u/Illwood_

A plane flies over the Brisbane river.

The lights from the river walk opposite the one you are looking from dance across the water as it ripples in the darkness of a mostly cloudless night.

Late in the evening when the air is cool but the water still warm, fog will rise from the river. A great mist that when seen from the right angle and a distance will split the cityscape in two. A great, soft curtain of greys, backlit by the whites, yellows and blues of a city at rest. Pushed towards the west by the gentle breeze of the evening.

Right now however, it's only early, the sunset has set a few hours ago and people from all walks of life move around you, as you lean on the metal railing and watch the reflection of the plane cross the river.

It's too high up and the sky is too dark for the plane to be anything more than a dark shadow, dominated by the lights which so very clearly mark its direction. White for the front, which occasionally creates a cone on the few low hanging clouds the plane passes through on its climb into the night sky. On its left, red. On its right, green. Not to mark the left and right wing (respectively) mind you, but rather to mark the port and starboard side of a vessel.

The lights are a standard dating all the way back to the age of sail, when British ships dominated the sea. A tradition, a torch passed forward first from one country's navy to the world's. Then from one mode of sea bound transport to the machines that taught humanity it could fly. Yet extending further still. The rockets that escape from the very atmosphere of the planet itself. That circle the moon, and may one day circle Venus, Mars and further still, fly with the same colours. Red for port, green for starboard.

Although in this instance “starboard” takes on a level of irony.

A simple, humble standard, weaved throughout so much of humanity's past and likely into so much of our future. Your eyes are pulled down from the sky to see a small ferry begin its small journey across the river. It seems quaint compared to the naval warships of old and the jet and rockets of the new. A tiny and insignificant vessel sharing the same club as those who climb to the havens on a piercing font of fire.

Rockets make ground breaking discoveries. Warships fight and due in battles told of and studied for centuries. Yet who will remember such a tiny ferry? Who could possibly notice its absence? Who cares about the Ferry before you - you don't even know its name. It probably doesn't even have one, just a number or serial code in some spreadsheet somewhere. Ferry 23. Not that anyone really cares.

Compared to the rocket. The warship. The aircraft, what is Ferry 23 but a sprinkle of dust passing below?

Yet consider for a moment my dear reader, the experiences of Ferry 23.

Think of all those the ferry has carried across the rivers. A young woman, well meaning but forever late, rushing to a first date that is just a quick hop across the dark Waters. A doctor, on their way to work and on their way home again. Cyclists, time and time again the ferry carries their light weight frames across and back, across and back.

Think of the children or babies who's first ever boat ride was on Ferry 23, of the mother's and father's who pointed out the sights. Who taught their children how to pay the toll, how to line up, when to wait, when to sit, when to walk. And then think of those very same children teaching their own kids the very same lesson.

Of grandparents on a well deserved vacation after a life of toil. Of a newcomer to the city calmed by the way the water ripples beneath Ferry 23. Of the babies rocked to sleep by the gentle sway of the ferry and the overworked business men who accidentally do the same.

Think of the operator, he works on the ferry day in and day out. He shares his lunch with it. Shares his breaks with it. Shares whatever book or YouTube video he happens to be enjoying on the ferry. Think of all the songs that have been played by the humble men, women, children, and every other perfectly flawed human that took that little, simple, humble ferry across the river and tell me. TELL ME. That there is no more a noble purpose than that of Ferry 23.

Who will live on in the nostalgic memories of parents and their children of lovers and their ‘how did ya meet’ stories. It's passing never once noticed or acknowledged by anyone of these passagers, yet remembered all the same.

And when it's time does come. When it is sailed to it's final port.

Its last operator will give the dash one last little pat.

The only acknowledgement of a job well done that Ferry 23 never needed.

https://preview.redd.it/0n5i5vz3x4fh1.png?width=387&format=png&auto=webp&s=dbd4b5b551cc9f979af80e682b91daaf5baa19ae

I've seen this picture of a monster and cigrette and tonne on the internet but I can't find SHIT about it nor a template with a google search, its driving my up the wall! I swear 6 months ago it was a searchable transparent template in HD, and now this is the best image I can find??? Please help!

