Extraction Issues Chapter 1

Energy Wells Saga

Moodepac Sea Dead Zone Boundary

Cycle 6002.638.24.5 W

A raging storm or squall could describe the condition of the sea and pelting rain in this area. It was shrouded in darkness, until flashes of lightening, revealed the thrashing ocean’s violent movement, like an intense strobe. Amongst this battle of moving sea a small, ominous, almost pinkish glow could be spotted.

If you were to somehow get close despite these deadly conditions, the pinkish glow turned out to be surrounding some sort of construction or platform. Then if you somehow remained calm enough to take in the scene, you would get the feeling that this structure was not only stupid enough to hold it’s place in the raging sea, but seemed to be the source of the violent agitation.

The strange glow did little to reveal the nature of the structure. Flashes or blasts of energy, from and around the area, occasionally revealed hints of solid utilitarian metal coated with an almost other-worldly shell.

Whatever was really going on with this area it was not somewhere that you would expect to find anything alive in the area. Heading into this seemingly permanent natural disaster, rather than fleeing from it, would suggest that the creature had a death wish.

Unbelievably there was a craft heading into this madness. Bizarrely, what looked like a large house-sized mechanized crab, was steadily paddling along on the pulsating surface of the giant, crashing swells. If you were to get close to this you, would quickly feel compared to the surrounding areas, that it was a refuge.

Despite the violence of the sea, the craft was surviving the heavy battering for the time being. It steadily continued paddling through what should have been instantly destructive forces. Not only this, but the stability that was found as you got closer to the craft, could let you see that it was crewed.

If they were lucky, it looked like they could function for another demi cycle. None of this crew were in good condition. Those doing the best looked worn out, carrying out their difficult duties as if by will power alone. Surveilling those that could be seen in the bridge revealed a mix of characters.

The extremes seemed to go from a solid worn out captain, through to some sort of official passed out on the floor and secured to the wall so he didn’t do anymore damage to himself or others. The crew seemed to be tough beyond reasonable expectation. Compared to that the others on the bridge the seemed to be more academic visitors, probably there with roles relating to the situation they headed into.

The bridge itself was noisy. The craft couldn’t filter out the sound of the forces colliding outside. Inside the instruments were bleeping and wailing with alarm, as various structures and systems were sensed to be nearing the point of failure. The only stable lighting on the bridge was emergency walk areas and station lighting. The workstations and instruments had enough light for the summary of their function to be noticed, but even that light wasn’t excessively bright.

The captain was seated in a sturdy seat in the middle of all of this. Despite being a dense mass of muscle, there would be nothing to differentiate him by his presence if he was hidden amidst a crowd at the pub, after a long day of work. The sides of his hair were short and the top of the cut revealed stylishly trimmed brown hair amongst the flashes. Whatever was passing for a uniform among the ship, he was wearing a tidy set of it hinting at some sort of professional training, despite his demeanor and role.

Surprisingly the man in tune with this craft, as it carved through the savage conditions, seemed to be be leading with character wrought from exercising endless years of patience. He smoothly returned to his seat, despite a couple of big hits shaking the craft, after adjusting one of the instrument panels. The other oddity was his eyes would often seem to be half closed as he took in the state of the people and instruments around, almost with a bored look.

The crew showed varying degrees of this steady competence. There seemed to be a male and female officer helping aid the crafts mission. The next most active member was the female officer. She’s just finished helping one of the non-crew perform some adjustment to a complicated looking projection. This was then one of the things the male officer was watching, making adjustments for and then relaying along to appropriate crew.

As of carving a path through the violent seas hadn’t been impossible enough they were preparing yet again as they approached the platform. The last updates from the male officer had been relayed and the crafts movement slowed over the crashing waves. It would look like they were approaching a calmer area but the very bone of the craft groaned as it closed on the structure.

The large claw was carefully extended, moving with steady precision despite the pressure surrounding them. As the claw sunk below the base of the structure, the female officer helped a different civilian to another panel. This civilians role or timing in events was clearly more crucial as he had some sort of environmental suit on to make the conditions more bearable.

