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

And whilst the crew was trying to determine what had just happened, in the ship unbeknownst to the seven of them, a door opened from the scene of the explosion and then closed once again.

There were several minutes of tense bodies in the cockpit, as the ship regained control of itself. Even Oliver slowed his usually frantic and swift hands at the controls, now orderly and calm. All seven crewmembers waited in silence, save for Yuki snuffling, trying to get hear tears in check once again. At last, Leon spoke out.

‘How is it looking Oliver?’

‘We’ve lost that airlock, there is no way to get that back. I’ve now locked the doors either side so nobody will wander down there at midnight still half asleep and accidentally get themselves sucked out into the blank space. The only way around now is through the lower hatches, but that should be ok.’ Leon slumped further back into his chair and closed his eyes in despair. He was at a total loss of what to do. He desperately wanted to try and make it to the other side of the blank space, and yet there were still a good two weeks to go; they were barely a sixth of the way across. His ship was damaged, for no reason at all, as far as he could work out, and there were mysterious blackouts.

‘Are the engines back at full power?’ he asked nervously, apprehensive and worried about a negative response.

‘They seem to be so, captain. I’ll just double-check now…’ The ship’s navigator brought up another screen on his Halo-Core and scanned through the data presented to him.

‘I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be at full power.’ Leon opened his eyes, looking out of the window to the blackness ahead of him. He was starting to make out a few specks of light, two weeks in the distance. They were tantalizing, taunting him with the promise of grand discovery. And yet he knew that his ship was compromised, and in need of a good repair. The safety of his crew was the most important part of the mission.

‘Oliver,’ he began, and then fell silent again, questioning what he was about to decide.

‘Captain.’

‘Set a course for Outpost 73, we’re getting out of here.’ The crew turned to look at him, curious glances being thrown around the room like marbles.

‘Leon, are you sure?’ Prissy asked him.

‘Yeah, I mean, so what if the airlock is out? We weren’t going to use it anyway. Apart from that the ship is back up and running, ok we had a technical glitch but if we look into it we can find out what went wrong and get Nightingale working fine again without any hitches,’ Holden tried to reason. Leon shook his head.

‘No. I’ve got a faulty ship, banging outside and an exploded airlock. There’s something seriously fucked up with the ship, and I want to know what it is. Celestria can find out better than we can wander around inside the floating tin can on our own with a guide on a Halo-Core. I can’t risk my crew.’ He looked around at his companions, who had become more than companions now; they were his friends. ‘We’re getting out of here and back to civilization before anything else screws up. Oliver,’ he looked towards his pilot, who locked eyes with him. He was asking him in his head, ‘are you sure about this? I’ll do it if you want, but make sure you are absolutely certain on it.’ Oliver kept the gaze up for several seconds, the room reduced to the hum of Nightingale’s engines and the occasional bleeping and blinking of the software. He nodded in confirmation.

‘Copy that Captain. Nightingale.’

‘Yes Oliver,’ the voice returned, the first time since the power had fully returned. It was only now that Jenny realized that she sounded much better now that all her systems were back as if her voice had come down with an illness, and now she had rested and was back to feeling 100% again.

‘Turn us around and head us towards Outpost 73.’

‘It’s out of my scanning range I’m afraid. If you give me a direction I will be able to tell you when to lock on to the Outpost.’

‘Um, ok then,’ the pilot replied, changing a few controls. ‘I’m turning us around 160 degrees left to compensate for the veering off course we made before. Full throttle there, and I think a 3-degree vertical change down would be useful as well.’ The ship began to the bank, rotating like a car on a rollercoaster, towards the left. All of the crewmembers felt themselves being pushed down into their seats during the maneuver, the first time they had really felt the full effect of the inertia of the ship since they had left Celestria. The leather made them feel safe and secure as if being pushed down into their seats was like being pushed back inside the womb; warm and protected. Nightingale exited its banking, and the whir of the engines began to rise in its pitch, escalating to a full soprano of technology.

‘We’re going faster than before by a large percentage guy, so you’re going to feel a little unstable walking at first because your bodies won’t be used to the inertia. By my calculations, we will be back at Outpost 73 in about 33 hours, but I don’t think that we will have any major issues from now. Contact with them will be able to be made around 7 hours before arrival; I’ll let you know when we are in contact.’

‘Thanks, Oliver. Ok then, I’m requesting that everyone goes to their rooms and completes their logs of the activities that have happened, maybe someone has noticed something that will help investigations later. After that, let’s all convene in the dining room for food.’

‘Sounds like a plan. I’m pissed we didn’t get out there though,’ Holden said.

‘So am I,’ Duma chipped in, ‘ah well, I’m sure that we will get a Mission II sometime and they’ll let us go.’

‘Never know, they might just repair Nightingale and send us out again,’ Prissy suggested.

‘Logs, all of you,’ Leon ordered, and with a sarcastic ‘yes cap’n’ from Holden, they exited the room; save for Oliver, who Jenny thought practically lived in the cockpit, regardless that his quarters were elsewhere on the ship. The door slid open, and they departed, one by one.

They walked in silence, even though they had so much to discuss. Nightingale had a different atmosphere now, it was more disturbing. Every little creak was noticed, Holden felt through his feet for a missed beat in the rumbling of the engines. When a light flicked on in the corner of her eye, Yuki would look to it. Duma caught his foot on one of the rungs going down the ladder to pass through the hatch and tumbled down the last two. When he had recovered, he took the light of a Halo-Core to that rung and inspected every last inch of it, looking for notches or nicks that could have been recently created. In all of their hearts, deep down, it seemed they were all on edge. None of them, although they would never admit it except for Leon, who had to as the captain for safety reasons and concern for his crew, entirely trusted the ship anymore. It was always a nagging idea that somewhere in Nightingale’s programming there could be a little piece of code that said it could now kill off its crew, go haywire. Maybe it was actually alive. Perhaps it was a self-aware, sentinel. Every step each person took was cautious, if only a little because none of them knew where they were anymore. It was no longer a voyage, it was a survival mission in all of their minds, and although nobody voiced that opinion, they all knew that each of them believed it to be true.

Logs were completed in their rooms; videos taken from their Halo-Cores, updating their records about their personal thoughts and feelings, what actions they had taken and done, etc. It was strictly protocol, and many of the seven found it to be an unnecessary hassle, they had the captain’s log after all so they didn’t see much reason why they should have to keep one as well. However the exploration brains at the Celestrian powers that be had deemed it needed, and so they all followed it.