The Good Doctor

[NraVadumee]

Ten Months Later...

Somewhere in the Edge Worlds…

“Doctor Nosiz, shields are down! Hull integrity is plummeting!”

Dr. Allan Nosiz needed a bloody new rating system for his days.

“Doctor Nosiz, the entire starboard section is - Oh no, no, no, no - Karen!!”

He had suffered some pretty abysmal days recently.

“Doctor Nosiz, Doctor Nosiz, they’re coming around for another run!”

Some real proper abysmals, to be honest.

“Doctor Nosiz, Doctor- AHHHHH!”

But this was just ridiculous.

Nine straight months of successful research endeavors, uncovering artifacts from the Edge Worlds that seemed to promise the biggest slew of xenoscientific discoveries since the Nomad War. He was permitted basing rights to a small asteroid outpost on the extreme edge of the Omicron Mu system, though he was never permitted to actually enter the system proper. He was never told exactly why he was threatened with immediate, on-sight hostility and a fire-at-will hit on him if he ever so much as blipped on their sensors. Naturally, as a clever man, he began piecing together a couple of theories.

He knew he was working for a shady organization with immense power, and immense power usually implies some degree of military might. Military might implies some central rally point or base of operations, and such a location would be… a sensitive subject. He suspected that, if Omicron Mu wasn’t such a location, it contained a jump hole or jump gate to one. He never determined who exactly was funding his work, nor how they gathered the funds, nor even the full extent of their operations and their legal status. He chose not to ask too many questions, though; he was conducting research, and while he was hoping to perhaps find some live K’hara specimens, that was all that mattered.

Well, it didn’t really matter anymore, given that he got exactly what he wanted.

They came out of nowhere, blips on the sensors. The crew seemed to fall silent when inquired as to their ID. Once they entered visual range, Nosiz recognized them instantly.

K’hara. Labraid Voidrunners. Six of them. Patrolling the nebula on the edge of the system, no doubt. Protecting their space. And Nosiz’s vessel was in their space.

They opened fire immediately. Nosiz knew that the Slomon K’hara were extremely advanced, but the sheer firepower they brought down was incredible. The shields were ruptured in seconds, and now it was a matter of how long before the entire ship went up in flames. Explosions were rending the helm as Nosiz looked in horror at the flames and explosions around him. One crew member had gone running to find his lady friend in vain, and another had already suffered near-complete decapitation from an exploding terminal. The entire ship was rocking from the concentrated firepower rending its hull, and the nanobots were hard at work. The pilot already discharged every shield battery in the hold; it amounted to about seven seconds of relief from the assault. The nanobots were next, and even now, Nosiz could tell that they were almost entirely expended. The ship was going to be doomed if he didn’t do something in the next few seconds.

“Pilot! Chart a course for the jump hole out of here! Engage cruise engines!” Nosiz commanded, barely getting the words out. He was no military officer, and the trembling in his voice showed it.

“Cruise engines?? We’ll be sitting ducks!” The pilot responded incredulously

“We either engage the cruise engines now and hope we can escape or sit here and die! Engage the engines and prepare to discharge the counter-measures in case of cruise disruptors!”

“Aye aye, sir!”

The ship heaved as the auto-navigator set it for the jump hole that would lead to their salvation, and the lights began flickering as the already stressed power core began directing energy to the engines. This was it; success meant living, and failure meant death. Nosiz bit his lips as the world around him seemed to fade away. An alarm and flashing red light meant that missiles were inbound; explosives or disruptors meant death either way. The pilot let loose a counter-measure, silencing the alert, but it simply came back to life a single rapid heartbeat later. Nosiz couldn’t see or hear the counter-measures or their launcher, but he knew on some level that it was going to be a cloud of flares back there.

“Cruise at 75%! Prepare for energy discharge!” The pilot exclaimed, and sure enough, the little indicator showing the reserve energy usually used for weaponry shrunk down to a tiny slice as the cruise engines prepared to burst into full power. More missiles, more flares. The K’hara were relentless in their hunt, thirsty for nothing less than the kill.

With perfect timing, the cruise engines came to life, sending the ship accelerating ahead at more than three times its impulse speed. It seemed the K’hara were low on disruptors, because the alert took a whole three seconds to activate now. By that point, they were exiting the K’hara’s range. But if this disruptor hit, it would shut down the cruise engines just long enough for them to catch up and finish the job. Hopeful, Nosiz looked at the pilot’s display, and lost most of his face’s color.

The counter-measures were completely expended. The only hope now was to outrace the missile and draw it out past its operating range before it impacted.

“Come on… come on…” Nosiz prayed to nobody in particular under his breath. He watched the indicator countdown he missile’s distance.

400 meters…

300…

200…

100…

...The ship did not rock or shake or explode.

They made it.

Nosiz released a sigh of relief, his eyes tearing in joy at the miracle he had just experienced. However, as he regained his composure, he looked up to see the display flashing with red lights.

“What… what is all of this?” He inquired.

“System failures. I had them set aside to focus on surviving, but… it seems like they’re… extensive…” The pilot had responded.

“Extensive? What kind of damage are we looking at?” Nosiz demanded. Fear of a Pyrrhic victory rose in his mind.

“Shields are permanently disabled… engines are severely damaged, we’ll have to shut down the cruise engines ASAP before they overload and detonate… life support is barely operational, but it will still keep us alive indefinitely… hull is a broken up shell… the rest of the crew is either dead or going to be dead in a few minutes… primary reactor is too damaged to operate at full capacity, which means reserve power isn’t going to regenerate…”

“... Are we going to make it?” Nosiz asked grimly.

“...Yeah, I think so. But it’s going to be a long trip back to base. We’re going to be running at minimal engine use, which means speeds at and below 3 m/s. Food and water mean trips to the mess hall, which seems to be… generally safe. There shouldn’t be issues in getting basic survival needs… so it’s all just a matter of how long, rather than if. And it’s going to be long.”

Nosiz reviewed the situation. They were flying at a snail’s pace, but they were going to live. They had taken several jump holes to this system, which was the furthest out they had gone, and some of them probably weren’t going to be properly phase-aligned when they arrived, which meant waiting potentially weeks to jump from one system to the next. And they had to play dead whenever a K’hara ship came by…

It was going to be rough.

But they were going to make it.

He would see his family again.

And that made it worth it.

“Let’s get started, then.”