Chapter Text
“Ex nihilo nihil fit. From nothing comes nothing.” - Parmenides of Elea.
Thirty thousand feet below the surface of the water, Tango’s eyes opened.
Panic set in quicker than his critical thinking, and he was gasping for air— clawing at the seat, the harness strapped over his shoulders, the empty space, anything he could reach. His head throbbed with half-questions and pain. Almost automatically, his lungs spasmed beneath his ribs and sucked in shallow, horrible gulps of air that left his throat burning.
Where am I. The thought cut through the haze behind his eyesockets and pounded like a steady drum.
Where… He glanced at his surroundings. What happened?
It was dark. Pitch-dark. Darker than space, anyway— From behind clusters of dark spots forming in his eyes, a wreath of blinking lights secured in front of him looked almost like the stars he was used to, except stars didn’t spin around his head and paint concentric lines in the sky like that. They were all he could see in the murk, and some far-away part of Tango’s brain faintly supplied that the lights were alarms on his spaceship’s console. Completely in sync, they danced like dying fireflies, periodically dipping out of sight and coming back to life, wavering erratically in the air.
Tango groaned as the pain caught up to him, waves of nausea sending his vision pitching and rolling. He swore he could feel his body moving, even as his heavy head pinned him to the chair. Alarms cried out to him from hidden speakers, fighting through the cotton in Tango’s ears and slowly growing louder. He shut his eyes.
Where the hell am I? The edges of Tango’s skull reverberated and shook, frantic thoughts flying and bouncing off the walls faster than he could process them. Where, who, what— my head —the lights, it’s dark— God, my head—! what happened, when, loud, the alarms, what— my mouth is dry, it— the—
Tango drew his first conscious breath. Rattling and unsure, the sip of air chased away the edge of the fog in his head. He took another breath. Something warm dribbled over his temple.
Another breath. The rushing sound of air came from his inner ear, padded and fuzzy like his whole head was submerged underwater. Every inhale came with a faint crackle in his ears and a splitting pain in his chest, but steadily, he breathed. He cracked open his eyes once again.
“Fffbnhb… the.. ohh, my head…“ he murmured to no one in particular. Sluggishly, he looked for some indication of what was happening. Faint lights pricked his retinas from their places on the console. He tried futilly to blink away the spots pressed into his eyes.
“Mm… lights…? uhh…”
Tango’s fingers twitched in their clumsy gloves, nearly numb to the fabric. The muscles in his jaw loosened and fell slack. "Ow…” He shut his eyes again.
I’m… in my ship. Did I crash land? Where’s…
Something dripped over his brow.
“That’s… w— water… li.. liquid…” It stuck to his skin.
Tango’s brain finally caught up, and on instinct, his hand flew to his face, fumbling for a second on his helmet. His eyes caught a flash of something crimson sliding down his cheek.
"Thaaat... can't be good."
He took another shuddering breath.
I’m… I’m alive, he realized. I’m alive. Un-explodificated! He numbly glanced around his control center.
The alarms in his ship were suddenly loud to Tango.
Past the anxiety building in his chest, he disabled the alarms and ran over a mental list of things to check on his console. This— the systematic double and triple checks, the endless reassuring that everything was functioning— this felt normal. He tried his best to sink into the routine of it: flick on the panel, blink away the blinding afterimage, pull up the console, perform a systems diagnostic. His skilled hands struggled to type in the commands past a pounding headache and a regular crackle and split of pain in his side.
Fuel... fine. Heating system operational. Air balance good.
“That’s… strange,” he muttered. “Oxygen’s low.”
Low and falling, he noted, watching another tick on the bar drop away.
…And another.
"Dammit," he hissed, pulling up another diagnostic.
[56% STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY], it read.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit.”
Tango had built this ship with his own two hands. He had tightened every bolt and double and triple checked it until his head spun and his vision blurred. He knew his ship. His eyes tracked the metal beams and panels that separated his fragile human body from an instantaneous and very painful death. He trusted his ship.
He scanned the damaged areas on the ship’s blueprint— wing, rudder, engines, all highlighted in boxes— all nearly totaled.
His mind ran through the hours, days, weeks he’d spent testing and building, welding and wiring and testing again— time he’d have to spend now fixing those parts.
Time he didn’t have.
