.
The black box picked up by the small survey vessel 'Prestige' was definitely unusual. Certainly not something one would expect to find during a routine survey operation. Though this was a relatively unknown area of space it was not entirely untraveled. How it escaped detection for so long was a mystery. It could have drifted for ages. The captain swiped a hoof over the floating hard light controls and ran the excerpt after the ships Starv-8 maneframe finally finished decoding it. There would be several more hours before docking with their support hub anyway. Might as well see what they found. It began with a technical readout as was standard procedure:
Spacecruiser Class: Heavy Celestial Starjumper
Registration Title: Reticence
Manufacturer: Hoofway Industrial Interests
Power Plant: Hooves & Princely 1.21Pw (Petwat Derivative Estimation)
Engines: Four Binary Fusion Gap Star Drives
Status: Presumed lost in space
As this flashed across the readout his second officer chimed in.
"A Starjumper, those things were immense, with a crew of 6500! Ships of that class haven't been built in over three hundred years. Four gap tunnel drives, so outdated now but what a beauty. Can you imagine how high the salvage rate would be if we could find even a piece of.." She was nearly jumping up and down at the possibility, making her hooves clack on the deck. Noticing the captain seemed far less enthusiastic and sitting there staring intensely at the readout made her stop mid-sentence.
"C-captain? What is it?" She was rapidly getting rather nervous just from his expression. This was not his usual demeanor. He looked up towards her in a way she'd never seen before, making her gulp.
"Think about this, Sun Dreamer. A Celestial Starjumper was a fully equipped exploration and frontline vessel, mining bays, diving and combat bays. Drone complements, a full weapons spread loadout, and four star drives. What could possibly have happened to her? A more powerful class of vessel has never been built, but here is the mangled black box. I have a bad feeling about this. Let's just watch the logs.” He pushed at the play switch.
The floating display sprang to life as a visual, displaying names and log data for a few seconds above the heads of the images:
"XO, how long have we been out here?" Captain Blackthorne was turning his command chair and asking of his executive officer, Aura Sentinel. A rough teal-coated pegasus mare with a wispy blond mane and tail who held a particularly mischievous air about them. Always joking, but serious whenever necessary. She was a valuable addition to the crew, added to the roster nearly at the last minute before departure due to the previous XO having taken ill.
"Three years, captain. The last transmission from home arrived a few hours ago. Even with all the advances in technology we still have to wait hours for messages this far out on the frontier." She extended and pointed a wing at the main forward viewport and the sweeping vista of distant twinkling lights laid out before them.
"Beautiful sight though isn't it?" She retracted her wing. The captain grunted. They knew each other for so long they were on a first name basis with one another.
"It's all starting to look the same, Aura. What is the point of all this machinery if they're just going to have us draw maps? We haven't set hoof on an actual planet surface in eight months." He loved exploring, but this was too much of the same for too long.
"Good news for you then, sir. Next gap jump is up in one hour, possibly a habitable uncharted planet was just detected one tunnel jump from here." She smiled for a moment.
A habitable planet meant they would send survey crews down. It would take an hour for the drives to cycle fully up to jump capability. This particular black box only kept about four hours of recording from before and after an incident resulting in its ejection for brevity and ease of follow-up. More actual data would be forthcoming if anypony ever found the ships flight log recorder. The picture just stopped. The captain shook his head, making his blue and white mane tumble then stretched, he continued the playback.
This part of the log was corrupted beyond even the powerful maneframes ability to clean up, clarify or reconstruct in any meaningful way so the captain placed an orange hoof on the control slider and slid it along to the next viewable section. So far the log was relatively mundane. This was about to change:
“Tunnel drives at jump capacity, captain. Vessel thruster orientation on target achieved. All strapped in. Ready to jump on your order.” The XO was saying. He waved a hoof to indicate go. The tunnel jump was initiated.
“On the straight, we will be there in no t..” The captain halted mid sentence as a strange second shudder was felt throughout the enormous vessel, alarm klaxons and lights went off and sparks flew off some of the equipment. The entire bridge crew was scrambling at their controls and screens as the image outside the main viewport looked twisted in some odd manner.
