Crash recovery

Helping out the Rabyth colony hadn’t really pulled that much time from their flight plan Dustin mused as he stared out of the observation bay window at a gas giant that Sola was gliding past enroute to the next jump point. Sure, they’d spent a few days doing physical labour, and the travel time to and from their previous route had taken the best part of a week on top, but it’d been worth it he felt. Rye’s confession and his date with Emely had seen to that - although apart from dropping hints that she was planning things the Rabyth woman had spoken to him very little about pairing. She’d been in deep discussions with Meli, and had spent an afternoon locked away in engineering with Emely, Dustin knew that much. He also knew that when he’d gone to her quarters to see if she needed anything adding to their stockpile at their next destination - a shipping space station halfway between two larger colony worlds - she’d hurried him away from her door as quickly as possible, but not before he could see that one wall was covered in the combination of pictures and string usually associated with the wilder conspiracy theorists.

Setting the issues of his impending relationship upgrade with the bunny girl aside for the moment, Dustin’s eyes flickered once again to the dispatch he’d gotten from Earth. He’d received a few of these packets before of course - generally they were a few notes from Axworth along with some pictures from fans that he’d taken to putting up in one of the spare hangars as they made a good backdrop for recording messages for back home. The whole promoting the mission deal was a pain, but a necessary part of his job he figured; at least the reports he got said that his series on life out in space was popular, even if he did heavily review what went on in the episodes he sent home. He didn’t mind folk back on Earth living vicariously through his travels, but he did mind them knowing too much about his relationships.

This time, however, the packet was different in that while it contained all the usual things he expected, it also contained three letters. The first was from Meli’s uncle and was the usual level of information he’d expected of the Velcan. It was mostly grumbling about how he was not a postal service operative, along with a minor diatribe about humans misusing communication systems - but woven in amongst that were just enough hints to make Dustin think that Re’x was worried about the encounter at the communication outpost in a way that the Velcan government and galactic council weren’t. That in itself was worrying, but the second letter raised his concerns even higher.

The second missive was from a major-general of the security forces back home, someone Dustin hadn’t heard from in over a decade. “Cousin George” as the letter signed off was in fact an old drinking buddy of his parents. He was also one of the few people that knew both Dustin and Axworth, and Dustin could feel the General’s influence over the contents. Oh, on the surface it seemed harmless enough, even if you were human - Dustin was pretty sure every word had been carefully written to get by both Velcan and Star Command review. To Dustin’s eyes however it’s contents told him that Axworth was worried in the same way Re’x was, and that he should keep an eye out for any more strangeness as the things he’d reported weren’t the only ones that the council was ignoring.

With those two letters filling him with worry, the final one was so unexpected he’d burst out laughing when he started to read it. One of his childhood friends back on Earth had somehow managed to wrangle her way through protocol (including persuading Re’x hence his grumbling about being a postman) in order to send Dustin a letter along with a photo of their old gang at some pub or other. True to form, Izzy’s letter was around ninety percent trying to persuade him to set her up with - in her words - “some alien hottie”, but the last chunk of it seemed genuinely concerned about how he was doing and her wanting to let him know that he still had folk back home thinking about him. For a brief minute, he had considered sending her contact details over to Jammieth before shaking his head. Neither of them deserved that particular disaster of matchmaking.

Still, the letter had made him smile, and it was good to know that his friends hadn’t forgotten about him. Turning from the window, he picked up a tablet to begin writing a reply - and had just about got as far as sarcastically pointing out that he was the human ambassador, not a dating service for disaster lesbians when Sola’s voice cut across his focus. “Attention Captain, I have received a report of a crash in our next weave destination. The crew have been alerted and are on their way to the bridge. Displaying holo data of the crash.”

Dustin looked at the spinning model and felt sick - the next system they were arriving in was one before the space station they were heading towards and had a few harsh gravitational currents - nothing that would imped a ship like Sola, but they had clearly pulled a pair of weaker vessels into a collision in orbit of one of the planets. “Engines to full please Sola, lets get there as soon as we can and lend a hand” Dustin said, feeling the hum through the deck-plates as the ship opened up the throttle on the system engines. Looking over the data from the crash as he made his way to the bridge, it looked like most of the crew and passengers would hopefully survive if they’d made it to the escape pods in time - but the planet they’d have fallen onto was not ideal.

The holo updated with news from the galactic web as the rest of the crew hurried to their stations. The list of ships underway to help was frighteningly small - but with the gravitational issues only strong and nimble vessels could provide any real assistance; larger ships would get in the way and smaller ones would risk adding to the problem. The crew of the Solar Ascent watched as readouts confirmed their attendance, as well as updated reports from ships already on the scene. The majority of the people on the doomed vessels had made it to the escape pods - that was a cause for celebration. However, the pods weren’t as strong as initially believed, and were likely to fail within a day in the atmosphere of the world they’d landed on. At that point, life expectancy for the survivors would drop rapidly.

Sola’s weave-drive spun up the second they reached the transit point. As the ship navigated the dimensions between them and their rescue mission, Rye and Dustin worked to prep the shuttle bays for rapid movement. Their primary plan was to use gravity clamps to pull the escape pods into one of the holds while hovering over them - Sola’s engines being more than enough to deal with the planet - but in the event that pod hulls started failing the two Rabyth-built shuttles could be the difference between life and **** for the survivors.

Dustin felt the shaking the instant the weave drive spun down; the system’s weird gravity acting like turbulence to a craft of Sola’s capabilities. Emely’s voice came through the speaker even as he finished the final checks on the shuttle in front of him. “I’ve patched us in to the recovery comms. There’s only one other ship that thinks it can handle entry on the planet, but the rest have shuttles in the air. There’s a collection of passenger escape pods that we’ve been asked to deal with first - Meli’s adjusting the approach vector now.”

That was the last calm message the crew would exchange until much later. Panicked cries from the victims of the crash, rapid barks of instructions and information in a half-dozen languages; Emely had turned off the auto translate to speed up communication and was relying on her on seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of alien tongues. Rye and Dustin talked briefly, and in the shorthand way that people who have lived together for some time manage as they worked grav clamps and pulleys from the control booths of the holds. Pods rose shakily from the surface and the bays filled, then Sola launched herself into orbit to offload the survivors to the waiting ships that lacked atmospheric capabilities but had plenty of medical staff on hand.

Back down into the acidic atmosphere, toxic clouds billowing over her hull as the starship entered as fast as Dustin dared push her - trusting Meli’s judgement on angles and altitudes before they dove once more into recovering crashed pods. Finally, however, Sola floated in the space above the hostile world and quiet returned. Her crew staggered into Dustin’s ready room exhausted, drenched in sweat from their efforts, and slumped into chairs. For a moment, nobody spoke - then Emely raised one shaky hand. “We did it, right? We helped save everybody?” Sola’s answer earned a tired cheer from the crew. “All survivors of the initial crash accounted for. All vessels involved in the rescue mission are now heading to Tealioss station for maintenance and to offload any survivors that are on board. I will be able to handle my own repairs, but doing so in port is advised - unless you have any objections captain, I will act accordingly.”