ENTRY ONE: EARTH DATE 01 JAN 2225
REPORTING: RORY BUCHANAN, CAPTAIN
I am awaiting notification from Corporate with the details of our first mission. If all goes well, we will be shipping out later today. It will be good to be working - my considerable education debt was not going to pay itself!
AFTER-ACTION REPORT - SUBMITTED 22 JAN 2225
Our first mission was to assist a Con-Am ship that stopped reporting to Logistics. The petroleum carrier Excelsior was stranded in the Groombridge 34 system. It sent a request for assistance, and then all contact was lost. There was no further communication from the vessel.
Excelsior's run was to carry petroleum to the Tharsis mining colony on Inferno. In return, Tharsis sells precious metals to Con-Am. If the fuel supply cannot be sustained, Con-Am stands to lose a lucrative contract. As such, this was an urgent mission, with a deadline of January 12th, a mere 11 days.
[Spotlight: Sensor Operator. Personnel/Action: "Game Over Man"/"Seize"]
I assembled the crew at Hamilton highport and provided them with the mission briefing. Aman Aldel, our sensor operator, voiced an expectation of the worst possible outcome. In her mind, the ship was likely captured by pirates (or even Tharsis!) and the crew murdered or spaced. I hoped that she was just over-reacting.
Wen Chun, our navigator, laid in a flight plan. The nearest hyperspace point was 80 million kilometers away. It would take four days to reach it. Inferno was only a parsec away, so we would only spend three and a half days in hyperspace. Projected reaction drive burns for the round trip was a comfortable 12-16, using half to three-fourths of our fuel and giving us a comfortable margin against any unexpected developments.
While the ship made ready to lift off, I finalized the contract with Finance. We had run into a hold-up pertaining to the bonus situation. Con-Am was requiring Tharsis to fund any bonus payouts, as the petroleum had already been purchased by Tharsis, and as such was covered by their insurance riders. I tried to invoke some of the clauses in the overall contract, but my objections fell upon deaf ears.
It took a whole day for Tharsis to budge. It was an uneventful and boring time for us, tempered only by our anxiety to leave so that we could hopefully complete the mission in time. Finally, the matter was settled and we were under way. Noah Lewis, our pilot, was able to guide us to the hyperspace point with no difficulty. Our chief engineer Luther Nelson and his assistant Leah Knight spent the time doing routine and preventive maintenance. Reviewing their reports, I felt that they had done only the barest minimum.
On January 5th, we arrived at the hyperspace point. Our flight surgeon helped us to ready for hypersleep. Desh is an android, but his appearance and mannerisms are authentic enough that we sometimes forget that he is an artificial person. My only concern was that he might also be secretly programmed to report all of our activities to Corporate. I did not need a political officer aboard.
We woke the morning of January 9th. Wen Chun and Knight felt a little queasy, as did I, but not badly enough to affect our performance. Nelson, on the other hand, took it badly [Natural 2]. He was vomiting and shaking uncontrollably. Desh took him to the medbay and assured me that Nelson would be fit for duty in an hour or two.
Aldel attempted to run a sensor scan in the hopes of locating Excelsior, but the ship's computer MUTHR was uncooperative. It stated that it was refusing the directive, as the recovery of a competitor's property constituted a conflict of interest. None of us were really convinced by that assertion.
Aldel set about checking the circuitry and reviewing the code. She was assisted by our loadmaster Tucker Evans, who was also handy with computers. [Natural 12] They were able to locate glitches in the code, likely corrupted by the intense solar radiation of the binary red dwarf stars. Aldel reminded MUTHR that failure to respond to a distress call would result in forfeiture of our shares, and it eventually agreed to comply.
After a few hours' repair work, Aldel was able to begin scanning the system to locate Excelsior. We found it orbiting the moon of Inferno, some 63 Mkm away. It did not respond to hails. Wen Chun and Lewis laid in a course. ETA to intercept was about three days.
During the flight, Assistant Engineer Knight became overcome by anxiety. She pointed out that it was unlikely that we would meet our deadline due to the delays. It was clear that there was some friction between her and our sensor operator. I ordered her to report to Desh in the medbay.
Desh attempted to counsel Knight [Natural 12] and helped her to realize that the anxiety was a projection of her own reluctance to assist a competitor and her annoyance with Aldel's attitude. She agreed to go easier on our sensor operator and promised to work more closely with the rest of the crew.
