Toby-Phealin

“Alright, let’s get an Air-Shield up.” The chief motioned to the airlock’s now gaping maw. “I don’t want to vent the ship any more than we have to.” Hulasi paused and motioned to the hole in the ship, “Chief, won’t the particles just overwhelm it?” Chief Reefskimmer shook his head, “If our armor can handle the particles, the shield should be able to hold. But it’s best not to try our luck. Pull the power unit out of the breaching laser and socket it into the shield generator. That should give it enough power to hold until we’re done here.” Hulasti nodded, “Aye, Chief.” And got to work. Once the shield was erected, Rayano hit the cycle button on the interior airlock and was surprised when a gush of air from the airlock vents filled the airlock. “Well shit, we have a good atmosphere on the far side.” The chief grinned through his helmet’s faceplate, “I may be old, but give me a little credit guys.” The team laughed, but it only grew as Renta floated through the Airlock hatch into the

“Chief, I’m opening up the pilothouse’s hatch. Get your guys ready and head up, we’ll make some plans.” Matriarch Inilia’s voice was finally calm, relieved. Her job in this was done, for the moment. Now it was up to Chief Reefskimmer and his boarding team to get the survivors. She turned around in her seat and looked at the rest of the Boatcrew, “Alright, Gorren and I will work on getting navigation sensors working. Regel, Eldin, I want you both working on the forward survivor’s compartment. See if we can get that breach sealed and spaceworthy. We’ll have our nose outbound for the majority of the trip, so we shouldn’t have to worry about particles – too much.” She motioned to the Brimknole engineer. “El-Saiem, I want you going over our engineering systems, diagnostic the aft gravitic nodes to verify integrity. We can’t swap any out, I don’t want you on the outer hull in this shitshow. We only have two extras anyhow and we’ve lost, what, eight?” “Close, but nine. The sensor readout

The Pinnace shuddered as another wave of particles fought against the ship’s gravitic bubble. Gorren grimaced, “We got residual Xray through the ‘roid infront of us. It was pretty scattered, but the fact it got through is telling me we are almost on the far side.” The Matriarch nodded as she wrestled the controls. “We’ve got a lull, have the boarding team move aft right now. The moment we breach I don’t want anything bleeding through that hull breach and frying them.” Eldin, his helmet having been retracted briefly to seal his clipped ear, carefully resealed his helmet. “Yes Matriarch.” He began sending orders down to the crew compartments over the interior comms. While they couldn’t hear the boarding team unbuckling and shifting, the four Sixers were rapidly disconnecting from their seats. Unlike the thin survival suits of the boat crew, their suits were thick, armored, and provided with thrusters from zero-gee flight. While the suits were normally used for boarding operations and

“Station 14, Station 14. Solar Treader. We’ve got particles coming in, the interior shields are holding. We’ve lost all nodes, and we’re running on fusion torches – both of them. Crews are suited, particles are scouring the hull.” The voice was tired, strained, but steady. Astrin, having elected to stand a second watch with Dobramila, paused and looked up at the Gadzu Officer of the Day. The Gadzu shook her head quietly and looked up at the screen on the wall, the dogged advance of the freighter trying to make it to safety. “Solar Treader, Station 14. Understand, on torches. Hull breaches with particles coming in. Crews suited. Rescue Pinnace is transiting the Ring now, they are on the way. Hold tight.” She did her best, her throat tightening as she clenched her fists on the console. “We’ll get to you, Solar Treader. Don’t doubt it.” The silence drug on for almost a minute, Astrin was already getting ready to call out a second time when the voice of the Captain came back; “Ok, fine.

The Pinnace shook, this time however, it was not a wave bashing against the small craft. This time, materials that were pulverized by the gravitic bubble cascaded down the armored hull and careened off the engine arrays. The rattling buzz of both High-Speed Lasers could be heard as Regel with the assistance of Eldin, the Pinnace’s Crew Chief, tasked the targeting computers with one target after another. The sound of the capacitors rattling through their tracks on their chain, the sounds of those capacitors triggering, and the high-speed hum of the motor rotating the multiple focusing barrels are a near constant background noise to go along with the particles, rubble, and the sounds of over-stressed gravitic nodes. The ship shook and shoved the entire crew sideways in the seat as Inilia hissed, “I’m going to be so bruised tomorrow.” This brought a laugh from Gorren, the Navigation and Co-Coxswain, who was her oft silent and subdued Thrall member. He was skilled, he knew his job, and

