The Final Nebula
05 Dec 2021Green Delta 11
We did it.
Yesterday we hit pay dirt. This happened at about 1100 Galactic Standard Time. We had been hard at it since early morning.
The previous evening we were snooping around a planetary nebula when we got a whisper of an indication from our anomaly detectors. A gravity wave passed through the system. Actually it was more like a gravity ripple. Very faint. We got a hit near an ice planet just outside of the nebula late in the evening. But, on inspection nothing significant turned up. We got all excited only to be let down by another false signal. We sat down on the small planet and called it quits for the night.
I could tell Ellen was very frustrated by the false signal. She was ready to give up on the whole expedition and head for Explorers Anchorage near Sag A*. Funds were running low and the backers had been on the Hyper Comm complaining about the lack of progress.
Ellen was getting wound up and said, “I can't take much more of this stupid expedition. We are going to neutron jump back to civilization. By the way your Tacos gave me the runs. You know how hard that is during zero G. Well, hard would be better. Anyway I need a decent meal. No wonder you got kicked off of those other ships”.
Now that hurt. “OK, says I, We depart early”. She stomped off to her cabin. Her cat hissed at me and followed. I heard a lot of scratching from his zero G litter box. That made me smile.
So, sure enough the next day we launched of the ice rock and started jumping enroute. Like I said, about mid morning we got a strong hit on the detectors. This time we were able to get a direction and elevation to the source. A big red planetary nebula. We changed course and started jumping towards that ominous red ball in space.
We stopped one system outside of the nebula and got a zero velocity update and re triangulated the source. Definitely something was interfering with space time near or inside of that nebula. The Galaxy map showed a black hole inside. Now we have seen a lot of black holes on this trip and this one should not have been any different. But it was.
Just seconds after we jumped into the system we got a proximity alert and we did an automatic drop out of hyperspace right next to this massive black hole. Much bigger that we thought possible. As the FSD drive was cooling down we got massive spikes on the detectors. The full system scanner only showed asteroid debris. But on inspection we found the remains of one of the ships. They almost made it to the core, but something went wrong with the new upper dimensional FSD drive, and they ended up here in pieces. No survivors.
We spent the rest of the day searching and collecting wreckage. We found the flight data recorders and the FOQA (Flight Operational Quality Assurance) recorders.
We did recover one body. It was gruesome. It was fused into a bulk head. Organic and Composite materials were merged in a most horrific way. I have since done some research into how this could come about and came up with references to a Philadelphia Experiment from the mid 20th Century Earth.
Ellen and I were very somber that evening. But at least we had something to show for our efforts. We will return to Explorers Anchorage.