J R Landers

Debris from the passenger craft pelted the hull of the frigate The Azusa Yumi, tearing through the skin and embedding into the augmented armor plating.

Commander Masako Sasaki grimaced at the readouts in the wheelhouse and the thoughts of what was actually becoming lodged within her ship. At least her crew would not have to perform the extraction; though at the expense of the dry-dock workers and post-incident analysis team that would have to remove and examine all of the metal and organic particles. However, there was nothing she could do now to avoid the damage.

What concerned her was the cause of the event. Their course had been altered when a Tau Neutrino burst had been detected; and based on the relative clustering of the debris the ship could not have been destroyed for more than three hours [e] at most. If it was a meteor storm, the ship should be more intact…

Then there were the fluctuations of gravitational waves; each with an accompanied waxing and waning of gravitational strings from the origin point. It was as if someone had grabbed the brane and torn it asunder before re-stitching it together.

Every second of loitering was another itch under Sasaki’s skin; another goosebump on the back of her neck. The infinite frontier was vast; yet somehow felt too cramped in the way that made even a Strick Transporter feel roomy.

Still, they had a job to do. Once it was done, however, they would be immediately departing the area. No sense lingering around to find out exactly what caused the destruction.

Lieutenant Commander Toshio Mori, the Executive Officer (or XO) was communicating with ST3 Kazuo Agawa, the on-duty RAOp (RADAR Operator) about readings from the field. Mori was blonde haired and rather tall, at 193cm, and broad as a rugby player, which gave him the appearance of a peculiar giant in their purple and white space suits - especially as he stood next to the 165cm Agawa. Of course, Sasaki was also dwarfed by Mori; at 162cm her height meant that most of her crew towered above her. Not that height impacted her ability to do her job.

Her stature did help ease the discomfort of intra-solar travel. The relatively cramped corridors and compartments of the vessel, like most spacecraft, meant that every centimeter was at a premium. Even with her shorter height, the bunks seemed to be barely large enough for her during her LT days – how did LCDR Mori survive all those years?

The idea of Mori laying in a bunk with his legs hanging over the side tickled Sasaki deep down. She pondered the impl-

The ship and all of its inhabitants lurched to the side, then inward, then to the other side as the panels and electronics popped under the stress. Systems integrity warnings blared; concerned about a potential entry into a singularity’s event field. Sasaki felt her stomach heave to and her inner ear tumble as though she were taking off from planetside. It was more than she could take; and as she gripped the rail of her platform she closed her eyes in vain attempt to stop the madness.

Someone retched.

Correction: several someones.

Sasaki opened her eyes as the gravitational tempest subsided. Thankfully, most of the bridge had been buckled-in at the time of the wave. QM2 Aoi Matsumoto had been thrown during the event; as had the LCDR. A couple of panels had popped open, exposing the innards.

She could also barely smell the bile; but it was mostly masked by the burning sensation of unadultured space – as though a thousand muskets had been fired recently. The rad labs would not be happy about their exposure. At least the masking stench of the universe would help them recover their positions before worrying about having to clean up their messes.

But first things first:

“All stations, Captain. Status report.”

A second passed before the first response. “Plant, Grav is online. Two is green. One casualty from a burst pipe on One; taken to Sick Bay. ETRO ten mikes.”

LCDR Imahara sounded impassive, as always. It was good to have a level-headed Officer for the Plant. Sasaki was glad that she had snaked her from The Muroto; though Captain Sato was less than thrilled. Oh well, the Asahidate Carrier Strike Group (technically CSG-3) had plenty of bright, young engineers to steal from First Fleet; they could survive without this one.

She made a note to go down to the infirmary after the dust had settled to see how the injured worker was doing. The full casualty list would flow soon enough as well; and she doubted that this would be the last.

“Thanks, ChEng.”

One by one, each of the departments reported in their statuses. In the gunnery, a munitions technician had the misfortune of a turret shifting and crushing his leg. Hopefully he would be able to keep the leg; though the risk it posed to organ failure was still severe. One of the culinary specialists had suffered some sort of puncture wound and was being taken to the infirmary. Too early to tell his current status. Apart from that, a couple minor scrapes and some system damage were all that the ship and crew had suffered - the stability proved to be well worth the fifty-trillion yen pricetag for the vessel.