Despite having more protection than the others the stress of what he was trying to do was clearly getting to him. There was hesitance, then frustration and then turning to look back to the crew as if they knew the job he had been brought aboard for.

Despite the seeming emotional uncertainty he diligently adjusted whatever it was the panel was giving feedback for. Then as the claw made contact with whatever was submerged under the structure there was a deafening sound.

It was as if the world had been made of metal and was shearing apart. Or as if an army of angry whales, were bellowing with a choir of ship foghorns, yelling in this overwhelming noise that intensely reverberated.

Despite this the civilian in his protective suit continued to work. Furiously adjusting things almost with panicked haste. And then everything started to calm.

The oceans, the skies, the structure, the craft and it’s crew.

All seemed to collapse into a nervous silence.

And the silence continued for a minute more, or so it would have seemed, because those still standing at this stage, would have at least had serious ringing in their ears.

But eventually things began to relax more. The oceans settled and swells only unhappily threw up spray around the pillars of the structure. The structure now sticking much further out of the water settled with merely looking ominous.

The craft seemed to be content to float lazily, completely exhausted from it’s battering in the storm. Inside the crew were slowly wandering around, checking over the system now that stable lighting was restored and things were operating at something like a normal idle.

The captain had done a round of the bridge, then gone outside to take a look at things. He waited a bit longer while those around him had a chance to unwind. To have made it this far in one piece was a miracle in itself, next they needed to check out the state of their craft and the structure.

The suited civilian seemed to be the most vocal. Having completed the task he was now noisily complaining. He was currently in the middle of a rant about how he wasn’t paid enough to risk his life like this. Having almost tired of this the female officer told him that was enough and reminded him that many of them had volunteered to be part of this mission.

He quickly quietened down. She went on to organising a mixed team, to sort protective suits and head onto the structure. Now she had the same bored look with amber eyes half closed as she explained the process for suiting up and assembling ready for boarding the now docked structure.

She was muscled enough that it was just noticeable. She stood at the same height as those around her and calmly re-explained any details needed. She had careful applied make-up on and one of the tidiest uniforms, that fitted immaculately. The name tag reading Dueleit was perfectly positioned in the spots of reinforced stitching. She pulled out a clipboard. Then undoing her tidy ponytail, she too donned a protective suit, a lot more smoothly than most of those around her.

Bizarrely the male officer on the other side seemed to be nowhere near as competent. In fact there seemed to be an ongoing stream of complaints radioed in to this Ronnec fella. He seemed to ignore with an unwavering optimism. It got to the point where the Gerney voice on the other end of the radio was so feed up he told the officer to shut up, because things were so bad he wasn’t sure how the craft was still floating.

Ronnec obliviously agreed that they were still floating and wanted to know what the next step was. He had regained a cheerful and bright demeanor. Eyes wide and bright behind big glasses. But unlike the others he was muscly in an exaggerated way. His top was a little tight and he sat at his station like a child happily playing a game.

With things now under control, the captain congratulated them on doing so well, at a seemingly impossible challenge. Only to be interrupted by rude yelling. Words were blurted out from the official, like an angry wasp. He was now conscious but still tied in recovery position near the back of the bridge.

His torrent of word continued claiming he knew that they would fail from the start. And how foolish the council had been to trust and fund such a sad excuse of a mission. His complaining quietened as he focused on telling the people untying him how to do their jobs.

Letting the official know that they had actually finished the first stage of the mission, was met by muttering. But with that, the captain told them to commence the next part of the operation. So with that the suited team left the bridge for the structure and the remaining crew focused on figuring out which of the crafts crucially needed repairs they could actually perform and complete, without doing more damage in the process.

Dueleit lead the team along the large pincer of the craft. It had secured itself behind two of the legs of the structure and swayed off it with the swells, like the leaf of a hinge. She confidently headed up the ladder, set into part of a massive steel I beam. That was really the only thing you could call the otherworldly support, without getting overly caught up in explaining the intricate detailed patterning and strange layering of metals almost woven together in the form.

