Chapter 5: The Walkthrough

  The Mammut's control room was silent except for the soft hum of life support systems. I leaned back in the chair, my breathing steady but shallow, the weight of two lives pressing against my chest. The only sound was my pulse, loud in my ears, as I stared at the blinking lights of a system reboot.

  "Alright," I said to no one but myself. My voice broke the silence, grounding me. "Time to see what’s left of you, Mammut."

  In the corner of the control room, a battered EV suit stood upright on a rack, its metallic sheen dulled by years of neglect. I crossed the room, running my hand along its surface. A long-forgotten relic of the Mammut’s active years, its presence reassured me. Safety equipment was always among the last things removed during decommissioning, and in this moment, it felt like the universe’s small mercy.

  I wrestled the suit onto my body, the joints creaking slightly as they adjusted to my frame. The internal systems flickered to life, the heads-up display projecting across my visor. Oxygen levels were stable, and the seals were holding. I clenched my fists, feeling the reinforced gloves respond with a satisfying rigidity.

  “Still kicking, huh? Good, I already died once today. It would be stupid if I survived all that just to die of asphyxiation,” I muttered.

  The Mammut’s corridors stretched out before me, dark and unwelcoming. Emergency lights cast long shadows, flickering in places, a testament to the erratic warp jump. I took a deep breath, bracing myself as I stepped out of the control room.

  The sensors were inoperable from the forward section all the way back to a little past three quarters of the hull, rendering them useless, and the rest were damaged.

  ““Guess I’ll have to launch a probe for external data,” I said aloud, planning my next steps. I started walking towards the aft section while remembering the full layout of the ship.

  There were two places a probe would be stored. The storage room on deck 2 and the shuttle Bay that was currently open to the void. Not wanting to take a spacewalk I briefly decided to climb up to the deck above as the elevator was currently broken.

  The Mammut had five decks in all, a vertical slice of survival buried deep in the void. The control room, nestled on the third deck, was supposed to be the safest part of the ship. I climbed the maintenance ladder to deck 2, the EV suit’s servos humming softly with every movement.

  Deck 2 was eerily quiet. The storage room was ahead, down a corridor where emergency lighting cast unsettling shadows. My boots echoed against the floor, the sound amplified in the silence. I reached the storage room and hesitated for a moment before prying open the door. The heavy door resisted before finally creaking open, revealing a cluttered interior.

  Inside, the air felt heavier though I knew it was just my imagination. The room was crammed with all the odds and ends the Mammut had accumulated during its years of service. Crates were stacked haphazardly, their labels faded, some in languages I didn’t recognize. I scanned the room, looking for the cylindrical housing of a standard issue probe.

  “Come on, where are you?” I muttered, shoving aside smaller containers.

  Finally, tucked behind a stack of spare coolant tanks, I spotted it: a sleek, dust-covered probe launcher. I heaved it onto a nearby workbench and began the process of activation. Its onboard diagnostics flickered to life, the interface clunky but functional. The probe was intact, its systems self-contained.

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  “Alright, friend. Let’s see what’s out there,” I said, carrying the launcher toward the aft airlock.

  The Mammut’s aft section was an even greater mess than I remembered. Damage from the warp jump was evident here more than anywhere else, the walls warped and scarred, black alloy I've never seen before creeping along the seams. The airlock door, however, was miraculously functional. I cycled it manually, stepping into the chamber and securing the probe launcher to the exterior hatch.

  “Launching probe,” I said, almost ceremoniously, as I pulled the release lever.

  The probe shot out into the void with a soft hiss, its thrusters firing briefly before it drifted into the blackness. I watched its telemetry feed light up on my helmet display. The probe’s sensors began to scan, piecing together a picture of the surrounding space.

  The results came back almost immediately—and they weren’t comforting.

  The warp jump hadn’t just displaced the Mammut in space; it had thrown it into a region utterly devoid of its known star charts. The probe detected faint stellar bodies and a debris field close by, but the spatial coordinates didn’t match anything in the ship’s database. Worse, the strange alloy I saw earlier was coating the hull and seemed to emit a faint energy signature—a beacon in the dark.