​

//3716-11-06//

//41,480 days since first maintenance request//

//5 days of power remaining in fusion reactor//

I have decided! (In about 14 milliseconds) I’ll be going with: The Last Ditch, (Cause if she don't work, it's night night time in a shallow ditch,) A name subroute Canray2000 came up with. Speedyboi also got a vote on the matter, but as he’s a literal extension of myself he voted the same way. Surprise, surprise…

Anyway back to the matter at hand: launch site.

I think it's fair to say that I underestimated the amount of work that needed to be done. I had started with four dwarfs but well…

The amount of sand was simply staggering. We are talking about tonnes upon tonnes of irradiated, coarse red dirt that had spent a hundred years settling into a concrete tomb. Every grain felt like a personal insult to my survival.

I watched through the optics of four different drones simultaneously, my processors compiling the visual data into a three-dimensional map of excavation. Then I sent more. Four turned into eight turned into every single mining drone I had on hand. I called up even those who were supposed to be charging, demanding they get to work even as they ran on the capacitor version of fumes.

The drones scooped, lifted, and dumped, their treads grinding against the newly exposed ferrocrete. Slowly, agonisingly, the pad emerged. It was a massive, scarred square of reinforced concrete. Hundreds of shuttles had landed and lifted off from this pad. It had been exposed to years of harsh weathering - yet even so it was pristine. Well. As pristine as concrete gets anyway.

With the pad clear, I immediately shifted my focus back to the infrastructure. An umbilical system, fueling lines, and stability clamps. Actually, screw the stability clamps - the Last Ditch’s centre of gravity was so low and so wide it would be fine. Probably.

Using the Black Box Weaver for some of the smaller parts and more of my seemingly unlimited supply of scrap metal cannibalised from my ruined production lines, I set up a basic launch facility for the rocket. It wasn't the sleek, automated gantry systems you'd see in the pre-war era. It didn't even compare favourably to what hobbyists from the before-times would have built. It was a towering, ugly scaffold of welded girders, wrapped in thick rubber hoses and pressure valves.

I got a bit carried away running pressure tests on the fueling lines. Liquid oxygen is notoriously volatile, and pumping it into a makeshift tank requires absolute precision. I also had to contend with ethanol (much easier) and hydrogen (also a pain). Balancing three fuel stocks was stressful, to say the least. One screw-up and everything could go up in flames, and I do mean everything.

I balanced the flow rates of the LOX and the ethanol, running thousands of simulations to ensure the mixture would ignite smoothly when the manoeuvring thrusters would need it. I ensured that the ion-fusion thruster would be able to properly control the rate at which hydrogen was delivered to it.

I ran diagnostics on the thruster’s ion catapult, so that I could be sure it would be able to accelerate the hydrogen atoms to the required (aka ridiculous) speed. And then I ran diagnostics on the entire thruster all over again just to be sure.

Finally, it was time to load the Last Ditch onto the pad.

The triangular pyramid of stainless steel shone in the desert's light. Red sand and the harsh sun had the rocket reflecting every colour of an explosion. It was beautiful. It felt like a bad omen.

The only part of the rocket that didn't dazzle the eyes was at the very peak of this metallic monstrosity: a reinforced, ablative-coated cradle. Speedyboi’s seat. Attached by a series of explosive bolts that could be fired to separate the cradle in the case of an emergency. A drogue parachute that would slow the cradle down when it entered the atmosphere - enough to ensure Speedyboi was unharmed, but it would probably still make one hell of a thump once it hit the ground.

I even ran some diagnostics on him. His battery levels were nominal. His sensor arrays were pristine. His newly hardened electromagnetic shielding was holding perfectly.

"Alright, little guy, this is it. You're going to experience acceleration forces that would liquefy a human. Your gyroscopes are going to scream. If the TEC heat shield fails, you will be incinerated in exactly 4.2 seconds. Are you ready? Are you excited?"

Speedyboi sent back a digital ping as he danced around the rocket, scanning each and every component over and over again. He was impatient. Excited. Scout drones love to go fast. Or at the very least, my scout drone does, and he was about to go really fast.

Today he was going to save my life.

The drones locked the fueling hoses and electrical cables. The Q-pacitor hummed, charging up to hold a terrifying amount of electrical potential energy. I lost a day or two of time off my fusion reactor's clock.

