Out of Space

Chapter 8: Lost

A sudden rattle of the decks first indicted something was wrong. Capt Blake sat on his command chair reading the reports flooding in from Engineering felt the shaking of the ship. He looks up in surprise as did the rest of the bridge crew. The shaking of the ship grew stronger and harder like an earthquake, followed by the massive sound of groaning metal. "What the hell is that?" He asked.

Before anyone could respond to his question, alarms blazed madly, and the whole world went white.

The rip in the power conduits blew a massive hole at the port side of the ship closer to the engines. As a result, the force of the explosion caused massive structural stress and damage to the ship, snapping the ship in half like breaking chopsticks. The leftover energy spun the forward half of the ship like a spinning top.

As decompression threaten the ship's crew, the computer activated emergency decompression protocols and 1 by 1, airlocks slam shut protecting the remaining crew members from instant decompression. Yet this did not save everyone as the inertia energy causing by the ship's spin, forced a crushing 14Gs on everyone.

Unsecured crew members and objects were slammed onto the bulkheads causing broken bones and instant concussions. Crew members fainted from the high gravity or died to heart attacks, broken necks or head concussions even with everyone is wearing a space/env suit. The computer detecting the high gravity spin and no human responses, attempted to right the ship using maneuvering thrusters. It was successful and managed to stop the spin of the ship. By then the crew of UNS Singapore has become incapacitated.

The ship continued on in warp space, draining power from the charged capacitors and the remaining reactor. The spin from the explosion knocked the ship off course from its original plotted route to Ecythn system and traveled on to an unknown region in space. Warp travel is based on knowing where the endpoint is, if not, the ship will be lost traveling to an unknown part of the galaxy. In the beginning, many explorers disappeared into the void of warp space, never to be seen again. Hence at each stable jump points, a warp signal buoy guides ships to their destination.

Blake felt someone shaking him, he slowly woke up from the endless shaking and "Captain! captain!"

"Enough, stop yelling at my ear. It's giving me a headache!" He grumbled.

He tried to raise his head, only to feel like it weighs 10 times more. He blinked his eyes and realized as that it wasn't his vision blurry but his head visor was chipped with spider web cracks. He tugs his helmet off with the assistance of someone he couldn't really see clearly.

"Captain, are you alright?" Comms Officer Clara peer at Capt Blake. She has some medical knowledge and is checking on Capt Blake if he has any concussion.

"What happened?" Blake rubbed his face, coughing from the fumes and burnt plastics and found his gloves tinted with blood. He looks around the bridge, finding several of the crew slumps over their seats.

"I am not too sure, sir. I just woke up not too long ago." She checked his irises and declares, "You got a minor bump, sir. Stay on your seat. I go check on the others." And she moves to check another person.

Blake fumbles with his console, bringing up the ship's computer logs. His face turns as he reads through the logs. A nuclear explosion onboard his ship? Damn. He unbuckles the crash harness that deployed when the explosion happened and stumbles to the pilot controls.

He checked the pilot's suit readout, finding him without any major issues and unbuckled him from his seat and unceremoniously dump him on the floor. Blake pulls up the warp navigation systems on the pilot's console and cursed. The ship is out of course! Damn it. 27 hours in warp space?! Need to shut it down! Blake quickly keys in the commands to drop the ship back to normal space.

Red lines of warnings alerts appear immediately on the pilot console as he tries to stop the warp drive. [WARP DRIVE UNCONNECTED] What? How can the warp drive be unconnected? He made his way back to his command console and search for the damage report. What? He looked at the ship's wireframe diagram showing all the systems onboard. The reactor B is greyed out, so is the warp drives and engines. In fact, the entire rear half of the wireframe diagram is greyed out.

Did the explosion blow half the ship away? All those men gone. What the hell really happened?

He tapped a few keys trying to access the systems but there was no response. Blake stumbled back to the pilot seat and typed in some commands, and the console displayed what he was looking for. The warp engines are down but the warp emitters are still generating the warp bubble that keeps the ship in warp space. Without the warp bubble, ships can't enter warp space. Blake checked the power systems and found that the warp emitters are still drawing power from reactor A. He quickly shut down the power to the emitters.

Without the warp engines to slow and control the exit speed of warp space, the ship dropped out of warp space back to normal space like a bullet hitting a water surface. Blake flew forward, over the pilot console and slam against the main tactical display knocking his breath out, and causing more spider web cracks to appear. Several yells and screams of pain and surprise came from the other side of the console where Coms Officer Clara was trying to treat the wounded bridge crew.

The viewport changed from purplish grey scenery to normal specks of stars. A dribble of blood trickled down Blake's forehead as he climbs his way back over the pilot console. He slumps on the pilot chair, trying to get his head to stop spinning and looks over at Clara. Seeing that she is moving, he turns back to the console and with 1 hand pressing on his head wound, uses 1 hand to search for their location.

[Error, no database of the current system.] No! Blake groaned. He looks out of the viewport seeing the tiny specks of stars in the distance. We are lost! He sighed.

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