  “Great. Just great,” I muttered, cycling the airlock and retreating into the ship. “I’m lost, the ship’s half dead, and I might as well be waving a neon sign that says ‘come and get me.’”

  After getting that lovely bit of news. It's time to inspect the ship for damage and everything else that might be wrong with the Mammut.

  The first stop was life support.

  I traced my way through the narrow halls, the sound of my boots clanging against the deck plating echoing through the empty ship. The life support systems sat behind a heavy bulkhead, which groaned as I pried it open. Inside, I found a tangle of conduits and machinery, some of it scorched, some of it intact.

  The main regulator was holding steady—a small miracle. I ran a diagnostic using the EV suit’s built-in scanner. Oxygen levels were nominal, and the scrubbers were still functional, but the backup reserves were at critically low levels.

  “Guess I’ll have to ration for now and remove life support from all decks except the control room” I said, logging the data into my suit’s memory.

  Next was the warp core, the heart of the Mammut.

  I stepped into the warp core housing chamber and froze.

  The core glowed faintly, encased in the same shimmering black alloy that now coated the ship's hull. It pulsed with an almost organic rhythm, alien and unfamiliar. I pulled up the EV suit sensors to see if I could get any better readings on the alloy then what probe gave me, to know new results.

  Next, I grabbed the handheld scanner from my belt, flipping through its settings as I pointed it at the alloy. The screen displayed fragmented readings—temperatures fluctuating wildly, energy signatures I couldn’t identify, and a faint, rhythmic pulse that almost mimicked a heartbeat.

  After the login the data into my suit I, cautiously, I approached the control console. The readouts were scrambled, symbols and numbers I didn’t recognize flashing across the screen.

  Whatever had happened during the erratic warp jump had fundamentally changed the core. It was no longer the fusion-powered heart of an old freighter—it was something new. I reached out, hesitating for a moment before brushing my gloved fingers against the surface of the console.

  The Mammut hummed in response. The sound vibrated through the deck, resonating in my bones. The core was stable—if only barely.

  “Keep it together,” I whispered, backing away slowly.

  The warp reactors were a problem. Their readings fluctuated wildly, only I couldn't risk doing anything without the computer to help because the reactors might detonate. So, I moved on to things I could handle, making sure to sync the data to my helmet's HUD to know if I was going to die in a reactor meltdown.

  I died.

  I stopped everything. Focusing on breathing, in and out, in and out. Acknowledging the fact and then letting it go as much as possible. A meditation technique to help deal with stress. “I'm alive, I’m fine, and I have work to do,” I tell myself like a mantra. Trying to accept and let go of the small panic attack I just had.

  Work. The engines, I need to inspect the engines. I refocus on the task at hand.

  The aft section of the ship had taken the brunt of the warp jump’s chaotic forces. As I entered the engine room, I was greeted by the acrid cloud of gas from burnt wiring. Panels hung loose, their innards spilling out in a tangled mess. The engines themselves were intact, but their casings were warped, the same black alloy creeping along their surfaces like veins.

  I ran another diagnostic. The engines were operational, but their efficiency was questionable. They’d need repairs before I could rely on them for anything more than basic maneuvers.

  I continued my tour, inspecting the navigation systems, shield regulators, gravity generator, and structural integrity fields.

  Each system told the same story: functional but damaged, the ship clinging to life just as I was. Mammut was a survivor, but barely. The shimmering alloy that coated its hull seemed to have seeped into its systems, altering them in ways I couldn’t fully understand.

  By the time I returned to the control room, I was exhausted, both physically and mentally. I slumped into the chair, the EV suit heavy on my shoulders. The ship’s AI was still rebooting, its systems running through endless checks and recalibrations.

  “Not bad for a first date,” I muttered, glancing at the suit’s diagnostic logs.

  The Mammut was alive—if that was the right word for it—but it was hanging by a thread. Still, it was mine.

  I pulled off the EV suit, hanging it back on its rack. My body ached, my mind buzzed with the sheer enormity of the task ahead. But for the first time in hours, I felt a glimmer of hope.

  The Mammut had survived the impossible. And so had I.

  Now, it was time to rebuild.