Exploring the Human Condition

The Galactus hummed through the vacuum of space. I didn’t mind the noise since it all but completely shut out my tinnitus. Some of the other crew found it annoying at first, but all got used to it over the first few weeks. Our assignment was to prospect deep space asteroids, and planets, for precious metals. A very lucrative assignment indeed, unfortunately not reflected in our pay. Everyone but the officers was still paid hourly, but now including sleep and travel time, a benefit of the worker’s rebellion of 2078. Alas, the workers did not achieve all of their goals, since the crew was still undermanned and the rations were of poor quality. Nonetheless, attitudes on the ship were usually amicable; there was ample downtime between excavations, and no matter how hard senior management tried, someone always managed to sneak a boatload of booze aboard. 

That was not the case presently. Not only had we failed to find any asteroid or planet with valuable ore, we were running low on fuel as well. The ship’s reactor could destabilize even relatively stable elements, and use the resulting isotopes for fuel, but the destabilization procedure had its limits, it couldn’t run on carbon. We needed to find some heavy metals and soon, if they weren’t valuable, they could at least be used for fuel. I wasn’t particularly concerned; there wasn’t a single documented incident of a ship of Galactus’ caliber running out of fuel. On the rare occasion that ships did run low, a dispatch was sent from the nearest colony to re-fuel. So I didn’t really understand why some of the crew members were on edge. Alexis, one of our two pilots, had been squabbling on and off with Trisha, the lead engineer, for what felt like weeks. Now that I think of it, their squabbling began even before the fuel concerns. I didn’t pay much attention to it back then, both were quick of tongue and sharp of wit. 

Just yesterday, Alexis took particular offence when Trisha snapped at the other pilot, Tessa.

“Can you stay off comms while I’m sealing abrasions out here. We’re trying to listen for microscopic breakage, you know how quiet they are?”

“Sorry I was just making sure you knew our repair window was closing.”

“You already told us when we popped out AND when we began the repairs.”

Alexis didn’t say anything in the moment, an officer was listening, but later in the mess hall she confronted Trisha.

“You do realize your back-talk makes it hard for your team to hear too?”

“Oh, so I should just keep my mouth shut? I bet you’d like that.”

“Yes, when you’re outside the ship, communication should be kept to a minimum. If you have issues with Tessa updating the timeline, then you should save that for the debrief.”

“Oh the debrief, the debrief, who cares about the debrief? I’m out there busting my ass, risking all manner of debris flying out of the darkness and turning me into swiss cheese, and you’re telling me to wait for the debrief. Must be nice sitting in a cozy pilot’s chair until the debrief.”

“We’re monitoring the entire ship, and every object for a quarter light-year, so yeah I’m in the seat, precisely so you don’t get turned into swiss cheese.”

“Oh get over yourself. Tessa is your subordinate, you should be the one telling her green ass to stay off the comms. I can’t believe they still got your lazy ass in that seat instead of one of the AIs.” Alexis glared at her, clearly the AI jab had hit a sore spot. Everyone else stayed out of it, swishing their procedurally generated potatoes, gravy, and ground turkey around on their trays. One of the officers had walked in at the sound of the argument, and was dutifully observing as he sipped room temperature coffee by the entrance. Alexis gave him an irritated glance, before stomping past him down the hallway to the barracks. 

As a specialist, I was entitled to a cot in the officer’s barracks. Each ship had two officers, a doctor, and a collection of specialists: mineralogists, communications experts, astrophysicists etc., so I wasn’t privy to the debauchery in the crew barracks. My pal Jeffrey, however, was one of the many engineers, and he relayed the juiciest drama. Jeffrey told me the argument from the mess hall re-ignited in the barracks, when Trisha came in, clearly inebriated, while most of the crew were already in their beds. Alexis began to berate her, which did not go well with the inebriated Trisha. Apparently, she told Alexis that she wasn’t an officer, yet, as evidenced by their shared living space, and if she wanted to lord over someone, maybe she should start with her darling Tessa. Apparently, the way Trisha said it wasn’t quite as polite. The argument went on for some time before some of the crew were able to get them to shut up, but only by yelling at them louder than the two were arguing.

