Stranded

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

- Anon, the Space Chronicles Volume VI, published CSE 12 by Mars House

Well, whoever "they" were, they were idiots, Hermey Cashew thought fiercely. As it turned out, you could hear screams in space. There had been three separate cries for help over the comms that solar afternoon alone, as a matter of fact. It was the getting to the source of screams that was always the problem.

Hence the current predicament.

When CHORD had discovered interstellar travel eighty-odd years ago, igniting the Common Spacing Era, they'd figured out the rapid communication part of the process right away. It was the corpo’s first breakthrough into the mechanisms behind faster than light speed. Unfortunately, it was also the reason there was so much spam on the solar frequencies from Pluto these days, at the moment aggressively marketing itself as no longer a dwarf planet but a "supraplanetary satellite". Whatever the hell that meant.

But CHORD had struggled to simplify the coordinate part of the equation for their proprietary engines. That is, making sure the calculated physical Point A of origin and Point B of destination aligned precisely so that ‘ships could arrive exactly when and where they needed to be. As such, on a good solday this computation process took around a lochour. At worse times it could take up over half a solday - eighteen whole Earth hours in which you could only thumb through the worn engine manual until your fingers went numb, wishing you could bypass the math and say screw it, let's see if I really will fly through that star.

The spanner in Hermey's left hand shattered, spraying its stabilizing grav glue all over the weapons locker underneath. Hermey swore.

The reason you couldn’t do anything else during the calculation process was that CHORD spaceflight and engineering protocols demanded close attention to the entire computational sequence, requiring active crew member input at specific iterations. The tumescent corpo blathered on at every broadcast solar shareholder meeting that it was ‘'still the early soldays of space flight’',’'the true pioneers were dependable freighships and their pilots'’, '‘computers couldn't do everything themselves'’, blah blah blah. Supposedly, it wasn't worth the risk of the computation being completed while you couldn't put down the latest spinoff of The Space Chronicles, The Space Diaries and had selected "yes" when the computer asked if you wanted to fly through the black hole instead of around it. And then you had selected "override'' when it had asked, "Are you sure?"

It sure would make things more interesting around here though, Hermey thought. At least before today. Why today, of all soldays? They removed their head from under the nav vid console, three blue wires clutched in each hand. Which ones fed into each other again? Was it left right center or center right left? Time to find out. A foot awkwardly snaked over the top of the console, flicking the largest switch. The center wire in Hermey’s left grasp twitched and sparked. Good, now if I can just connect it to the center right wire, a little closer… An arc of electricity suddenly laced across the gap between the twitching wire and its immediate neighbor in the same hand. The combined shock and modest explosion didn’t quite knock Hermey out, but the pain of a banged elbow, wrenched scapula, and bruised forehead made them wish they had been rendered unconscious. Hermey decided to lay on the floor for a few moments and consider the life choices that had brought them here. The cool metal of the Tasman Paradise’s floor also felt soothing against the throbbing limb and shoulder. Hermey played the events of the past solday out again mentally. Have I missed anything that could help me out here?

It had all started with Guild Zarn, Hermey’s employer. The kind of micromanaging corpo that would push you off a cliff and ask you to be on the lookout for rare minerals on your way down. Hermey had taken this particular commission carefully, knowing the risks involved of working for Zarn, but the payout had been too rich to pass up. One point five mil creds, just for a simple transpo. Worth it. The only catch was the normal price of doing business with a ruthless corpo - Zarn expressly forbid helping misguided interstellar travelers. No distractions.

"Lost productivity cuts into the bottom line. Why should we risk our necks for some harebrained Earth tourist or pilgrim trying to be the first to land on a forsaken asteroid and instead getting sucked into a black hole?" CEO and president Zugg Zarn had recently said. "It's a funny story either way." He could make such statements, because he was fabulously wealthy, being the founder of the first successful interstellar freighter corporation. He was also correct in his perception of the relative popularity of Earth tourists and religious zealots among spacers; the only organics other than freighship pilots brave enough (or moronic enough, reflected Hermey) to venture into deep space did it for religious causes or to have their picture taken in front of the Cosmic Cliffs - the new Grand Canyon. Of course, this eclectic population significantly Venn-overlapped with those least navigationally-adept at handling new starcruisers off the lot…

The first wire responsible for the earlier chain reaction began sparking again, igniting an oil-soaked rag and starting a small fire. Still lying on the floor, Hermey yanked a grav blanket off the nearby couch at the back of the cramped cabin and tossed it over the conflagration. Memo to self, buy a new non-singed blanket - if I ever reach Yllyani.

