FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Expect the Unexpected

Copyright (c) FarmWolf's Player

After the initial exhilaration of the first history-making flight, Felix soon settled into a routine: fly the day's mission, review the logs, and tune the ship for the next flight. Of the many improvements the team had made to the Experimental, the most important had been removing the standard warp engines and tuning the transwarp drive to power it from the speed of light up to the speed they were currently testing. Their tuning had brought the speed record up to 9800_c_, and they had the intermix injector deviation nearly under control.

Today's flight was cleared to 10 000_c_, more than twice as fast as ships had been capable of just a few short weeks ago. Felix was all business as he set course for the test site and ran through the pre-transwarp checklist. When all was ready, he called Flight Control.

"Flight, this is Experimental. I've activated recorders and telemetry and I'm ready to engage transwarp drive."

"Acknowledged, Experimental, you are cleared for transwarp to 10 000_c_."

"Roger, Flight, engaging transwarp drive."

Felix touched the transwarp activation control and monitored the instruments as the ship shifted into deeper layers of subspace. He kept a close eye on the readings as he accelerated. They stayed well within normal limits, just like all the previous flights. Even the quirky intermix injector was behaving itself, indicating only the most minor of variations.

As Felix approached 10 000_c_, he paused his acceleration, holding the ship at 9800 for a short time to make one final check for problems. Finding none, the chief pilot began to accelerate again. He passed 9850 with no problems. Likewise 9900 and 9950. However, at 9975, the intermix injector began to creep out of balance, but Felix caught it right away. He held his speed constant, retuned the injector, and checked for further deviations. After giving everything a moment to stabilize, Felix moved the speed control forward again.

Every instrument behaved perfectly as the ship reached 10 000_c_. Felix scanned the display once more to check for trouble, then contacted Control.

"Experimental is holding steady at 10 000. All instruments well within normal range."

"Roger, Experimental, continue at 10 000 for another minute, then throttle back and return to base."

"Acknowledged, Flight."

Felix turned his attention back to the instruments. For ten seconds they remained perfectly still. Then, again, the injector balance began to creep away from its most stable value. He noticed it immediately and made adjustments to correct it. But instead of returning to its normal reading, the instrument simply paused in its deviation and then resumed its trip toward instability faster than the chief pilot had ever seen it move before. He tried again to stabilize the injector and failed. Felix activated the emergency shutdown and contacted Control.

* * *

"This is Experimental. My injector is severely out of balance and I'm unable to stabilize it. I'm shutting down and--"

The transmission ended abruptly. For a moment, there was total silence in the flight control clearing as operators stared in shock at their displays, where ranks of biometrics updates and flight data had suddenly gone critical or disappeared.

Then the stunned silence vanished as the operators began barking out their status to the flight director all at once.

"Flight, I've lost telemetry--"

"Flight, biometrics are gone--"

"Flight, transwarp drive is offline--"

Commander Albus Koy growled for silence. His own display gave a summary of the other stations' status.Communications were down, telemetry was no longer transmitting, and even the biometrics readings had flatlined. "One at a time, people. Biometrics, what's your status?"

"No bioreadings. Everything's flat!"

"Propulsion?"

"All propulsion is offline. No updates at all."

"Telemetry?"

"No information updates. Everything's stopped."

"Can we be looking at a datalink failure?"

"I don't see how, Flight," the telemetry officer said. "Every channel we're monitoring from the ship suddenly went dead. You'd think we would have had some warning."

Koy tried to re-establish contact with the ship. "Experimental, this is flight control, come in, Experimental."

Nothing.

"Repeat, this is flight control. Experimental, please respond!"

The frequency remained silent, and the displays continued to flash red.

Koy slumped slightly and his ears and whiskers drooped, but he issued his next orders with a confident tone. "Assemble a search team. Prepare a ship."

At Koy's last words, Kisara sprang to her hindpaws. Sirta, sitting beside her, tracked her with his eyes and ears as she instructed him, "Analyze the data, find out what went wrong, and be ready to give me some answers when we get back!"

"Aye," he barked, and began finding the data she wanted. Kisara didn't even hear him as she raced toward the flight director.

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant--" Koy began.

"You're sorry, but there's nothing I can do by coming with you? That may be so, but there's definitely nothing I can do by sitting here!"

"Kisara--"

"Kelvin has access to the data. He can interpret it as well as I can."

Koy opened his muzzle yet again, but Kisara didn't even give him the chance to speak.

"I'm coming with you, Albus," she stated, tilting her head up to look him directly in the eye. Even sitting, his head was slightly higher than hers.

Koy looked at Kisara for a long moment, then sighed inwardly. In all his years as Kisara's mentor, he had never been able to change her mind when she clamped her fangs on a notion this hard. Even being her commanding officer changed nothing in this case.

He held her gaze for another moment, then gave her a single nod.

First, Koy briefed the station commander, Captain Aurora Sitka, on the link failure. Shortly after that, the search ship informed him that they were ready.

"We're on our way," replied Commander Koy, and he headed for the dock with Kisara on his tail. As they boarded the ship, reality began to catch up with her and she felt the first true suspicion that something might be very wrong.