The next day started slowly. Long range scanners had been running intermittently for weeks, with no worthwhile finds. Shortly after mid-day, that is adhering to Earth schedule, since in the vast expanse of space time ceased to be iterated, one of the scanners picked up a large deposit. The deposit was too large to be an asteroid, and how the long-range scanners failed to pick up a planetary target was a question the officers asked the communications expert in private. Nonetheless our course was diverted for what we assumed to be a small but mineral dense planet.

The planet was covered in light gray clouds, which the comms expert and mineralogist ascertained as metal particulate. This was likely the reason we didn't pick up the planet sooner, since the long range scanners were detecting the clouds and dismissing them as low density metals, while failing to capture the planet itself. When our more robust short range scanners picked it up it left us with a peculiar question. We could jump to near light speed and reach the planet within a matter of hours, or we could maintain cruising speed and arrive in about a week. Under normal circumstances, we would maintain cruising speed, but due to our dwindling fuel supply it would be much more pragmatic to jump there. Trisha took considerable issue with this since accelerating to and from near light speed in a short window put considerable stress on the ship. The officers, never having encountered a situation like this, put the question to Alexis. As the lead pilot, Alexis was as close to the officers as a crew-member could get. It was common knowledge that she would be promoted to officer sooner rather than later. She already effectively ran the Galactus, having served aboard it for ten years longer than either of the officers. Alexis decided to jump, against Trisha's well voiced concerns.

This time the argument happened over global comms, and was well heard by everyone. Our acceleration to near light speed was too quick, and our deceleration, also too quick. Alexis retorted, again over global comms, that the officers wanted us to get to the planet as quickly as possible due to our low fuel. In any case, a crew of engineers and diggers was sent down while a smaller contingent of engineers ran a diagnostic of the ship. Trisha declared she would go with the dig squad, and that seemed ideal to everyone since Alexis and Tessa would be working closely with the engineers to diagnose the ship. It was highly unusual for the lead engineer to disembark for a routine dig. I watched the planet below us from the observation deck, brown, reddish, sparkling gray clouds swirling low above the surface.

“Negligible oxygen content, high nitrogen and carbon dioxide,” Trisha's voice echoed through the observation deck. “Temperature reading… currently at -85 Celsius. Day cycle at 67 hours approximately and right around two times Earth pressure. Looks like we'll have another 20 hours before sunset. We should be gone by then since temperature will drop significantly.”

“Surface is heavy with iron ore, cobalt, preliminary scans suggest lead is present at the current dig site, as well as Cadmium and Bismuth.” The mineralogist followed up, the sounds of drilling already behind them. 

This was excellent news, we would be able to replenish our fuel supply and potentially dig up some valuable product. We would likely spend several days orbiting the planet until the officers felt a sufficient load had been extracted. Unfortunately, it would appear we could only dig during the day cycle. While our space suits could withstand near any temperature and pressure, the machinery functioned better within a set range, and losing drills or other mining equipment would constitute a catastrophic failure.

The digging progressed for the next several hours as the remaining crew aboard watched from the observation deck. The ship hadn't sustained notable damage from our quick hop, so Trisha's concerns appeared unwarranted. Alexis and Tessa scheduled three rotations around the planet to scan for high value deposits, aiming to arrive above the dig crew with five hours remaining before nightfall. The primary operation for the day would be mining lead and other near radioactive elements to restore our fuel supply with the following days aimed at securing a payload.