The other smaller freighcorpos that had come after Zarn had taken the unwritten-but-loudly-voiced opinion that you were on your own in the vastness of space to heart when they had written their own shipping manifest constitutions. Most new ships off the line these soldays didn't even come installed with distress transmitters. The building 'docks figured if already no one cared about your plight over the regular comms then why install an even fancier and more expensive system over which still no one would care? So the understood protocol in place was if you couldn't see a stricken ship on your forward viewport, it didn't exist. You turned the channel to listen to a Spudniko opera or even to Pluto's spam ("cyan deserts! 40° healing oceans!") and soon came to regard plaintive calls as equivalent to static. It was better for everyone that way. Sure it cost every corpo a ship or three of their own each solyear. But that was nothing compared to the aggregated fuel and supply costs of shuttling lost spacecraft back to their home planets every time a distress call came in over the comms. There were no heroes in space, mused Hermey. You just couldn't afford it. It was every man, woman or thrak for themselves.

They sat up suddenly; head swimming momentarily, vision popping with black spots, then settling. Hoisting themselves up carefully using the pilot’s chair back, Hermey considered their new idea. If I could reroute the power from the backup sublight engine core, maybe I could approximate a new vid screen power source…

Eleven skinned knuckles and one slightly melted backup engine core later, it was back to square zero. Hermey sighed heavily, tossed the one surviving spanner back in the general vicinity of the toolbox, and collapsed onto their couch that doubled as a bed.

Unscrupulous trillionaires and their vaguely xenophobic policies aside, however, the real reason no help was forthcoming to them in their current dilemma was the hazard of interstellar weather. Fully twenty percent of all spacer pilots in their lifetimes were killed by mispredicted meteorological impacts. It just wasn’t worth the risk to you, your family and your cargo to stray from your designated course.

While the particular strike that had damaged the Paradise earlier that solday hadn't actually lasted that long - it helped that the 'ship had basically flown through the back half of the swarm rather than it hitting them - it had been a nasty type of ‘stroid. The talking heads on the ICCC network called them "rapidly decomposing elements of galactic ice hurtling through space at unpredictable speeds" and had developed a stupid acronym for the ice balls that probably only attendees of exclusive parties on Phrastos would use as jargon to indicate their particular level of high society. Whatever. Freighship pilots just called them slicers, after the amount of damage they did and how your ‘ship looked afterwards with carved streaks down the sides. Like a 'suit knife through yakk’s butter. Really, I'm lucky it was only the nav array and vid screen destroyed, and not lifesys support - let alone a hole punched clean through the ‘ship. I could easily be explaining my deeds to St Chrysthemes right now.

Idly Hermey tossed a techbolt up in the air, watching the metal sphere spinning as it rose in the air, twisting as it fell... Just like me, hurtling through the depths of space. I wonder where this 'bolt even goes. Don't remember even removing one.

The unpredictability of weather was exactly why today, after it had taken a relatively normal computational time of four point seven lochours for the CHORD engine protocol to complete, Hermey had checked the forecast thrice before launch from Vulpine II. First a lochour before takeoff and then again point five lochour and point two five lochour before final checks. The first two checks were run of the mill and required, the last was due to the invaluable nature of the cargo carried on this particular flight - and because Hermey liked to think in at least practical, if not outright careful terms.The pre-flight tower report had shown the outer atmosphere was a-okay every time. Hermey had taken off from the rocky surface and landed at the CHORD space 'dock.

No issues.

The engines had been readied for the jump. Still green lit. Then, at precisely the worst possible moment, the ‘stroid storm had struck. After the selected randomizing jump had been keyed up and the nice large yellow launch button had been pressed, but before Hermey had had a chance to see on the screen exactly which planet the first jump was taking them to, the Paradise was engulfed. The impact had immediately and catastrophically shorted out most of the nav array, the resulting reaction also frying the main vid screen electronics. No vis. Inexorably, the CHORD engines had continued with their pre-programmed destination, insulated and independent from the strike, as their obsessively compulsive design structure demanded. Nothing had touched the engine system so why would they cease the ignition of their faster-than-light flight?

Aloud, Hermey cursed the CHORD company in general and the meteorologists employed by them in particular, using as many creative references to ‘worms and anatomical cavities as possible. That was the problem with having a corpo run completely by scientists. Sooner or later, every business process had to be backed up by so many layers of data that the corpo leadership became paralyzed by indecision, and forgot about practicality. Which led to breakdowns like shoddy weather reports for the one hundred thirty seven space stations under their control. How much data was actually enough? Could you ever be sure? Better run another shitload of tests just in case!

