The East PacificBoard

All across Valsora, emails or telegrams are sent out. The letters are sent to various nations; ranging from the most powerful to the relatively quiet. These letters share the same message:

Greetings.

Ankobrystan has been viewed as a selfish, isolationist nation for the past seventy-two years. Today, I wish to change that.

For the first time in over seven decades, I will be hosting an international roundtable summit held in Ankobrystani territory. The summit will be held at the Kazan Center in downtown Haizan for approximately four (ic) days, food and room service will be supplied free of charge.

The contents of the summit is currently kept secret, however we will disclose the summit schedule later this week to whomever will be attending.

We hope to see you there at the roundtable!

Mateusz Z. Tkaczyk

Transit Station, High Jovian Orbit
U-2
Cutoff Day, 42 years ago...

With a clearly pained expression crossing his face, Zhubin Kinao slid the Ginga fruit across the table towards his compatriot to the left. It wasn't the first piece of food he'd lost during the game which had been ongoing during breaks in this group's shifts for the last couple days, but it had broken a winning streak for him during this break. The game had started when a diplomat had brought back a shipment of Talitoan food from U-2 Earth. Of course, she had promised to distribute them amongst the others, but only in the context of this Confederate table game. As Zhubin glanced at his right towards the next member of the game, the sound of an equipment failure alarm suddenly sounded across the room over the small group, making them all look up.

"The sensors are all screwy again?" someone blurted. "For Ghis-"

Another, different and somehow more ominous alarm went off, sending them into a quick frenzy as they scrambled to their feet and ran off, scattering for their assigned stations while querying the computer and other people as to what was happening. By the time he had entered the control room to which he was assigned, Zhubin had been informed about the latest of a long, long line of crises in U-2, this one being a sudden cutoff of the wormhole linking the Transit Station's portal to its counterpart in U-0. What made this cutoff different from the occasional failures which had happened due to malfunctions and damage was that the wormhole had simply vanished instead of collapsing, as if the endpoint in U-0 had disappeared.

Getting to his station, he sat down just in time to witness a probe vanishing in a flash of light against the multicolored face of Jupiter over a screen, leaving for U-0 to investigate the failure which appeared to have originated on their end. Although IU Drives were large, complex pieces of equipment which required building up a lot of power for a jump across universes, the Confederacy had modified several conventional probes to be nothing more than IU Drives sheathed in power storage modules, sensors, communications equipment, and rudimentary thrusters. After waiting for several moments, the mood in the control room soured as the probe failed to establish communications via its pinprick comm wormhole, or even return if the environment on the other side was dangerous as per its instructions.

Another was soon sent as a redundancy.

No response...

After the fourth probe failed to return, the room was in a barely suppressed state of panic. As Confederates exchanged worried looks and muttered amongst themselves, Zhubin looked around the room. His gaze settled upon the screen displaying comm data with the Sonoma, which was conducting a scientific study at the edge of the solar system.

[NO CONTACT - COMM CUTOFF AT T+2:34]

Just like many of the other people who had noticed the other loss of contact before, he realized this cutoff of the Sonoma's PCW - similar to the ones used in the probes - was barely seconds after the station's portal has cut off. Considering what its current mission had been, he was sure what happened to it would have been the same as what happened to the U-0 endpoint of the portal.

CSS Sonoma, 96 AU from Sol
U-2
Cutoff Day

The Sonoma drifted in the outer reaches of Sol System, sensors scanning a strip of the sky. Running through the entire electromagnetic spectrum, the ship was conducting a comparative annual survey of the observable galaxy and universe in both U-0 and U-2. The purpose of the survey was to take simultaneous readings within both universes, and then release the data to organizations in both TAMDEZ and the Confederacy to puzzle out any differences found in the observations of both skies. Although this involved engaging the IU Drive and shifting between each universes every two and a half minutes - the amount of time required for the IU Drive's power capacitor to build up enough energy for a jump - the crew had a special love for this annual chore, since it gave most of them the opportunity to take it easy.

