Challenge Stories

Outbreak Re-Supply

This is an entry for a Space Opera challenge on Wattpad. The limit is 2,000 words and the prompt is: A ship and her crew dock at a remote space station to refuel and resupply, only to find the station is in lockdown due to a viral outbreak. Knowing they're not going to make it much more than 24 hours without fuel and supplies, the crew have little choice but to do whatever it takes to get what they need. (Okay, so this story is 2,500 words. Deal with it.)

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Pull the thumb stud while flicking the wrist and then the satisfying snap. Use your thumb to release the catch spring, fold the blade away without cutting the back of your fingers. Repeat. The satisfaction of playing with an Old Earth (O.E.) pocket knife was quite relaxing. Doing this repeatedly would allow Matrison Cutholard to reach an almost Zen state during his long, long, shifts at the interstellar command console aboard the I. G. C. S. I Didn't Expect This from Musk Enterprises.

Usually.

While things were generally busy and entertaining intra-system – in any system – the duties of Comms officer whilst transiting the void (between galaxies) were quite different. That's why the duties during those long hauls were combined with logistician, pilot, duty officer, chief, chef, and bottle washer.

Matrison, Matty to his friends, sighed heavily and once again morosely had a chat with himself about his disappointment that faster than light (FTL) didn't necessarily mean quick. With the jump-rest-jump-rest cycle of the dark-matter folding drive, the journey from Mars to the once inhabited moon orbiting α-Horna inside the Triangulum galaxy (Messier 33 – 249 parsecs distant, almost 5 quadrillion miles) the transit was experienced at a factor of forty-seven. This meant that the 812 light-year journey was compressed to 17 years. Matison still shared the duty in two-year shifts with three others. Today he was in month 21 of his third and final shift rotation before his last hibernation cycle.

Matrison leaned forward and pressed the button again, "Dock Master from the I Didn't Expect This, did you get lost?"

The response was pretty quick, "Station 319 to the I Didn't Expect This - Yeah, yeah, sonny, keep your kit on. I was just conversing with the CMO."

"We don't really have any choice," Matison went on without the de rigueur hail, "I've got twenty-two hours of breathable air and all of my water is contaminated, our systems simply weren't prepared for this kind of accident, we need those damn supplies – at least enough to get us somewhere habitable and industrialized."

"How many are awake?"

"Just me, otherwise we'd be in a helluva worse position."

"You'll have to divert to Caput Trianguli, that's the only place with a graving yard this far out in this direction. They can fix you up and resupply you."

Matison sighed, his frustration threatening to overtake his calm. He replied, "But we can't even make it that far. That's still over three years travel time with the folding engine and like I've said, how many times now? I have less than a day of breathable air and no drinkable water!"

The person on the other end keyed the microphone, held it for a moment then let it go. When he replied there was a bit less edge to his tone. "I hear ya, sonny, but there is fuck-all I can do. This PicoVirus is deadly. If your ship so much as brushed our station, the Alliance would consider you infected and fair game. The only reason they haven't dispatched a ship to blow us up is because one of the Council of Nine was transiting through here when the quarantine hit. Even the CMO can't get her released even though she's not symptomatic."