Interstellar 1

Chapter 4: Interstellar Jump

The Interstellar 1

Scott woke up slowly. He heard a voice call to him, then his head cleared. Commander Warren's familiar wakeup call rang through the ship: "Rise and Shine, crew! Today is warp day!" "Gah!" Phillips groaned from his room. Scott knew there was no use fighting her, and groggily got on his clothes. He walked around the centrifuge through the center hallway, than hit the door to the kitchen as it was straight ahead, not along a hallway like the crew cabins. He walked slightly back, then started to walk forward again to hit it. Commander Warren opened the door though, so he fell. He quickly got up, and went to the fridge. He looked through till he found something he liked, sipped some coffee and slowly woke up. He then walked slowly to the command center, along with Commander Warren. They sat down in their respective seats. Warren called out: "Navigator?" "Go" Alex Mitchell responded. "Engineer?" "Go." Philips replied. "Scientist?" "Go." Scott said. "EVA specialist?" "Go"Jack responded. "Commander? Go." She said with a laugh. She pressed a button and set route to Alpha Centauri. The Alcubierre drive warmed up, and a stable warp bubble sprang up around the ship. "Engage Orion Starter Pulse"(This is a different Orion than the one they arrived in.) They needed a boost to start the Warp Drive, the bigger the better. A tingling ran through them as the acceleration started, then they felt nothing out of the ordinary. However, Wang Tsu who was right next to the engine, felt something more. He got slammed into the back of the wall, and was temporarily unconscious before waking up. He had a bloody nose, and his jet-black hair was stained with blood. He quickly wiped it off and pulled out his medkit to heal himself, before slipping back to unconsciousness. Back in the command center, you could see the blue sparking of the warp bubble literary 3 inches from the window. "Is our course and maneuver good?" Commander Warren asked Alex. The other crewmen held their breaths while Alex typed in his console. "Course and maneuver good, Commander. On track for arrival in 1 month." The crew collectively breathed out in relief. "All right, get to your posts. Alex, study our course more in depth, Philips, check the Alcubierre drive and our equipment. How is it holding up in the Warp Bubble? Jack, send out drones, then test dummies, then go out yourself. What does the warp drive to do something? Scott, run experiments in the lab centrifuge." Philips floated through the hallway, got to the airlock to the spacedock, and floated across the spacedock to the engineering bay. As he was checking the warp drive, he spotted a slumped figure in the corner. He radioed into Commander Warren: "I think there is a stowaway, Commander." "What!?!" "Please come!"Commander Warren floated over to the engineering bay in a hurry. Investigating the slumped figure in the Engineering Centrifuge, she found it was a stowaway. After a bit more study, and finding the modified Gemini Capsule in the service port, she found his name was Wang Tsu from North Korea, and his mission was to sabotage the Interstellar 1 while in orbit around another solar system and maroon them. That night, Commander Warren called a meeting. "We have some options. We could kill him, as space is international waters and he is a pirate. We could hold him captive, or we could set him free in his capsule and he would get killed." Scott said "We should hold him. We don't know why or how he planned to do this and why." "I agree." Alex said. "Me too." Phillips said. "At least until we know why he was doing it." They transferred him to the ship's sick bay, which had a restrain feature if a crewmate was mentally disturbed. After that, they wondered of food and oxygen. The commander asked Scott, who also worked as a farmer, to figure it out. "Do we have enough oxygen and food?" Scott thought for a minute, then responded. "Both the greenhouse and oxygenator have room for 2 extra people, in case we met aliens. It should be fine."

3 weeks later. The jump was almost complete, and it was during the time when the Orion pulse drive would fire and stop the Warp Bubble that Wang Tsu awoke. As he slowly came to, he noticed that there was almost a steel exoskeleton holding him to the bed. He quickly came too, but then got knocked senseless as the sick bay did not have acceleration couches. The ship swung around, and nuclear pulse prepared to launch. In response to this, the bed flipped upside down and put him in a safe area under the bed. The pulse blasted out, and everyone in the ship got a brief moment of nothing, which was alway felt when exiting warp, before the full force of a 500 kiloton nuke slammed the ship out of hyperspace. This was just the pulse from the Orion, nothing new to most of the crewmates, except Jack, who had did it once when entering hyperspace. Wang, though, who had been asleep when it first hit, did not. The bed flipped over and started healing its occupant again after the wave had hit, and Wang was lying limp, the pain and shock of it had rattled his bones. The bed also fed Wang through his long sleep. He had dreamt of his mother and father back in China, of the mission he had to complete, and the failure of his mission so far, for he thought the pulse was a weapon. As he came to, The crew walked in and saw him. The woman, who was Commander Warren leaned over him, wielding a taser (For hostile alien encounters). "Why were you trying to sabotage our ship?" Wang had been trained in the event that an enemy had kidnapped him, but as he still though the Orion Nuclear Pulse was a weapon, so he divulged the info. Wang Tsu knew English as he had to interact with other astronauts and space programs. "My goal was to sabotage you to prove that the U.S space program was horrible, to destroy it and prove that we would appear better." "Well then." Commander Warren responded, "Kill him." "Have mercy on me, please!" Wang Tsu pleaded desperately. Jack, who was also a doctor (all crew members needed to have 2 specialties) said "We have a prototype chip that can be implanted into anything humanoid to subdue them. We can control their behavior when we need to. We also have the equipment." "All right than, do it." Wang Tsu started to protest, but then the bed pumped sedation into him and knew no more.