"Observations of current sector completed", intoned the Sonoma's AI, simply and unoriginally called Sonoma by most of the crew. "IU Drive capacitor approaching jump limit". The crew who heard the AI gave it little notice, as they had been hearing the same announcement many times over the past few days. Since the ship was currently engaged in a mostly automated task which when compared to its usual assignments did not require many people aboard, there were less than two hundred of the usual near thousand crew members aboard. Amongst that sparse number were Thomas and Dmitri, currently engaged in a slow conversation frequently punctuated by silent reading and video viewings. As the power from the filled capacitor flowed into the IU Drive, its signature flash of light gathered around the ship as it vanished although those aboard the ship did not notice unless by a window or screen displaying the outside (which few were). Less than a second of shifting through the probability space which was the Multiverse later, the ship arrived in U-0. However-

The entire ship shuddered, emitting a visible groaning sound throughout all of its compartments, as a light and heat far more intense than that of the IU Drive's operation slammed into existence as the ship came into phase with U-0. Although the Sonoma responded near instantly, generating energy shields which cocooned it from the intense onslaught of energy, the crew aboard was immediately thrown from a smoothly quiet few days of routine into a sudden crisis punctuated by piercing alarms, heavy damage, and a blast of light and heat which killed some unlucky enough to be within sections of the ship near the hull which crumpled from the assault of energy engulfing the ship.

Thomas and Dmitri slammed into the deck along with all the loose items surrounding them, shocked into immobility for several seconds. As soon as they recovered however, they scrambled to their feet and Thomas activated a comm link. All it issued however was a hissing static. Thomas cut off the evidently useless comms, and shared a glance with Dmitri. Then, both ran down the nearest path for the bridge, which was fortunately rather close and merely minutes away on foot given that their assigned positions were there.

-

Deep in the bowels of the engine room, Donny had been silently doing some minor bit of maintenance when the ship entered U-0. Knocked directly into a bulkhead, it had taken him longer than most of the other largely uninjured crew to recover his wits and interrogate Sonoma as to what was happening. Gathering his equipment, he headed for the door, suddenly realizing that all the power in the room was offline, with the exits firmly sealed.

He quietly swore.

-

"Sonoma, how long until the IU Drive is recharged?" Thomas demanded. He and Dmitri had reached the bridge, just in time to meet up with a discussion underway as to their options.

"Seven minutes with current and projected increases in power generation.", the ship's AI responded. "As previously stated, that required time overstrips the remaining ability of the shields to hold for three minutes and twenty-four seconds."

"What are our options?", someone asked.

"One option is to carefully weaken the shields to to channel additional power into the IU Drive. At the proper balance between shortening the remaining time and keeping enough power to prevent the shields from collapsing, the time gap would be shortened to one minute and forty-six seconds. No options allowing escape have been uncovered as of yet."

Captain Coldell nodded.

"Do it," he ordered.

"Implementing."

-

Donny slid a cutting tool out of his sack and began aiming it towards the door. In time however, he remembered a lesson taught to him during academy by his Confederate trainer...

"For Ghist, Donny! I've told you this too many times! NEVER. DRILL. THROUGH. A. SEALED. DOOR. WITHOUT. A. SUIT.IF. YOU. DO. NOT. KNOW. THE. CONDITIONS. ON. THE. OTHER. SIDE!"

"Whoops," he muttered. "Sorry Mr. Sisslereetaquit."

Drawing out a gelsuit from his pack, he stretched it across a doorway and jumped through into it, his preferred method of donning it. After about twelve seconds, it had fully morphed around him to form his suit. He manually slid the door's pair behind him shut to seal off the inter-compartment hallway and prepared to begin cutting. (^{_{OOC: Each doorway on a Confederate ship or station between compartments has another door to form an airlock}})

Sure enough, air began leaking out through the cut, increasing in frequency as he completed the circle and becoming a gale which quickly died down as the air blew out the hallway into the next compartment. Sticking his head through the hole, Donny was forced to avert his eyes from a hull breach which blazed with light behind the barely-visible flickering curtain of the shield. Looking around, he could see the entire room scorched, with a darkened, more intense scorch mark just opposite from the breach. Unfortunately, one of the four main power feeds to the IU Drive was within that mark.

He quietly swore again, but then realized that it was a very simple fix. Stepping forward, he pulled out an intact form of the damaged component from a storage locker and began doing what he was truly good at: repairing the ship.

-

On the bridge, the crew sat, dejected. Every scenario, failure. With the condition of the ship, the surrounding environment sucking up power via the shields, and the lack of time for repair teams and bots to reach the areas needed to conduct repairs, it was practically inevitable that the ship would succumb soon after the shields did.

"One minute remaining until shield collapse."