After securing a safety line, six more of the crew in this team headed up. Some clipping suited civilians onto the safety, before helping them up and some clipping on themselves as they carried impressive packs of equipment. They progressed slowly and steadily. A quarter demi later, the sombre expedition had made it’s way up to the structures main platform.

The platform was wrapped in a shell that they were pretty sure was metallic and made of huge fragment like panels. There were strands weaving all the fragments together, any gaps in the weaving were wide enough for two people to squeeze through at the same time. Or one comfortably in the case of those with equipment.

In contrast, once inside the shell the deck was a wider industrial mesh, that surprisingly didn’t flex under the heaviest crew and there loads despite the generously spaced supports below. They unpacked until Dueleit had ticked off all the setup items on her clip board. She then radioed the captain that they were proceeding.

A spherical building was emerging from the centre of the platform. It had what seemed to be a charred exhaust vent emerging from the top of it. Forming a wider ring around that, were aerials that were held together by rings. The structure again looked like it had a woven surface and they approached it with care, looking for the slightest fluctuation on any of their instruments.

The crystal identifier was still working, so the card had the door slide open and then they carefully proceed into the chamber. Once those inside had triple checked all the readings, the rest of the team and a cart of equipment followed.

Some of the crew went straight to connecting equipment onto the coils on the perimeter of the large chamber. Those in the centre of the chamber worked more carefully connecting a command unit to various units around the centre ring. The crew working with the remaining civilians focused on setting up what seemed to be scopes to peer down the centre of what currently looked like a shaft. The readings that they go by peering at the state of things below the ocean floor were were really valuable.

Again the next phase of this set up was carefully checked off on the clipboard. Then after waiting a demi fraction longer, they declared the structure stabilised. Most of the crew in the team grabbed instruments from back on the deck and went to make basic inspections of the lower levels. Everyone else from that team remained in the chamber.

As the readings came in intense discussion broke out. The recent instability in the network that drew power from the planet was new. More than necessary had been sucked out of the planet and it had faithfully kept giving. The readings coming in lead them to believe that a deliberate pulse had been channeled at this facility. The discussion seemed to swing between those doing their best to make sense of the data and those trying to pretend it had to have been a unique natural phenomenon.

Despite what was now heading toward an intense debate, there was some agreement. At the current rate they were having to lower and stabilise wells drawing rate, there country would begin to collapse in less than 12 giga cycles.

Things on the craft were not looking so bleak. What had initially been written of as a disastrous state of affairs for the ships condition, had turned into surprised confusion. What had seemed like damage that had reduced the entire mass and stability of the craft to the point of collapse; was beginning to look like a complete warping and refinement of every aspect of it’s structure.

Engineers were excitedly discussing how the hull now resembled something like the shell of the facility. There was a lot of excitement as they observed readings claiming that the craft had lost mass to the point that it should not be structurally stable. Despite this everything was still functioning within a more than optimal range considering the violent conditions it had endured.

But that was only the start of the surprise. There was much discussion about how the ships now more organic nature initially seemed to letting it harmonize more with fields around it. They couldn’t agree on if it was electric of magnetic fields or something completely different, but the improvement was impressive.

The variance of the engineers explanation for cause of the energy blast was a little more extreme. There was also an element of questioning had this change actually been cause by a targeted energy pulse or triggered in response to dropping the wells draw rate. Although unlike the team in the facility, suggestions went as far as alien intervention for the cause of the change.

This had left the captain a lot busier than usual and despite the calls directly to his radio getting attention, there was a huge pile up of info to be sorted on his command console. Once he had finished observing the changes to key parts of the craft and been over especially the structural scans three times, he returned to the bridge.

The bored look had disappeared and he spent a half demi sorting the reports on his console. After grouping the reports into about seven groups that still displayed any major overlap he rechecked the crew status. He checked in one final time with Duleit. Three of the crew and the civilians in her team would stay to set up some extra sensors to monitor the craft. The others returned to the ship.

