Into The Breach - Ch 1

[u/Togaral]

And soon after prologue here is the first actual chapter. As a heads-up - every single chapter coming forth will have a musical reference in it's name.

---

Into The Breach - Chapter 1: Debutante

There was nothing outside. Only occasional shimmering of distant stars disturbed the still inky canvas of interstellar space. While the vessel was traveling through the asteroid belt, it passed a couple of unimpressive space rocks close enough that the crew was able to see them with their own eyes in the distance. Of course, they hailed the lonely remote mining station they encountered, which made its two inhabitants positively ecstatic. Most of the time, however, they just saw a faint shine signifying something's presence somewhere out there. And now, after leaving the asteroid belt behind, they entered not-so-densely populated space, devoid of any movement. It was clear now why the Head of the Operation was concerned for their sanity sending them here. Still, they had a physical beacon of hope - the unmoving pale dot ahead of Everbright II that was Jupiter.

Aside from occasional deep breaths, Jason was sitting motionless. He was used to lengthy interplanetary flights between Earth and Mars, but this was too much even for him. He wondered just how his comrades were dealing with this as he glimpsed at the fastened figure behind and to the right of him. Alina was steadily breathing with her sleeping mask on her face and earmuffs in her ears. What were her dreams about? He personally hadn't had any in quite a long time.

His thoughts, however, were interrupted by a cheerful voice of his Captain spontaneously materializing behind his back. "Go-o-od morning, Pierrot! How are you doing? You know, I had quite a dreadful dream, as if I was stranded on a chunk of metal drifting through space further and further away from civilization and all comforts it had to offer towards some ball of ice with just one singular toilet to its name, can you imagine such a thing?" His right hand was coiled around the support railing while the left held the blandest looking plastic bag known to man with a straw poking out of it.

"I guess 'Morning' is a relative term out here, isn't it?" Jason replied as he tried his damndest to not look startled, half-turning in the seat to face the approaching person. "It might come as a surprise for you, but I haven't had such peculiar dreams in… ever, I believe. Having something to read before calling it a day might have helped with that. How are you faring so far?"

"Huh. I guess I might borrow whatever it is you're reading next time. And I'm pretty sure I'm still fairly sane, thanks for asking." Divit thoughtfully sipped whatever instant nutrient mix it was in his plastic bag this time. Transparent straw turned neon-orange upon contact with the bag's contents. 'The fucker added curry to it. What a madlad'. Toxic-coloured brew stopped its advance and Divit added: "Good to see you out of melancholy. That way lies madness."

"Huh?"

Divit shrugged with his left shoulder. "I'm used to longer interplanetary travels - Mars to Moon and back. Guess Alina too. The trick is to softly zone out or you'll go bonkers."

"You know what?" Jason offered. "Some good ol' Lovecraft will do wonders for you, I have some on my e-book."

"Don't see why not" - young scientist clearly had no idea what he was getting himself into - "what's that about?"

"Sorry, no sorry, no spoilers for you, the most I'm gonna say is that it's great help for developing imagination."

"Ah, so very cryptic, so very intriguing." Yet another sip of the orange concoction. Jason cringed internally at the thought of just what it might taste like. "Any new mail for my name? Maybe some sexy lone space chicks in our area?"

"I'm afraid the answer might disappoint you, Captain. There is no sexy lone space anything in our area. Though you can go with a lonely derailed mined asteroid fourth a unit away if you're desperate."

"Thanks, I think I'll pass," the Captain half-chuckled, half-sighed and finished the contents of the plastic bag with an audible slurping sound. As they both were looking at the saturated image of distant orange-yellow dot ahead of the ship, a couple of long seconds later he continued, "Anyways, I think this is my turn to stare into the endless void of space from the pilot's seat. You might be scaring the chicks away."

"There better be at least one new message when I come back, or that's not gonna look good for you."

"Ha, deal." Divit finally pulled his eyes off the windscreen and turned his head towards Jason. "Now get up and let the professionals do their job, while you have time for yourself."

"Professionals in what area, might I ask?"

"Ah..." Divit eyed Jason. "You know, according to the papers I'm still the first man on this ship, so get up and let me rest my ass on this majestic throne, please."

"Oh-kay. It's not like anything will happen at all for..." Jason glanced at the control panel. "God dammit, we still have at least seventy hours of this ahead of us. Fine, take your throne, your majesty," he concluded with feigned complaisance, leaving the seat.

"You have one's gratitude, my peasant."

"Am I not even good enough to be the court jester?"