Hermey shook their head. Unbelievable… and yet at the same time highly believable. Corpos believed data for the sake of more data would make them invincible - both to galactic public opinion and to solquarter shareholder losses. Hadn’t been the first time a mispredicted storm had impacted their route, but easily could have been the last. A common dream for Hermey over the past few solmonths involved reaching out to an old flame employed as a level three tech at CHORD to see if the weather station on Doppp 98, where the corpo’s HQ resided, could take a solday or two off from updating its weather reports. Just to see what would happen. Now that’s the first thing I’m going to do if I ever make it planetside again.

This had all led to the current quandary: slowly and blindly - at least instrument-wise, the forward viewport still worked, though there wasn’t anything to see - drifting through whatever backwater system had been preselected by the CHORD protocol. The problem wasn't really that they couldn't see anything on the screen at the moment, but rather that Hermey hadn't glanced at which specific system they were headed to because they had been focused on weather - rightfully so as it had turned out. An angry fist against the plastiglass relieved the immediate emotion but just as immediately they wished they hadn’t made a sudden movement. Both the sore elbow and mildly concussed head protested. I wonder if there’s more than one gelpack in the med ‘cooler. Pity I have to get up to reach it.

Oh, Hermey had entered all the proper keystrokes at the right times down on Vulpine II of course, so they were pretty confident they weren't about to get sucked into a collapsing star. For one thing it wasn't all that hot at the moment. But most of the organic input required had concerned specific energy coefficients with the yearly round of solar flares and suggested paths around a new nest of spaceworms near Beetlegeuse. After making freighship flights every three or four soldays for over eight point six years, sometimes specific systems info went in one ear hole and out the other. It was inevitable. So what if you missed the exact name of one random star grouping of the dozens you were about to bounce through for a single solhour at a time? It was all contained on the vid screen and it wasn’t like pilgrims -

Wait, those cries from earlier! I could at least ask them what system I’m in! Hermey practically leaped from the couch to the pilot’s chair. With the screen still non-functioning it took a couple seconds longer, but muscle memory brought up the comms aud feed after a few key taps. Faint voices greeted Hermey’s ears. Finally. The excitement was short-lived, though, after several blurted questions went unanswered. It was a static loop, a recorded message, occasionally punctuated with what sounded like a faint religious chant. Either they'd finally drifted out of range and this was the last recorded transmission or the pilgrims had consigned themselves to their fate. Difficult to be certain with no vid screen nav guide. Hermey slowly returned to the couch, abruptly drained.

The vid screen, of all ‘ship parts, was the one you couldn’t afford to lose. On a normal solday at that exact moment the HUD display would have been sharing all the relevant local planetoid names and info, exactly how far the in-system jump was to the next space station, and Hermey would have been able to adjust the sublight run to the planet accordingly. Even if the entire coordination system had been destroyed, if Hermey had just caught a passing glimpse of the name of their intended destination, they would have been able to estimate the jump distance to planetary orbit pretty accurately and reached a repair barge in no time. Pyccs for instance had two orbiting moons that were so predictable in their rotations that they could be navigated through with one's eyes closed.

But the strike had thrown Hermey to the floor, depriving them of key info at a crucial point in the nav process. With no destination, system name or any other vis info to key them to where they were, they were stranded, helpless in the outer belt of the planetary system… if indeed it was a planet I jumped to, Hermey considered uneasily for the first time. Several times now in the last solmonth it had just been desolate, strip-mined asteroids. A drastic departure from the established protocol of the early spacing soldays. Hermey liked to think the 'stroids-instead-of-planets angle was the work of one disgruntled CHORD scientist doing his or her or their part to protest against the powerful corpo's inattention to detail by screwing around and seeing if any exec noticed the spherical object freighships had to land at every few soldays wasn't actually a planet.

“With my luck it’s probably not even going to be a full-size space station, just a lonely ‘dock with some medpacs and a solar field to ref my nutripacks”, Hermey muttered aloud to no one in particular. They eased from their reclining position, gingerly made their way to the med ‘cooler (there was only one gelpack, unfortunately) and returned to the pilot’s chair this time, carefully settling the pack against the swelling elbow. Medicine and food were fine, but you couldn’t craft a new vid screen out of bandaids and organic sludge. Suppose it would be too bulky to pack an entire spare two em by three em screen into every tiny freighship. If it was only a 'dock and solar field ahead perhaps they would able to pry off one of the mirrors from the field…

