EVE Fiction

“This is Astral Mining Deep Space Unit 17 Exploration issuing general emergency.”
He had the computer setup to wait several seconds before issuing the subspace communique again.

Interplanetary travel had been made easy since the faster than light engines enabled him to go 13.5AU/s, meaning he could traverse solar system relatively easily, but making it out to the next star system without the use of a jump gate, would take a few days or the better part of a week.

He’d been stuck in these unregistered systems for over a week since he made the jump through the wormhole. Heading towards the third star system at his current speed meant he had just over three days of flight time remaining. He did not have to worry about fuel, this ship in particular had enough capacity to travel for several months without refueling. It’s warp-core was optimized to move the small frigate for the entire duration of most mining expeditions, which were often 9+ months in duration.

The navigation computer hadn’t been able to recognize a single star and the subspace comm’s reached out over 40 light years in every direction. His thoughts were that there had to be someone from any of the corporations or races out there. He was desperate. He’d hoped for pirates or even an old drone hive to respond.

The feeling of total isolation in the vastness of space was incredibly daunting. Despite the climate controlled ship, his could subconsciously feel the coldness of space creeping in through the hull of the ship.

He was flying an exploration ship, a highly modified Imicus frigate called a Helios. Roughly 65 meters on its longest axis, by 20 meters in depth. It resembled an off-axis inverted Y, with the legs being engine compartments, the vertical being a sensor suite, and center of the ship being main habitation and control.

It had some room to move about, a small ration closet, what could be considered a lavatory, and a sensor diagnostics/observatory/sleeping quarters. It would hardly be considered spacious and/or comfortable, even for the slaves still under Amarr rule. It was bare bones. Plasteel seating in main hab and, a narrowly thin gel mattress, included just incase an overnight stay were required. Obviously the engineering-outfitting crew hadn’t considered someone might need to spend more than two shifts in the ship before returning to the outpost.

The modified Helios was used to warp into an area, scan it down for asteroid belts, possible threats and other spatial anomalies - which usually included fractured warp cores from capitals and wormholes. His duty - before getting lost - was to find asteroid belts with high concentrations of rare minerals, note its location and possible threats, and report back to the outpost to alert the op commander. If his location was best suited, the op commander would give the order, and he would lead the mining fleet back to the belt in his Helios, and continue scanning for potential threats to the mining operation while it was underway.

His mind wandered and dreamt of the mining outpost. His friends and co-workers. The loneliness was starting to get to him. He could feel his mind begin get seek companionship.

---

When he arrived at the new star system, he sent his deep space probes out to scan down the system and look for anything.

One hit. It was on the far edge of the system, opposite his current position around the star. It was faint, only a 5% signature resolution, unknown anomaly type, but it was something. He directed the two other probes to aid and hopefully get some better resolution of the anomaly, which the other two continued scanning.

99% signature resolution. It was a warp-core fracture for sure, but the deep space probes sensors weren’t built to identify what type of ship it had come from. He would have to jump over and use the more powerful sensor array on the ship to determine what it was from. That would hopefully at least give him some idea of what racial area he was in.

The ships sensors array hummed to life and began analysing all of the atomic signatures and quantum energy fluctuations trying to determine the warp-cores origin. All warp-cores came from a single Amarr design from several thousand years ago. They had a specific evolution and the database would be able to identify any warp-core from any ship built since then.

Analysis level 50% complete - no conclusions or statistically significant guesses as to where it came from.

Analysis level 95% complete - no conclusions or statistically significant guesses.

Analysis level 100% complete… The screen went blank. He knew the system was searching the database for all known ship types, not just the current or previous generation.

Something happened then. The screen returned a result. It was unable to identify the design of the warp core. No known signatures matched.

“Computer: render probable warp-core designs based on the analysis of the fracture.”

The computer churned away at this task for several minutes and the screen flashed with designs and probability levels.

The computer chirped back “Error: Not enough information.”

“What information is missing?”

Pithily, the computer responded “Error rendering components and incompatible formats.”
“What formats are incompatible?” he asked the computer, wishing it would be more forthcoming with its secrets.

“Known principles pertaining to warp-core designs are not sufficient to render engine designs and capabilities that would sufficiently match the fracture analyzed.” the screen read.

“Computer: reverse engineer the equations necessary to match the signature of the fracture.” he asked of the computer.

“Please re-run analysis.”

“Computer: please re-run analysis of the fracture.”

“Analyzing: estimated time to completion: 10 minutes” the screen flashed.

I actually read it, it's a very complex and interesting story. Heh, that problematic computer taking ages to solve things. :b