ataraxion | VIDEO ▒ 001 ▒ OPEN BROADCAST ░▒▓█▛▟▛▙▚▞▗ ▘

VIDEO ▒ 001 ▒ OPEN BROADCAST ░▒▓█▛▟▛▙▚▞▗ ▘

[ There's small click as the feed begins transmitting. Nothing shows up except staticky black, but there are muffled noises in the background that faintly resolve themselves into hurried words—two voices, one male, one female, pitched low. ]

—id this—

—ell is goin—

[ . . . ]

—et’s just … over with.

[ There’s a noise that might either be a sigh or a quick burst of static. ] Fine.
[ Then, a moment of terse silence before the blackness of the video suddenly gives way to reveal two figures. The man—who had been the one holding his hand over the camera—is dressed head-to-toe in black, back straight, expression deadpan and unamused; a closer look reveals a matte black, impressive-looking gun at his side. The woman standing next to him has her hair pulled back into a rough ponytail, faint smudges and oil stains on her forearms and cheeks, with a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth; she’s unarmed, but if looks could kill, you’d all be dead already. If they’re confused as to what the hell’s been happening on the ship over the past few hours, they don’t show it—beyond a shared air of tense frustration, or bone-deep exhaustion.

Their sentiments are clear: what. The fuck. Is going on. ]

This is Captain Dominic Ward of USC vessel Tranquility, en route from Alexandria. Acting Commander and Chief Engineer Devon Resnik also present for shipwide transmission.

Welcome aboard.

As much as we’d love to give you the guided tour—[ is that sarcasm? it’s hard to tell with him ]—we can’t. This ship is big. Bigger than you probably realize. Something happened to the rest of the original crew; we’re not sure how or why, and we couldn’t tell you if we wanted to.

And before you start—no, we don’t know how you got here either. So don’t ask. [ Resnik is completely serious. She pinches the bridge of her nose, clearly unimpressed with these series of events. ] We’re trying to find out. Just... bear with us.

In the meantime, there are a few things you should know. One: we’ve been operating at a state of urgency since all essential and non-essential personnel went missing, and until very recently, we’ve been stretched a little thin. This isn’t a free ride; you’re going to have to pull your weight around here. Two: our next port of call is Tansei Station, if that means anything to you.

[ It doesn’t, does it. Moving on. ]

Three: in case it wasn’t already obvious, you are in space. For those of you who’ve been groundside your whole lives, you’ll acclimate fast enough.

Four: all passengers and crew receive an identification number while onboard this ship. The fact that you have one now demonstrates that you are, in fact, a part of this team, whether you like it or not. They also act as your ID and keycard while onboard, so I’d suggest you don’t try to get rid of it. [ Resnik holds up her arm and pushes up the uniform’s sleeve demonstratively, in case anyone hadn’t noticed their numbers yet—or needed a fresh reminder. You can’t see her particular number, but the black ink is clearly present on her forearm. ] Use them to get into your rooms and traverse the rest of the ship. If an area is sealed off, don’t try to get in. You won’t be able to, and trying to access restricted areas is just going to end up trapping you somewhere you really don’t want to be.

So don’t take any chances. [ You don’t want to get stuck somewhere without access to food or water. Trust her, she’s seen it happen before; on a ship this big, it’s only a matter of time before someone decides he wants to be an idiot and gets hurt because of it. ] Now, the tanks you woke up in—those are gravity couches, and they're meant to help you. The ship travels using a very dangerous type of spacetime technology, so long story short, every time we “jump”, you’ll need to get into a grav couch. You don’t want to find out what happens if you don’t. [ G-forces are such a bitch. ]

Our access to the ship’s mainframe is also pretty touch-and-go at this point, and we don’t know what happened to the Tranquility’s maps—we think they’ve been deleted, along with a lot of other archival data. So it’s important that we know where you are. At all times. We don’t want anybody getting lost or injured.

In other words, if you’re thinking about exploring? Don’t. [ That comms device you’re using to access this broadcast? Easily tracked, as are your tattoos, but... you don’t need to hear that right now, do you? No. The majority of you are probably smart enough to figure that out anyway. ]

You get lost, you call us.

Any other questions?

OOC NOTE ▒ Direct your questions to either Ward or Resnik by placing their name in the subject line, along with the type of return transmission (video, audio, or text). Resnik will answer technical or engineering questions, and Ward will answer just about everything else. (Fair warning: they’ll probably threadjack each other a lot.) 