“XO, have all decks report! What’s happening?” He almost didn’t need to give the order.
“Navigation reports we are still in the middle of the jump, with zero forward momentum. Engineering reports engines still at full output.” The XO was not easily shaken, but her face told a different story than her outwardly calm words. How could the gap engines be at full output and they weren't moving anywhere? The shuddering was still violent despite being unmoving.
“All science decks report we seem to have encountered unknown astrogravitics phenomena. Comm deck reports outgoing communications nullified, anything being transmitted is being reflected back due to ongoing jump tunneling.” The XO had her hooves full just relaying all this to the captain.
“Can we cut power to the engines?” He asked gravely. She queried the other decks.
“All pony, avian and draconic scientists aboard concur, we cannot cut gap engine power at this time. It appears all outgoing energy forces are being equally redirected back at us. If we reduce power or shut down the engines all that force will tear the ship to pieces. The engines are simply too powerful.” This was bad. The XO never looked this nervous before.
“Sentinel, calm. We need to find our way through this.” Blackthorne could see she needed reassurance. The images occasionally fuzzed in and out, barely audible.
“I..yes, captain.” She cleared her throat.
“What can we do? We are caught in a catch-22. If we keep this up the ship will just shake itself apart, and if we don’t we will drop out of the tunnel too rapidly. It would be like slamming the entire ship into a single point in space.“ The situation was possibly inescapable. The ship, the equipment, the crew. Everything. The captain looked down at his command vest. He loved this ship, and cared for everyone aboard. Now, any decisions made could doom them all.
“Shipwide broadcast.” He stated in an even tone. The XO pressed one of the hard light panels hovering nearby.
“Attention, fine crew of the Reticence. This is the captain speaking. Prepare to abandon ship. This is not a drill. Head for the nearest lifepods, fill and await possible launch go.” He hesitated a moment before continuing.
“Know that you have all served with distinction and honor. I take great pride in every single one of you. I will not lie to you, our situation is beyond dire. I therefore take full responsibility for whatever happens next. The way I see it we have one chance of escape. We cannot break free of this accursed gravitic dead-zone and we cannot stay. We will set the engines to overload and eject the power plant behind us when it hits critical stage. Hopefully the resulting shockwave will let us ride the rest of the jump tunnel out before it collapses. You know what this means. The Reticence is lost. Fortune favor you all.” Reaching a hoof up to wipe some tears from his eyes on the back of his foreleg he then looked to the XO, and back at the bridge staff.
“What are you all still doing here? Get to the pods.” What were they doing? They were all just looking back at him.
“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I think we’ll hang around for the ride.” A comms station lieutenant looked around at the rest and spoke up.
The captain found the XO putting a hoof over his shoulder as he looked up at her from the command chair. Ten minutes skipped on the display, unviewable. The rest of the crew would have filled the lifepods by now. It may be none of them would survive this.
“We have fought together, explored wondrous places together. We may die together. Let’s go, captain.” She said in an almost sing-song voice he’d practically never heard. She spread her wings wide as he gave the order. A tremendous cracking sound was heard as the image fell dead on the display. That was all the playback that could be cleaned up enough to view. The Reticence must have been obliterated almost utterly. The black box surviving was testament to its hefty construction from the strongest materials known at the time. The survey vessel captain who was watching this looked to his second.
Tears were pouring down both their faces.
“All those poor souls..” She was crying profusely. It was not a usual thing to do, but the captain reached out and gave her a warm hug for a long moment. Their professional demeanor would return soon enough.
“It’s alright, it was three hundred years ago. Now, we have to warn fleet command as soon as possible that there is a highly dangerous region of space somewhere around the coordinates where they disappeared. We’re fortunate we did not run into it ourselves, but the log box could have been thrown who knows how far when they dropped out of tunnel. Other lesser vessels have gone missing around there from time to time, but it was so infrequent they were all just assumed to be accidents as you would expect. They may have encountered the same thing. A little bit of good news for us is they will reward a small fortune just for bringing this back. The science council will also love this one. Maybe we will even find more of her.” He pat her on the back in a friendly manner and they separated. They were approaching the docking hub.
“Well, back to work.” The survey vessel slid home against the dock with a thump.