CHORD protocols dictated that these carefully calculated and randomized system-to-system flight paths be chosen, supposedly the better to avoid dangers like pirates and spaceworm nests (although there seemed to be a suspiciously high number of Federation toll booths along the routes chosen, randomization notwithstanding). The derisively nickname freighpilots gave the paths was 'zizag jag'. "I feel like stripes on a zebroid" was a common spacer expression after several flights in quick succession using a particularly odd combination of sys hops. Great for efficient interplanetary commerce, bad for unlucky victims of inclement 'stroid showers, mused Hermey. If it was always the same flight path taken, they'd know exactly how to proceed right now instead of this nearly aimless drift. Of course, they'd probably also be dead - or worse, a gravitational dancer in some seedy starliner cage for depraved space pirates. Marauders loved predictability.

Hermey had come the closest to panicking immediately after the strike, when it wasn’t immediately clear what the damage was - mostly due to the fact there was no vid screen to evaluate the impact. After a solhour of flight time and oxygen levels remaining stable, the adrenaline had worn off and so had the sense of imminent danger. After all it wasn’t the first time a system short had occurred and there were plenty of tools onboard. The vid might just come back once they were in system or while Hermey slept, too. So they had taken the standard four solhour sleep, half expecting it all to have been a particularly vivid dream brought on by one too many back to back freighjobs. But upon awakening a black, cracked screen continued to greet them.

The blanket jerked feebly at their feet, wires from the back of the nav console still trailing underneath it. Hermey stomped on it.

Upon arrival in-system (wherever that was) they had first tried a few cautious sublight jumps toward the best guess for the system center. But after nothing came in view for nearly half a solday they'd given up on that idea. There was clearly no planetary spheroid on the bleak "horizon" and it didn't endear you to the locals if you crashed through the atmosphere at supersonics, if not into the planet itself, on a blind jump. So the next solution had been outright repair. And now that avenue had failed. The medpack switched from elbow to forehead, more for the migraine Hermey could feel coming on than for the bruise.

The one remaining idea they could think of at the moment was navigating by star chart. But there were no physical maps on board (only viewable in the vid computer!) and it was more difficult than one would think to identify distant stars through a rotating viewport. It had also been decades since Hermey had taken Origins of Starflight 101 at university. Calculating trajectory by hand while trying to remember what ancient Professor Orwe had scribbled on a dimly lit holo screen sounded even worse than dancing for a lascivious space pirate at the moment.

Plus the situation wasn’t that desperate.

Yet.

Unless the Paradise drifted into the path of a particularly empathetic freighter willing to disregard decades of established space protocols or until it finally came within range of the planet itself to hail the local space station, they were helpless to the solar waves. Gravity still worked, certainly, just being drawn in by a planet was a lot slower - and deadlier - than in-sys flight.

Hermey was actually more annoyed with the disruption from routine than fearful of outcomes. There were plenty of nutripacks on board and they had been in worse situations - the Saturnal standoff came to mind. The one key difference between this circumstance and all the others was there had always been another sentient to have Hermey’s back and share the stress of the situation. That's it. This is the last time I pull a freighjob without my copilot.

The computer beeped three times for planetary proximity alert. Roused from somnolent daydreaming, Hermey grunted in surprise. So just the vid screen was shorted out but the nav aud alerts were working fine? They had estimated it taking at least another two soldays of sublight drifting to reach the local sys center, so it must be a tight system with bunched planetoids and more gravpull. Well, that ruled out a lot of sectors right away. They made a mental note to have a firm discussion with Axa the next time they encountered the little Darwellian black marketeer on Septus Prime. Latest in inflight technology my third arm, Hermey chafed inwardly. When I see him I’m really going to -

The planet hove in view through the forward viewport. Its surface was such an obsidian hue that for a moment Hermey thought it was one of the volcanic excuses for an asteroid in the Orion sector. Then a small geographic promontory in the southern hemisphere, clearly visible even from space, caught their eye. Hermey's hearts thudded in their ears. They would know that outcropping anywhere.

It had been seven years since they'd been here and much had undoubtedly changed but the one thing their home planet was not known for was excessive volcanic activity. As the globe slowly rotated more outside the forward view screen, Hermey could see that only one small portion, a slice of the southern sea and polar cap, retained its original blue and white color.

Earth had been burned clean.

And that was when the homing beacon chimed.

*CHORD - Cobalt Heliostatic Operational Radioactive Drives

*ICCC - Interstellar Central Communication Channel

*solhour - a solar hour, equivalent to 1.5 earth hours

*lochour - a local hour, equivalence to earth hours depends on gravity of current planet

*freighship - freightership, most common method of interstellar commerce