Evacuation
20 Dec 2017Martind Forlon
"Good morning, sir. Do You know about the latest Gallnet news about the Pleiades region?", has asked me Deborah, once I have entered the offices in the Marsden City in Yaroklis. She continued, "it looks like there are now three Aegis stations badly damaged by some newly discovered Thargoids variant called Medusa, and all these stations must be evacuated. Damage must be really bad, normally are these stations able supply inhabitants also in the state of construction or big reconstruction."
Forlon remained silent for few minutes, while he was checking latest news from the region. "OK, it looks that they may really need help from everyone who can be available. We have here some obligations like usual, but I hope that Ryan will not kill me, if we will spent some time with helping evacuate people there. Please start immediately preparing the Dark Queen for emergency operations. Armament will be anti-human, I still consider "humans" threat for such operation higher as are aliens. We do not have any relevant information why were these stations attacked, and sources of data which I checked right now are saying that aliens appearing in local area were not attacking unprovoked. We also may need more heatsinks devices, local docks seems are really hot and high temperature can kill us ways faster than all human or alien threats altogether."
Only two hours later was anaconda with callsign Dark Queen ready for take off. Course to the Pleiades was set into navigation computer and last stop, before the dangerous area, was chosen in Celaeno system. After dock in the local wealthy Coriolis station (with great views on surrounding asteroid field and close huge white Sun ) were checked all emergency passengers cabins and ship has been refuelled. Once it was done, was about a time to go to the Taygeta system, only 2 jumps away, where was located one from the three damaged stations called the Titan's Daughter.
There is a huge difference between watching the news and experience something by ourselves. Dark Queen has left from the supercruise close to the Titan's Daughter and there was waiting a scene like from the hell. Deborah was with Forlon on the bridge and both only silently for some time observed that horrible state of this big space station. But then, finally, an emergency call have disrupted theirs stunned minds when the Dark Queen arrived closer to the damaged entry of the station.
Forlon ordered: "Deborah, I need you on lower deck asap! There are many scared civilians waiting, which will want boarding quickly. We do not have much time and every mistake can be the last. Problem however is, that passengers can be taken only up to the cabin's life-support capacity. I know that they can handle more, but not under current conditions. This is also the main reason why you need to be there personally." After this he have cleaned his mind and started fully concentrate on docking. Station inner space was full of hot air, exploding debris and emergency radio messages. First heat-sink was needed when was ship only half way to the designated pad. Fortunately docking operations were still working under emergency protocol, and therefore immediately after Dark Queen touched the pad, she was quickly moved down into the hangar.
Passed less as ten minutes when Deborah has reported that all the passengers cabins are fully used, and that ship is ready for take-off. Forlon slowly pulled controls up and big ship left the pad. There were all these emergency sounds and red blicking lights, so he totally overlooked checking the ship's temperature. Ship was already in movement through the mail-slot when suddenly started one by one failing ship's modules."What the hell is this?!?" thought Forlon in the first moment and in next moment he struck the button for heat-sink. But that system was also damaged already and ship engines suddenly went silent. "How bad it is?", asked Deborah through hand communicator. "Are passengers only up to to the cabin's life-support capacity?" replied Forlon. "Are, I was in need use arms as threat, but we do not have any one extra.", said Deborah. "Good, then we are really lucky this time.", told Forlon and continued: "Please inform our guests that ship systems will reboot now. Cabins are designed for this kind of situations, and reboot will bring our damaged systems back on-line.".
Most of ship's modules was in "red" condition but all were functional and there was luckily only very short travel needed. When Forlon saw evacuation ship after they has left the supercruise he breathed a sigh of relief. It was time to ask for docking permission and repair the ship after will be all passengers safely released. Dark Queen slowly reached the end of the queue of other waiting ships and the preparations for landing has been started.