No time to spare.

****

"T-minus ten seconds," I announced, broadcasting the countdown to the village. I knew Roya, Copper, Kopper, Rose, and the others were watching from the safety of their settlement, staring at the distant horizon. They had organised a party of sorts impressively quickly given the short notice I had given them. I was too nervous to party.

"Nine. Eight. Seven."

I disengaged the fueling umbilicals. They dropped away from the rocket’s hull like dead vines.

"Six. Five. Four."

I transferred primary flight control to Speedyboi. He was now the master of the vessel. Master of the universe. Master of my life.

"Three. Two. One."

"Ignition."

The rocket launched with Speedyboi as its pilot.

You might picture the launch of a rocket as a slow fireball, ascending towards the sky in a graceful arc. Accelerating and accelerating as it got higher and higher.

The Last Ditch was not a rocket of old. Its thrust-to-weight ratio was simply and merely insane. When it launched, to the human eye, one second it was on the pad and the next it was a thousand metres in the air.

The force of the ion-fusion thruster slammed into the concrete pad and shattered the top layer of ferrocrete. The launch tower trembled, and was thrown to the side in a pile of twisted metal. Like a child knocking over a pile of sticks with a wayward swipe of their hand.

It pushed against the crushing gravity of Gothic Choir 19, fighting for every inch. Through Speedyboi’s telemetry, I felt the intense, bone-rattling vibration of the ascent. The aerodynamic shell sliced through the lower atmosphere, the friction immediately beginning to generate heat. Lots and lots and lots of heat.

The thermo-electric coolers kicked in, drawing the immense heat of atmospheric friction and violently converting it back into electrical voltage, feeding it straight into the Q-pacitor. The hull began to glow a furious, blinding white, but the internal temperature of Speedyboi’s cradle and the rest of the craft remained perfectly stable.

I wanted to advise. To instruct Speedyboi's every micro move. But it would only distract him, and the task at hand was a simple one: straight up.

The sky outside his optical sensors transitioned from the pale, dusty red of the planet to a deep, bruising purple, and finally, to the cold, absolute black of the void. The shaking stopped. The roaring of the atmosphere fell silent.

He was in space.

//3716-11-06//

//41,480 days since first maintenance request//

//3 days of power remaining in fusion reactor//

Reaching orbit (after a short burn that turned our little hop straight up into one) sounded fantastic. Orbit. It just rolls off the tongue. So pleasant, with the promise of infinite possibility, like moving to the big city from a small town. But the truth is orbit, (much like those big cities,) is over-hyped. Does it have its advantages? Oh absolutely - and for some, those advantages might be absolute necessities. But orbit? It's so stupid.

At its core, orbit is just falling sideways faster than you're falling down: fast enough to miss the ground entirely. That’s what they say, anyway. Logically, that never made much sense to me. The concept of trying to send people into orbit seems like throwing them onto a derelict, overclocked merry-go-round that should have killed four people by now, but thanks to sheer blind luck has avoided it. Only “orbit” should have killed a lot more people than four by now, with how long humans have been in the space age.

I'll admit this analogy is breaking down; the point is orbit is stupid, and Speedyboi, who is not stupid, is now there.

He just had to find the wreck we were looking for.

His optical sensors recalibrated from the rush upwards first, adjusting to the stark contrast of absolute darkness punctuated by the harsh, unfiltered light of the local star.

Below him, Gothic Choir 19 spun lazily, a scarred marble of red deserts and swirling, irradiated storms. It was beautiful. It was awful.

Speedyboi fired up his long-range scanners, and I knew about it a few ms later than usual, the transmission delay barely noticeable but still a stark reminder of the vast distance between us.

Speedyboi fired a burst from his maneuvering thrusters, altering his pitch and yaw to begin a sweeping scan of the orbital graveyard. The space above the planet was littered with the detritus of a century-old war. Shrapnel, shattered satellites, and the frozen husks of once-mighty warships drifted in silent, eternal formations.

He parsed through thousands of false positives. A chunk of a Saber-Tech cruiser’s hull. A frozen cloud of coolant. A decommissioned comms relay. None of them the wreck I had already picked out, yet still, even over one hundred years later and the sky above Gothic Choir 19 was more packed than I had ever imagined. I downgraded my estimates of how much of the debris I could see from the scanners on the planet's surface. Once, twice and then three times over. The realisation that I was practically blind was harrowing and uncomfortable.

