Dusters SEVEN

“One, Come in One”, Aidyn called again. “Anybody? Anyone there?”

Nothing, it was a dead ship.

After a ½ hour of trying, all of One’s power systems were cut off remotely. It was floating in a stable orbit and Aidyn radioed Corporate for a tug.

Dinah was baffled and crushed, she slumped in her chair staring at nothing. With all systems off, any crew onboard would certainly be dead on arrival. She downloaded all of the logs to her room’s local terminal and recused herself from the recovery effort. “Can you handle the please?” She asked Aidyn, nearly in tears.

“I got it.” He answered, seeing the pain in her eyes. He touched her arm as she began to walk away, she didn’t notice. A brick to the head, maybe she would.

Dinah got to her quarters and cut off her intercom. She sat in front of her terminal screens and unfurled some drawings on her desk. She began at the end and worked her way back to the beginning, searching for what had gone wrong. Her virtual model of Duster Two gleaned off to her left.

She stared at it for a second and whispered to herself “This can’t happen again.”

Aidyn got the call from Geoff. He wanted the first ship untouched and shutdown. He ordered it towed back to Terra immediately. It was Welhaven property, so there was no arguing, Aidyn assumed it was part of an investigation.

A few of the staff were afraid of legal problems due to the deaths. Aidyn didn’t know what to tell them, but said not to worry about it. The Company would cover all that.

Dinah reconstructed the whole event using the logs and their own sensor data taken from Chaffee. It was bizarre, the collector field went crazy.

When it came down, the ship was left twisted and mutilated. Dinah noted the log readings and the levels of resonance from the two malfunctioning arrays right before the problems began. She would have to adjust the emergency shutdown program to initiate before these levels are reached.

Aidyn stopped by and told her the Company was taking One. She hoped they could figure out exactly what happened. It was over her head, and thought the Company should be able to sort it out. They relayed her software adjustments to HQ, so they knew the problem was being addressed.

A small service was held to commemorate the lost crew and Dinah showed up at the end. It was held in the hanger with Two. They sat cross legged on the floor as the visiting “generic” clergy laid passage to the souls, rattling off the names of the dead. Dinah just caught the end of the speech;

“and they have not passed in vain. Their heroic efforts will propel science, mans knowledge and Welhaven to new heights. The efforts you all make here are blessed and must continue. Thus the lost souls here come to see a good justification for their passage to the other side.” She said. She went by the name Madam Graghem.

Dinah didn’t talk to her after it wrapped up, she met Aidyn’s gaze on the way out and nodded towards the exit, silently asking him to follow.

She went straight to the recreation room, which was empty. Aidyn showed up shortly after her.

“I don’t know if we should continue this until we know what exactly what went wrong.” She professed.

“It will be fine Dinah, what are the odds of another failure in that exact configuration again? You have adjusted the software to shutdown if that even starts to happen, so it should be fine.” He told her.

He took her hands in his and looked into her eyes, “Dinah, you are the most intelligent person I know and you can overcome this and see the project through. This was just a fluke, a freak, we couldn’t have prevented it.”

“I should have. There are too many variables if the arrays have problems, I can’t begin to fathom the results of those.” She said.

“This was our hurdle and you found a way over it.” He said. “A shutdown will prevent it happening again, you have it covered.”

“I don’t trust it Aidyn.” She said, leaning into him and he embraced and supported her.

“To bed with you, little lady.” He said, smiling.