Just One of Those Days On an Old Derelict Ship
Authors Note: Written in 2018. This story was actually written for a literature class I was taking at the time. It was 3 times as long originally but the teacher demanded I shorten it as part of the material limitations. I lost the deleted parts, but it's probably better this way. I got highest points in class for it!
“We all have things we enjoy, sitting on my ass is mine.” Rigsby said, he was leaning in his chair and staring at the dark metal ceiling. “Some people paint, some people play with yarn, this? This is my relaxation, it gives me time to think ...and I get to stay as far away from other people as possible while doing just that.”
He pulled his legs off the desk and leaned his sizeable, unfit, upper body over it, bumping his elbow into the desk light as he did. It skewed the light, nearly obscuring their faces. He didn't care to correct it.
“So say,” he said. “Why do you annoy me?”
“But captain,” Johnson the chief of engineer said. Her hands behind her straightened back with a uniform which hid nothing. “The noises and clangs are getting worse as the days go by.”
“So?” Rigsby said, his face losing composure. “I wasn't elected captain so I would deal with technical issues. That's your job description.”
“But captain,” Johnson insisted, with a short glance into his eyes for the first time. “I don't know what to do about it and the people are getting worried.”
“You're getting worried,” Rigsby said with a hint that he really couldn't care about the situation at all, but getting Johnson out of his office was becoming more and more vital to his own peace. He leaned back into his chair again and placed his hands behind his head. “Tell the people the air vents are undergoing maintenance.”
“For days?” Johnson asked. She blinked at his reluctance of care.
Rigsby waited a few moments, expecting her to leave. He finally gave in and sat up straight, his hands planted on the desk.
“Fine,” he said. “What is it you expect of me?”
“We need a full investigation,” Johnson said. “The noise is coming from the walls.”
“But there is nothing out there, beyond the walls.” Rigsby said.
“Exactly.”
Rigsby pushed himself up to stand, his chair slowly rolling away from him.
“Oh, I get it,” he said with a sigh. “So you need me to oversee a walk operation.” He sighed again and rolled his eyes. “Lead the way.”
Johnson turned on heel and left the captains room. The outside of the room was just as gloomy as it had been on the inside. Not enough light to cast a good view and all of the detail was rusty old metal.
They left through a dark passageway and entered into a dimly lit open space. Cardboard and old plating from the lifeboats of an era past had been used to construct stalls in the now defunct cargo bay. The market place was full of life, with hundreds of people having a good time, participating in events, and yelling for sales and trade.
“Hello captain!” The nearest stall owner said. “Can I interest you in some hot beverage today?”
Rigsby just held his hand up as a no, passing the man without a word. There wasn't time for that sort of nonsense. The sooner they solved the mystery, the sooner he would be back in his chair. Enjoying the bliss of solitude.
“This way captain,” Johnson said. Leading him through a small path behind the stalls.
Once they arrived at the other end of the market, they entered a second dark passageway.
At the end of the passage was the staircase down to engineering. This was perhaps the most lit room in the entire ship. It had to be, as it was the only vital part of the ship still in operation. If something here went awry, it could spell death for the entire crew.
“Hi captain,” a boy no more than fifteen said. He was sitting by a screen with a series of numbers flashing by in various colors. He wore the same style of suit as Johnson. “I didn't expect to see you come personally.”
“Eh? Why didn't you?”
“You didn't tell him yet?” The boy asked in a hush to Johnson, shoulders raised, head forward.
“No,” Johnson said. “I was... leading up to it.”
“Told me what?” Rigsby said, the annoyance was clear in his tone.
“Well, you know the logs from back when our great grandfathers got stuck here.”
“I've studied them just as much as the rest of the crew.” He said.
“Well,” Johnson said. She looked concerned. “You know how in the beginning, a lot of debris ended up causing damage to the hull, which then had to be repaired externally.”
“Yes?”
“Well...”
Rigsby closed his eyes and mouthed a silent “Fuck,” then faced Johnson. “When was the last time someone repaired a leak on the outside?”
“The last time,” Johnson said. Thinking. “I believe I was five years old back then.”
”...and that was how long ago?”
“Twenty four years ago.”
“What,” Rigsby said. “You mean to tell me the evac suits haven't been used since? How do we even know they still work?”
“Well, captain,” Johnson said. “As you said yourself, there's nothing out there anymore.”
“Clearly I was mistaken considering what we're about to do.”
“Yes, well,” Johnson said. “No one expected this to happen.”
