The following are exerpts of the Majestic’s final log (discovered within Mount
Pompamaula – a long dormant volcano) which had been automatically jettisoned seconds before the ship found its final resting place. There are some speculations and assumptions included in this text derived by recovered personal logs, family input and security editing. Some fictional elements were added for dramatization in the photoplay.
First Officer Tycho adjusted his body to conform to the brand new chair. It’s virgin leather squeaked with nearly every movement he made, but he was assured it would break in, eventually. Yeah, right. The moment this assignment is done and someone else takes over this position. He leaned forward and checked the status board that over-saw the other departments’ statuses. All lights were blue. Everyone seemed to be doing their job quite well. Right now, his job was to baby sit them. Nothing glorious. Almost a little redundant. But he earned this spot as First Officer, and one day he may command one of these great vessels. Maybe, he’ll break in the command chair for the fifth ship scheduled to be built next year, rumored to be named, CXI-Vicereine (assuming Poindux’s health continues to fail and the current Queen doesn’t relinquish the throne upon his death, and in the past, some had not). Tycho swiveled around towards his captain with a resounding leather squeal. “Just under ten minutes, Captain. All systems Blue. The WIF is ready for final checks.”
“Very good”, Bardon acknowledged. “Proceed.”
“Dourdrey?”
The Helmsman and Second Officer nodded. “All looks good. Course has been plotted, if you call maintaining orbit a plot. Ground control reports all traffic has been cleared from our current and projected previous position.”
“Mr. Muck,” Tycho asked as he noisily turned to the Science Officer.
Muck never smiled since he had been assigned to the experiment. Rumor had it that he was the only non-volunteer, but he never voiced it. He gently stroked his gray and pink beard as if in deep thought. It seemed it was pinker today than it was yesterday. Maybe the stress was getting to him. “All recording sensors active. No abnormalities to report. Let’s get this over with.”
“Less than ten minutes, Muck. If a monkey survived it, so can you. Thank you.” Rather than risking another leather screeching moment, Tycho strained his neck towards the Communications Officer. She was a joy to look at, so much so that he was too intimidated to actually speak with her casually. My wife probably wouldn’t appreciate that anyway. “Mystivus?”
“Mystifious, sir,” she immediately corrected.
“Sorry.”
She smiled but it was not a sweet smile. Her canines showed briefly, exposing a chipped tooth, and her eyes did not sparkle. Tycho assumed she was tired of correcting the butchering of her name. “All comm lines are open. Data bands and the redundancies are on line.” Her short-cropped gray hair had a wisp of pink showing her youthful maturity which was belied by the numerous scars of her violent background, including the missing chunk of her left ear. Whatever her background was, she had most definitely been there.
Captain Bardon was on the link with Engineering when Tycho turned back to him. “Sir? All bridge personnel are . . .”
Bardon held up his palm to Tycho, shushing him. “What was that, Laela?”
“The WIF is fully integrated into our warp drive. Computers are tied in. Warp field is standing by at 15 percent. Ready for static warp sphere. Mass calibrations have been verified by Ground and simulations all look good. Inversion at your command.”
“Very good,” Bardon said. He terminated the link and as he slowly stood up and looked around the rectangular bridge, he exhaled very slowly. He slowly walked to the Comm officer. “Okay, Myst. Ship wide.”
Two quick keystrokes. “Ship wide, Captain, Sir.” There was a quick glint in her kaleidoscopic eyes, not those of a lover but more of kinship. Even having come to that conclusion, Tycho still felt a ping of jealousy. No. Not jealousy. Just a little envious. It was a subtle distinction but very important, nevertheless.