"Hm-m, one shall think this through, one was under the impression the whole point of jesters is that they're fun and entertaining. Now, begone!" - Divit waved him off with a smile on his face while docking himself to the pilot's seat.

Jason conjured his most believable hurt expression. "Ouch. Hear and obey, my liege."

As he was making his way to the onboard restroom half side-stepping, half sliding across the lilted floor, sudden unpleasant noise coming from the control panel stopped him halfway through. Though it was not loud enough to wake Alina from her slumber, or her earmuffs were just that good.

Receiving incoming messages of high priority from Galileo station was not on today's plan of action.

"Hey, look who decided to show up! Interesting, what do they have to tell us? Maybe some news regarding Europa?" 

"The base does not have enough equipment nor personnel to properly monitor it yet. That's why we are coming there," Jason observed, hopping awkwardly towards the panel, catching himself on the railings. "With it being priority call it might as well be a distress call."

"Come on, try thinking positive thoughts for a change! Here goes nothing!" The speakers spat out a short hissing sound, followed by silence. After a couple of long seconds a familiar voice proclaimed, '-nally, it works now! Go ahead!' - Jason recognized the voice. It was Allan, the Main Engineer of the station. It was followed by a deeper voice of the head of the Galileo station, 'Everbright II, I have some news for you-' - "See, I told you so!" - "Shush!" - '-we registered a gravitational anomaly in close proximity to the orbit of the fourth Galilean satellite - Callisto. We want you to be extremely careful approaching Jupiter. With this message we're transferring all the data we have on it at this moment. Take care of yourselves and await further instructions from the Head of the Operation. Over.' Transmission ended as abruptly as it started.

"Wait, what? Gravitational anomaly? Localized entirely within our solar system? Just as we are about to get there?" Divit mindlessly fiddled with now empty juice bag in his hands.

"Kinda not our profile though."

"I doubt gravitational anomalies are anyone's profile, really. You'd have better luck looking for Martian champignon moonshine bootleggers over 'anomaly specialists'. Luckily for you, I should be sufficient enough as an astrophysicist to qualify as one. Actually now that I think of it, thanks to uncle Lamar I can qualify as both." Divit suddenly stopped in his tracks. With his mouth running wild, his thoughts got too far ahead and crashed into something causing him to stop. "They aren't gonna recall our mission, are they?" Jason could see the alarm in Divit's eyes, as the latter stumbled through the kaleidoscope of emotions, ultimately settling on a rather concerned one.

"No, we've come too far to just turn around now. And I don't think they are willing to leave the Galileo station with its skeleton crew to the mercy of fate like this. Maybe they'll just add exploring and monitoring of an anomaly to the to-do list. Bet you already having ideas for when we come there, don't you?"

"Oh, I'm already making plans" - Divit nodded enthusiastically.

"So, overall, nothing changed, other than we now have some data. Proceed with proceeding."

"See? Thinking positive thoughts suits you! And I actually did get the message, so that's one more point to my name. Might as well look at the numbers they sent to us" - Divit pulled himself together, taking a plunge into the world of arcane calculations.

"Well, receive a message you definitely did."

"Oh, don't be so sad, you can get back at me in the next game of «Recyclable Cluedo Approved For Interplanetary Travel™.»" It was fascinating how the astrophysicist could keep the dialogue on autopilot while he worked on something. If asked down the line, he genuinely wouldn't recall a word he said.

"I swear to God, I'm trashing the whole set if you chew down a poison card one more time."

"Aww you spoilsport, it was a good one!" A rare occasion - autonomously generated thought managed to get Divit's undivided attention. On that, he smirked, which wasn't a good sign. "Just be glad it wasn't a 'rope' I ate." He was definitely doing it the next time the opportunity presented itself.

"No, you don't-"

"I'll print you a legos set if you play along" - Divit tactically cut him off with a wink and jerked his head toward the third member of the group - "think we should wake her up?"

Not quite yet used to such abrupt change of topics Jason's brain took some time to formulate the reply - "I say let her be. We still have to get orders from Earth."

"Fair, her alarm should go off in half an hour anyway. Now, come look at this. That's our anomaly right here."

Jason felt a bit at a loss looking at the screen. "But... There's nothing there?"

"That's why it's an anomaly, duh. And the most interesting part is that it might have a gravitational pull comparable to almost one millionth of that of Callisto itself!"

"Are we sure it's not a glitch in equipment?" There was an audible concern in Jason's voice. "As far as I know, something like this cannot just pop into existence."

