Cosmic Dash: Pause & Effect

Day One: Part Three

Mara's Bunk: Hour 8

Sleep is elusive at the absolute worst times.

Mara found herself lying in her bunk, staring up and the plasteel tiles that made up the ceiling. The plates were solid and safe, but they were aged regardless and various impurities in the plastic and metal combination had asserted themselves over the course of decades. This made them absolutely fascinating at just the wrong time. Instead of drifting off she now darted her eyes from tile to tile, monitoring them for any patterns or shapes — any indication of some greater purpose to them, really.

She turned over, but the blinking light on her computer terminal was slowly pulsing its way into her brain. Her room was hostile to any attempt at getting some sleep, so she resolved herself to becoming exhausted and letting sleep overtake her. She rose out of bed, threw on some running shoes, and made her way out the bunk's door to the cargo-bay.

Nav Room: Hour 8

The ships in question turned out to be one ship, called the Sulany, a small tug ship that could drag unpowered cargo structures. The Sulany was one of a fleet of trans-factional courier vessels that would latch onto the massive cargo platforms and pull them along to the next stop in the system. This was a rapidly declining method of material transport, mostly for large, cumbersome cargo, but they were still a relatively stable economy of their own. As a kid, Kracker had seen one in orbit around Skyhaven, a virtual speck detaching from a massive refinery that had been brought to the planet to be disassembled and reassembled on the surface. He was too young to really understand the physics of it all. He was just amazed that something so tiny was in charge of something so huge. It was one of the few things that made him feel positive about anything since the accident the previous summer where he broke his wings and radically altered the trajectory of his life.

Of course, now he knew the physics, and he understood how each space flight, in many ways a routine, was always a hedged bet against any number of catastrophes and disasters. Most assuredly the Sulany's jump was a bet that led to ruin.

Here is how he understood it: The Sulany was an old tug, one that was most definitely past its prime. More than likely adding to this whole grim situation was the fact the ship was on a rushed schedule and the large cargo-containers were most definitely not secured at an appropriate level, causing one container to buckle off and hit the gate, triggering some form of catastrophic failure. Kracker was able to piece this together through direct observation of a loose cargo-container, now secured by a jump-gate authority skiff, minor damage to a section of the jump-gate itself, and several oblique textual references in data referring to a "jostle" that he had hacked from a few different G.I.N. streams radiating from various ships and the jump-gate itself.

This was not public record at this point.

In his mind, whatever parts of his brain would have handled flight was eclipsed by the part of his brain interested in computer coding. Kracker had a knack for looking at the most basic expressions of data and pulling knowledge from it. Sometimes the data had to be coerced, and his nickname, Kracker, originated from that very tendency of hacking.

Take all the data you want, but never exploit it was his mantra, and generally, he was pretty good about that. Of course, that was barring a couple of sneaky scheduling hacks at Gnarlruut which he would always argue were for the greater good of his fellow students. This though was on another level... It was solving a mystery for the greater good of spacer everywhere.

It made sense why the Jump-Gate Authority was silent about everything. Galactic travel revolved around hyperspace tunnels, so creating a panic would be bad for the galaxy as a whole. Without jump-gate travel, most systems would be inaccessible and travel between planets could take months or even years in some cases. All-day so far Kracker had been listening to the chatter, switching to the particularly juicy streams that arrived with scouts ships for the Federation, Empire, and Neutrality; little, clipped bursts of military terminology indicating some new discovery somewhere that would vanish in a burst of static as the communications scramble to other military G.I.N. streams. These small military ships were unable to generate their own jump-gates from this or that colony. Now too, those who were nominally in charge were forced to slum it with the normies. The disdain and annoyance in Imperial and Federation requests for clearance and updates were palpable. To their credit, the Neutrality was somewhat less impatient, though they took the opportunity to blast surveys and propaganda to just about every ship in orbit around the gate. Why not apply for citizenship at one of three of the Neutrality's luxury colonies? After all, who says brave explorers do not deserve the comforts of home?