The ship was in distress. Captain Taynor knew it was only a matter of time before his command
fell. Not only was the ship incomplete but also it had never actually left the shipyards it was
completed in. To be completely accurate, it had never fired its main drives until this very day.
The day had started like any other with the officers and crew manning their stations just as they
had ever day before for the last 3 months. Constantly drilling, constantly training, the crew
would be the finest to join the fleet since the time of the Hegemony. Not only would they be the
best crew, they would be controlling the most advanced ship in the fleet. The ‘Arbiter’ was the
first of a new line of end-all behemoths. Capable of slugging it out with the biggest battleships in
the fleet and stalking the swiftest destroyers, the Arbiter would dominate any battle. Her primary
mission, however, was not battling other traditional warships but to take the fight to the Reagan
Space Defense System cruisers protecting the Usurper’s core planets. Constructed by the
Hegemony to protect those planets from the Great Houses, it was now the ultimate irony,
protecting the Star Leagues worst and most powerful enemy. The Arbiter was equipped with
the best anti-warship defenses available as well as several top-secret devices to help crush the
computer controlled opposition.
The most powerful and also most controversial weapon included in the massive war machines
arsenal was the battery of atomic-tipped rockets. Basically upgraded Killer Whale naval grade
missiles, the Abyss class missiles where capable of single-handedly destroying any size of capital
ship as well as smashing the ground based anti-warship weaponry. These fearsome weapons
were only allowed with the addition of one of the most powerful computers ever constructed.
This computer, capable of limited autonomous actions, was charged with the duty of overseeing
the nuclear arsenal and ensuring their use against military targets. This computer also had
regulating capabilities on most of the other major systems on board the ship. This was the ship’s
undoing in the end.
The engineers had decided that the day had finally come to test out the massive sub-light engines
mounted in the ship. After several days of priming the reactors, the fusion power levels were up
to minimum operating levels and the computer deemed them ready to charge the drives. That is
when the failure occurred. Somewhere in the aft hydrogen tank something happened. It may
have been a simple spark or a short circuit or a malfunction in a system but whatever it was, the
ensuing explosion shook the ship from stem to stern. As damage reports filtered in, I knew that
something terrible had gone wrong but I had no idea the extent of the damage.
The problem was the placement of the computers primary power shunts. They were situated
near the H2 tanks and when they blew, a feedback wave traveled up the power conduits, so the
techs say. This must have damaged the computer in some unknown way because suddenly it
began to do things unexpectedly. One of the first things that happened was that all of the blast
doors throughout the main corridors of the ship slammed open and locked. Slowly our life-
sustaining oxygen was bleeding into the depths of space through the rent in the hull caused by the
explosion and the ensuing fires. The second and most devastating thing that happened was the
computer-launched volley of nuclear rockets. I watched in stunned disbelief as the phalanx of
deadly projectiles streaked away from the ship and towards the planet below. Even before I
asked my gunner for the projected impact point, I knew they would hit the living and supply
complex planet-side. In a blink of an eye the 842 people still on surface perished in hellfire. The
computer had done a magnificent job of destroying the facility. Not only did the missiles slam
into the outer regions of the base but also bored into the deeper, ‘hardened’ bunkers. That goes
to show how ‘hardened’ they really were. Now, the destruction of the base is the least of my
concerns.
We are suffocating to death. Repeated attempts to restart or override the computer have failed.
Every attempt we have made at closing the blast doors has failed. The vacuum of space has
smothered the fires in the storage tanks but too much of the hull was opened for us to patch it.
Several teams are working on placing temporary patches in the corridors aft of our position but
these will not hold long. Even if our patches did hold we only have enough food on board for
about a week and the remaining oxygen supply would only last us about 3 days. The next ship
coming into the system will not arrive for 2 months. The demand for security for this project was
so high; it was seemed necessary to reduce the number of arriving and departing ships to the
bare minimum. Now I wish our drive for a secret weapon was not so headstrong and we had
prepared more thoroughly for an accident of this magnitude. One thing is for sure; the people
aboard the next dropship will definitely not find anyone alive here. I am not even sure if there will
be enough left of the ship when help arrives to even be worth salvaging. Maybe I am being
overly morbid but imminent death has a way of doing that to a person. I have authorized the
allotment of cyanide pills to the crew. Those that do not want to wait for the inevitable can end
their suffering a little sooner. I have decided to stick it out to the bitter end. Hopefully it will not
be too painful. My last wish is that my family will know that I died and am not ‘Missing in
Action’. That small amount of closure may help my soul rest well in whatever is to come. It is
starting to get cold in here and I am getting sleepy. I hope the war will go well without this ship
or its crew. I guess that is awfully vain to think that we were that important. Maybe I should
take that pill and get it over with. Either way, soon it will not matter. I guess we all are now
casualties of war.
------ End of Log ------
Log Date: ******
Recorded By: Captain Charlie Taynor
Staging Area Zeta 9 Gamma
Omicron 14 Star System
