Alright. Time to do this.
Your window of opportunity is short. But you figure that an extremely short bout inside a Tear can potentially save the frigate. Problems with this plan flash through your head. Being inside a Tear can and likely will rip apart the frigate thanks to a lack of a teardrive protecting it from gravitational forces. Yet this is only an issue if they can even get inside the Tear. Your drive can, at a greater level of strain, create a Tear in space big enough for the frigate to go through, but the frigate's orbit may be
too unstable and a Tear could just deliver it right into the singularity.
There's also the problem of your Teardrive potentially
exploding, but that's something you choose not to think about.
Okay. Run to the Teardrive maintenance panel. Pull the Emergency Override switch. Increase power to the Primary Gravity Modulator. Forcibly disable power surge safeties. Disable targeting safeties. Run back to the cockpit, target the front of the frigate. Manually activate Teardrive.
The entire ship lurches and groans under a sudden huge strain. The cockpit instruments suddenly lose power and lighting goes out. For a brief moment, the only thing you're aware of is a mix of hope and fear.
The power comes back and the systems quickly boot back up. You direct the sensors' scope to the location of the frigate, and nothing appears on the readout. You begin to worry until the frigate appears further away from the singularity, exiting from the Tear in an admittedly unstable fashion, but still mostly intact. Unfortunately, you'll have to worry about that later.
A large alert appears on the primary screen, indicating something gone horribly wrong with the Teardrive. A switch to a detailed diagnostics reveals that the ship's mainframe was unable to reach the Teardrive. You get back up from your seat and sprint to the Teardrive maintenance panel just recently visited. The regular indicator lights are all dark. Trying to manipulate the various switches and buttons does nothing. You stand back from the panel, resigned. You just can't find out what the malfunction is without
more time. You give up in your efforts here and return to the cockpit and are once again greeted by a cacophony of alarm sounds and flashing red lights.
The next few hours are spent in a very precarious state. The gravitational singularity is in constant flux as you desperately try to keep your orbit stable. Eventually, it starts to wane and reaches a point where your ship is able to stay in a stable orbit without use of thrusters. Based on what little data you have, you'd guess that the singularity will likely dissipate over some period of time, but for all you know it may explode or suddenly disappear or get worse. This isn't covered in standard training, unfortunately.
You stare at the sensors again. The alien frigate is still within sensors range and appears to be somewhat dead in space, out in a further (stable) orbit of the singularity.
So, what do you do? You have a very quiet Leader sitting in the copilot's seat, a
small issue to mention if you meet that leader of the so-called "Planetary Union" again, a mostly-powerless alien frigate in space, a nonfunctional teardrive, and possibly the precursors to psychological problems if you ever make it out of this damned system alive.
2 systems away from next Waypoint.Wearing: Vacuum Suit
Wearing: Mothership Engineer Uniform
Equipped: Wristcomp
Achievements:
- Destroyed a planet
- Alien Communications-compatible
- Radiation Protection Suit
Author
Topic: Lone Galaxy [SG] Ep. 1 - Strain of War (Read 8110 times)