Asha No Surname, abbreviated NS on official forms, captain of the Amissus kicked her sundress forward with an exaggerated motion before falling into her ready room desk chair. A small room held all that she would need while the fleet was underway. Her own personal berth being only available during her three-day off-duty cycle, she lived out of the ready room. Multiple sundresses hung on the hanger in the corner behind a privacy screen, all in yellows and other bright colors to contrast her emergency suit worn under them. It had been unexpected, but she had found herself with a bit of a distraction from the monotonous fleet operations while Weylend Smith, fleet manager, negotiated via long-range communications with Cygni Binary to support an expedition to Wolf Alpha for research and colony scouting. Her ship, Amissus, and others like it, would be necessary for such an undertaking, and Smith was dogged in securing the opportunity, insisting on a trip to Cygni Binary for in-person negotiations. He was normally right on these things, and they needed the contract. The distraction at this moment was a distress signal arriving from Vessel 4113 via automated systems. Her communications technician had dutifully responded, and the 4113 automated system returned a stream of information in regards to the ship's location and condition. The ship itself was largely unscathed but a radioactive mess. And its pilot was near death and unconscious. He had been found dangling by his mechanically locked hand at the containment release lever, the power generation system gone cold being unable to maintain fusion without proper containment. The ship's log advised that he had been hanging there for twenty hours before their arrival. Currently, he is in the medical bay, still unconscious and stable. Two of her security and recovery team had gone aboard and declared it was an attempted suicide by reactor.
Asha had nearly gone cross-eyed reading that conclusion. Haulers were seldom among the suicide stats, and those that were seemed to prefer less painful means such as navigating into an asteroid belt while the compression drive was engaged. Rumor was, you never experienced the reality of death at relative speeds beyond light. She doubted that. Besides, there was too much strangeness in this report to simply attribute the resolution of things so straightforwardly. Every door in every companionway and drone bay had been ruptured in a way suggesting travel towards engineering, supported by autonomous logs registering rapidly increasing pressures causing door failure. The flight deck door was in one piece and in place, but the ventilation system had undergone a procedure for a caustic atmosphere emergency, recovery teams had identified nothing of the sort in the atmosphere currently or previously. His personal defense weapon had two discharges, but scorching consistent with directed energy impacts could only be found on the first companionway leading from the flight deck. That was two of potentially eight beams. Where did the other six strike? Besides all this, pilot logs showed that he had been experiencing strange communication errors and deflections.
Then there was the pilot, Asha changed reports on her handheld display pad, Peter Dove. He was a former member of the Spaceborn Legionnaires. A loose militia for the equally loose consortium that was the spaceborn flotilla. Not unusual, the legion was a volunteer service, but nearly all spaceborn served. They were a fragile society, with no planet to call home, and every ship was a precious thing and a target. The Sol Confederate still actively hunted them. His record was unimpressive, but honorable. Her ever-present smile flickered for a moment as she recognized some of the battles he had been part of. Her own memory of the battles was not kind. The Dorian campaign stood out starkly. A collection of 14 moons in orbit around a supermassive gas giant, each a memorial to slaughter. She uncomfortably shifted in the chair. Those memories still plagued her, and physical scars burned occasionally as the synthetic layers underneath inflamed the surrounding organic tissue. But his work as an isolated hauler was unblemished. He delivered on time, on budget. His ship was leased, always in good repair. Nothing to suggest he was anything but a well-disciplined man. Like others, he had scars of war, but he was otherwise in good health per the pilot registry. That was not what they found, however. Mr. Dove was near death. His right knee had been badly damaged from what the medical officer determined was a fall, fractures in the surrounding bones and torn ligaments would have made movement excruciating. When he opened the containment of the power generation system he had received well above the lethal dose of radiation and was only saved by his suit's shielding. The medical officer could repair the burns and DNA damage, but if he hadn’t placed his suits' shielding in series, siphoning power off the core, he would have surely been killed. More evidence against suicide. The medical report was concise on all these matters, but the reporting officer's sureness was missing from the second part of the report:
“The patient has extensive damage to the Myelin Sheath, evident in what can only be described as holes exposing the nerve cells beneath. There are locations in the feet, legs, and lower body where the damage occurs at greater frequency, as well as a location on the right shoulder and near the heart. Damage of this level would have affected the saltatory conduction of the nerve cells, leading to an observable delay in motor function and disorders of the heart and lungs. Suit logs show that stimulants were administered at increasingly high levels, as well as increasing oxygen levels to compensate for the blood oxygen saturation levels falling below safe levels indicating hypoxemia. Also present in the logs is a bradycardic rhythm which could be related to and consistent with damage to the Myelin Sheath.”
The medical officer went on to explain that autoimmune and viral infections did not drill holes in the sheath. Asha vocalized her discomfort at the idea with a groan. He’d live, but the recovery time before his nerves recovered would be extensive.
Her display signaled a message, an addendum to the report. A member of the recovery team had been working to recover data from the ship's internal recorders, camera, and audio. The radiation had corrupted and distorted the majority of them past recovery, but one audio file had been recovered. The message was for her situational awareness, but contained an extra line, “recovered from suit, expedition class got all the bells. It is unsettling as hell.” Her eyebrows shot up. She played the audio file, and it was as expected, distorted. The radiation had inserted numerous pops, clicks, and stutters. She had to focus on making the two voices. Voices! She sat up, both feet to the ground, nearly ready to spring over her desk. Voices? Manifest showed it was a single crew vehicle, support, and supply configured to the same. She adjusted the volume and focused harder, replaying the short audio file. A name, Peter Dove, possibly, and a phrase, never touched by creation? Punctuated with roaring laughter. The gong of the radiation alarm sounded; containment had been breached. More laughter, weaker but louder, closer to the suit microphone, possibly Peter Dove himself, and a multi-tonal roar layered under the static: “Civilian merchant vessel 4113, pilot Peter Dove, receiving your distress signal, how may I assist?” Followed by “Never touch creation,” All the while weakly laughing, Peter Dove slipped from consciousness.