“This is the Captain. In a few short minutes, we’ll be right where we are right now. King Poindux called me this morning, personally, to have me thank all 22 of us who have volunteered . . .” Bardon quickly glanced at Muck. Muck harrumphed and turned back to his science console. Bardon continued. “ . . . who have volunteered for this exceptional program. The risks are always with the new but every single day has its own risks. In a very short while, and for a very short time, there will be two of each of us and two ships named Majestic. This is an historic moment and each of our names will be remembered as pioneers. I know all of you will do your duties as prescribed by the Crown.” Bardon glanced at the chronometer. “Two minutes. Stand by.” He patted Myst on her shoulder. “Keep it on ship wide.”
Tycho watched his captain survey the bridge once more. It was a huge bridge, almost the size of mobile house. Very spacious, just in case any dignitaries wanted to visit, and there were a lot of them. Sadly, King Poindux’s health prevented the ritualistic send off tour. This would be the first time since the inception of the deep space program.
For what seemed to be an enormous amount of time, there was silence, and waiting. The Chronometer inched its way closer, ever so slowly.
“Open the doors,” Bardon ordered to no one in particular.
Tycho reached out and flipped an antiquated looking switch, and suddenly the walls began to slide away, exposing huge panels of clear steel. In just a few seconds, the forward half of the bridge had a 180 degree panoramic view of the universe. Far away were support and observation corvettes. They were little bigger than specks of reflected light. Squire and Space Dock were unseen as they were on the other side of their world.
“Fifty seconds,” Muck said.
“Tycho?” Bardon asked.
“All blue. Good to go.”
Bardon walked to his command chair.
“Thirty five”
Bardon sat down.
Tycho hadn’t even realized how hard his grip was on the firm, brand new leather arm rests. They were in the way, so he collapsed the arms.
“Twenty.”
“All right, Laela,” said the Captain. “Punch up the Warp Sphere. 100%”
Laela didn’t immediately respond but the bridge lights dimmed, almost imperceptivity. “100%,” she replied. “Inversion standing by.”
“Ten seconds.” Muck’s tone was sounding nervous.
If I hadn’t volunteered, I’d probably be running for the nearest shuttle bay, Tycho thought to himself. Then he remembered. The shuttles had been removed for this test to reduce as much unnecessary mass as possible.
“Five . . . four . . .”
“Initiate inversion, Laela. Now.”
“Two . . . one . . .”
Tycho stared out one of the windows and watched as the specks of reflected light disappeared.
*** Part 2 ***
And that was it. No flash of light, no vibrating or shaking hull. All was quiet except for the background noise of the bridge equipment. Everyone stood up, looking at each other.
“Well, that was . . . anti-climatic,” Muck said, sitting back down.
Tycho looked down at his board. “Still all blue.”
Captain Bardon stepped up behind Dourdrey as he sat down, looking over his shoulder. “Where is the Majestic?”
The helmsman’s hands danced over his controls. “We should be ahead of us,” he said slowly. “I mean they . . . well, yeah, we should . . . oh nevermind.”
“I’m getting no chatter at all,” Mystifious reported. “And the data link is gone. Let me check my equipment.”
“I’m getting sensor data but nothing from the ground,” Muck reported. He paused and stood up, his face showing confusion. “Uh . . . Captain. Where is Bijou?”
Bardon stared at Muck for a long moment. “You tell me. Dourdrey, punch up camera six-ventral”.
The main viewer came alive and showed an array of stars. It would have been beautiful had it not been for the fact that a red and yellow planet should have been filling the entire screen.
“Maybe . . . the calculations were off,” Tycho suggested. “Maybe we just warped for a few seconds.”
“What the hell is going on up there?” came the filtered voice of Laela from Engineering. “And if you guys don’t want to start a damned panic, you better take yourselves off ship wide.”
Mystifious quickly severed the ship wide broadcast.
Bardon composed himself and for the moment ignored Laela’s outburst. “Alright. Everyone, give me a status report. Muck. Find our planet. Uh, Tycho, get back to engineering and help Laela and let everyone down there know everything’s going to be okay. Muck . . . where’s my planet? Dourdrey, station keeping . . . if we’re moving at all. Bring us to a halt. Myst, get someone on the radio.”
