The USS Oxford was an aging Miranda-class starship berthed out of the Sol system with a distinguished record of service. Her angular lines spoke of an era long past when starships were built for function over form–displaying a carriage of a single heavy saucer about the middle and boom-lowered nacelles like a metal catamaran.
The ship had many scars from her travels, none visible on her hull–the engineering team at Utopia Planetia pride themselves in sleek, unmarred hull plating. However, age and injury did show amidst her superstructure, far out of sight and mind.
For Helvetica’s first assignment, after being placed aboard the Oxford, the captain put his newest Ensign to work crawling through the Jeffries tubes in order to hunt down and tag potential engineering problems.
The work was boring but it gave her experience. Mostly it meant walking down a corridor, talking to someone who was having a problem (“My replicator just gave me a cactus instead of a slice of raspberry pie!” or “My sonic shower has switched from suck to blow.”) Helvetica wasn’t sure exactly what the last one meant, but if there was a problem, there’d be a glowing spot in the Jeffries tube nearby and she could tag it for the maintenance crew to check out and hopefully fix that malfunctioning shower.
The ship was nice, the captain seemed distant but present, but really what caught Helvetica’s attention was how small the place seemed. For each area she went to in order to find people and effect tagging for repairs, she discovered there was only one corridor to walk down (with one person) and often only one Jeffries tube–and that tube almost always had one bend in it. None of the doors went anywhere, the tubes were all blocked at one end, and none of them led elsewhere.
Sonic shower. Replicator. Door broken. Not that any of the doors opened for Helvetica anyway, except for turbolift doors to take her to a new floor.
“Are you enjoying for first job?” the game asked as she was crawling down another tube towards a glowing panel.
She sniffed. “I feel like an overpaid space janitor right now.”
“You have to start somewhere,” the computer said. “This is an MMO after all, so either it’s shooting twenty slimes or you fix five malfunctions. You’re an Ensign after all, what duty did you expect to get? Flying the ship?”
“Well…” Helvetica said. “I would really like to fly the ship. If I don’t start out as a captain, how will this game be fun?”
“Wait, I can change that. How about we create a change in command. You said you wanted a ship. Let’s get you a ship.”
“How are we doing to do that?”
The computer didn’t respond, so Helvetica got back to work and waited for the most recent glowing console to stop glowing.
MALFUNCTIONS TAGGED 4 of 5.
Thoom. The ship rattled around her, tools and gear fell and clattered on the tube floor.
“What was that?” Helvetica said.
The whine of an alarm klaxon sounded red alert and the captain’s voice came over the comm. “General quarters! The Borg were sighted attacking an outer colony and we just happened to be in the neighborhood. To make a long story short, we are unexpectedly taking fire–”
Thung-boom.
“Get to your stations and secure yourselves. Captain out.”
BOOM!
The red alert alarm continued to sound and another voice cut in. “Hull breach detected. Evacuate port section, decks three through five. Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Security teams to the bridge.”
Helvetica crawled back out into the corridor and found it glowing red. The person she was just talking to–someone who’s door didn’t work– was cowering next to the tube. When he saw her, he grabbed her and pressed something into her hand.
“The Borg are boarding the ship! Take this phaser and fight your way to the bridge.”
Green transporter beams fluttered behind him and two burly-looking Borg drones materialized. One swung a bulky arm made of whirling gadgets and sharp edges and struck the crewman who handed Helvetica the phaser. He fell to the floor.
Startled, Helvetica opened fire with the phaser. Several orage beam blasts later and there were two Borg drones on the floor at her feet, still glowing slightly from the overkill.
“Now this is more like it,” Helvetica said as she hefted the phaser.
The indicators on the map had changed, a blue circle and an arrow led her to the nearest turbolift. Her face broke into a wicked grin and she stepped over the downed Borg and started her trek to the bridge.
The author Helvetica writes the Helvetica Voyage, Helvetica Venture, and Hellvetica Chronicles for Vox Ex Machina and proudly supports the works of Kyt Dotson, whose writing includes Mill Avenue Vexations (a gothic webserial featuring cab driver Vex Harrow), Black Hat Magick, and Helljammer and invites you to check out the novel, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson.
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