The planetary scans were very promising, with gold, platinum, rhodium and palladium being the richest deposits, so when we swung around to catch the departing diggers and engineers, spirits aboard the ship were high. The tensions of the previous several days had been completely forgotten. This was not true for the planetary squad. Trisha was immediately on Alexis again for the ship's late arrival. I was under the impression we arrived exactly on time, and still had five hours to spare before nightfall, but it appeared we would have to leave the equipment planet-side since the teams weren't able to disassemble and load all of the equipment before boarding the return shuttles. These conversations went mostly above my head, but Jeffrey informed me there was quite a bit of yelling overheard from the officer debrief. Trisha was mad the Galactus didn't arrive to pick them up earlier, while Alexis and the officers blamed her for not supervising the disassembly in a timely manner. Apparently in addition to cloaking the planet from our long range scanners, the metallic clouds interfered with our communications. Trisha claimed she asked for an earlier evac window several times, due to longer than anticipated disassembly times as a result of dropping temperature. She claimed monitoring atmospheric interference fell under the pilot’s responsibilities. Regardless, a sufficient payload of fuel had been secured and transferred to the ship so our fuel concerns were abated. There were valuable minerals at our current digsite too, so another day of digging before repositioning was not necessarily lost time.

The following day proceeded as planned. Trisha went down with the dig crew again, this time under the command of our first officer, Janice, a slight in her mind undoubtedly. Around 6 hours into the dig we received a distress call from the bottom of the newly etched quarry. Even with perfect conditions, communications from that far below the planetary surface were scrambled, likely due to the layers of heavy metals in the planet's crust. We waited anxiously for a relay from the surface crew but did not receive an update, so assumed the issue must've been technical. Soon a second distress call came from higher up in the dig column, but again we weren't able to establish communication with the dig squad beneath the surface. At this point, Alexis and Tank, our second officer, attempted to reach Janice at the base, but weren't able to establish a connection. Tank suggested we try to reach Trisha, but Alexis pointed out that could be considered an unwarranted bypassing of the officer on the planet's authority, and would go against company guidelines. So we waited. About twenty minutes later, and all at once, we received multiple distress calls from the surface. We began losing vital signs on multiple dig crew members as well as several engineers. We tried to contact Janice but her connection had been severed entirely. Trisha was next in order of command so now they attempted to reach her.

“Where the hell have you been!? We need immediate evac!” Trish's voice crackled across the global comms.

“What's going on down there? We've lost contact with the officer and are losing vitals on crew members.” Tank jumped to attention.

“There was a hostile species beneath the crust, the dig crew encountered them at 14 hundred and the base is under attack!” Trisha screamed. “Our comms can’t find the ship! We need coordinates immediately to begin launching return shuttles.”

“Have the shuttles been compromised?” Alexis spoke before Tank could compose himself.

“What? I don't know! These things are everywhere, we've lost Janice and who knows how many more.” 

Alexis cut off the line and spoke to Tank, “if the alien species compromises a shuttle we may be endangering the entire ship by allowing the shuttles to return.” The officer paused to look at her.

“We can't just leave them, they're in danger!” Tessa butted in.

“And we would lose any potential payload…” Tank added.

“We have enough fuel for the return trip, and company guidelines strongly advise NOT to engage hostile species without full defensive capabilities, which the Galactus lacks both in crew and in artillery.”

The officer opened the channel again, “Trisha, how many of the crew can you safely onboard onto the shuttles?”

“What? The signal is breaking up! We have about a dozen of us holed up in the base.” Her voice was frantic, “outside… I can't see anyone outside, those things… slice right through our suits. We'd… need one shuttle, just send me the coordinates and I'll input them manually!”

“Its not out of the question these things could survive the return trip even outside the shuttle.” Alexis spoke cooly to the officer.

“What the… Alexis! We have to get out of here! They've already tried to breach the base… The temperature will drop with nightfall and we don't have enough supplies!” 

We could hear people yelling over the line while Tank mulled over his decision. Suddenly the comms went silent as a cloud floated over the ground team.

“We have to give them the code!” Tessa yelled, “we can't just let them all die down there!”

All eyes turned to Tank as he peered down onto the planet, the forward base obscured by a light gray cloud.

“Alexis, as soon as we re-establish communication send Trisha the coordinates directly, and tell them to take only one shuttle.”

The next few minutes dragged on for eternity. We all watched from the helm as the cloud slowly drifted across the planet’s face. Alexis called for Trisha every five seconds but couldn't get through. Mercifully, the winds on the planet were blowing steadily and the clouds moved out of our communication line. 

“Trisha, do you hear us? We're sending the coordinates now.”

There was no response.