3 I Finally Get to Use That Shovel I Bought!

Space flight is a very subjective topic when it comes to comfort.

Some people can calmly take the emptiness of space and enjoy it for the beauty it holds, while others suffer from shock when confronted by the infinite vastness of the cosmos, and how small and insignificant it makes them feel. Truly, an existential dilemma for those with weaker stomachs.

As for myself, I enjoy all the aspects of space flight, with the unique exception of coming out of FTL level speeds. For whatever reason, the transition from the beige color of light speed to an immediate smash-cut to the infinite stars taking up my view makes me want to violently vomit. It is for this reason that I am glad I blacked out after entering the blind FTL jump, because it meant I could avoid having to consciously witness coming out of it.

Waking up in the cockpit, I immediately noticed that my back had hurt immensely, and this probably stemmed from the fact that I had somehow transitioned from my command chair onto the solid floor. Fortunately, I had placed a gauche yet functional shag carpet at the base of command chair (I sometimes didn't wear shoes, so it was for comfort), so at least I was splayed out on the floor in relative comfort.

Slowly picking myself off the floor, I viewed the grey walls of the cockpit and noticed that there was a lack of light in the command room save for the emergency lights that had energy supplied from a separate power generator I kept beneath the frame of the ship, right beneath my quarters, which fortunately I was smart enough to also routed to power the emergency oxygen circulator and reserves. This probably meant that I had lost a large amount of power exiting FTL, or that the main generator was fried.

The problem was the gravity. If the main generator was off, then I should not be on the floor. The backup generator I had set up only supplied power to comms, oxygen, emergency lights, and my personal workstation computer in case I needed to create and send more sophisticated messages over the comms. I had to get to the bottom of this, and quickly.

"Alfred!" I called out expecting no reply. Sure enough, no sound came out of the ships speakers, and tilting my head over to his monitor I noticed that his personal screen was powered down and emitting no lights in response to my query.

This was to be expected of course, Alfred was tied to the main generator. Fortunately, Alfred was loaded onto an internal drive that could be removed (with some effort) and could be hooked up to my personal workstation. Since he tends to autosave himself every minute or so to his drive, he should be able to recount what happened after I blacked out.

Heading over to his monitor, I look below screen to see his external shielding panel. Opening the panel, I see his external drive which I had helpfully labelled "Alfred" using duct tape, which I then proceed to pull out of the wall rather forcefully. Satisfied with the removal of the drive, I turn around and head towards the main hallway to head towards my room to plug in Alfred, when I stop dead in my tracks.

Looking all the way towards the back of the Argo's cargo bay, right where the bay doors should be, I see a large mound of dirt that should not have been there, next to "Seizer" that had somehow broken through the restraining harness and was now splayed on the ground in a similar pose to how I woke up.

If I was a betting man, I would say that I had somehow crashed, and judging from the small granular texture the dirt seemed to have from the distance I was looking at it from, it looked like it was dirt from planet side, not from an asteroid or like object.

This dirt was not a random pile that came out of nowhere. No, looking at where the dirt connected to the hull of the ship, the metal looked like it had been sheared off, and the dirt had been there to fill in where the cargo bay doors were, like a cave in. I could not see if the dirt was covering perhaps broken off sections of the ship, but the cleanness of the tear of the metal gave me a bad feeling in my stomach, as though I would not find the missing end of the ship.

The back end of my ship had literally been broken or torn off.

I had no back end of my ship.

"Well shit" I say to myself, knowing that this was perhaps the worst possible outcome from a blind jump, barring death of course.

The portions that were either missing or being obscured by the dirt was where the main generator, rear lift thrusters (for lifting the ship off planets), and exterior FTL thrusters for entering FTL speeds were located. If I could not find the generator or other parts under that mound of dirt or nearby, then I could not power the rest of my ship, exit into orbit, or enter FTL speeds if I did go to orbit. I was grounded.

I had to plug in Alfred to find out what had happened.

Taking a sharp right into my personal quarters, I head over to my personal work station which housed a tower desktop with a lovely high definition monitor on top with a standard keyboard attached below that also had an external drive reader installed by to the tower connected by a cable that was a bit too long. This drive reader was installed on the off chance that I had to take Alfred out of the main system which doesn't happen that often (he gets suspicious I am trying to deactivate him permanently), but space malware can be tricky sometimes and infect entire ships through comm channels alone when I search the web through my personal computer in my room.

What can I say? I always get curious on how I can lose 20 pounds in a single day.

At any rate, I boot up the computer and wait the agonizing 5 seconds it takes to get to the desktop (so slow, I need a new computer soon), and plug Alfred in to my external reader. A few seconds later, the monitor dims from the myriad icons and desktop wallpaper to a black screen, followed by the words "Alfred" being displayed in the center of the screen in Arial font.

Arial is how I know a serious discussion is about to occur.