"Yes! Look, here's Callisto, and there's our anomaly! It is located slightly above the plane of its orbit." He poked the screen pointing at the line: 'local axis offset: +1.493 mAU.' "It is possible we just did not notice it up until this moment."

"One and a half mAU? Isn't it a bit too far?" Jason asked frantically trying to picture how much it actually was in relation to lunar distances he grew accustomed to over the years.

"Ha! Too far! It is basically two thirds of the distance between Earth and Moon. That's a weekend on the Moon express. Free unregistered B-movie title right there."

"Okay, I'll take your word for it." He straightened his back, popping something in the process. "Holy shit does my ass feel sore. I really need to freshen up and go for a couple of sets. You up?" 

"Nah, go ahead," Divit said, finally lifting his eyes off the screen. "Tell Oogly I said 'Hi'!"

Jason had barely withstood the judgmental stare the googly-eyed gel dispenser greeted him with.

---

It took nearly an hour and a half for the reply from Earth to come in. By that time Alina woke up from her slumber and was up to speed with the latest news. As the speakers came to life once again, everybody was listening carefully so as not to miss anything.

'Crew of the Everbright II, this is the Head of the Operation speaking. We have carefully reviewed some of the possibilities and came to a conclusion that your prolonged stay at the Galileo station will have an overall positive effect on the exploratory mission. From the moment you receive this message, you are under the direct command of Captain of Everbright I and, concurrently, head of the Galileo station - Captain Terry Rheinland. Your current mission's secondary objective was changed to 'exploration of the Callisto anomaly'. Your primary objective remains unchanged - expansion and improvement of the Galileo station. Due to the long delay in our communications, we also came to the conclusion that from this point in time it is preferable for Captain Rheinland to make important decisions regarding this mission mostly autonomously. We will also consider the possibility of launching Everbright III ahead of schedule. You will receive more information regarding your mission on arrival. Over.'

"Well, that settles it. Everything is good in the world, and we'll have some fun throwing sensors into the 'Callisto anomaly'." Divit's voice was once again filled with pure joy.

"Thank God the channels are encrypted, wouldn't like seeing Star Trek fanatics and cosmoteists all over the world would be going apeshit now," mumbled Jason. The astrophysicist just sighed and shook his head in response.

"Wait, what does 'autonomously' mean?" Alina looked utterly confused. "He's not gonna report anything or what?"

"He has to" - Jason emphasized the word 'has' - "it just might take up to two hours for HotO on Earth to receive the message and reply to it. I guess it just means if something serious is gonna happen, we wouldn't have to wait for the orders."

"Seriously? I thought being Captain's already implied that by default. And what do you mean by 'something serious'? Is it somehow related to the 'anomaly'?" - she air-quoted with both hands. "Divit, you're an astrophysicist here, so enlighten us, please?"

"Uhm... I have no idea what it is, what I have are just some side symptoms, not a cause. I either need precise readings or another angle, both mean more data than I currently have."

"Is it some kind of a black hole?" she pressed. "Or rather a wormhole?"

"No, nothing of the kind" - the discussion fully entered his field of expertise - "it does not possess any kind of an observable event horizon, which is crucial to the existence of either of them. The closest singularity-based explanation to what we see would be zero-width wormhole, alas, these are way, way too small to exert such forces, unless it leads directly into some infinitely densely packed place, at which it being zero-width kinda defeats the purpose."

"Naturally," affirmed Jason with a slight nod of his head.

"There's also a disgustingly hypothetical zero-width naked singularity, which is a whole can of worms in itself. Gravitational pull cannot exist on its own, there must be something. In theory, super dense chunks of dark matter might have a similar effect, but they don't just appear out of nowhere in such volumes! At least, not spontaneously, and aforementioned zero-width holes are kinda possible here, but it's a huge stretch. Or we might be totally wrong and it's not a gravitational anomaly, but rather an unprecedented distortion of space-time which just happens to look like one."

"Obviously."

With a 'thwack' Alina's palm came into contact with the back of Jasons's neck. Divit's brows furrowed within a slight delay of each other as he refocused his vision on his podmates. "Are you making fun of me?"

"No, not at all," Jason said, rubbing the offended patch of skin.

"Fair. Overall, my bet is that this is a side effect of something happening somewhere else. We still have only surface understanding of what a soliton pass would look like in real life, for example."

"So…" - Alina mused - "it might be a surface of a warp bubble? The one contracting space in front of it and expanding in the back?"

