(No subject)

Who: Jo
Where: Docking Bay 26
When: backtracking a little to before the gravity gives out.
Jo stepped through the doorway to Docking Bay 26. The Quasar 4 sat
partially repaired suspended among a jungle of scaffolding. She
climbed up a ladder and swung through the open hatch into the ship,
making her way to the small office she was assigned. Manually closing
the dented door as far as it would slide, Jo walked around to sit at
her desk. She sighed as she saw the number of diskettes piled up in
front of her.
Grabbing one at random, she slotted it into the computer terminal and
tapped in the passcodes. As expected, yet more reports outlining the
damage to the various specialised experimental systems onboard flashed
onto the screen. With another sigh, she settled down to read through
the glut of material.
The repairs were taking longer than first estimated, delays magnified
by the attitudes of the scientists, who had been distinctly unfriendly
to her since the crash. It had taken many weeks of what she termed
‘peace talks’ to finally learn that collectively, they had as much an
idea of how to fix the damage as a monkey in a straight jacket.
All over the ship, many wall panels were still missing, exposing
tangles of wires, circuitry overflowing into the corridors, choking up
passageways like a species of parasitic plant. The quarters Jo had
claimed were the most intact she could find. Except for the door’s
fried servomotors and the large ceiling panel suspended by a few
twisted shreds of metal above her desk, the walls were still standing
and the place was still connected to the power grid.
Tossing another disk into the ‘out box’, Jo propped her elbows on the
desk and massaged her temples, staring at the looming pile of reports
in front of her. In slow motion, one disk slid leisurely down the
stack and clattered to the floor. Jo blinked and glanced down at the
desk. Resting her hands lightly on its surface she noticed a small
vibration, rapidly increasing, being transmitted throughout the entire
ship. The diskette mountain was now shaking itself apart, disks
raining off her desk. The terminal screen opposite her was flickering
madly.
“What in Jupiter’s frilly underwear is going on?” A loud groan caused
her to look up at the ceiling tile now swinging precariously overhead.
With a shriek the metal girders holding it in place began to give way.
Jo threw herself out of the way and rolled into a crouch against the
wall just as the panel reduced her desk to its component atoms. Just
as the shaking reached epic San Francisco earthquake proportions, it
ceased abruptly. Jo pulled herself to her feet and surveyed the room.
Unfortunately, this last incident was too much for the already severely
weakened structure of the Quasar 4.
A static flooded message buzzed through her private com. “Jo, get out
of the ship. That last … shipquake, or whatever it was, caused some
damage. The scaffolding is collapsing. The ship is falling to
pieces.”
She climbed quickly over the debris and fell through the door as the
deck lurched. At a staggering run she wound her way through the
corridors to the nearest airlock. Suddenly, the floor dropped out from
under her in a particularly violent convulsion.
At this precise moment, Blue Dwarf’s gravity was terminated.
Jo, however, still assuming that normal* laws of physics applied,
falsely expected to be thrown hard into the floor, most probably
fracturing a number of bones in the process. So it was of some
considerable surprise to her that she continued to float up away from
the floor, headfirst into a metal support beam.
Steadying herself against the truss, Jo fleetingly pondered over the
day’s odd events before offering a brief thanks to whatever deity
seemed to be watching over her and floating as quickly as possible (ie.
not very fast at all) to the exit.
Once outside she climbed along the tattered remains of the scaffolding
towards the assembly point a few feet from the bay floor, where most
crew were hovering. A few nods and greetings acknowledged Jo’s
arrival, but a heavy silence descended on the crew as they surveyed the
remains of their livelihood.
The Quasar 4 was strung out in pieces among a glittering shredded metal
web.
“The quake unbalanced a crane working on the rear section. It sliced
through the main structural support beams in that region and the
segment broke up under its own weight,” said Brett’s voice in her ear,
“That area was unoccupied when it happened. Only minor injuries due to
airborne debris have been reported.”
Hooking an arm around a pole bolted to the floor, Jo watched the
wreckage silently, tapping a knuckle nervously against the cool iron.
“Get in contact with the officer in command and find out what the smeg
just happened!” she ordered, her voice hoarse.
**************************
* a highly relative term in this universe
OOC: Open to anyone to continue. Feel free to use my character(s) in
the BD novel =)
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