THE ARDENT

a short story by Lauren Chandler

The experimental spaceship Ardent floated above the planet Elysium in a high orbit. Soft orange light diffused from Elysium’s luminous star and peppered the sleek hull with shining brilliance, caressing the young ship with welcoming light. The Ardent’s crew worked to correct a drift along the y-axis, but a Triton class cruiser meshed with an A-class ship and experimental tech was proving cumbersome. Captain Roland Adachi and Operational Commander Dr. Vyran Bax had finished guiding the new ship through orbital trials that had been purely theoretical until that moment in such a chimaera of a ship. As the Ardent smoothly rolled and crested over a sunlit horizon, the star of Elysium revealed an abnormality.

Bax stepped away from his station to the viewport and narrowed his eyes at what seemed to be gaseous particles leaking from the hull. He pulled up a hardlight projection of the ship’s schematics in his palm.

“Captain Adachi,” Bax said. “We appear to have a small containment breach off our nose. It could explain the drift.”

“Helm?” Adachi called from his command chair.

“No alerts on our console, sir,” said pilot Esha Roan. “All instruments are in the green.”

With a sigh, Adachi rose to his feet and joined Dr. Bax at the viewport. “What do you see, Bax?”

Bax shifted and showed Adachi a detailed view of the Ardent’s forward hull. “Where the cruiser’s hull meets with the support structure for the rift drive here, there seems to be encroachment through the fuselage and outer assembly. If bulkheads fifteen through nineteen are closed, we should be able to proceed safely.”

“Lieutenant Novak,” Adachi said over his shoulder. “Close those bulkheads.”

“Aye, sir,” Novak said. “Closing bulkheads fifteen through nineteen.”

Adachi crossed his arms and rubbed his chin while looking at Bax’s schematic and contemplated their next steps. His eyes were not truly focused on the projection though, as he calculated the lives of his small crew against the weight of the survival of civilization. Time was too critical an asset for the people of Elysium with a comet on an extinction-level collision course with the planet.

“Normally such a failure would have me turning us around and headed back to Meridian. But considering our circumstances…,” Adachi eventually said. “You’re the lead on this mission, Doctor Bax. What’s your recommendation?”

“Vic, has Orbital STC confirmed the range is clear for testing?” Bax asked.

Commander Vic Marshall nodded. “Aye, sir. We’ve been cleared to proceed, and the Midway confirms their long range arrays are ready for data capture from their area.”

“Very good,” Bax said. He took a deep breath. “Prepare the Ardent to test the Rift Drive, Captain Adachi.”

___

Chaos streamed throughout the ship as its crew fought to keep both themselves and the masterpiece of technology alive. Purplish, red brilliance and sapphire streams of glistening light faded in the vacuum of space as Dr. Bax pulled himself up from the floor. The Ardent’s outer hull sizzled and popped as it re-equalized with a familiar state of matter, and its powerful rift engine rumbled with echoed thunder. It was spinning through the last cycles of what was becoming quite the aggressive shutdown sequence.

Lights suddenly dimmed, and the Ardent’s rift engine reverberated with a new throbbing drone.

“Doctor Bax, what’s your rift engine doing to my ship?!” Adachi hollered across the bridge. “And for the sake of the stars, mute that alarm!”

“Release the forward gyros! Let them spin free,” Bax said.

Captain Adachi motioned to Corporal Simmond at navigation control. “Do it!”

Mercifully, the reverberations began to lessen and power modules began to return to their nominal limits.

“Doctor Bax, I’m picking up an anomalous signal heading toward the planet, sir,” Vic said with furrowed brow. “It matches the energy of the rift event we created. I’m contacting the Midway, but so far we’re the only ones tracking it.”

“Set a course, Captain,” Bax said.