Tycho immediately headed for the bridge doors. They barely opened in time.
***
As he entered the Engineering section, Tycho immediately smelled an acrid scent in the air. He also heard several voices calling out to each other, not in distress but with urgency. The owners of the voices were, for the moment, not to be seen.
Tycho took the moment to look around, assessing whether he could determine any obvious damage.
The commodious room was packed with instrumentations, computers and an array of displays and machines that were not indigenous to an engineering room. All of this was for the experimental Warp Inversion Field which was suppose to revolutionize star ship tactics. The twin towers, two massive tubes that reached from floor to ceiling housing the waste material from the Singularity warp drive, stood foreboding. The lifeless tubes had their own subtle hum which you could almost feel if you were standing too close to one of them. The waste material fed power into the ship systems, including battery maintenance, shield stability, and the Singularity Disjecta Membra.
“We would have never, ever come up with this shit on our own.”
Tycho jumped a bit to the sound of the unexpected voice behind him. He turned to see Laela standing behind him. “What?”
“This here. All of this. The warp core in its entirety. This imperfect copy of the original we found.” The unusually petite female was holding out a calibration spanner to him. “Since you’re here, help me with the converter juncture.”
Tycho took the tool and followed her. She wasn’t wearing the normal engineering attire, instead she wore the short sleeve worker garb that exposed her dark gray furred arms, neck and head. Her hair was shoulder length and pink less. “Not exactly the required uniform,” he said.
“This isn’t your typical mission, either, boss man,” she said as she turned to face him. Her multi-colored eyes changed to a darker hue in agitation. “You know damn well that the new uniforms are for the benefit of our esteemed visitors, not for work efficiency.” She turned away and knelt down to an open panel. “The hell with them.”
Tycho knew this wasn’t the time to discuss the matter. “What are we doing here?”
“I am going to recalibrate the waste injectors. You are going to hand me the tools I need.” She held out her hand.
Tycho handed her the spanner, wondering why she handed it to him in the first place. She immediately began her work. He looked around again and saw many new faces hustling about, doing tasks that were well beyond Tycho’s comfort zone. They seemed to be focused on their jobs. Not panicking. Laela seemed to have taken control of the situation here. “We have three other ships that are doing just fine with your imperfect warp core.”
“Yup. Barely a generation from its original inception. Constructed by sifting through shattered remains of a nearly 2000 year old space-alien ship wreck that had been submerged in one of our most densest and dangerous swamps, picked clean by hungry swamp-dwelling blood suckers that can even eat certain metals for nourishment. Hold this.” She held the spanner back up to Tycho. He took it. She resumed her work, reaching one arm deep inside the panel, straining to reach something. “Oh yeah, you couldn’t ask for anything more, eh?”
“Maybe we should have come up with our own design.”
Laela craned her neck to look at Tycho, grimacing in discomfort. “We wouldn’t even have thought to do this had we not found Pompamaula Artifice. So why re-invent the wheel if its handed to us, albeit in pieces, decayed and centuries old.” There was a loud popping noice. Laela cried out in pain, withdrawing her hand. She immediately covered her hand with the other. A new light came on the panel above and a steady hum filled the room. “Ah, that should take care of the air ventilation now.”
“Let me see your hand.”
She held it out and on the tip of her fifth finger was a small tiny drop of green blood. Tycho looked at it, then at Laela.
“Hey, it hurt. A lot.”
Suddenly the ship wide chime alerted the crew of an upcoming alert.
“This is the Captain. Everyone, get your stations in order and report to Mystifious on your status. Department heads will meet in the conference room at 1300.”
“Great,” Laela mumbled. “That’s in 20 minutes. I bet his niece is getting an earful right now.”
“Niece?”
“Yeah. Captain Bardon is Myst’s uncle. When you can get a relative working on the same ship as you, don’t complain to me about which uniform I wear. Deal?”
