Bellows the navigator aboard team Theta’s modest search and rescue vessel The Mangelo. She is furiously toggling switches and flipping frantically through a cluttered control board of dials and buttons. An ear splitting siren is screaming over the ships pa system. The pilot, now missing, went to the restroom and just vanished off of the ship. But not before dumping the ships fuel, and tainting all of the rations. The oil canister he must have secreted aboard the ship is lying overturned next to the now ocher coloured water cistern. It’s green label is well worn, and partially fading. It sits stark against the rust brown floor grates in the cargo compartments yellow overhead light. “Richard’s! Did you have any part in this – you slick silver fox fuck. You greasy – gods be damned bell end!” Roars the navigator as she continues to arrest the vessels endless supply of alarm bells and warning klaxons. Constantly shifting between control boards, the captains chair terminal and the read outs situated at her own post. As far as she can tell they are still on course, the trajectory she plotted out is perfect, though now with the loss of fuel and the weight of the propellant missing it could turn too steep an insertion to Lagrange point 5 out beyond Pluto and Charon’s gravitational pull. That’s an awfully dark and remote place to float with no fuel and tainted, spoiled rations. The course called for several corrections over the coming weeks as they waited for further instructions and a final destination. Unforgiving is an understatement, untenable an apt description- suicide more like it. “That thick fuck. What was he thinking?” She has begun to mutter vehement curses under her breath as she works expertly to stave off the flow of fuel pellets and propellant leaking out of the containment tanks on the exterior of The Mangelo.
Rustling in the rear of the cargo bay brings the navigator, Racquelle to a standstill. The clear ring of aluminium piping falling onto the metal floor grates is unmistakable. Followed by the sounds of heavy food bins tumbling and the muffled shout of someone swearing magnificently. More bangs, pings and thumps can be heard in the now cluttered cockpit. Racquelle had to pull a bunch of the main bus wiring out of the panels in order to reroute power and environmental functions around the alarms triggered by faulty equipment. Seems Theta’s flight commander had a nefarious plot to hatch as he had taken it upon himself to cut cables and conduit in a seemingly random fashion.
Racquelle couldn’t make head nor tails of what he’d cut or why. There wasn’t much about what he was planning that made any sense at all. We all knew what failing Dr. Jang would do for us, we’d end up spending the rest of our miserable lives kept prisoner in the doctor’s grotesque surgical bay, being eviscerated via needless surgery and bouts of straight up torture. The man’s eyes gleamed as he poured over the mangled lumps of his favourite specimens, still somehow alive, as he gave his orientation speeches to the newly initiated at UB313.
The sound of somebody clumsy waddling through the central gangway of The Mangelo, clumping along like a cunting great Clydesdale with lead weights for shoes brings Racquelle up short as she catches her breath while staring out the cockpits view port. Standing slouched over her NAV terminal is a man in black shiny coveralls. His face is burgundy and his grin is lopsided. Breathing heavily he mumbles and his face goes slack. He topples over the radar – Lidar view finder lands face first upon the ground. A two inch pipe poking out of the back of his head. The fracture surrounding the wound leaking brain matter and copious amounts of blood mingled with wiry grey hair. His name tag reads Richards. He was the medic and second in command aboard The Mangelo.
“What the fuck is going on here!” Racquelle leans her head against the view port, feeling the icy chill of the concrete glass cool her forehead. The empty black void outside hides a great deal. Many people in better situations than this have succumbed to the siren song of betrayal and intrigue.
Part nine : Ghost of the Dirty Starling.
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