Looking below the monitor, I grab the keyboard and begin to type to Alfred since my personal computer does not have input speakers. Fortunately, the monitor itself houses normal speakers, so I will be able to hear Alfred's responses when he speaks.

"Alfred, are you okay?"

As I finish typing my query, Alfred surprisingly takes some time to respond, leaving me to agonize and ponder about what he could possibly say. After a full minute, I get my response.

"I AM ALRIGHT, I ASSUME I AM CONNECTED TO YOUR PERSONAL COMPUTER?"

"Correct."

A few more seconds.

"I AM GOING TO TAKE A GUESS HERE AND ASSUMED WE CRASHED."

I was quite impressed he was able to guess it so quickly, even though I really shouldn't have been. Alfred was basically a super computer, so he should have been able to guess this in a few attempts. Not that I would give him the satisfaction of being right so easily.

"Well no shit we crashed! There is dirt all over my cargo dock, the main generator is either buried or missing, and the FTL thrusters as well. Give me the details and log information about the crash, I happened to black out and remember nothing after the jump initiated".

Another pause from Alfred. I wonder if the computer is actively delaying his response time, it is not as strong of a processor as the ships main system after all.

"UNDERSTOOD, I ATTEMPTED TO CONTACT YOU AFTER THE JUMP AND RECEIVED NO RESPONSE, SO BEING INCAPACITATED MAKES LOGICAL SENSE. BEFORE WE JUMPED, WE WERE FIRED UPON BY AN ENEMY BATTLESHIP…"

"I remember that part."

"…AND THEN WE TRAVELLED FOR 28 MINUTES AFTER THE JUMP. THE LASER FIRED ON THE ARGO FRIED THE EXTERNAL SENSORS AND COMMUNICATION DEVICES, AND I WAS UNABLE TO SEND A REQUEST TO THE PRIMARY ENGINE BECAUSE OF THIS TO EXIT FTL TRAVEL. WE ESSENTIALLY KEPT GOING UNTIL THE FTL DRIVE BURNED OUT."

Earlier when I was thinking that it was bad that I didn't have a main generator, this somehow made it worse. 28 minutes of FTL travel could potentially be half way across the galaxy from where we originally started (It is widely recognized to take an hour of FTL travel to go straight from the opposite side of the galaxy to the other, though you would most likely hit something and die along the way) and seeing as how the laser fried our systems in some way, I could not even guarantee that our travel was even in a straight line.

So, I had the possibility of being anywhere in the galaxy, literally.

"WHEN FTL TRAVEL CEASED THE SHIP CONTINUED FOR ONE MINUTE BEFORE MY LAST AUTO-SAVE, SO I BELIEVE SHORTLY AFTER THAT WAS WHEN I WAS DISCONNECTED FROM THE ENGINE."

"Were you able to track where our flight took us?"

"NO."

"Any indication of potential things that may have knocked off or disabled the engines before you were taken offline, such as a planet or space debris?"

"NOT BEFORE THE AUTO-SAVE WAS RECORDED."

Now it was my turn to pause a bit before sending a new question to Alfred. The ship is crashed on an unknown object that has granular dirt, so most likely a planet. While I do not have all the (or any really) information about the crash, I am going to assume that the generator and thrusters are either covered by the dirt or broke off and are far away or broken without repair. Fortunately, the dirt seems to have sealed the ship shut, so I have not lost any circulating oxygen and can still breathe. Or, perhaps by some miracle, I have landed on a planet that has an oxygen rich atmosphere, which is incredibly rare, but not impossible.

There was only one way to find out for sure, and that was to dig through the dirt.

"Alfred, any thoughts on digging through the dirt to potentially find the generator?"

"IT IS AN IDEA, JUST MAKE SURE TO WHERE A SPACE SUIT IN CASE YOU BREAK THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE AND IT IS HARMFUL TO YOU. ALSO, SEAL AND PRESSURIZE THE ROOMS OF THE SHIP SO THE OXYGEN DOES NOT BLEED OUT SHOULD YOU BREACH THE SURFACE."

"Solid plan so far, any other suggestions?"

"RUN A CABLE FROM THE EMERGENCY GENERATOR TO THE MATTER RECYCLER. WHILE IT MAY PUT A STRAIN ON THE GENARATOR OUTPUT, BY DOING THIS YOU CAN STOCKPILE THE DIRT YOU ARE DIGGING UP BY DUMPING IT INTO THE RECYCLER TO LEARN OF ITS COMPOSITION, AND PERHAPS USE IT LATER TO CREATE OTHER SUPPLIES THAT YOU MIGHT NEED."

I didn't even think of that. While it may take a little more effort to go back and forth from the dirt pile to the recycler, it would save me time if I for some reason needed to move the dirt out of my way again in the future. Besides, I would prefer not having useless dirt taking up space in my now half a hangar.

With a temporary plan in mind, I prepare myself to open the floor and get ready to run that cable.

And grab a shovel.