Tales of the Admins

[Korrd]

Asleep on his ship's cockpit was a man. Far away from civilization, awaiting for the ship's computer to give him the results of the last analysis of the rare out-of-place object he had come to investigate.
He was on the small, untidy cockpit of the small fighter. A fighter like no other, for it was outfitted with scientific equipment instead of guns, a powerful computer in the place where the torpedo magazines would normally had been, and an improved life support system, designed for truly long-duration missions. And this mission, would be a long one in fact...

The ship was operating from a Cruiser, which was orbiting twenty A.U away, unable to approach the site because of the huge gravity field that was being caused by the small, yet incredibly heavy neutron star so dense, that made the Omega-41 Neutron star look like a small moon with no gravity in comparison. A rarity in fact, as such a dense object should have became a black hole instead. It was too massive for the electron degeneracy pressure to keep it from crumbling under its own gravity.
The cruiser would have been disintegrated by the huge tidal forces that thing was responsible for. Being too big to fit inside the small spot of gravity-corrected space where the raven's claw was sitting right now.

For the moment, the Fighter was safe on the centre of the gravitationally stable region made possible by the 6 asteroids that were in orbit around it. Those buggers, made of super heavy Magnetic Monopoles, whose combined tidal forces compensated those of the star, made possible to orbit it at only 3.600 kilometres from its surface on a very fast orbit.
Despite all the measures taken to protect the ship, the gravity inside the Raven's Claw cockpit was quite weird. It wasn't constant, but varied as the distance from the centre of the orbiting masses increased. He was feeling a pull of two gravities on his feet, zero Gee on his belly, and around one Gee on his head, pulling him on the opposite direction. Fortunately, his stomach was empty, for he would have vomited otherwise. Only eighteen hours more, and the de-orbiter mass would reach him, taking his ship and guardian asteroids far away from the star and into safety. But first, he had to complete the analysis of the thing. The very reason why he was here, taking all those risks.

A soft sound began to ring inside the cabin, bringing him back to full awareness, and also scaring him to death. The life support alarms! he thought. No, it was the computer calling his attention, as his Head Up Display had drifted from his head and was now resting on the top of the cockpit quartz cabin. He reached for the HUD device, put it back on his head, and the true cockpit appeared in front of him, as the cockpit of the ship was a hologram created by the main computer and projected by his HUD device onto his eyes, all virtual.
He made some gestures with his hands, and the reason for that scary sound was made evident. A message. But not from his ship, but from the Sirius sector instead. He instructed the computer to stop correcting the ship's spin and to align it so its receiver always faced towards the direction of the message instead. The gravity differential would no longer be constant inside the ship, but he could receive the message now. It's a good thing that it was completely dark outside, as the star was no longer on a fixed position now, but seemed to orbit around him instead at a very fast pace. A vertiginous sight it would have been, specially with the gravity varying wildly now.

As the message slowly arrived, Korrd was wondering what it would be about. Something quite important he thought, for it was quite expensive to send a message this far from the Sirius sector, even for an ADMIN. To the very void between the galaxies, where eternal darkness reigned as there were no stars in a million light years radii.
The message came in slowly. At a few bytes per second speed. It was just a plain text message. No holographic, no audio, nothing more than some characters spoken on the common Sirius trade tongue, encrypted with the usual ADMIN security algorithms.
The signal was so weak that it took him three times to get it right. Mostly because it was a broad beam signal, not the standard narrow-beam one, which could be made far stronger. They did not know my exact position, so they sent it on a general direction instead.
Fortunately for him, the thing was transmitted 6 times instead of one, to give him time to get his ship properly aligned first.

At last, the message arrived. It got decoded. And the full text of it now floated in front of him.


----

From: The Admin Battlestar, Omicron Delta.
To: Admin Korrd.

--- Message ---

Population uprising within the sector resulting in the destruction of Admin Laowai's craft...your assistance is requested to help us quell the rebellion... please come home

--- End message ---

Korrd read the message again. And then again just to be sure. How can an Admin ship be destroyed? How can a non-A.D.M.I.N crack one of our ships, so far superior compared to the rest that even no fleet on Sirius can dent it's shield? This must be a mistake, or a hardware failure.
He still could not believe it. It was no joke, he was sure of that. The sheer power needed to send an ultrawave transmission THAT far away must have been enormous. A drain even on the A.D.M.I.N resources. Slight, but significant non the less. AMd most likely, the Battlestar's magnetic accelerators might have been fried by it. The need to gather all Admin forces must be dire.
Despite that, he could not do anything until the de-orbiter mass arrived to take him and his "mass system" off the neutron star's close orbit and back into the safety of his cruiser. . .

Well, time to call to the cruiser so it can begin the jump engines startup sequence now.

It would be eighteen hours until the de-orbiter mass arrived, and three more days until the mass took him to the cruiser's orbit, and some twelve hours more until he could put enough delta-V to get in sync with the cruiser so he could dock with it. Too bad that I'm too far away from Sirius for the ADMIN powers to work here he thought.
The comm signal reached the cruiser, and the automated systems began to calculate a new orbit that would take the ship far enough from the star to open a stable jump point towards the Milky Way. It would be a week before he reached the far end of the galaxy, and the place where he had left a resupply vessel that could refuel his ship so it could reach the Sirius outer fringe, from where he could power up his admin drive, and jump directly to the battlestar. For the drive was fast, but it used a hell or a lot of power, and was short ranged. But, after all, the Sirius sector was a small place...
He seemed to froze inside his cockpit, but he was in a deep trance looking at the info from the last analysis as it poured out of his HUD, and interacting with the ship's computer. Getting busy was the best way to make time past quickly. And there was nothing he could do until he reached the cruiser...

---

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(If you find any mistake in my English, please let me know via a PM)
(Really, I speak terrible English, so please, tell me if I make mistakes. I'd like to improve it a bit )