Duty, 23.5: Fallen Star (X-Mas Special)
25 Dec 2022Meowers
Warning: contains graphic content.
When I was about to call Mion and tell her I want to come and discuss those last events with her, she... Called me first. And she sounded quite worried. Turned out, a friend of her asked for help, her husband went missing on one of the local icy moons, and, with that Thargoid situation around, things could happen. She already requested the data from the satellite network, his ship's transponder signal had been detected on the surface, but he had not responded to comms for more than 18 hours, and this was considered by his family to be very unusual. Sending a wing there seemed inappropriate, but Mion was authorised by her command to go there herself for investigation. However, she thought it would be good to have a backup, so she called me.
She told me the details on our way there. The man's name was Ricky Roberts Jr, once a rising star in Buckyball Racing, before a series of scandals involving adult parties and illicit substance abuse had cost him his sponsors and his place on his team. But this was quite a long ago, before he met Lara, that Mion's friend. He convinced Lara that he gave up on dangerous sports, drugs and parties, they married and then moved to the settlement. He was working as a mechanic here for more than a decade, maybe I even saw him in the hangars, servicing our AX ships. But, one thing seriously bothered Lara. Over the last year, he'd been trying to get back to racing again, being already 43, and without having a word with her. He was taking his SRV out for several hours a day to practice, as he was hoping to qualify for the next Buckyball event and restart his career.
We were able to easily locate his ship, landed on the planet's surface, and we set down next to it. There was no response to our comm transmissions, and no life signs were detected aboard the ship by our scanners. We headed across the surface to the ship, with the intention of trying to gain access to the vessel in case the pilot was still aboard. As we approached we noticed that the SRV bay was open, and that there were wheel tracks heading away from it into the distance.
We re-boarded our ships and slowly flew, low to the ground, following the wheel tracks. The tracks descended into a narrow canyon and disappeared from our view. Both Marshmallow and Mion's Chieftain were too large to fit into the canyon, so we landed near the mouth of it, filled our backpacks with suit batteries, oxygen tanks and medkits and continued on foot.
We followed the tracks through the canyon until we saw wreckage from the missing SRV. When physics meets biology, physics brutally wins, and it quickly became apparent that the accident had resulted in the fatality of the driver. In the absence of a medical officer at this time, responsibility for the investigation and reporting of the incident falled upon me.
My report is as follows. The SRV, driven by Ricky Roberts Jr, was heading west along the canyon floor at great speed, approaching a 90 degree right hand turn in the course of the canyon to the north. On approach to the corner there is a slight rise and fall in the canyon floor, barely perceptible on foot, and, I would suggest, imperceptible on approach from the cockpit of an SRV, particularly one travelling at speed.
Upon cresting the rise, all six wheels of the SRV lost contact with the ground and the vehicle became airborne. At this point the driver would have had no means to turn or brake the vehicle. As such, the vehicle continued in a straight line, experiencing no deceleration until impacting the cliff face ahead, with the tyres being approximately 6 inches above the ground at the moment of impact. The cockpit of the Scarab model SRV is designed for maximum visibility, and therefore lacks structural strength. The vehicle's power unit, atmospheric recycler, shield generator, weapon system and fuel cell are all positioned within the main body of the vehicle behind the cockpit.
Upon impact with the cliff face the cockpit canopy instantly shattered and disintegrated and the metal frame supporting it folded. The front suspension arms also failed, bent and broke off from the vehicle upon impact. The main body of the vehicle continued forward until it too struck the cliff face. The driver was compressed between the vehicle body and the cliff face, resulting in the rupturing of all internal organs, and partial destruction of the skeleton.
As the vehicle struck the cliff face at a 15 degree angle to the right of centre, it recoiled from the impact and sharply spun anti-clockwise 155 degrees, travelling backwards in the northern direction briefly, before the rear of the vehicle struck a rock formation that arrested its movement. The torso of the driver was lacerated and penetrated by both the cliff face and by elements of the vehicle, which caused a lateral separation of the dorsal and ventral halves of the thorax as the SRV ricocheted from the cliff face, resulting in the expulsion of the internal organs in a radial arc as the vehicle underwent the subsequent rapid rotation.