Comments without a specific name in the subject line will be treated as a question directed to the both of them. (They’ll... still probably threadjack each other a lot.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Capa nods here and there during Hotspur's explanation, however perfunctory. ] Complete sense. Traveling faster than light effectively blinds up in transit. There's no way to know where and how you'll come in contact with something else from point A to point B. Nevermind unpredicted anomalies on top of that.

Yeah, you got it. [ He nods ruefully. ] Don't get me wrong, FTL's great for deepspace haulage and cargo and that... but exploration's always gonna be as slow as your fastest sublight drive. And all those 'unpredicted anomalies' make using FTL in a dogfight a bitch-- [ A SUDDEN PAUSE and a flash of worry; is swearing okay? Is he cool to swear? These scientific types, YOU NEVER KNOW. He catches himself and finishes quickly, just in case. ] But, yeah. Too much debris, too much movement.

[ If there's a problem with the swearing, it doesn't show on Capa's face. In fact, there isn't much of anything to his expression beyond an even sort of focus, an attentiveness. He doesn't so much as bat an eyelash at Hotspur's bitch. ] And these pre-programmed nav paths— were they your responsibility as pilot, or did you have a specialist responsible for them?

[ oh, good. The last thing Hotspur wants to do is end up offending someone, especially someone as seemingly interested as this guy. ]

Specialists, mainly. Navvies - navigators, I mean - acting as co-pilots, sometimes gunners. There are too many computations for one person to figure out a jump path off the top of their head whilst flying at the same time, but there are always clear spaces that a pilot can jump in to when they're in a pinch. For emergencies and the like. [ he pauses for thought, raising a hand to scratch at the back of his neck contemplatively ] But where I'm from bigger ships - carriers, like this one - don't have pilots. They have helmsmen - more like the navigators. It's all maths and astrophysics and steering by co-ordinates and starcharts, not manual joystick stuff with visual contact like us pilots. [ It's clear by the tone of his voice as to which one Hotspur prefers. ] Different skill sets, you see. I can plot a couple of paths but hell if I could do it for a carrier like this. [ another pause - this time as something dawns on him. ] Wait - is this all new to you then?

[ Capa continues with his nodding, even murmurs a quiet, makes sense when Hotspur draws delineations between pilots and helmsman. He knows he'd never be able to be the former, but the later—

Capa gives a short nod. ]

Faster than light technology's still a hypothetical where I'm from. I understand the principals and guiding concepts, but the practical implementation of it's a mystery. Right now, I'm just trying to play catch-up. Fill in the blanks, using other people's experiences as springboards.

I wish I could be more use to you, then. [ Hotspur performs that apologetic little half-shrug again. ] Where I'm from - [ and here he's referring as much to his dimension's version of the path humanity progresses along than anything else; he's already painfully aware that it is completely different to anyone else's ] - us humans had a bit of a helping hand when it came to making that first scientific leap towards FTL. [ a moment of realisation, and then a sudden smile: ] And, hey - when you make it back to your homeworld then maybe you'll be the one who makes that leap, based on what you found out here. That's something to think about.

[ aaaaaand it should probably be noted that Hotspur said 'when you make it back to your homeworld' - not 'if.' Ever the optimist, our Hotspur. ]

[ The corner of Capa's mouth twitches and perhaps he means to smile — albeit grimly — but it comes out more like a wince. The mission's waiting for him at home. The mission, t-minus nineteen hours and not enough oxygen to get there. ]

—helping hand?

Alien interference. First contact turned out to be that little push in the right direction that humanity needed... and without their help humanity might never have survived Earth dying. [ he nods, decisively. ] So take notes. You never know what might help you out when you get back...

[ Capa blinks. Then, quickly: ]

Was it the sun?

[ perturbed by the other man's question, Hotspur hesitates. ]

Uh, no, not really. Earth just began to die away. [ Talking about this planet he'd never seen nor felt no real love for was odd - everything he knew about it was history, sometimes more fiction and rumour than fact. ] Although that was alien interference too, they thought. It was before my time. Why do you ask?

[ Capa's mind responds by trying to fathom what could have possibly happened, a dozen different possible scenarios spiral outward, fractal-like, only to break off when each simulation fails to follow-through to the appropriate end. ]

There are problems with the sun where I'm from. [ He's a pilot, so Capa doesn't dive into the physics involved. ] Earth is currently experiencing a perpetual solar winter.

