Final Frontiers

Something was ringing in his ears, muffled as it was. It was an electronic chirp of sorts, not wholly unpleasant but at the same time annoying enough that it wasn't ignorable. There was also an air of urgency to it. He had about a second more to contemplate the noise when the bite of a needle in his chest, followed by the rush of liquid adrenaline being pumped into his body, snapped him from his state of stupor.

Falling to his knees on the hard metal floor his mind raced to piece together the situation he had been flung into while his lungs fought to retch up the gelatinous goo stuck in his throat.

The information came together in fragments. Still on the ship. Emergency alarm. Suspended animation ended early.

Finally coughing the highly-concentrated nutritional supplement onto the deck, the human pulled himself to his feet with the aid of the open locker where his gear had been waiting. A droid entered the room to clean the mess up.

An electronic female voice chimed from nearby, "Scanning." The human pulled the undershirt on while he waited for the sensors to do their job. "Identification confirmed: Marius Aelius, Titus. Query?"

"Situation report," Titus asked, his body was moving automatically - he climbed into the leggings of the bodysuit and worked his arms into the the sleeves of the torso section, "Are we under attack?" The last thing I need to deal with right now is pirates or a Jedi hunter.

"Negative. Ship has been taken off-course by a spontaneous gravitational and energy anomaly. Port-side engine damaged, output down to 63% and falling," the computer answered.

Well, at least it wasn't Jedi hunters. Titus loaded a powercell into his sidearm and checked the charge before securing the weapon in its holster. "Unseal all doors from here to piloting, NOW!" the human barked, grabbing the helmet from the locker and jamming his feet into his boots before taking off toward the cockpit. Only got time to get the bodysuit on, no time for the plating.

Sliding in front of one of the control panels, the screen came to life. Titus' gloved fingers began flying over the surface, each tap or swipe entering a command or accessing information on the ship. "Bring communications online and program self-replicating seeds of the files across every subnet databank you can. Dynamically encrypt each."

The computer chimed an acknowledgement.

"Launch emergency beacon two through six to pre-designated coordinates; set to broadcast encryption keys for the files on all friendly channels."

Another chime, "Port engine output has fallen below the escape threshold. Instructions?"

If I don't live through this, at least the information wouldn't die with me. It's out there for someone to find.

"Instructions?" the computer asked again.

"Send a mayday signal to our handler then cut power to non-essential systems: transfer to inertial dampeners," Titus said, delegating some of his tasks to get as much done in the narrow window he had, "backup navigation and AI to each of the server cores-" the ship lurched hard to port as the anomaly began to suck them further in, bulkheads groaning against the stress and blinking warning lights illuminating the cockpit, "Adjust course to reduce ship profile. I'd rather not go into this thing sideways!"

"Acknowledged: firing starboard engine," the computer calmly stated, followed by a brief pause.

Titus programmed all forward-facing thrusters to fire at maximum burn should the ship survive the trip through the anomaly. Provided, of course, it doesn't drop us off in the center of a sun or planet.

"...course correction complete."

"Now redirect reactor power from main engines to slipstream shielding. Secure cargo bay. Any excess power left over from here on out goes to reinforce the shields," he tapped another string of commands into his console as the ship began to shudder harder, "cut life support on my mark, transitioning to suit support." Entering a command into a display screen on his jacket sleeve, the tiny tetrahedrons that made up the entire suit automatically constricted to a more snug fit, reducing the amount of material that could potentially catch on a surface in low gravity. Next his helmet activated, more tetrahedrons extending down his neck to connect with the rest of the suit and completing the seal.

"Mark," he said, waiting for the life support warning on the console to start blinking red. Titus was still giving commands when the ship was finally swallowed - the anomaly disappearing without a trace a second later.