“Remind me to make it law for routine inspection of the evac suits.”
“Yes captain.” She said with what couldn't be anything other than shame.
Rigsby and Johnson left the engineering operation room and into the nearest airlock. They had twenty suits to choose from and they each picked one at random that looked functional. Did a preliminary air pressure test. Then got ready for the depressurization.
They sat at each end of the airlock, the com buzzing.
“How far is the walk?” Rigsby asked.
“The noises has been coming from the front of the ship,” Johnson said. “Same place as all the damage in the past, so I gander about fifteen minutes.”
“It makes sense that it would be at the front and not from the back,” Rigsby said. “Considering what's behind our engines.”
Once the room had been turned into a vacuum, they opened the door to the outside. Pitch black, just as promised. The first time someone on the ship saw the empty void in twenty four years. Neither of them felt comfort in the void, and it was apparent.
“It feels like my stomach has been gouged out,” Johnson said. “It must have been terror working all those shifts out here in the black back then.”
Rigsby grunted. He didn't want to admit fear of the emptiness to himself. He kept occupied with his evac suits status.
They each used a set of magnetic clamps to climb their way along the hull. The nose of the ship was squared and the ship itself large. They wouldn't be able to tell what was causing the noise until they reached the edge.
It took them a good eighteen minutes to reach the nose.
“Johnson,” Rigsby said, looking back. He struggled to let his gaze go of what he saw. “A-Are you okay back there?”
“It's hard to believe what I saw, captain,” she said.
“Y-You think,” he stuttered, turning back to look at the nose of the ship. “You think maybe we have an opportunity here?”
“Um, captain.”
“I mean, think about it.” He said. “Just get one man in each suit and deploy a team of welders!”
“Captain!”
“Let's just head back and prepare,” he said in a smug tone. “This is going to win me my second term!”
“Cap...tain...”
“What's wrong with you?” He asked and turned to look at Johnson again.
Johnson dangled with a single hand at the magnetic clamp.
“Shit!” He yelled. “Johnson!”
There was no answer.
“These suits are fucking suicide,” he complained has he began to clamp his way towards to her. “Fuck.”
He pulled the string buckle from his suit and connected it with hers. Nudged her hand out of the clamp, then started climbing towards the nose of their ship.
“You fuckers better not be hostile,” he mumbled. He had limited time to act before Johnson would die from asphyxiation, going forward was her only option for survival.
At the nose of their ship, was another, smaller ship. Alien in structure, it looked far newer than theirs ever did. Even when it was newly constructed, a stylized structure had not been part of the design. Getting the mission done had been.
He found a hatch at the bottom of the alien ship and opened it. There was a big green button in there that read 'Pressurization'. He locked the door and slammed the button hard. The room filled up within mere seconds. With that, he immediately removed Johnsons helmet. She was unconscious, but breathing.
As Rigsby removed his own helmet, the door to the airlock opened, and another human stood on the other side.
“Hello?” He said.
“What?” Rigsby said in turn.
“My name is Miles McCarthy.”
“What...”
“Oh, sorry. Let me introduce myself formally.” He said. “I'm a xenoarchaeologist and I found your ship here. It's very exciting, oh and, your friend there. Is she alright?”
“What is going on?”
“I've been studying your ship for a few days,” he said. “I didn't think anyone was still alive in there. It would have been much too dangerous for me to go inside without a team. You know, protocols and all that.”
“I'm the captain.” Rigsby said, stunned.
“I'm a captain too!”
“Rigsby.”
“Right, well then.” He said. “Captain Rigsby. Your ship is old, very old. There aren't that many records of this ship type. I've only seen some virtual reconstructions. So tell me, how long ago do you believe you left harbour?”
“Our great grandfathers left in 2127.” Rigsby said. “That was about two hundred years ago.”
“Oh, that's really something isn't it!” McCarthy said, all excited. “That was over thirteen thousand years ago from my perspective!”
“No one came looking for us in thirteen thousand years?”
McCarthy laughed, “you do know where you are, right?”
“Yeah, in the void.”
“Right,” McCarthy said. “It's only been about the last thousand years that we can even get this close to a singularity. It's frankly quite mind-blowing that your engines has create an equilibrium, keeping you from falling all the way in.”
Johnson regained consciousness. “W-what's going on?”
“Hello there, miss!” McCarthy said.
She stared at him blankly.
“I think,” Rigsby said. “I think we're about the be rescued.”