Slakova
2006-06-11 |  | Slakova`s Storys |  |
Another
Old Man Star
Those traveling within the Gallente Federation from the Peccanouette Circle to the Patrie Perimeter can make a shortcut midway through by traversing Ouperia - a cold and uninhabited white dwarf system. Few now remember the name Ouperia - most people only know it by what it is commonly called, Old Man Star.
The inter-stellar warp drive technology is fairly new. Until it came along the only way for the empires to expand their territory was to send a ship to a solar system to build a stargate. The latest versions of these construction ships managed a speed of ca. 30% of the speed of light. At this speed a system 10 light-years away could be reached in 33 years, or there about. The crew of the construction ships was put into cryogenic stasis for the duration of the trip, only to be revived once the destination was neared.
A century ago to the date, before capsules and collision avoidance systems, a Gallentean construction ship set out for the desolate system then known as Ouperia. A stargate there would not only serve as a link between the Peccanouette Circle and the Patrie Perimeter, but would also give access to the rich asteroid fields in the system. The construction ship departed from Villore system, some 12 light years distant. Estimated travel time was 40 years. The crew consisted of five people, a huge reduction from the old days when dozens of crewmen were needed - swarms of drones and robots were now responsible for most of the actual construction, the crew only acting as operators and technicians.
Five years after the construction ship set out disaster befell it. A large asteroid hit the ship full force in deep space. The cryogenic chamber was damaged, killing four of the five. The fifth survived, luckily for him he was revived before the cryogenic equipment gave out entirely. His name was Ceul Darieux and he was the drone operator on the ship.
Darieux immediate problem was how to feed himself - to save space and weight no food was carried on the ship, the crew was supposed to deploy small greenhouse bulbs once they'd been revived and grow edible plants there. But this required the proximity of a sun to provide the essential light and heat - in short, the greenhouse bulbs and the plant seeds were useless in deep space. Water was an equally pressing problem, as was the shortage of oxygen. The state of the ship did not make things any easier - the stray asteroid had ripped a huge gash into the side of the ship and destroyed many of the ship's vital systems. The cargo hold was hit especially hard - debris of destroyed equipment and pieces of the asteroid cluttered the small space.
Darieux put his engineering skills to good use to solve these problems. He began by tampering with the fuel tanks. The fuel tanks, filled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, served the propulsion system once the ship had to be slowed down once near the destination system. Fiddling with the fuel tanks was extremely danger |
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joker
99+ day(s) ago | Great stuff!! More more more..... |
Macbeth
99+ day(s) ago | Good ideas but lacks description, what did the asteriods look like? How did it hit the ship? What was your characters reactions? etc... |
Slakova
99+ day(s) ago | This is the last of the storys i am making so thanks for reading them. |
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