care of most of the work honestly."

"If they're so good then how come they're not going outside the ship?"

"For some reason they don't want anything to do with that panel, neither do the other techs for that matter. So that's why I'm bringing you."

An alarm whined, the ship was about to drop of FTL. Nate planted his feet on the deck while Izzy cycled open the inner door to the airlock. Gravity returned slowly, gently pressing them down, and they stepped into the airlock.

"Here," said Izzy. "Don't forget this." She handed him a thick cable that attached to the back of the exo-suit.

It would keep them tethered to ship if their magnetic boots failed. The air hissed out of the tiny airlock and the outer door swung open. Nate took a cautious step out onto the narrow scaffolding surrounding the airlock. The ship was in deep space, drifting alone through space at hundreds of thousands of kilometers per hour. Nate smiled as he stared off into the void. Space stretched on endlessly all around him, an ink black canvas studded with a billion pinpoints him of light, phantasmal nebulas stretched ahead of the ship sprawling across the void in swirls of violet and emerald, and a pulsar sent beams of electromagnetic radiation dancing over the ship, causing a soft hiss to come from the exo-suit's radio as the waves of radiation rolled over them.

Izzy tapped him on the shoulder. "Don't mean to interrupt your stargazing, but we need to check out that panel. Come on." She stomped across the scaffolding and onto the hull, moving with large exaggerated steps and heavy footfalls as the magnetic boots sucked her feet down onto the hull.

"Sorry," said Nate, stomping off after her. "I just still can't believe we're out here doing this."

"Fixing a hull panel?" said Izzy with a small laugh.

"No, exploring an uncharted section of the galaxy."

"I was only joking, I know what you mean though. Honestly I'm just excited to be away from all the bullshit."

"Bullshit?"

"There's loads of it back home. I'm pissed that we're trying to argue the same old issue from two-hundred years ago. I mean there's a million other places to go. So, now I'm here, finding my own place away from the bullshit."

Nate frowned. "You lost me," he said. "Where are you from exactly? You've never mentioned it before."

"Space Station Inspiration, terrible name for it really, should have been called Space Station Shithole. It's in the Orbital String around New Horizons. People still think we should be fighting for independence, they want the stations in the String to secede from the Alliance even though we already lost that exact fight back in 2118. It's an old fight that I'm tired of hearing about, so I came here hopefully to something that actually matters. Anyway, here's the stuck panel."

Nate took a walk around the panel, it was a large square section of the ship's hull that lifted and slid backwards. There were a series of small holes pockmarking the area around the it. "Right here, Izzy." he said, pointing to a crumpled section of the hull. "Looks like a micrometeorite crumpled in the hull and smashed a latch. What's under here anyway?"

Izzy stomped over to the damaged section and pulled a cutting torch off of her belt. "I'm not even sure, the ship schematics that we have list the sliding panel but nothing underneath it."

Nate sighed. "If there's nothing here then why are we fixing it?"

Izzy ignited the torch and started slicing through the crumpled plating. "While I'm cutting this can you get a pry bar under the panel? Start wiggling it loose. And there's no reason to have a sliding panel with nothing underneath it. That's just a potential weakness in the hull for no benefit."

Nate crouched and jammed the end of the pry bar under the sliding panel, lifting it clear of the crumpled plating after the latch had been sliced off. With nothing else impeding its movement the panel slid back on huge hydraulic pistons.

"Holy shit," said Izzy, looking down into a huge cavernous space. Nate leaned over the edge, a massive missile launcher and a series of ammunition feeds were recessed into the hull under the panel.

"Jesus," he said. "That must be a forty tube missile pod. How many of these sliding panels does the ship have?"

"Four" said Izzy, quietly.

Nate shook his head. "So one-hundred and sixty missiles on top of the gauss cannons on the bow and the broadside laser cannons. I thought this was an explorer, not a god damn destroyer."