Chapter 16

In my experience flying search-and-rescue missions, the greatest single variable contributing to successful rescues was the preparedness and expertise of the person(s) in distress.

~ Tom Gross

The colossal mountains came and went past the view of the cockpit of Ensign Carr's F-401 fighter. She didn't seem awed at the alien world's marvelous landscape, a view no other human had seen. The only thing that was going through Carr's mind was the mission and her captain. She was taken entirely by surprise at her longtime friend's action towards her. John was her superior officer, but she had known him long enough to be able to tell when she could joke around or not. She had completely misjudged the situation. Carr had never seen him this angry before, and she had begun to worry about the entire situation at hand. The WarpStar was currently stranded, with no way to communicate back home. As the pilot of the ship, she landed the WarpStar and felt her react to the atmosphere. How she jerked, twisted, and veered at every possible moment. The ship did not want to land, nor did she want to do anything else but simply... die. She felt it, and Carr knew after all the abuse WarpStar had endured over the last twenty-four hours, she knew that the ship had given up. If any other pilot was at the helm, lady WarpStar might just have gotten her way.

Carr was pulled from her daydream by the chirps of her console, a message coming in from her wing.

"Alpha One. Go," Carr pushed the active comms button on her dash to respond to her wingman.

"Alpha One, Alpha Nine, ma’am I see it, it’s huge," a pilot reported in as he flies ahead of the pack. "I have never seen anything like it! It’s an entire city, larger than New York!"

New York City had grown exponentially since the end of the Third World War. With advancing technologies, the city itself had taken over the entire landmass of the state of New York and had its metropolis spread over most of New England. New York City holds an impressive one hundred and fifty-nine million people.

Ensign Carr gave out her orders."Alright, everyone spread out, full recon protocols. Sweep low, full sensors on, we need to record as much data as we can."

Repairs on the WarpStar were moving rather quickly. Most of the minor systems were back online, conduits, lights, and other wires were being put back in place. Repairing the minor issues is not a concern for the ship's young commanding officer. Several hours had passed since the reconnaissance mission had returned. John called for a meeting of the senior staff. The captain was deep in thought on his way to the wardroom, and John was concerned with how they got thrown out of warp and into this unknown planet. Even a more significant concern was this mystery of a planet, a planet that should not have existed, one that transformed from a toxic world to a paradise. That concern would have to wait, as John was entirely focused on finding out why the ship was crippled. He went over every detail, and he made every calculation, figured in every variable. He checked the work of Doctor Søviknes to the detail, adding his work on the Antimatter reactor to the F.T.L. Drive. Then he compared the engineering aspects of the WarpStar herself. Everything was in order, and there should not have been any issues. His mind was racing with several scenarios that could have occurred and, while in deep thought, he nearly missed the door to the wardroom.

As John entered, the entire senior staff of the ship sat, looking at datapads and various small, built-in terminals in the desk. No one stood up as the captain entered the compartment, per John's standing orders. He always felt the theatrics of fake respect coming from a title were unwarranted and had instructed his crew not to follow with that age-old tradition as long as he was commanding officer. However, if an admiral or other Federation official had found themselves onboard, the crew were instructed to act accordingly.

"Report," the C.O said as he made his way to the front of the long table, taking his seat.

"The O.P. has been launched, and we should be receiving telemetry within the hour as it completes its orbit," Charles, the ship's executive officer reported.

The Orbital Probe is an emergency probe that was recently introduced into the fleet. It has two objectives. The first, the most important for a surviving crew, is an orbital scan. The probe travels into a low orbit, scans the terrain as it super cruises around the planet, then transmits its findings to the ship after it has mapped out the surface. This gives the crew a detailed scan of the planet they are on: terrain, live maps, resources, climate, life signs, everything the probe can find if the ship is unable to complete an orbital scan. The secondary objective of the probe, if activated, sends an intermittent distress signal to the closest Federation ship.

"Sir, landing was a success, minor damage to the hull upon reentry, primary thrusters are now back online. However, fusion reactors are still offline. I can't generate enough thrust to take her out of orbit. Also, we have completed a quick recon of the nearby city, waiting on the O.P. data to compare," Ensign Carr reported.

The ship’s chief engineer, Jeffery Donovan, made his report."Life support is down to sixty percent. We lost prime in both the antimatter and fusion reactors. It will take some time to get them primed and started again, main power relays have been fused, we are working on a bypass. Emergency power is holding; however, we lost quite a bit of it. We are down to forty-three percent, and if we don't get the fusion reactors online soon life support will begin to fail."

John skipped right to the issue that was on everyone's mind. "Lieutenant, do you know what caused the incident?"

"Best I can tell, some sort of cascade failure in the main drive assembly. That's the what, but I don't know the how or the why."

"Get on that as soon as possible. If we ever get back in the sea, I don't want this to happen again."

"Aye, sir."

Just as the engineer finished his report, the Master Circuit panel lit up the number “11” followed by a light claxon, indicating the Bridge to Wardroom M.C. was active, and requesting to be open.

"Sir, the O.P. has transmitted data," the bridge officer reported as the captain opened the master circuit channel.

"Excellent, send the data here," Commander O'Connell ordered.

The wardroom is located above the bridge. The entire side of the compartment faces the bow, with a beautiful viewport that overlooks an almost 180-degree view. The wardroom is filled with the Federation Navy's most advanced technology, one of which is the new glass pane system view. The viewports that overlook the beautiful scenery in front of the ship can turn completely opaque, or even semitransparent, to show information or whatever view or screen the crew needed to display. In this case, two sections of the observation window were turned into the data from the O.P.

