Out of bounds

[Sombs]

---

Day 15 - Location unknown

It was more than two weeks by now since the Apahanta was stuck at the black hole. Ezrael stopped counting the days already as each day felt the same anyway. Getting up in the morning, shower, shave and style, breakfast, daily briefing, morning workout, lunch, system checks, talking with the crew, playing poker in the canteen, dinner, evening workout, resting at the apple tree and then returning to his room. For now, alone. Sombra was in a cryo capsule and Lorena was just entering one. Ezrael stood in the corridor infront to the cryo room, leaning his back against the wall while waiting. Four people were entering those capsules now, five in total now. It was a weird feeling to send those people to sleep. They might never wake up again, or only to find themselves on a space ship without energy. He didn't envy them at all.

For a while he stood there alone until Sherry left the cryo room, looking surprised to the side to spot him. "Have you been standing here the entire time?" she asked him, not a bit of an indication of the surprise in her voice.

"Sort of. Leon just told me to come to the engine room, he wants to show us something." He smirked at her. "I thought I fetch you and we go there together. It might be good news, finally."

---

Leon, Annie, Ezrael and Sherry stood infront of the control panel in the engine room, looking up at the giant mindmap on the screen. To Ezrael's positive surprise, Leon seemed pretty excited about it, same as Annie. So Ezrael and Sherry metaphorically leaned back and listened to their attempts of explaining what they planned.

"So this is it. Thanks to the little hint of the Captain, we looked into the nomad parts of the ship. We looked up all data we have about them. Function, numbers, values, possible modifications. The thing is, the APM cores are able to gather more energy than any other core in Sirius, thanks to the nomadic parts in it. Our AP-605940 not only uses thermic but also photonic energy as well as radiation. Heat, light and radiation, Ezrael." Leon smirked at his Captain and before Ezrael was able to say something to his defense, as he was well aware what those terms were standing for, Leon continued. "I never thought about it, but this is also the reason why we measure these output fluctuations. This is radiation. Not produced by us but by the anomaly out there. The shields only absorb so much of it, and some remaining radiation rays hit the nomadic parts of the AP-605940. With other words, we've been harnessing tiny bits of energy the whole time since we are here."

Ezrael nodded, understanding it so far. "Can we make use of that somehow?"

"Yes, we can." Leon smiled at Annie, who then took over.

"To be honest, the chances for this plan to fail are high and the repercussions in that case would be catastrophal, Captain. That being said, it is the only alternative to doing nothing." The short woman eyed the Commander first, then the Captain. "We have tried various scenarios of harnessing the radiation of the black hole anomaly, however there is only one scenario we can actually survive. This scenario requires us to alter the Apahanta quote-unquote a bit. This will probably take a month of time and will eat up many resources we have and almost all of our water. And the Gales and the Thumpers. In return, we get one, and only one, blind jump. Meaning we can leave this black hole."

"The procedure will require us to enter the gravity well of the black hole to reach a certain location in the radiation fountain our sensors picked up when we turned them on. We will bend the shields to channel the radiation through the power core, and the power core will transfer the energy directly to the jump drive. We have only that one chance. Once the jump drive is charged, which usually takes only thirty seconds, we will blind jump out of here. I don't need to tell you what can happen if we blind jump. We could leave hyperspace inside an atmosphere or even inside a planet's tectonic plates, we could end up in a sun or anything else dangerous. We also don't know whether we will blind jump back to Sirius, the Lost Sector or Cassiopeia, or even other sectors. We could leave hyperspace and find us at Trenton Outpost, encircled by the Liberty Navy, or in Sector 21, or in Gallia. Or inside the Dyson Sphere. The chances however are extremely slim to get stopped by another black hole. We will, assuming we will as usual leave hyperspace close to a stellar object, probably end in any place better than this black hole. We might end up in a system with ice asteroids, where we can refill our water supplies by harvesting those ice rocks. We might find raw materials we can process in the workshop. We also might just end up infront of Livadia."

"A leap of faith it is. Risking all our current resources to end up in a system that at least allows us to gather new resources. Sounds good to me. How big are the chances of success?" Ezrael asked, staring at the mindmap with his arms folded infront of his chest.

"We'll need to install some security measures to ensure we'll have full control over any situation, but the chance of success is, well, uhm. I say it is good."

"Sounds well enough to me. What do you think, Captain?" Sherry asked, turning towards Ezrael while she kept her hands behind her back.

To Ezrael however, this was a heavy decision. An all-in on this, or rather buy more time until they would come up with a better plan, if there was anything better. They would need time to make all the modifications. Sighing, Ezrael raked his fingers through his jet-black hair. "You probably want me to decide about this right now. Uhm... You know, give me one day to think about it. In the meantime, you two should take a break."

Leon and Annie blinked at each other before glancing back to Ezrael. Sherry simply smirked for one short moment before returning to her neutral countenance. After two weeks, this was a little glimmer of hope. Yet once more Ezrael had to make a decision that would seal their fate.

---

---

---

Uncharted System Stories: 18 | 32 | 34 | 37 | 38 | 85

Templates: Character | Transmissions

---