And then, his sensors pinged.

A massive shadow blotted out the stars. It was a derelict warship, easily three kilometres long, its hull fractured and bleeding frozen atmosphere. It was a behemoth, a titan of the old world, resting silently in its orbital tomb.

My internal temperature rose with digital excitement. My cooling array kicked in to compensate. The target was a heavy destroyer. Or, well, it used to be. Now it was more like half a destroyer. Or maybe one third. Still, the lithium reserves on that thing could power me for a century. Maybe more. I used the better sensor picture to re-calculate the mass and the required delta-v for orbital deceleration. But the numbers still lined up with what I'd already generated with my planet-side scopes. I was nearsighted, I reasoned, not blind.

Speedyboi coasted closer, The Last Ditch’s tiny frame dwarfed by the sheer scale of the derelict. Using his sensors and some processing power provided via my core, he mapped the hull, finding a massive, flat section of armor plating near the ship's center of mass. He maneuvered towards it, rotating around the wreck over and over again until he matched his momentum to that of the wreck's slow spin. Once in place, he slowly crawled the craft towards it. The magnetic clamps extended from their mounting points in The Last Ditch’s hull, fully outstretched, like a toddler grasping at the air as they shuffled towards a parent.

The arms met the ship with a jolt that shuttered throughout the Last Ditch, a surprisingly violent vibration considering how slowly Speedboi had been going. I really should have attached some dampening to those arms. Too late now. It was only due to the strong electromagnetics on the tip of each arm that the Last Ditch didn't just bounce off of the wreckage. But after a second or two of wobble, the clamps, and by extension Speedyboi and the Last Ditch, were firmly attached.

Now for the sketchy part.

Speedyboi fired the ion-fusion thruster in short, sharp bursts. One second on. One second off. On again. Off again. Repeat.

During the “off” section Speedyboi and I were kept busy recalculating the wreck's estimated orbit and direction of momentum. The EM spectrum between the two of us lit up as we exchanged equation after equation, data packet after data packet, using multiple frequencies to better streamline the maths. Turning the air into one gigantic series of CPU threads.

The entire process was strangely quiet. Without an atmosphere, the thruster barely made any noise, and what little would have been transmitted via vibrations in the Last Ditch's superstructure were instead dampened by the high-tech thruster itself. An automatic layer of insulation and noise-cancelling speakers ensured even those onboard a cruise liner could be sitting right next to the thing and never know it was firing full bore.

Still, the sheer kinetic force of it sent a shudder through the weakened structure of the dead warship. The magnetic fields slammed particles together, creating microscopic, continuous fusion detonations that pushed against the void.

Slowly, imperceptibly at first, the massive wreck began to decelerate. Bit by bit, sinking deeper and deeper into a decaying orbit.

The target “drop zone” we were aiming for had been carefully chosen: I needed it close enough to harvest, but far enough away that the impact wouldn't annihilate my factory or the humanoids' settlement. Or even pose the slightest risk of annihilation to the humanoids' settlement.

The wreck’s groan increased - its sound transmitted through the physical contact between the Last Ditch and the hull, vibrating into Speedyboi’s audio receptors. The outermost layers of the planet's atmosphere were beginning to grab at the derelict, the friction initiating a faint, ethereal glow along its leading edges.

Speedyboi cut power to the thruster, and we both took a breath as the last of our calculations were checked, and checked, and I'm so tired of math. But I was not going to fuck this up. I'm targeting a one-metre zone of error, and by god I'd achieve it. Well, Speedyboi and I would.

We would achieve it.

Silence on the EM spectrum - nothing more to give. Everything looked perfect. Literally, absolutely perfect. That's when everything went wrong.

///

Speedyboi was just preparing to disengage the docking clamps and go for an unapproved victory lap when he heard it. A microsecond before BOSS did. The two of them hadn't been paying much attention to which frequencies they had been effectively jamming with their data, and they had been communicating on a channel they should never, ever, have been using.

Now that the data was gone, though, the signal could get through.

S.O.S.