The O.P. displayed the entire planet in a big geographical and topographical map. The planet was impressive. Mild climate throughout, no major storms, plenty of mountain ranges, and lots of freshwater. The planet had a greater deposit of fresh and raw resources than Earth had ever thought to have. Freshwater, oil, metals, gasses all topped the charts. Although the planet was reportedly old and had a vast amount of natural wildlife, the scan reported no signs of natural intelligent life developing. But on this one section of land, sitting at a few hundred kilometers from the WarpStar, sat a vast metropolis! The questions kept piling up. How was a megalithic metropolis built on a planet with no other signs of intelligent life? And, more significant, how was the city still standing? Nature had not come in and reclaimed the elements that it once owned: no erosion, rust, or any flaws in the structures to make them collapse. First estimates of the city placed it at several million Earth years old.

"Would you look at that?!" Carr broke the silence.

"That is far larger than I had expected!" John replied.

"What did you expect? Your ego is not even a fraction of that!" Carr said jokingly.

John cracked a smile. Carr always knew how to get him in a better mood. John’s smile quickly faded away as he realized the situation called for command and discipline. The crew needed to see a strong, confident commander, not a goofball flirting with his friends.

"Commander, oversee repairs, get this ship ready to go. And make sure Jeff figures out what happened," the Captain said to his executive officer.

"Aye, sir," Charles replied.

"Char, Watney, and Jackson, you're with me. Oh, and Watney, grab a Marine detail."

Lieutenant Heidi Watney acknowledged her duty assignments. "Aye, sir."

Independence

A junior L.T. ran half the deck to deliver some vital news to the command crew—beyond the normal range of his chain of command. The junior officer would likely be reprimanded later for not giving this information to his superiors, the officers who then would hand it to theirs, and so forth until the information finally got to where it needed to get to, the commanding officer of the ship, Admiral Briggs. However, the junior L.T. did not care about protocol, and he knew that if he followed his chain of command, this document would take hours to get where it needed to get.

"Sir," the crewman said again as he finally approached the bridge, this time out of breath. He had known he shouldn't have been skipping out on his routine workouts. Even in the zero-gravity of space, a Juggernaut keeps a constant pull of 1g of Earth's gravity on her artificial gravity generators. Native-born on Ceres, his body still is not used to 1g.

Captain Anthony Rhymes intercepted the young crew member, annoyed by the breach in the chain of command."You should be reporting to your lieutenant."

"It's quite alright," replied the admiral, who knew all too well the importance of delivering valuable information as soon as possible.

"What do you have, son?"

"Sir, this transmission just came in from the Frigate 'Hope.'"

The 'Hope,' Registered as F.W.S. Hope NF-721565 (Naval Frigate) was one of the ships sent out ahead of the Independence in a recon mission to find the WarpStar. Frigates are very versatile ships. Not very strong as far as firepower or defense capabilities, but swift and agile. Due to their relatively small size, they can maneuver around most capital ships almost as fluidly as a fighter, enabling them to do specialized missions like destroy small targets on ships, such as communication arrays or various weapon turrets. Their speed also allows them to be extremely useful in search and rescue and recon missions, and they can cover a vast amount of space and deploy hundreds of scout drones, and several long-range recon fighters and rescue craft. For a ship its size, it packs a mighty large fusion engine with the most advanced efficient fuel system. They can sustain 15'gs of acceleration comfortably, enabling Frigates to reach .9c easily.

The Transmission from the F.N.V Hope Reads As Follows:

Message Alpha 7-2-9 Charlie Echo 3

Encrypted Code: DELTA FOXTROT

DECODED

DECODED TIMESTAMP: 2322:52 HOURS JULY 17 2423

MESSAGE READS:

BEGIN –

Independence, Hope discovered active Hyper-buoy not registered to the current network. Hacked buoy to investigate. Launched two birds to investigate system designated Wolf-359. Birds discovered possible F.T.L exit traces.

Lost contact with both birds.

Energy field detected surrounding the local planet.

Requesting reinforcements.

Birds had reported a debris field at the hypothesized F.T.L exit point.

Debris is consistent with Federation materials and power signatures.

Unable to verify until recovery of lost birds has been completed.

Theoretical Exit point of the WarpStar discovered.

Need verification.

Requesting reinforcements for full search and rescue of lost pilots.

END TRANSMISSION –

TRANSMISSION RECEIVED

2121:30 JULY 21 2423

ENCRYPTION PROTOCOL THETA 9

The admiral was seething. "This message is two hours old? Why the hell did it take your team two hours to decrypt?"

"Sir, we had to download the data several times. We received it in corrupted packets," the junior officer replied.

"What's your name, son?"

The junior proceeded to give the admiral his name.

"Well you did a good job despite the two-hour delay. I will be having a word with your commanding officer."

"Sir, yes, sir," the junior saluted the admiral, who returned the salute before walking off back to his duty station.

"Captain, order all search teams to that planet…" the admiral was beginning to give out orders before being interrupted.

"Sir, this may be just some lost pilots; it does not look like a solid lead."

"Captain, I don't have time to explain myself; order the entire fleet to that planet at best possible speeds, do you understand?"

"Yessir, On it, sir," Captain Rhymes replied.