Project New Dawn - Printable Version

Loud sirens begin to howl from each of the control panels on the bridge, alongside visual alerts. The crew is being pushed from left to right as the New Dawn attempts to recover from the explosion's backblast. The hull structure almost seems to scream and ache under the immense forces put onto it. An impact within the ship's armored belt is something that, while planned for, was never anticipated to be of this magnitude.

"Containment breach detected within bow's mid section. Locking adjacent compartments and prepare for decontamination. All affected personal are to find themselves in the closest protected facility and wait for further instructions." Aurora's voice could clearly be heard via the ship's speakers, repeating this exact message over and over. While the crew, even aboard the main bridge, is busy seeking shelter she is already busy sending out dozens of drones from the ship's hangar bays to access damage and check on the state of the main autoclave in which the Nomad vessel has been kept at.

To her surprise the reinforced airlock that has sealed the entire chamber was blown open entirely, with few visible traces of the derelict ship inside. The entire autoclave has imploded, tearing open pipes that supply important gasses to the decontamination chambers as well as thrusters and other systems, indicating that a misfire during the incineration process must have cause the massive explosion. Nearby compartments have already been sealed at this moment, containing any sort of potential biohazard within them and preventing the ruptured airlocks to leak atmosphere into space.

The repair drones behave almost like a swarm of bees around their queen, completely surrounding the New Dawn and preventing a catastrophe of unknown scale. One by one, all remaining crew gather in one of the biohazard shelters and are sealed in there until the situation is under control. Despite the intensity of the situation, it also acts as a great way of testing how far Aurora has come in her development. Constantly learning the crew's procedures, refining her own skillset and improvising where possible give her a good selection of tools to solve this problem.

Around half an hour later the alarms begin to subside. Most fires have been put out and leaks have been provisionally patched, allowing the crew to leave the shelters after being thoroughly decontaminated. "What the hell happened Aurora?!" Captain Page storms towards the center console to get an overview of just how badly of a shape the New Dawn is in. Luckily the main reactor hasn't been damaged and only one auxilliary powercore had to be shut down to prevent further damaging its systems. She sighs and leans back in her seat, taking a look out of the bridge's windows to see the remainders of the autoclave's hatch floating in front of the heavily deformed front section of the ship.

"An explosion blew open the autoclave, disintegrating the derelict ship and most of the heat shielding. All available drones have been sent to conduct repairs, but I'm afraid we will need to return to allied space for outside protection for the time being. The New Dawn is currently not capable of defending itself. I advise to plot a course directly towards Freeport eleven."

The captain sighs, tapping through a number of menus in an attempt to recover video footage of the accident, still thinking a fault with the incineration process to the cause of the explosion. "Plot the course then, and give me whatever video files you can recover of what happened. I want a precise answer as to why a third of my ship is destroyed." Even though nobody aboard this ship should be capable of sabotaging the mission on a purely logical level, Olivia's instincts consider the combination of a destroyed nomad vessel, inoperability of the New Dawn and missing video evidence of it all to be rather suspicious.

Video footage of the accident

The behemoth begins to slowly make its way towards the jumphole to the Omicron Delta system, relying on its shields to deflect incoming asteroids as it can't dodge them with reduced manouverability caused by the damaged bow thrusters. "Recovering video files. I will display the last visual contact we have to the insides of the incineration chamber." A display forms in front of the commanding staff in the middle of the bridge, showing the Nomad vessel pulsing with almost blinding light. On closer inspection the ship seems to form small cracks across its outer layer which increase in brightness and intensity with every pulse of light emitted by the ship. The last frame of the video log shows the vessel rupturing, entirely annihilating its tissue in a violent explosion. No scientific entry or eyewitness report had ever mentioned this kind of safety mechanism, leaving the crew nearly clueless to the phenomenon.