Christian Oesterling - Blank Space - Into the Depths of the Universe

‘Ah there’s only a bit left, Oliver can drink it out of the bottle.’

‘A Black Mariner out of the bottle? You serious?’ Yuki asked.

‘Is he really going to complain? Alcohol might make up for the hole in his ship, whatever container it’s in,’ Duma reasoned. Jenny drew up a chair, and around the round table, they sat, martinis in hand.

Leon looked at the men and women before him and smiled. They were a good crew, a little excited, and one of them a little trigger-happy, but a good crew. It would be a good and successful voyage, without a doubt. It was time for a small celebration, and then it would be all hands on deck. The holiday was about to end, the fantasies were about to come to a close. It was now that the working start and they began to earn their pay. To broaden the horizons of The Empire Of Humanity, to go where no spaceship had traveled before; that was what they were here to do.

It was then that a clear voice came from the ship.

‘Exiting communications range with Outpost 73. Now in open space known as The Blank Space.’ It was the voice of a young woman, mid-twenties, with a very slight robotic tinge to it.

‘Who was that?’ Prissy asked. The rest of them shrugged.

‘Oliver, what was that? There was a woman’s voice just then,’ Leon called. Oliver came back a second after.

‘Yeah, I discovered Nightingale’s internal voice communicator. Essentially, the ship can now talk. It should make the trip a bit more interesting, to say the least.’

‘Well that’s cool, I thought they’d gotten rid of the computer voices a few decades ago because it always activated whenever you said the name of a ship in the middle of a sentence,’ Duma said.

‘Obviously now they’ve sorted it. Right then everyone, let’s make sure all of our stations and jobs are set up, and remember to check who’s on duty during the sleeping hours,’ Leon told them. The crew all nodded and agreed, draining their martinis in one go. Slammed onto the table in sync, they rose from their seats to begin setting up their workspaces and their home-from-home, now that home was an impossible reach across the gulf of space.

Two days into the expedition and the crew were beginning to settle down to the daily routine. Every day consisted of two meetings, one in the morning (or what their clocks still registered as morning) and one in the afternoon, in order to voice opinions on what was happening, if anything had come to light or mind, etc. Every day there was a ten-minute session with Holden to make sure they were still feeling tip-top. Mealtimes were rife with conversations, proposition bets between the men (an excess of manliness, as Yuki would refer to it), laughter and discussions about the wider happenings of The Empire Of Humanity.

‘No, I’m telling you now. Brykthylosians are more violent than Kozolequinians, only an imbecile would argue against that,’ ran one discussion at the dinner table, courtesy of Holden’s love of arguments.

‘Brykthylosians are barbaric yes, and are the most barbaric in terms of just, general messed-up ways and practices. But Kozolequinians are bred for war. They practically live to have a gun in their hand or to smash in a Torkaxion’s skull,’ Leon countered.

‘Actually, having had to be in a fighter ship repelling a Kozolequinian launch on a small planet in the Firestorm cluster, they’re pretty damn brutal,’ Oliver interjected.

‘You were there against Kozolequinians? When was that?’ Jenny asked, looking up from her pasta sludge.

‘Must have been about, oh, ten or twelve years ago now. They had just decided from out of nowhere to attack a tiny unsuspecting planet that Celestria was just starting to make connections with. People, there are essentially massive snakes with ten arms, so they weren’t the most noted interstellar travelers. I can’t remember the name of the planet even though I really should do.’

‘I think I read about it in the news actually. Vernim wasn’t it? Something like that,’ Leon added.

‘Probably. But they launched strikes against it and refused to stop when the Celestrian guys asked them to kindly stop firing plasma missiles at them. I was one of the guys that went over to try and stop them being such violence elitists.’ Prissy raised one eyebrow.

‘Violence elitists? What the hell is violence elitist?’

‘Someone who thinks that only their idea of violence is the correct one. Anyway, shot a fair few of the buggers down that trip, although I know several people that didn’t make it out. Skeletons are probably still strapped into the ruins of their ships, sinking into the swamps down there. Poor guys.’ The company was silent for many seconds before Holden raised his glass.

‘To the fallen, whoever they are, and wherever they are.’ The crew raised their glasses in silence, hovered for a moment in suspended animation, and then brought them all together to clink them in appreciation for Holden’s words.

‘And the exploration and safety of the rest of us still here, so that we might not have to honor so many fallen again,’ Leon tolled. Their drinks were drained, nourishment for weary bodies. They began to eat again in silence, one of the first silences since the trip had begun. All seven of them were perfectly fine with one another, and each would say of their companions something along the lines of ‘they’re all amiable folk, and I have great pleasure in accompanying them into the darkness for I know that they will carry me through with light enough’, although perhaps in not those terms. The seven began to move off one by one once food and drink had been taken in, back to their various workplaces, although Prissy went straight to the sleeping quarters, as she had been on the nightshift the longest so far and was about ready to drop to the mesh grating floor.

For the main part, each crewmember spent their various time doing work for Celestria, tasks that they would hand back, reports and such, or researching into their favorite topics and enhancing their knowledge. They had seen nothing yet, so there was nothing much to do. Duma was reading many a document on the relationship between artifacts found on different planetary clusters and solar systems that had no links when the items were made. Jenny was watching documentaries on the making of various guns, Yuki on horticulture on different planets. Oliver was reading over the manual for the ship once again, making sure he knew every little button on the entire vessel, just in case something was to happen. Leon was filling out the reports and doing the rounds of Nightingale, Prissy was asleep, and doing the general chores the rest of the time, and Holden was interviewing everyone and reading a novel. Each of them was relaxing, taking their time. There was no rush, no immediate danger, or at least nothing the scans and monitors could detect, so they were all content and snug inside the belly of the ship they were flying into uncharted territory.

Duma was reading his texts, fascinated by the information that it contained when the Halo-Core in his desk flashed. Oliver was there in the projection.

‘Hey, Duma.’

‘Howdy Oliver, how’s it all going upfront?’

‘She’s sailing nicely, light as a feather, engines are barely going and she’s just powering through as if there was a tailwind throwing us through,’ Oliver said, relaxing back in his Navigator’s chair with a Rubik’s cube. Over 3000 years old the confounded contraption was all the way from earth. Oliver still didn’t have the faintest clue how the hell to solve the blasted thing. A few twists here and a maneuver then, and he somehow always ended up worse off than he started.

‘So what’s up?’ Duma asked.

‘I was just wondering. If we do come across anything, what are you expecting to find?’