[ A pause. ] It's like dying. So I wasn't sure. Continuums — that sort of thing.

Sol, right? The sun?

[ 'that sort of thing' - Hotspur doesn't really know about that 'that sort of thing'. The death of the planet Earth was a long time before his; the full facts of the exodus are still a little unclear... historical record keeping was one of the first things that fell to the wayside when humanity's survival was being put to the test. ]

Well. There you go then. If nobody figures out how to, uh, fix Sol then maybe when you get back you'll kick-start the exodus.

[ Capa tips his head to one side, like he's considering the possibility, even though he's not. None of the Icarus crew had the luxury of banking on contingencies. As far as they all knew, they were the last line. ] That's— [ He's not sure how to put it. ] —generous of you. A nice thought, I mean.

[ Capa realizes that 'nice' isn't quite the word he's looking for. ] Nicer than the alternative, at least.

[ yyyyeahh Hotspur's getting the impression that Capa isn't too sold on it actually being a nice thing. He summons up a quiet smile. ]

Yeah. Well... You never know.

[ 'BUT YOU COULD BE THE MESSIAH!' ]

So your ship didn't have FTL, huh? [ He raises his eyebrows with a grim expression. ] So that means you've been sitting around on a sublight ship for how long?

[ Now there's a question Capa can answer and without any hesitation or doubt. He straightens — in so much as Capa ever really straightens. ] Sixteen months. [ A beat, then a little more grimly. ] We were t-minus nineteen hours.

Then we woke up in stasis here.

[ ohhh Hotspur doesn't want to ask the next question - he really, really doesn't want to ask it - but his face creases in to a wary wince as he sounds out the words he doesn't want to hear: ]

... T-minus to what, exactly?

[ don't say oxygen exhaustion - don't say oxygen exhaustion - because that is pretty much Hotspur's worst on-ship nightmare scenario. ]

[ Without hesitation: ] Payload delivery.

[ There isn't a reason to beat around the bush, not really. Not when Hotspur's a pilot and understands these sort of things — the weight of a mission, the cost of miscalculation. Then, after a beat: ] Though: T-minus 16 'til complete oxygen depletion.

[ Hotspur purses his lips in a grimace and drops his gaze away from the video feed. In the long years since his injury - Hotspur is loath to call it an 'accident' given his own undeniable culpability - he has grown accustomed to checking, double-checking, and triple-checking his oxygen reserves out of paranoia. The fear of drowning in the vast, airless nothingness of space is terrifyingly strong and his gaze moves almost instinctively to where his pilot's helmet - retrieved from his locker and still carrying a standard eight minute canister of emergency O2 - lay. Even from there he could see the little arrow on the air gage winking promisingly at 100%. ]

16 hours. Sounds pretty chancy.

[ not that you need Hotspur to tell you that, Capa, BUT STILL. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

VIDEO ▒ 001 ▒ OPEN BROADCAST ░▒▓█▛▟▛▙▚▞▗ ▘

[ video ][ you, sir, are a pillar of the brommunity ]

[ video ][ he's a brofessional ]

[ video ][ brosideon, god of the brocean ]

[ video ][ I'm officially out of bro jokes /useless ]

[ video ][ then i will take this opportunity to laksdjfalsdf over nikolaj's face ]

[ video ][ it is such a good face! I need more Black Hawk Down caps, sob ]

[ video ][ i was so tempted to bring sansa from GoT to scream at his face ]

[ video ][ AAH I am reading that rn! and sob hotspur would be SO DISTRAUGHT ]

[ video ][ kljasdf WHERE ARE YOU RN??? ]

[ video ][ SOB only 60 pages in to book one! ]

[ video ][ I SUPPORT THIS WITH EVERY FIBRE OF MY BEING OKAY ]

[ video ][ when i finish work next week i can PROPERLY SMASH MY WAY THROUGH IT ]

[ video ][ running commentary: NECESSARY ]

[ video ][ oh man IT WILL HAPPEN there are so many characters I'm excited to see in the show aahh ]

[ video ][ ohgahd you haven't seen the show yet either /MAKES GESTURES AT YOU ]

[ video ][ NOPE I HAVEN'T oh my god I am a fortress of anti-spoilerness I CAN'T WAIT TO WATCH IT ]

[ video ][ YOU ARE AN ISLAND i seriously cannot wait for you now klajsdfas ]

[ video ][ bald flaming sword dude better be in the show, just sayin' ]