Non-Cam RP fiction is OK, right?

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

The two derelict spaceships orbited one another with slow grandeur amid the bluish mist of the fourth? fifth? sixth? dimension. The Daedalus was lifeless, each rotation exposing the jagged hole torn in the skin of its engine module.

On the Icarus, the last four crewmembers had finally turned away from the viewscreen onto desolation and left the bridge to the horror in melted flesh, melded to the metal of her chair, that had once, seventy five years ago, been human and sane.

Ignition in thirty minutes, announced the computer to the nearly empty ship.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go back,” said Ioannis, the Computer Officer, at last, reluctantly putting words to all their fears. “Those nanites; what if they got loose?”

“Not go back?” responded their navigator, Kleoniki, incredulously. “Spend the rest of my life on this derelict hulk, getting turned into a pool of sentient goop? Not for me, thankyou so much.”

“We could go into quarantine,” Security Officer Tom put in brightly as he dodged one of the insubstantial glowing spheres that drifted through the walls. “Anyway, they must have come up with some way of dealing with rogue nanites in the last seventy five years.”

“Mmm,” said Dr Tanaka, unconvinced. “Let’s see what we can learn from whatever’s in the sick bay cryo unit, shall we?”

“Yeah, cos opening the last cryo unit we found was such a good idea,” Kleoniki pointed out.

“This one still looks human, anyway,” said the doctor, peering through the frosted faceplate of the unit. “I’m gonna try to bring him round.”

“I’ll check the lab,” volunteered Ioannis, quickly backing away.

“And I’ll check the security feeds,” agreed Tom, moving quickly to the computer at the other end of sick bay.

Kleoniki backed up against the wall by the door, holding a spanner in front of herself defensively.

The doctor sighed and keyed in the sequence to begin resuscitation.

Resuscitation in three minutes. Please have medical personnel standing by.

The life signs were surprisingly good for an emergency cryo. The video records from seventy five years ago suggested that he’d been put in cold storage as a response to a ship-wide emergency that prevented immediate treatment, not as a result of organ failure. Dr Tanaka hovered over the control panel, adjusting temperature and supervising the withdrawal of the invasive life-support apparatus.

The door opened, and the last surviving crewmember of the Daedalus staggered into their waiting hands.

“Has it gone?” he asked them with hopeful desperation. “Have you got rid of it?” One of the spheres drifted through the bulkhead and his face sagged into a rictus of despairing horror. “It’s still here. It’s still here. It’s here, and it wants to come through to our world. You have to get rid of it! Stop it!”

There was a moment of stunned silence as a number of fragmentary oddities suddenly fell together into one horrifically coherent whole.

“To the bridge,” Dr Tanaka ordered. “We have to stop the jump!”

“Yes! …what?” said Tom.

Ioannis paused. “Hang on. Where’s Kleoniki?”

Countdown accelerated. Ignition in three minutes.

Kleoniki lounged by the secondary nav console, her elegant ankles crossed on the comms panel opposite, occasional taps of one perfectly manicured finger sending the navigational computer down the correct branch of calculations.

She wasn’t accustomed to philosophical thought, but it hadn’t taken long to ponder the choices before her. She didn’t know why the rest of the crew had been so willing to believe the superstitious poppycock found in the captain’s private letters, but even if the return jump really did ‘destroy the universe’, it still beat hell out of slowly going mad through boredom as the nanites built her into the structure of the ship.

A red light started flashing on the console. Someone was trying to bypass the locks. She smiled and typed a short phrase in the secondary window.

> BITE ME :)

“Kleoniki!” Ioannis groaned through gritted teeth as he watched the legend scroll across the lock display. “Let me in! We have to stop the jump!”

The door remained stubbornly shut. Reaching into his toolbox he pulled out a blowtorch and set it to the bulkhead, knowing, even as he did, that he could not be in time.

Countdown accelerated. Ignition in thirty seconds.

Tom and Dr Tanaka burst into the engine chamber, now glowing brightly with the energy gathered to punch back into their own dimension.

“I don’t know how to stop it!” wailed Dr Tanaka, looking around in vain for any comprehensible controls.

“And I don’t think we should,” said Tom as he twisted round to grab the doctor in his brawny arms.

There was the hiss of a hypo spray and Tom dropped to the floor.

Ignition in five… four… three… two…

On the bridge, Kleoniki tapped one last command and leaned back, as the viewscreen opened, to watch the glorious scenery of her triumphal return.

In the engine room, Dr Tanaka threw away the hypo spray and staggered towards the blazing buildup of power. As the countdown came to its end she finally reached the edge and paused there for only a second before letting herself fall into the flux. The room exploded with brightness.

Ignition.