-

Donny huffed in his suit as he installed the fresh component into the power feed, locking the connections in. Standing back, he watched as the indicator light on the component flashed green, completing the green line running down the feed which indicated that power could flow through.

As power began flowing through the feed into the IU Drive, Donny stood back and began doing his own personal victory dance. Although others, especially Thomas, seemed to find it annoying, Donny felt happy by acting it out.

-

"Power flow into IU Drive has increased. The Jump Limit will be reached in- The Jump Limit has been reached. Initiating return jump to U-2."

Before everyone could even look up in surprise, the Sonoma left U-2.

-

Before the Sonoma leave U-0 however, it first had to drop the shields. For a short moment of time, the ship was left exposed to the roiling mass of energy beyond.

Like any other mindless mass of 'nature', it did not hesitate once the barrier dropped.

-

Stepping back into the compartment he'd initially been trapped within, Donny suddenly felt a blast of heat on his back. Turning, he could see the room beyond the hallway swamped in light, the material melting away and evaporating. Before he could do so much as throw an arm over his eyes, the light and heat abruptly faded to the softer glow of the IU Drive, and then the darkness and cold of near-interstellar space replaced it.

Donny being in the shadow of a thick, untouched wad of hull directly between him and the outside had saved him from an instant death, although he had missed a view just after the ship reentered U-2 that no Human in either that universe or U-0 had ever seen. But, even after that intense blast of light and heat faded away as fast as it washed into the Sonoma's hull, it initiated a cascade of further destruction.

Donny was once again slammed against a bulkhead as the explosions began.

-

As energy poured into the Sonoma for that instant between the dropped shields and it leaving U-0, there was a power surge which poured into the IU Drive, resulting in a minor malfunction. As the ship reentered U-2, there was an imbalance in the structure of spacetime caused by that malfunction, with a deep curve warping it 'downwards' on one side of the ship and 'upwards' on the other. For the briefest of moments, Sonoma invisibly surfed on an improvised Alcubierre wave, which is the most successful that anyone could ever get with such an attempt at FTL, before it dissipated, depositing the ship far from its original position far out in the Oort Cloud. As it surfed the wave and then drifted following its dissolution, the ship was wracked with ongoing new damage. Hull sections still reacting to the bombardment of light and heat moments earlier exploded out into space, blowing out air, bits of debris, and anyone unlucky enough to be in compartments of the ship newly exposed to space. Main power, most life support, all communications, and many other systems utterly crashed, mangled by the energy blast. The convulsions running through the ship causing much of this damage also tore drones, shuttles, and fighters from their mountings, wrecking most and sometimes triggering secondary explosions. For nearly a minute, the internal destruction continued. And then, the ship began to fall silent and still once more.

-

Once the bridge crew came back to their senses once again, they found themselves drifting. The nearly frictionless rails upon which the habitable section of the ship slid to generate rotational gravity had jammed, thrusting them all into microgravity. As with anyone who lives and/or works in space however, whether aboard a Confederate vessel like the Sonoma or any TAMDEZ ship, they were seasoned veterans and quickly adapted. For those suffering internal bleeding however, they would need to gain back gravity for proper treatment. Faced with their new situation, fortunately helped with the internal comms not being jammed anymore, they evaluated their situation and discussed what to do as teams of suited crewmembers ranged through to ship, finding and rescuing members lost and cut off in separate areas.

Yes, even Donny.

After a lengthy debate which was spurred on by the ongoing drainage of remaining power and the extreme lack of options due to that and the extensive damage far beyond their or the AI's ability to repair, they settled on a final option. The crew would enter stasis, and the ship's propulsion drives would iniate a short thrust, designed to propel the Sonoma on a long-term elliptical orbit which would bring them back into the inner system and down from their high inclination, dipping back down into the ecliptic plane of the solar system as they approached Jupiter's distance from the Sun with a perihelion between (and 'under') the orbits of what remains of Venus and Earth.

The Sonoma would only approach that perihelion in many, many decades, and would still be far out from the inner system and at a high inclination in forty years.

The crew entered stasis hoping for rescue, wondering how long it would be until they were discovered and laid eyes upon a fellow Confederate or TAMDEZ member again...

(OOC: Just to say here, I would like to be part of the planning of an RP which involves the Sonoma being discovered and rescued. Bonus if Ceres has a role in the recovery.)

no ping!

. . . what?