The remains of the sternum and ventral rib cage were located close to the foot of the cliff, with heart, lungs, upper spinal column, liver, stomach and entrails, along with fluids and other dissociated tissue and bone fragments, being discarded along the arc, which continued slightly beyond the stopping point of the vehicle due to momentum and inertial forces. Pieces of the left arm, which had suffered multiple segmentation through interaction with sharp debris during the collision, were also spread along the radius of the arc.
During the impact the driver's neck experienced significant trauma, leading to partial decapitation, with the head becoming fully detached from the body as the torso disintegrated during the vehicle's rotation. The mass of the head and helmet caused it to travel further than the expelled organs and soft tissues. The compression and deformation of the helmet made it clear that the head had been destroyed, and extrication from the helmet would not be meaningfully possible at the crash site.
I was able to determine that the pool of grey, seemingly oily substance in which the helmet and head were laying, was a mixture of cerebral fluid and liquefied brain matter.
The dashboard of the SRV had passed through the top of the pelvic region, partially severing the torso from the hips. The legs, hips and lower spinal column remained, severely deformed, in the compressed remnants of the SRV cockpit attached to the front of the main body of the vehicle, with the ventral epidermis, ribs, and some muscle tissue, still joined to the hips, with the residual tissue of the kidneys also present. The right arm of the victim was, with the exception of a cleanly severed ball joint, remarkably complete and intact, as well as still being partially attached to the ventral epidermis.
Recovery of the remains of the driver, and of the SRV, was carried out later this day by a rescue team.
Analysis of the SRV found that the owner had tampered with the vehicle's power distributor, diverting all of the vehicle's available power to its drive system to maximise its top speed capability. The shield generator was therefore inoperable at the time of the collision. The driver would have died instantly upon impact.
Toxicological tests found that the driver's blood stream contained the Onion Head Gamma strain. Whilst this substance is not considered illegal in many systems, it is a substance that impairs the judgement, thinking and reaction time of the user, and sufficient quantities were present in the driver to suggest that he would have lacked the capacity normally considered required for the safe operation of a vehicle, suggesting that the potential consequences of legalising the substance may not have been fully thought through by the authorities.
It is my opinion that had Ricky Roberts Jr not been under the influence of Onion Head he would have been able to more accurately judge his speed on approach to the corner, and would have therefore been able to apply the brakes and decelerate the vehicle appropriately in advance.
Whilst the rise in the road would potentially still have caused the vehicle to have left the surface, the lower speed would have meant that there was a possibility for the wheels to reconnect with the ground, allowing the vehicle to further decelerate and rotate before reaching the cliff face, reducing the likelihood of collision, or, in the event that a collision still occurred, greatly reducing the impact of the collision, significantly increasing the survivability of the crash.
It is my finding that Ricky Roberts Jr perished instantly when his modified SRV collided at high speed with the cliff face of the canyon through which he was driving. His judgement and reactions were impaired due to his use of Onion Head Gamma strain, and so he was not fit to operate a vehicle at the time of the incident. Had he not been under the influence of a mind altering substance whilst driving, there is every probability that he would still be alive. No other persons were involved in the accident. I therefore record the conclusion of Accidental Death by Misadventure.
Ricky Roberts Jr leaves behind a wife and two children. They have been informed of his passing. His remains will be returned to his family as soon as we have been able to fully extricate and remove the last of them from the wreckage and debris of the vehicle. Transport costs will not be applicable due to the reduced size of the required container. Funeral details and final casket size will be decided by the family in due course.
Ah, I really hate this job sometimes.
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The episode was originally written a while ago by J-Dog162 to be a part of her 'Afterimage' series, but then it was excluded from it. However, later we decided that it shouldn't remain unpublished, and I've edited it slightly, adapting it to my story. And the 'physics brutally wins' line is also originally hers. So, she has my sincere thanks for this awesome, and truly festive scene.
Easter-egg: The name Ricky Roberts Jr was inspired by Ricky Bobby and other characters in the movie Talladega Nights.