Conflagration

The Missing Plane

Galaxy: Darklands (dwarf galaxy)

Cluster: Nexus

Station: Gonaways

It was during the slow, quiet hours of the morning. Gonaways might be the biggest trade hub in all the Darklands, but even the mighty space station and its ten million inhabitants slept at this hour. A few hours from now and it would be sunrise, station time. The lights in the corridors would automatically brighten. Out on the station's gargantuan habitation rings, the solar shields would slowly open, creating an approximation of a sunrise. Soon after that, the station would come to life. The quiet corridors, the vacant streets, and the empty transport trains would begin to fill with people from all walks of life going about their days.

Just like the rest of the station, the spacecraft ramp at Noémie Station Services was quiet and dark. There were no planes landing or taking off on Noémie's runway. There were no engines roaring on the ramp or the taxiway. There were no tugs honking their horns, no baggage being moved about, and no passengers boarding or disembarking. The ramp's artificial gravity was turned down to a mere 0.2G's to save money at night. The only activity was at the far end of the hanger bay from the runway. Three night shift mechanics driving maintenance mechs worked to change out the engine in a loader.

Flight dispatcher Ivka Stoya sat at her desk in the ramp's ops tower reading a boring book on her personal data pad. Her supervisor, Rinjin, was asleep in the chair beside her. Ivka glanced at her displays; there was nothing going on. Her boards were almost entirely clear, except for two items. A charter flight was scheduled to leave in two hours, but neither the pilots nor the passengers had shown up yet. A bulk freighter was due to land in about 45 minutes, but it hadn't even dropped out of transtach yet. She went back to reading her boring novel.

A chime woke her up. She hadn't even intended to nod off. First, she glanced at the clock. She guessed she'd only slept about 10 minutes. Rinjin was still asleep in his chair, snoring softly with his foot up on the desk. He was completely unbothered by the chime from the flight dispatch boards. Ivka checked the boards and saw that nothing had changed with the other two items on them. But now there was a third item on her boards. It was a SCARS report from a company aircraft which read:

/495NC/GND/SHP_242/TFGCAP_OTS/END/

Spacecraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (SCARS for short) was a maintenance subsystem that Noémie used on all it's spacecraft. The SCARS sent encoded data about a company spacecraft's health and status back to the company. An experienced dispatcher like Ivka could read these codes without having to consult the manual. What this code said was that spacecraft tail number 495NC was grounded because the transtachyonic field generator capacitor was out of service. End of message. The only part she didn't understand was the phrase "SHP_242." She didn't know what that meant. She loaded the manual on her terminal and quickly determined that SHP_242 wasn't in the manual. She was going to have to wake her supervisor.

"Hey, Rinjin," she said. He didn't stir, so she pushed his foot off the desk.

"What the fuck?" Rinjin protested as he jolted awake. "Ivka, what the⁠—"

"We got us a grounded plane. TFG Cap is manked." She indicated the SCARS message on her board.

Rinjin pulled his glasses out of his pocket and read the message. "What the fuck is SHP_242?"

"I was hoping you'd know."

"Did you check the manual?"

No, you twat. I sure am glad I woke you up to give me that very useful suggestion, she thought. "Of course I checked the manual."