"My Name is Blake Germaine, staff Sergeant. My specialty is programming, especially simulation software. In theory I'm supposed to be modelling planetary atmospheres right now, or maybe fixing the engines. If the fusion batteries have failed, we will need to replace them."

"Marco, can you suggest anything to conserve power? We probably still need heat, and the cryotanks will need power for the cooling for a while, but there must be something. Is the navigation radar still on? That eats power. We can risk not dodging micrometeoriods for a while if we really need the power"

"Certainly the lights are bright enough. Marco, could you cut illumination to 30% of normal please?"

"We could also get by on, say, 80% gravity, at least as people. I hope that doesn't interfere with the plumbing for the cryo tanks. How much power does the artificial gravity use anyway?"

   "With the power fading, Sergeant Germaine, I doubt you will be able to get there to help for now.  See if there's an engineering terminal here.  Maybe you can locate a set of emergency capacitors or some other system in place to power the ship while the batteries are being swapped out.  If you can power the ship from the auxiliary batteries, they will have time to fix this floating freezer."

   Maxwell addressed the others down below.  "Lieutenant Shadow, do what you can to replace the batteries.  We will buy you whatever time we can from up here."

  We'll do what   we can...Steven says he thinks he might be able ta help, if  we can find our way to the engineering place....Me and  Patterson we'll help  him how  we  can.....

I'm going to try to log on to a terminal to buy some more power. There must be something notionally mission critical I would be able to switch off, that hasn't been switched off already.

There are consoles all over the bridge, and soon Germaine finds one with engineering access.
Meanwhile Marco dims the lights.

I cannot access my systems Blake, I am sorry. I have now shut down all lighting across the ship except the route to engineering, bridge and cryo. However, this will not last long. I estimate total system shutdown in 13 hours.

Jennifer meanwhile, still looking over the mummified corpse while adressing the other issues, finds a folded piece of paper in the chest pocket of the rotting grey jumper.
Unfolding it, she sees 4 pod numbers.

CP-125
CP-477
CP-1404
CP-4997

Blake accesses the systems - looks like his login credentials are still good.

He starts looking for something to shut down - or for evidence that Marco has already done it much better than him.

Within seconds of accessing M4RC0-P010 Blake realises there is something terribly wrong. Yes, he can access the terminal, and he can even log in using his own credentials, but instead of the standardised NA submenus, he finds just one program icon on the hub. A simple logo of a sun.

A simple click to open, and Blake is greeted by a song. An old song, at least two centuries old already. He knows the song, because his grandfather used to love the band that made it.

That band was called The Doors.
The song's name... The end.

A digital counter starts on all consoles along the ship. Its a countdown from 60 minutes.

Blake sits down and starts hacking into the terminal. He seems perplexed, working solidly and stopping to say "ahh of course" several times as if he's forgotten the world's most obvious fact.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:11, Wed 08 Mar 2017.

Blake continues to work on the terminal, trying to access the main systems through the macro program.

   Jen looks for a terminal to activate in order to see who is occupying the four cryo pods listed on the paper.  She also takes a few moments to examine the salvaged .22 pistol to see if it is in usable condition.

Blake tries to shutdown the decontamination program before telling anybody about it - he doesn't need the distraction.


Second attempt.

With Blake working hard to gain entry into the ship computers, Jenn looks up the cryo pods. She finds the four, and to her surprise the logs show them empty.

The salvaged pistol could use a good oiling, but should work.

The clock creeps down slowly.

   Jen uses the computer to try to see where the four pods are located among the other cryo pods.  She replaces the .22 in her right sock and slips the note with the pod numbers into her left sock.

Blake tries his best, but the security protocols protecting the decontamination program are just too strong.
He does however find a backdoor way to stop it. Shut down the fusion reactor. There will be no leftover gass, so no decontamination.
The plus side is that he does manage to access the ventilation system.

Jennifer learns the pods are scattered about the cryo hall.

   Jen knew that the newly awakened people wouldn't have anything to work with for tools, since they weren't chilled with any.  She had an idea of how to help them and even if it was a long shot, it was the only shot in the locker at the moment.  She keyed her personal link.

Blake tries to stop the fans.

"At the end of that countdown, the ship will flood with fusion gasses and kill us all. This seems to be software sabotage. I can't shut it off, the only thing I can see to do about it is shut off the fusion reactor, but I don'the know how long people in cryogenic storage last without power."

Cryo pods have their own back-up energy Blake. They can go a year without a constant supply of power.

Blake shuts down the fusion reactor.

"Let's see what else has backup power. Come on emergency lights."

Blake shuts down the reactor. All over the ship power goes off. Lights. Airconditioning. Computers. It all stops working.
As does the computer right in front of him.

   The shutdown and resulting blackout caught Jenni by surprise.  "Ummm...  You meant to do that, right?"

"Yes. At least this way the decontamination protocol won't kill us all by flooding the ship with fusion gasses. Although I was hoping for the bridge to have some kind of auxiliary power or backup."

Blake wanders around this bridge, carefully in the dark, looking for some means of making light. Even if the station he was using doesn't have backup power, perhaps some of the others do.

By the time Blake finds his way in the dark, the emergency lighting on the bridge starts up. Soft toned, red, but enough to see by. The computer consoles all remain off, and will stay that way untill the fusion reactor restarts. This restart can only be achieved at the reactor core itself, in the engineering room.

With hardly anything else to do but wait for now, Blake stares out the huge window that seperates the bridge from the great expanse.
There seems to be nothing there. No flying rocks or debris, no junk as was so common around earth. No planets, and most certainly no sun. Just distant stars. Stars he does not recognise. Not a single familiar constellation.

 For sure wherever they are, it is not Alpha Centauri, or anything even remotely close to that.

   Captain Maxwell moved up to the window.  There wasn't all that much else to do at the moment.  Her soft voice sounded louder than it should on the powerless bridge.  "Damn.  I was hoping that we had been orbiting some big rock in Alpha Centauri all this time.  Once Shadow gets the batteries changed and you get the power restored, maybe we can find out why things happened instead of just dealing with what happened."

After about three hours of waiting and staring the team in engineering seem to have come through. Suddenly all lights come on, computers start up, and the airconditioning starts buzzing. The ship has come back to life.

"We have power again."

Blake tries to check whether the decontamination program is still running.