The Caspian Will Not Return in Time

I should have seen the red flags as they flew by, but my eyes were still stuck in my morning caffeine. Call drones zipped past me, too many drones and too fast for that hour. My eyes were still refusing to fully open. Humans have a natural sense of how fast we are traveling. Even in the deep hulls of a ship I could feel the flow as we pulled through open space. If I had stopped to think about it, I would have realized that we were flying fast, faster than The Caspian had ever pulled. Instead, I noticed a button on my collar was undone and I struggled to fix it in the bulkhead as three motor mechanics ran past. It wasn’t until I reached the command deck that something finally woke me up.

I had never seen the captain so singularly stopped; his natural convulsive energy was completely gone. He still wore his coattails from the previous night’s gala. On any other day I might have guessed that it was just fatigue, but somehow I knew better. He held a small screen-message in his hand, and I realized it was taking all his focus.

“Captain,” I gave the formal salute with little enthusiasm trying to keep things light. He gave no response.

“John, what’s happened?”

He looked up then and discovered me for the first time. I saw the red at the edges of his eyes.

“Idiots!” He said offhandedly as he passed me the note. I tried to read it quickly, but my eyes wouldn’t focus in the anxiety of the unknown situation. “They sent it to us!”

“They sent what to us? What is it?”

“Jamestown is leaking oxygen. They’ve already gone hypoxic by now. That’s the SOS they sent to us!”

“…but, why not The Concordance or The South Hills?” I said, still trying to grasp the situation.

“Well, OBVIOUSLY they should have! But as far as I can tell they didn’t and now it looks like we’re going to come up short.”

“How short?”

There were ten thousand souls on Jamestown. The oxygen failure would be the second greatest catastrophe in far space yet, only behind the Andromeda Ark explosion.

“I’ve been running the engines to the breaking point for the last four hours and we’re still six hours away. Two hours short of the deadline.”

In any other circumstance it would have been a miracle. He had pushed the ship to thirty-six million knots per hour. And it wasn’t just the engines and the cooling, but the navigation too. By ordinary means it couldn’t be done, shouldn’t be done, but they had done it, and all for nothing apparently…

“Can’t we reach the other ships?”

“TERI has been hailing all frequencies since we got the message, but they’re not responding. They’ve probably already jumped the quadrant, and since we don’t have a jump drive…”

I knew sending the message back was useless. It would have taken six or seven hours to get to us from Jamestown. By the time it got back, there wouldn’t be anyone left to rebroadcast. Another thought came to me. “We don’t have enough room.”

John slunk into his chair and stared ahead.

“We don’t have enough room for even half of Jamestown, let alone oxygen.” The words escaped me as I suddenly became conscious of the room. The few other officers at their stations had been working through the night as well. They looked as haggard as the captain. Some of them were still in formal attire. Others, like me, had just shown up to relieve the third shift. For a moment no one spoke.

“I have the Comm. We need to get the passengers back into stasis. Esmond, call emergency stations code green. Cory, have the stewards wake up the passengers and explain the situation. We won’t take no for an answer. If any of them have medical training, we need to set up triage in the main ballroom. Call any free engineers to their stations. Marvin, I don’t know how the hell you’re doing what you’re doing, but you better explain it to Kate before you pass out.”

I almost didn’t realize I was saying it, but suddenly the room was alive with activity. A siren began to blare and the automated “code green” message played through every hallway on twenty-four decks. I turned back to my tired friend.

“It won’t be enough,” I said. At first, he only shook his head, then rubbed his hands together as if contemplating afternoon tea. He looked up at me with that one prying eye. We were both thinking it.

“Even if you filled it with all the O2 cans on the ship it wouldn’t buy Jamestown ten minutes,” he said.

“Let me put the repair drones on it. You can slingshot me out and I’ll have an hour to spare to fix whatever the hell’s going on.”

“Jamestown has drones you know. If they couldn’t fix it, you can’t fix it.”

“Did they say how it was leaking?” I started looking around for the lost message on the floor.

“No. And they haven’t sent any follow up. We should have heard something else by now. If they’re burning it then they’re already dead.”

We paused again.

“I suppose they have children on Jamestown.”

“That’s low, Sam, even for you.” I shook my head in agreement. “And it has to be you, huh? Can’t get one of those new age space-aces to do it. I have to send my Executive Officer like some old sitcom.”

“I’m the only pilot with combat experience you’ve got. And besides, I’m just an old man. Division won’t care.”

“They will care if you wreck a forty-billion-dollar prototype!”

“How many kids do you suppose?” At that he could only huff.

Twenty-seven minutes later the Slinger was fully loaded with anything we could think of and one 46-year-old pilot. On the command deck things had calmed down only slightly.

“Alright everybody, this is going to be one of those maneuvers division won’t let you tell your grandkids about. On my mark. 3..2..Mark!

It’s difficult to imagine a ship of the Caspian’s size doing donuts at close to sixty-six million kilometers an hour, but that’s exactly what was happening. On the third pass the ship automatically ejected me out of the specially designed docking bay and the Slinger hit close to 46 million-knots-per-hour. I was totally dependent on the navigation they had preloaded me with. No point in letting me crash her myself. I should have been afraid, but man, what a rush!

Four hours and fifteen minutes later she started to slow. At T-4:27 I reached the bay space for Jamestown and that’s when I saw them. The Concordance and The South Hills, they were already here! For a moment my heart jumped, but their lights were out. And then I saw it.

The last transmission to The HSS Caspian was: “TURN BACK! AMBUSH!!! DO NOT APPROACH!!! S.LIVINSTO-” But the communications officer that day was an isolationist. The message landed in the wrong hands and was simply deleted. An hour later the ship reached its destination.