The Starship Aprilis: Hangarbay 9

This blogpost is part of the A to Z Challenge which begins on April 1st. The goal is to post every day (except Sunday) in the month of April. Each blogpost will be associated with a letter of the alphabet. Check the A to Z Challenge page for more information.

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The Starship Aprilis was a common and unremarkable transport ship built on Earth, back when humans were still bipedal and mostly organic creatures. The ship travelled between the many human colonies that were established at the time throughout the galaxy and served as both a cargo carrier and passenger transporter.

The ship finally met its end when it was stuck in a crushing gravity field off of Taurus Baqara C, which killed all who were aboard and destroyed all the on-board data and most importantly, the ship’s log. Of the ship only a small section survived, which was discovered quite recently several million light years away, in a slow decaying orbit around a black hole.

The remains of the ship offers no clue as to what really happened to consign the ship to its fate. The only document that could be salvaged from the remains is a travelogue, believed to be written by an unknown crewmember. The travelogue offers a glimpse of what life was like for a traveller of the stars in those heady days, thousands and thousands of years ago. Most importantly, it gives us a glimpse of many different planets and what they were like during the time.

The following entries are excerpts from the travelogue. May you find amusement and enjoyment from reading them.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M

N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

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We had our first major accident on Aprilis today. It happened in Hangarbay 9 when the atmosphere field generators malfunctioned. We were receiving several supply boats from the surface of Gallimimus and somehow they did not register that the fields were still up and so all three of the boats sliced into the fields and were shredded like hot cheese.

I had the misfortune of being on duty in Hangarbay 9 and was one of the unlucky crew that had to clean up and salvage the mess. Atmosphere fields work by generating shots of energy in a crisscross pattern. Unfortunately, while air does not escape through this field, any physical matter that hits it will be sliced into smaller chunks by the crisscrossing shots of pure energy.

Needless to say, cleaning up the remains of the passengers was the most harrowing work of all and it took several medical teams to identify each body part to its owner.

I’m glad I’m not in the engineering team responsible for maintenance of the field generators. I saw them being escorted to the bridge deck and every one of them seemed to be in a panic.