Manageable. It’s manageable, he told himself. I’ve dealt with worse before, I’ve been through worse before, I—
He glanced at his windshield.
The windows were black.
…I still don’t know where I am.
Wherever he was, he wasn’t in space anymore. His positioning system’s screen had flickered and died—because of course it had— showing only a little speck representing his spacecraft, alone in a black abyss, just beneath a message reading “NO SIGNAL”. His ship had one of the best comm systems being produced, so of course the knowledge that it was either broken or somehow being interfered with was absolutely fantastic.
Nervously, his eyes flicked to the pressure guage of their own accord, searching the ticks of the dial and burning the neatly labeled number it hovered over into his mind.
[15,750 psi.]
Dread crept up his spine.
15,750 psi. 15,750 psi. The number resounded in his head. The part of Tango's brain that took standardized tests and memorized textbooks translated the figure uselessly—108,600 kPa, 1086 bar— like turning over a frayed edge in his hands. Something about that number beneath the twitching pointer pulled his heart up into his throat.
What causes that kind of pressure?
The void loomed over Tango’s little ship.
Well… whatever’s out there… he needs to be ready for it. He needs to know. Tango barely breathed as his hand moved to the dashboard.
‘FRONT LIGHTS’ read the innocent little switch beneath his trembling finger. It was such a simple action, but some desperate part of Tango wished fervently to stay in the dark. He’d installed the bulbs himself, wired them by hand, tested them hundreds of times. They worked. They had to work. He focused his eyes on the velvet black swath past his control room.
Tango flipped the switch, and his eyes widened.
Water. Unmistakably, water. Tango scrabbled in his brain for any other explanation, but the glow of his ship’s revealing light against the pale seafloor illuminated the choking murk around him— water for miles on end.
Water. No, no— an ocean. Tango was crash-landed at the bottom of an ocean. God, of course it had to be water! The pressure, the darkness, it— it all made sense, it added up, but… water? He could handle an alien planet. He could handle deep space. Hell, he could deal with some frozen, mizerable little moon at the edge of the galaxy! But this…
The sound of metal creaking rang through his ears. Tango ran the scenario in his head: A few measly tons of metal and a slowly dwindling oxygen supply versus a potentially endless ocean filled with the power of an indescribably large amount of water pressing down on it at all times.
He didn't like those odds.
He really, really didn't like those odds.
Tango made the executive decision to not think about that right now.
Instead, he stifled the fear and the pain building in his mind and did the only thing he knew how to— make a plan.
He didn’t know just how fixable the damage was, didn’t know how many gallons of water were rushing into his ship at the moment, slowly choking him out; he didn’t know if he had weeks or just hours before the whole thing burst— but whatever his situation, he had to get over there and fix it.
Which meant he had to stand up.
He grit his teeth, gripped the armrests, summoned his last strengths, and—
Oh, God, that was a bad idea.
The air flew from his lungs. Tango clutched at a stabbing pain in his diaphragm, doubled over and coughing wetly.
"Medkit," he gasped, voice barely making a sound as his legs buckled and threatened to collapse. Tango's lungs burned and heaved as they struggled to draw in air. Through his quickly blurring vision he could see spatters of something dark and red on his glass visor.
As another spasm of pain shot through him, Tango’s legs gave out, the impact with the floor reverberating up through his ribs and dragging a strangled yelp through his lips. His hand wobbled as it clutched the rim of his control panel.
The shallow gulps of air he managed burned his lungs and made him nauseous— his frantic brain searched for some kind of relief, to scrape away the tightness in his chest.
Tango’s glove scrabbled at the neck of his helmet, and he knew that without thinking he was searching for the latch on his helmet. The proper depressurization procedures and checks failed to enter his mind as, automatically, he found the metal rail at his neck and shakily twisted the helmet off. With a pop and a hiss, the helmet hit the floor.
Medkit, he tried to say again, lips making contact with sticky blood flowing out of his mouth as they silently formed the shape of the letter M. He had spotted it— white against the grey metal.
With his free hand Tango reached for it, fingers fumbling at the straps securing it to the back wall.
Come on, come on—! He tore the kit from its holster, threw open the lid.
I need… shit, what do I need?! This has gotta be something internal, I don’t know how to—
Another bout of hacking took over him. Specks of blood appeared in front of him, scattered across the sterilized surfaces.
