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Recovered infomorphic data intercept

K4T-Y-61 Infomorphic Data Intercept

"Try it again. It'll work this time."
 
 
The pilot sighed, and turned their mind back to the control. The vessel under their command - only days ago a symbol of their industriousness, now sat moored as little more than a monument to their plight. The star was too far away. The ship could not make the jump.
 
 
The jump drive hummed to life, but to the pilot it may as well have been as far away as their destination. They saw only the great black expanse before them, and a tiny speck of light in the distance. E.Q4R.445 - if they could just get there, they could build their return gate. A bridge back home. A door in the prison. It was so close. The distance wasn't that far. They were so close.
 
 
Calculations ran across the pilot's field of view as the onboard processor ran the equations for the jump. The computer could see the target star, knew its mass, its temperature, how many bodies were in orbit around it. "You can almost hear it," the pilot thought. The sound of stars would sometimes echo off the warp fields of nearby starships, and seasoned pilots would become familiar with stars they saw often. Starsong, the more romantic among them called it. "It's right there."
 
 
In the back of their vessel, the jump drive began to roar. The orchestra was warming up, a cacophony of disparate sounds and lights. Pre-jump calculations were complete - the distance was measured and the computer knew the route. Subatomic particles screamed into existence and then vanished in an instant. Space around the core of the ship began to bend and flex. The Val's superstructure groaned, and hull compensators buzzed to life to mitigate the strain of the jump. The conductor had not yet stepped onto the podium. 
 
 
"What's it reading?" the voice in the pilot's comms said.
 
 
The pilot turned their attention from the computer, towards the fuel assessors. Somewhere in the belly of the ship was the fuel assembly - high-energy particulate sparked to action by ionizing radiation. Even at the reactor's maximum output with the highest density of fuel available, the crude matter that fuel had been distilled from was old, and the resulting SOF-40 was weak and brittle. Would it be enough? If they'd only found a younger rift, they could have had a fleet of ships on their way out of K4T-Y-61 right now. The gate would’ve already been built. They'd scoured the region for such a rift - but none had appeared.
 
 
The pilot watched the fuel assessor closely. The Val was clever - it knew the danger of making a jump it couldn't complete. Ending up between stars was a death sentence. Without a signature to lock onto, nobody was coming to find you. No vessel in space could produce such a signal, either. You'd end up adrift, floating aimlessly in the darkness until your engines burned out, or worse. There were always stories about things that lived in the dark places between stars. Things that would slip out of the Stillness and pull you back in with them. So no, the Val would not attempt the jump unless the assessor confirmed the fuel mix was sufficient to complete the jump. During previous attempts the computer hadn't even lit the jump drive - they'd pulled the safeties so far back now that the pilot was almost flying manually. Any further and the Val threatened to lock out, and there would be no more attempts.
 
 
And they had made other attempts. Not just at jumping; they had opened up the filament channel for the local Clonebank, looking for other Riders on their network who might hear their calls for assistance and lend a hand. They didn't need much help - they'd long given up on asking for someone to help them bridge the gap with another gate. Even a tank of fuel they could use to ferry one of their builders over the gap would do. They had money. They could pay for the service. But the response was always the same.
 
 
"K4T? How the hell did you end up out there?"
 
 
"Yeah, no, I'm good, thanks. Good luck getting out of that backwater."
 
 
"Sorry mate, I'm far enough from home as is. Can't risk getting stuck back there like you lot."
 
 
The Val was roaring now, hot injectors pumping the atomized fuel particulate into the jump matrix. Ice was forming on the condensers surrounding the drive inlets, and a small fleet of drones scurried over the surface of the vessel to keep the important sensors clear. They had never gotten this far. The pilot knew the mood was different - all idle chatter on their comms had fallen silent. A whole region of Riders sat watching the lone Val. This time would be enough. They'd done everything they possibly could - there was no further they could push the fuel system. It would be enough.
 
 
"What does it say?"
 
 
The pilot took a deep breath, and then another. They gestured for the computer to finish the fuel assessment. The computer went silent. For a moment, there was nothing.
 
 
[JUMP TARGET OUT OF RANGE, FUEL MIXTURE INSUFFICIENT]
 
 
And all of a sudden, alarms began to blare around them. Fuel was rushing out of the jump drive back through the compressors. The jump drive core was flushed and hot gasses seemed to seep through every panel in the hull of the ship. The pilot screamed and raged inside the control heart of the ship. 
 
 
All around the Val, messages began to ping out again as the small fleet began to disperse - back to searching for another rift.
 
 
"Is there anyone out there?"
 
 
"Can anyone come help?
 
 
"It's not that far."
 
 
"We're so close."
 
 
"Please help."
 
 
But the Frontier was silent.

Awake, and remain awake eternally

K4T-Y-61 Infomorphic Data Intercept

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