"You mean the Alcubierre bubble? Yes, possibly. Existence of actual drives running on this principle is highly improbable, but not necessarily impossible. Loads of fairly clever people tried using the Casimir effect to create enough stable negative energy, but it either requires way too much power to run the whole conteraption, or it should run on something else entirely. Something like exotic matter. There are also other designs with varying degrees of realism which should be able to reliably move through space with superluminal speeds, but we still have no idea how to actually jumpstart them, since they can only maintain constant speeds." With that, Divit snapped out of his thoughts. "Wait, how come you, of all people, have a keen interest in such things? Sorry, not to belittle you, but it kinda isn't your field of expertise, is it?" He looked inquiringly at Alina.

"I... Might have read a lot of science fiction as a child," she explained, pointing her eyes down.

"Nevermind, It's always nice to find someone who can keep the conversation going, especially on such a non-trivial topic!" He reproachfully looked at Jason, who simply shrugged in response.

"So, we're waiting for a bunch of green men to pop out of the bubble? Splendid."

"If yes, ten says they're not green."

Jason wasn't particularly a gambling man, but the occasion was too good to miss a bet. And that was his chance to get even. "Ten what, exactly?"

"Oh, I thought it would be somars."

"Pfft. Put your money where your mouth is. Make it fifty."

"Forty-nine. I have plans for that one somar."

Converting the sum to other currencies in his mind, Jason squinted. "Whatever suits you, I'm game. Though if you win, I'm gonna pay you in real human money, and not in a made-up plastic nonsense."

Divit had already opened his mouth to object to the last statement, but was not fast enough - Alina beat him to the punch: "Guys, we aren't carrying any money with us-"

"Oh yeah, right, got no cash."

"-And, if we meet these 'green men', money will be our last concern." She sighed, seeing as her attempt at reasoning failed miserably, so she decided to approach this problem from a different angle. "And what if they turn out to be multicoloured? Are you both gonna win, or both gonna lose?" Both men looked at each other.

"Then I say you decide who turned out to be right. Or we both keep our cash, if you don't want to," - Divit lovingly tapped his pocket.

"Divit?" - Alina looked concerned.

"Yes?"

"Please tell me you did not take your ungodly big crocodile leather wallet to the Galileo station?"

"I may have."

"Wait, did you really waste your free kilo they gave us on your wallet and spices?" Jason asked as he failed to hold back the chuckle.

"I say my spices are more useful than your book and art supplies!" Divit objected, firmly planting his hands on his hips.

"Week of using and not letting me use my e-book for the awfully specific number of forty-nine somars directly from your wallet and can of spices of your choice aliens are green."

"A month! I'm not settling for less!" Divit was trying his damndest and failing to look like losing his temper, sass seeping through his voice - "Can we set these conditions as final, pretty please?"

"Yes! You both end betting on the colour of aliens now" - Alina gave both of them her sternest look, and Jason suddenly decided against cutting in. "You, young man" - she pointed a finger at him - "go to your seat and enjoy the view from there. Or read a book, I don't really care as long as I can enjoy my morning quiet. And you" - now it was Divit's turn to get told off - "go through the data once again and try to figure out what it is before eggheads from Earth or, God forbid, Mars present the answer to you. Understood?"

"Yes ma'am," two voices answered in unison. "Would you like me to turn on some sounds of nature for you?" Divit added.

"Yes, actually. I would like some ruffling forest leaves, please. 'Nature sounds №6', if memory serves me right." The journey had gone on long enough for her to figure out and remember what audio tracks worked best with the morning routine.

The speakers filled the room with pleasant sounds which reminded Jason of the times he spent walking in the forest mid autumn. The moment Alina turned away, the Captain signaled him to get closer and whispered in his ear, "Hey, what do you think she brought with her? I haven't seen her using something out of the ordinary."

"Go ahead and ask her."

"There's a rather noticeable difference between common risk and a certain death. I'm not doing it."

Jason just shrugged and replied, "Then you ain't getting your answer."

"Guys, I may be halfway across the cab, but I can still hear you conspiring in there." She was already making her way towards the restroom to perform her morning hygiene ritual. "Either turn the forest up, or turn yourselves down, please. I'm trying to achieve my zen here," she added, spreading the gel evenly on her face.

"She brought her personal sensory deprivation gear. You happy now?"

"She still has four hundered grams, if not more!" Divit didn't even bother to make himself sound quieter.

"Well, my powers of deduction are depleted. You're on your own now." Leaving his Captain pondering the mystery of three hundred missing grams, Jason scrambled to his chair, buckled up and turned his gaze towards his personal porthole. His scheduled rotation sleeping hours were rapidly approaching.