“Brace, Brace!” As one, five hands came up and braced on handholds mounted to their consoles. The leading edge of the wave sounded like sandpaper across the hull as the fusion core deep inside the Pinnace changed tone. Then the wave hit. The gravitic nodes across the front of the ship audibly hummed as the force of the impact threw the pinnace’s crew forward in their seats, burly muscles tensed as the big Therion males did their best to stay in their position and keep working. The Brimknole’s thinner arm gave way and he barely managed to brace his other arm. The roar of the particles ripping at the hull was loud enough to hurt the crew’s ears, but the sound of the pinnace’s hull audibly flexing and convulsing managed to beat the roar by a magnitude. When the impact finally ceased, the Therion male on weapons named Regel quipped; “I think the ship just got a bit shorter. Are we part of a new class now?” Matriarch Inilia rolled her eyes as she watched the screens. “Three… two… one…

As the transmission from the 110378 finished, there was silence but for the soft click of clawed fingers on a holographic keyboard. As the typing finished, the Teruvian female looked up to watch the Gadzu pacing along the screens on the front of the communications center. Astrin licked her lips before taking a deep breath and asking; “So… How bad is it? What are they going through?” She almost seemed not able to ask, but she went through with it. “Will they make it through?” Dobramila looked at the main screen as she came to a halt in her pacing before motioning to the screen. “It’s all about how the star acts. Every star has a frequency, a heartbeat even. It pulses with an internal rhythm that is the same for hundreds of millions of years with very little change. You’ll get the occasional burp or hiccup, a sunspot that will cause a rogue particle wave and a flash of X-Ray radiation. But the frequency and rhythm are always the same. If it changes, then that means something is about to

“Ma’am…” The silence of the pilothouse of the 110378 was palpable. But the smooth, Arabic voice of the Brimknole sliced through it like a well sharpened, heated knife. In comparison to the gravelly deep voices of the male Therions and the feminine lilt of the Matriarch, it was almost staggering in the tense atmosphere. “Ma’am, it’s… it’s going to be bad, isn’t it? The storm is brutalizing a ship, we’re just a small craft. The Pit is bad at the best of times, and… and.” He stopped, his voice wavering. “And it’s even worse now.” The silence stretched out, but the perked ears of the Therion males spoke of men who would follow their matriarch into hell knowing they wouldn’t come out… but were not immune to nerves or fear. They didn’t have the drive to not follow their matriarch, it was a biological imperative that told them where they had to be. But they were still mortal. The Matriarch took a deep breath and nodded from her spot in the Coxswain’s chair. “Yeah. It’s gunna be bad. I won’t

“Does anyone know where the love of gods goes, when the stellar winds turn the minutes to hours?” Sing-Songed out a Sixer on Station 14’s Boat Deck. He was one of six technicians hurrying across the hull and around the Dock of the Coalition Standard Pinnace, painted in high visibility red of the Coalition Revenue Cutter Service (CRCS). Approximately thirty meters in length, the sleek and trim craft was one of the few Coalition ships to still utilize a jump drive. Rudimentary, with very little in the way of range or capacity, the Jump Drive was just enough to hurl the small craft to the five or six nearest stars. However, the key point of the jump drive was that unlike the Coalition Tachyon drives, it had no need to capture high energy tachyons for a jump and allowed the ship to quickly respond as needed. Armed with a pair of high-speed lasers, the rotary weapons utilizing multiple barrels and a chain of capacitors to keep wear and thermal expansion within the airless void of space as

“CQD. CQD. CQD.” The text scrolled across the immense front screen of the comms room onboard Rescue Station 14, Yannin’s Rest, and the tired silence of a late evening watch was shattered. The watchstander immediately sat up straight from where they had been reaching for a caffeine pack that had fallen on the floor and slapped the call button for the Officer of the Day. The intercom went live and the Teruvian called out over the station intercom; “Officer of the Day to Communications, Ready Crew to Ready Boat. OOD to Comms, Ready Crew to Ready Boat.” “CQD. CQD. CQD. Rqst Sta 14 come on net. Stop.” The whirring buzz of the Tachyon Mast receiving and processing signals at a prodigious rate could be heard somewhere deep in the station’s bowels. The Kaer’Satunae (Gadzu in common.) watch officer came jogging onto the Comms room deck, her long legs making what would have been six steps for the Teruvian’s legs a measly two. Her disheveled appearance brought a chuckle to the five foot tall