Lewis was able to make intercept without any additional burns, and on January 12th we entered orbit around Inferno's unnamed moon. Excelsior was rolling erratically, so we could not dock traditionally. Lewis deftly matched velocity and Evans mated a flexible docking umbilical to Excelsior. Scans showed the ship as cold and dark, and a fine mist of vapor emanated from its port side cargo section.
Only Evans, Lewis, Knight, Nelson and Wen Chun were certified for vacc suit operations, so I sent them over, accompanied by Desh. Excelsior's airlock was malfunctioning and would not permit entry. Knight was able to override the security protocols and gain manual entry. The atmosphere was too cold for unprotected humans and the air was too thin to breathe and mostly carbon monoxide. Evans headed to the avionics bay to check the ship's computer, while Nelson and Knight headed for the upper and lower drive sections respectively. Lewis made his way to the bridge, accompanied by Wen Chun, while Desh set out toward the medbay and hypersleep chamber.
Nelson replaced a damaged hyperdrive initiator, while Knight repaired the environmental reclamation systems. Once power was restored, Evans was able to reboot the ship's computer. Damaged compartments were sealed off and atmosphere was restored to the remaining habitable sections.
Desh reported that the medbay was functional. The crew had entered hypersleep, but 80% of the pods had failed, killing the crew members within. Only two pods remained operational - the Executive pod for corporate officials, which was unoccupied, and the pod of the ship's medic, Clement Bailey. Desh revived Bailey and treated him. Once stabilized, the sole survivor recounted the events that had led to the Excelsior's current situation.
The ship had sustained micrometeoroid strikes, damaging the power grid and causing several vital systems to burn out. One of the strikes penetrated a petroleum tank, causing the loss of 7900 tons of product. Computer systems began to fail and one by one, the ship's subsystems began to shut down. The environmental conditions became uninhabitable, and the crew sent a distress call and entered hypersleep. As emergency power dwindled, the computer prioritized the pods of the medic and corporate executive pods for survival.
Bailey was overcome by grief when he learned about the deaths of his crew mates, and outraged that the ship's computer would allocate emergency power to save a corporate official that was not even there, at the expense of the rest of the crew.
Pilot Lewis attempted to correct the attitude of Excelsior, but only succeeded in sending it into an almost uncontrollable tumble. I was forced to disengage the umbilical, and MUTHR moved the Dawn Treader to protect the ships from possible collision. Lewis remained aboard with Bailey, as our pilot would need to correct its tumble and pilot it back to Hamilton. The remainder of the crew made an EVA back to Dawn. Once Lewis was able to regain control of Excelsior, Nelson went out in a workpod and repaired the hull breaches.
All told, we had spent a full day on restoring Excelsior to operational status. I transmitted a message to Logistics, notifying them of the completion of our recovery mission. The nearest hyperspace point was 30 Mkm away, and Wen Chun laid in a course and took the helm. For us, the trip would take only a day and a half, but with the sluggish reaction drive of Excelsior, Lewis would take three full days to arrive there.
We spent the time performing routine maintenance and going about our daily tasks, and around lunch time on the 15th, we entered hypersleep. The Dawn arrived back at Hamilton in the early morning of the 19th, and our pay was transmitted. The Company had deducted 10% of our bonus payout because the ship was damaged, and an additional 1% penalty for being over deadline. Each of us collected a mere $1302, for nearly three weeks of work.
The crew was granted three days of shore leave. We mostly spent the time resting from our ordeal. Around mid-day on the 21st, the Excelsior returned to port. Lewis had established a close friendship with Bailey, who was apparently known as "Gamble" to his friends, for reasons that should be obvious. They had spent most of their time drinking and playing cards. Lewis lost most of his pay to Bailey at the poker table, but had reclaimed all but $100 by beating his new friend at drinking games.
The following morning, Bailey came to me for help. The Company was trying to hold him accountable for the deaths of his crew mates, and had declared his pay to be forfeit. I was able to intervene, reminding our superiors that it was the ship's own programming that had prioritized the survival of the ship's medic and an executive that wasn't even aboard at the time.
Our first mission turned out to be a nominal but costly success. I await tomorrow morning's meeting, where we will receive our next mission. Buchanan out.