With that he gave the Ronnec a list of maneuvers and starting points for each. Then once all sensors were go they could gradually put the craft through it’s paces. If there was any sign of instability in the craft or called in by Dueleit they could call the test off.

As this was going on there was a building excitement. As all lights came up green on the captains consul he gave the go. Ronnec gleefully fired up the craft, through all open channels you could hear mummers of excitement as initial reading came in for what should have been a heavily damaged craft.

The official felt it important to mention that this was just another sign of the captains reckless incompetence. People were too excited to care. The captain asked Ronnec to get into potion for the first maneuver nice and quietly.

They first tested out the insectoid like legs that were attached to the sides above the water line. Seven of the eight legs had survived the violent conditions. With the craft paddling into position, there was more happy chatter. Calling everyone ladies and gentlemen, the Gerney voice announced with satisfaction despite the compensation, thing looked to be running well. Stability and efficiency were at levels similar to those from when they left port.

Once the craft had happily paddled into place the low idle of what was similar two heavy duty jet engines speed up. It was announced that they were looking well balanced and were definitely cleared for the first two maneuvers. With the go ahead given, the captain signaled and Ronnec routinely brought the craft up to speed. It quickly moved along planing along the ocean. Then with a couple of wide turns there was again relieved murmurs.

Slowing smoothly the craft settled in the water. The legs were used much more quickly this time. They cut into the ocean and solidly flicked in opposing directions, to spin the craft neatly on the spot. The crew were used to this and had braced themselves appropriately. They were unfazed as the the craft took off faster with the engines shooting them off to a quick start and bounced energetically along the top of the sea churning up a frothy wake as it went.

The crafts sounds and flexibility were noticeably different as it moved. Especially with the engines they didn’t cough into life and rumble as mechanically as they had before. When they started there was also a harmonic tonality. Then as they worked, there was more of a hum or whine as it went. Fluids didn’t carry the sound of pumping through the craft the same way either. The sound was less forced and almost just a vibration or sloshing at some points.

Most impressively though was that the craft seemed to move and adapt as it bounced along the surface of the sea. For some reason the craft was now shorter. But besides this, in terms of overall shape it was very close to when they left port. Yet now with the new shell it was riding more smoothly along the swells and choppiness of the sea despite being lighter.

Ronnec, now starting to enjoy himself, would half slow the craft for a turn and then adjust the thrust. This allowed fast turns riding on one side of the hull. He increased the speed and sharpness of the turns, now happily and concisely communicating over the radio. He did sharper and faster figure of eights, with one loop grounded around the facility.

He continued this until the craft flipped up ready to tumble, until the leg paddles hit the surface and the craft was ripped out of it’s figure of eight. It flailed then stabilised back into bouncing along the sea.

The crew relaxed from their braced positioned and there was more happy chatter as they went over the readings. After the captain checked in with both Dueliet and Ronnec, he announced a sixth of a demi for another scan. The happy chatter continued as they compared notes waiting for the scan.

Once again the scan results showed things were functioning well. They agreed the straight line sprint and type four acro maneuvers, should reveal enough to complete the only stress test data they were missing. It was easier to prepare for this, because they didn’t have to scan to avoid sea life, as it hadn’t returned to the area yet.

The sprint test went well. What had been a quick start shooting the craft forward last time, was now an explosion forward. The engines could function out of the water to and the craft now skipped and jumped along the surface of the water. The engineers were a little dissapointed their was no change in the violent intake and explosive start after so many other areas had seen improvement.

The next step put the craft through it’s paces dashing, turning, bouncing and spinning, regardless if it was in the water. Again there were improvements in movement.

Once the tests were in they stared in to processing and make the necessary adjustments. The crew and civilians were happy with their tasks. The captain however had more to worry about, regarding the assumptions of outside forces again intervening. He was coming to the conclusion that now was the time, to get as much information as they could.

Wehl 2024

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