While his lungs lurched inside of him, Tango rifled around in the medkit, looking for something, anything, with no concrete idea of what exactly. His hand faltered across the contents, sporadically tossing aside bandages and ointments, tubes and applicators and boxes that all blurred together. Finally, his fingers closed around a little rattling bottle— Painkillers. That’s what he was looking for. A temporary fix, yes—he glanced at the window—but he didn’t really have any other options.
It was a slow fix, too. He clutched at his chest, realizing the pills would take a while to kick in. In a trance, Tango took a pill, stopped, took another, shuddering at the taste of iron on his tongue. He winced as his side split again, a fresh throb replacing the nausea in his head.
His eyes fixed on a bottle and syringe, still nestled in the medkit.
MORPHINE 300mg
…No. I— I can’t use anything else, not yet.
His nails dug into his suit and left smudges of blood across the fabric.
I’ll just have to bear it.
Tango tried his best to breathe and ignore his tight lungs; rested his clammy forehead against the wrist still white-knuckling the control panel.
I need to check life support—A fresh bought of coughs pushed past his throat—I need to think of a plan, need to— to—
He spat out half a mouthful of blood. Weak, shuddering breaths tried to catch in his throat, and his thoughts sputtered and died where they began.
I can’t go on like this, he realized. Beads of sweat collected on his eyelashes.
He curled up against the console and fought the tears pooling behind his eyes.
I… I can’t.
For once, Tango’s ship was quiet. Not silent, not peaceful— just still.
No alarms rang. No meters ticked. Even the wires and tubes hushed their thrum for their passenger.
The only sounds that a human ear could discern were Tango’s own whimpering breaths, and the steady drip, drip, drip of sweat and blood onto metal.
Excerpts from
University Physics
Second Edition
by R. M. Ludlam
Introduction
The discipline of physics is our way of understanding the many functions of our universe. In this textbook, you will find the answers to many fundamental questions: How do forces act upon each other? How does energy move between systems? Why do planets orbit stars and suns?
The unknown is the basis of all curiosity, and curiosity the basis of all science. I encourage you, reader, to ask many questions, explore, and experiment in this great universe, with this textbook as your guide.
- R. M. Ludlam, PhD.
.....
Chapter 1
Distance and DisplacementWhen an object moves through space, there are two ways to measure it: distance and displacement.
Distance is the way we measure how far an object has travelled without taking into account its direction, while displacement is the shortest possible distance between the start and end positions of an object. While distance is a scalar quantity, or one which can be described by a single value—such as 12cm or 6 miles— displacement is a vector with both direction and magnitude. It is the total change in position of an object from point A to point B.
Even if an object moves a great distance, if it returns back to the place it started, its total displacement will be 0.
Thirty thousand feet below the surface of the water, Tango lay slumped against the console of his ship. Silence laid its heavy hands around his ears, muffled and fragile.
Beep.
Tango’s eyes opened, breath caught in his throat.
…What was that?
A million reasons flit through his mind. He turned all the alarms off, so it… couldn’t be them. He pricked his ears again, waiting to hear another.
Nothing. Only silence.
…It could be nothing. Just— just the fuel meter dropping or something. Tango took a deep breath.
“Calm down, Tango, you’re overthinking.” he rasped to himself. Still, he kept his eyes open, studying the little dark stains surrounding his knees. He listened.
Nothing.
He closed his eyes again, and—
Beep.
…There it was again. Tango lifted his head, suppressing the wobbling rush as best he could. His console had gone dark, screens dimmed and alarms quelled.
It could be nothing, it could be nothing… he repeated to himself.
His eyes caught hold of a subtle green glow on the console.
Beep.
Tango knelt forwards on his knees, all pain pushed to the edge of his mind. His heart dropped.
It… it wasn’t an alarm.
Beep.
It was his radar.
Beep.
Still aching, Tango pulled himself in front of the little panel.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
A dot on the monitor, flashing, flashing, flashing—
The beeps droned all around him.
Something.
The beeps grew faster.
Something there.
The radar sang.
Tango clamped his hands over his mouth.
Two pricks of light stared back at him through the darkness.
He squeezed his eyes shut, heart palpitating against his ribs, preparing to die at any second.
As suddenly as it came, the sound stopped.
It was gone.
Tango slumped against his chair.
I need to get out of here.