Beyond Sol

Chapter 3C

The Spectrum had taken far longer to arrive at Neptune than anticipated. It was fine, though. NASA was shitting themselves about it, they thought we could overload the core. When we were around a month away, just outside of Neptune's sphere of influence, NASA ran the test for it, turns out the ship was really good at its heat-rejection system, or so we thought. Just vent it into the water system, it runs back into the EWSS, super chilled and pumped back into the core. It goes on and on. Or vent it into the heat radiation projectors.
The cryo-bay, which by the way sat in front of the hangar if you didn't know. Was flooded with steam. I was barely awake, but already had a sense of wrongness. It's like when you just know something is wrong. The hull is supposed to pressurise and heat nine hours before crew awakening.
My ears popped, I shivered. What the hell? I was dizzy. But I couldn't tell if it was from cryo sickness or something else. I was able to check my watch, 19.19 KPA, -18 degrees Celsius. Whatever happened AETHER was able to keep us at minimum life support. Everyone else was just as confused as I was, although they remained silent
"Carter?" Muhammed rubbed his eyes, just as winded. Something wasn't right. Something was wrong, something happened during our transit, and it fucked something up.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm here. And no, I don't know what's wrong with the ship." I gained vision back, I looked around before heading to the bridge. The one thing NASA tells you not to do when you just wake up from Cryo, fuck around with the ship. Looks like something already fucked around with it more than I could. I picked up a blanket from the HGS on the way there, I also looked around there too. The Heat Generating System could explain what was happening, but nope. It reported nominal systems, and a temperature of 22 degrees. This isn't right.
The OGS reported 21 KPA. What's happening? What, or who, fucked our ship.
Don't take that out of context you asshole. This is serious.
Muhammed followed behind. "What do you think it I-I-Is?" His teeth chattered.
"I was thinking HGS and OGS, but it's not. I don't think it's the EWSS which leaves the core. That's why we're heading to the bridge. I have a feeling the pressure and temperature aren't the only issues." I slid inside.
"Yeah. Me too." The bridge was dark. Classic. Battery was offline. I slipped in my seat and looked around for a moment. I reached my hand up and my other to my side panel. I flicked both battery and APU switches. I heard a clink, before the screens lighting up. The sheet of ice glowing slightly over them. I smashed the ice, before shoving it out the way. I looked at the side of my hand. It was bleeding slightly.
It went through its logo showcase before illuminating in the menus. I navigated my way through them before I was in the control panel. It was a list of every single electric component that comprised the ship, and next to it was its status. I won't list all 729 but long story short, we are fuuuuuuuuuuuucked. The most major were our HGS, OGS, EWSS, airlocks, and lastly. Our fucked up core. In the next minute I think I invented some new curses.
I scrolled back to the top. Wait a minute. 730. Seven hundred thirty components of the ship? What? That can't be right. I swiped lightning fast to the bottom.
"What happened?" He asked.
"There's seven hundred twenty nine components of the ship, right?"
"Seven hundred and twenty nine, yes. Why?"
"Seven thirty." I hit the bottom. The last one read
UNKNOWN DEVICE, INSTALLED 2120 MAY 4TH. That's when we stopped at Mars. The day the inspection team came ab- Fuck. The people who came aboard weren't the inspection team. Someone decapitated them or something, they posed as the team and came aboard. Planted something on the core, and it's been giving us shit for 4 years. I've used fuck too many times in the past five minutes, Jesus.
The core isn't broken, it's infected. It's sick. It has a virus. And viruses on a ship like this are notoriously hard to rid of, it has 729 places to hide. And it takes hours to clear out one. I manually raised the pressure and temperature, it wasn't hard. The virus slowly ate away at the systems, it wasn't instant. It's not hard to obtain heat, just have the core vent less, and the core produces a by-product of oxygen.
"So. What's our next move?"
"We have hours before we actually need to raise them again. We follow our original course. Aero brake on Neptune and land on Triton. We're already on track for the brake. The system failures awoke us late as well, three hours late. Which means we have 15 minutes at best before we do.
I went to go contact NASA, shit. Comms were offline, I found a work around using some rudimentary re-wiring.
The static and warbled voice of someone came over. An ATC caller. I decoded the message eventually. "This is Kial Mendez at Sector A's capitol building contacting the Spectrum on an emergency broadcast. This is marking 93 hours since contact was lost. Crew have proven unresponsive, considering they have been conscious for three hours, or so we think. Any crew please respond." I pressed the push to talk button on the right side panel in between me and Muhammed.
"Carter Allan aboard the Spectrum broadcasting to Sector A Capitol building. The Spectrum has proven infected, a virus picked up by a false inspection team, four years ago in Martian orbit. Our pressure and temperature sensors are faulty and most of our systems are unresponsive. Our cryo-bay pods are damaged and were late on awakening. Our course is on par. We will see you soon." I tried my best to maintain a professional voice over it, although a hint of sobbing was present. I don't know why. But it was.
I heard a sigh of relief and applause over it.
"Copy that."