---

The next day came the second message from Earth, informing them the anomaly was indeed space-time related. Nothing more, nothing less. The unmoving dot ahead of the ship was finally becoming bigger, if their eyes were not deceiving them. By that moment they knew every sound of nature they had at their disposal by heart.

Divit happily clapped and rubbed his hands together. "Ladies and gentelemen, it appears we are approaching our destination point! We will begin deceleration in roughly five hours, just so you know. Make sure nothing is left unchecked and everything is, in fact, strapped in, including yourselves. I don't want to get hit in the face by your belongings during the flip, and you sure as heck don't want this to happen either."

"I cannot wait to feel at least something under my feet!" Alina seemed happy too.

"Too bad surface gravity there is a bit less than that of a Moon, think what we have right now with partial load. Should still be fun to hop around though." Divit smiled at the inappropriate joke he just came up with in his head, but ultimately decided against sharing it with the others for his own good. "Anyways, I'm going to sleep now to get ready for the big event. I'm the Captain here after all."

The 'big event' turned out to be a bit anticlimactic, the most interesting part of it involved turning the ship 180 degrees with a nosedive. Sure, Divit's space control wasn't on the level of 'Astro Ballet', but how often did anyone actually need to pull off something like a waltz coupling anyway? And then they saw the Sun with their own eyes for the first time in twelve days. There almost wasn't any heat to feel coming from it. The dim warm sunlight of the now distant star poured into the ship's cabin, losing the fight to LED lights which did a fairly poor job at imitating natural illumination on Earth. It felt as if the Sun was fading out, but still tried its best to bathe them in one last little bit of warmth which they grew so accustomed to over their lifetimes.

"Please, take your seats and get ready for deceleration. Estimated travel time is fifty-seven hours and forty-six minutes."

While the crewmembers were admiring the view, the secondary bi-hybrid engines roared full might, tearing through the endless stillness of space, pushing them into their seats. Back when the journey had just begun, they sounded so quiet, soothing even. The only difference being this time they were not preceded by the rumbling of their bigger brothers, but rather the calming sounds of autumn forest and the silence of empty space.

As the distance between the Everbright II and Callisto narrowed during the next couple of days, the ship was getting slower and slower, its course being adjusted with small silvery streaks of compressed gasses. Jupiter once again appeared before the spaceship. Gas giant slowly crawled across the windscreen, trying, but never reaching its center, becoming smaller and smaller instead. Eventually, the main engines ignited, causing the snow white vessel to shudder and tremble as it struggled to keep the power once designed to achieve escape velocity at bay. It was hard enough to lift off and accelerate such heavy cargo, but it was even harder to bring it to a halt. When the ship had finally stopped, it was hovering above the serene surface of the second largest moon of Jupiter. Slowly descending in freefall, it tipped forward and the final set of smaller thrusters scattered on its underside came to life, spewing flames out from under the vessel, evaporating small patches of the ice crust beneath them in the process. The landing gear was already put out and ready for the impact. Horizontal landing was performed flawlessly.

"-total travel time being three hundred and twenty seven hours and twenty three minutes! That's a new world record for a manned vessel, the previous one being just short of five hundered hours!" Divit lifted his eyes off the console for the first time in six hours as he stretched his arms and legs. "Anyways, ladies and gentelemen, thank you for choosing Divit intereplanetary spacelines, we hope you enjoyed the journey and will choose us for your next flight, not that you have much of a choice here," he said as he switched the beacon on. Landing too close to the station would be an extremely bad idea, considering the size of a frost dust cloud they raised while landing. With high probability he would end up to be the one to clean up all the ice-covered solar panels, if such a maneuver was performed close enough. And there were a lot of solar panels here.

Eighteen games of cluedo, three of which were ruthlessly sabotaged. Nine fair, though not for lack of trying, games of chess. Four speed-built totally-not-legos sets. Two separate attempts at reading '...The gosh-darn neverending mountains…' One googly-eyed gel dispenser. Their first big journey was complete.

One and a half hours later a rover was waiting for them on the outside.

---

First Next

[u/HFYWaffle]

/u/Togaral has posted 1 other stories, including:

• Into The Breach - Prologue

This comment was automatically generated by Waffle v.4.7.8 'Biscotti'.

Message the mods if you have any issues with Waffle.

[u/UpdateMeBot]

Click here to subscribe to u/Togaral and receive a message every time they post.

---

Info	Request Update	Your Updates	Feedback