Collins Does Solo RPG ‘The Wretched’

Day 5, Entry 2, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Collins Reporting.

I spent the day in the engine room trying to fix the heart of the ship. It’s still not beating sadly. I took it apart piece by piece, taking careful notes of what went where and how it was fitted so that when I found the problem I could fix it and still know how to rebuild the engine.

I got to this one part that seemed to have so much torque behind it that the power tool I was using couldn’t shift it so I resorted to adding in fulcrums and additional weight in the form of one hungover human. In hindsight it was never going to work and me smashing myself in the face was entirely predictable. I managed to get a good cut to my forehead when expectations and reality abruptly collided at force.

I dragged my sorry arse around to the medbay. It’s not a large facility but perfectly adequate for the doc to do her thing in. She was still in her office sprawled behind her desk. She would regularly work long and hard, something I never comprehended is that the medics constantly need to do lots of extra work on top of normal work to keep their licenses up to date. I suppose on a small crew there is little to keep the vocational person occupied except research and extracurricular learning.

The only time Amy wasn’t found working hard was either when she was cooking or sleeping. She could always do some amazing things with ships rations and chorizo or paprika which was a welcome change when we all got together for dinners. I miss those dinners and the chatting round the table with my friends I miss it so much.

I patched myself up, not as well as it should probably be but good enough, I won’t die from my misadventure…

I forgot to mention this previously but a few days ago I was in the medlab before. There is a wonderful glass ceiling that is standard for this type of vessel, I think it’s to do with a psychology thing where people who are unwell need to be able to see the outside to aide in relaxation and recuperation. You know, see the stars and planets and any god dammed aliens that are trying to headbutt their way in. I got the handheld plasma torch and some sheet metal from the cargo bay and made a second skin over the weakened section. That way should chief knobhead breach the glass he’ll headbutt metal and I now know how painful that would be but also I want to try and keep this section of the ship pressurised. There is some overly useful equipment in here that simply cannot be moved. An added bonus is that I cannot see the monster when he is there hammering away.

I’ve been wracking my brains as to why the creature is here murdering everyone and how he came to be on this ship. I’m calling it a he now… I obviously don’t know its gender or even if being sexed is a thing for the species, haven’t stopped long enough to look up a skirt or drop a zipper etc but I figure as it’s killing everyone like a crazed psychopath that on the balance of probability it is male. Anyway, the whys. Don’t know, we are a long range salvage ship, we roam about and recover broken stuff, we aren’t a long range probe ship. I doubt we have entered the unknown regions although we weren’t far from the boarder. Oh god… what if the inertia has pushed me out past the Heighlian Gap? That means my chances of someone coming to find me would be dramatically reduced, like catastrophically low, sub zero in fact. That would suck. I’m just going to say that it has not happened, and that people will be able to triangulate the beacon I fixed, and then they will come pick me up, and all will be well.

Music (What is it – Chris Bassett)

Day 6, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Collins Reporting.

Today has been possibly the best day since the incident. Well, perhaps not the best but certainly one of the most productive. My little grey matter did some of its best work in the refresher this morning. I spent most of the time building my masterplan.

Do you dear reader remember that I said I thought the creature always knew when I was moving around the ship and would follow me. Well I decided to make some decoys. There aren’t that many windows on the ship so he can’t be using line of sight vision to track me, so that leaves sound. I went searching for music players, speakers and general noise making devices. I figured if I flooded the ship with so much background noise my little stalker wouldn’t be able to keep up with me. Would make me alternating my little hidey holes a bit more clandestine too. I scrounged enough parts to make 6 noise makers so I placed them in strategic corridors and rooms around the ship. The bridge, engine room, messhall/galley, medbay, main corridor and the cargo bay too. I also managed to find a way to make the turbo lifts operate continuously. I can still call them to the deck I am on but when I’m not using them they simply move from one end of the shaft to the other and back again.

There is no way he will be able to follow me around the hull now. I love it when I’m smarter than the opposition. It’s not check mate but I reckon its check.

Music (What is it – Chris Bissette)

Day 7, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Collins Reporting.

This morning I was abruptly woken by some screaming. It was startling and initially I was unable to determine where it came from. I’ve been staying in the Captain’s ready room as its more comfortable than crew quarters and is right next to the bridge for me to be able to respond to any return signals from my rescuers. My first reaction was to sit up in blind panic, then once I’d momentarily had chance to think I reached for the pistol that was on the bedside. The scream was ear piecing and seemed to be coming from everywhere.

It took me a moment to realise it was a ship wide broadcast on the internal comms channel. It didn’t take long for me to shut it off once I went to the bridge. I can only assume it was the creature trying to freak me out, which it did. Once I had made enough noise from my startled waking I could hear noises on the hull of him wandering around. I managed to do a back-trace on the comm system and learned that the creature had initiated the transmission from the permanently locked inner airlock control board. That is unsettling.

I decided to permanently power down that console, if the terror had become intelligent enough to interact with a human control panel then that means he might be smart enough to open doors and access hatches. That’s not the worst part though. Once I had finished my checks I turned and caught a glimpse of the bastard out the bridge viewport. I shat myself so hard I basically fell backwards over the chair. He was just sat there, staring at me. The most visible part of him was his silverly teeth, the jet black body was difficult to make out until the inertial rotation of the ship brought a nearby planetary object into view behind him creating the most terrifying silhouette. His horribly long tail was swaying behind him as it looked deeply into me. I couldn’t see any eyes but I certainly felt the murderous intent behind his stare. I couldn’t deal with it any more so I scrambled to my feet and slapped the blast/heat shield closure button… I really need to find a way to get rid of it once and for good but right now I’m stuck, sealed in a ship in shark infested waters that will likely be my tomb.

I needed some hope, after that episode with the creature I needed something! I decided to check on the distress beacon to make sure it was still pumping out my mayday call. It was thankfully. I also checked the automated logs in detail to see whether there were any response pings I had missed. There were! 2 nights ago the system had picked up an incoming signal! Oh My God! That’s amazing! I played it back with a hefty bout of excitement, like a school child who’s just learnt that the tuck shop has opened for lunch time business. Then my heart sank, I can see now why the computer elected not to tell me about it. It was all garbled and the small parts I heard sounded like standard docking instructions at some shitty outback station like Sevastopol. It has clearly been bouncing around out there on the solar winds. Fuck.

Still searching for hope I decided to check the scanners. Nothing, I couldn’t even get a decent reading of the planetary body I saw behind the creature. There is nothing out there…

I spent the rest of the day trying to find some humanity. I collected up the crew members, putting them in their own body bags and dragging them to an area of the cargo hold and arranged them neatly in lines where I could then formally say goodbye in a sort of funeral.

Some were easier than others based on their demise method and location. The Captain, Doc, and Loadmaster were all relatively simple and mostly intact. Owen, the Navigator, was harder as he had been dragged up into an airvent and gutted. Took me quite some time to get him in the bag and out the vent. By far the most violent death was Powell’s. He had been dragged under an engine block and pulverised. Tools were required to get him in the bag.

During the makeshift funeral I spoke a few words about each person. You know nice things that people usually say at funerals. Stuff like the Loadmaster Eilidh was a whimsically fun individual who loved to be around animals to the point that you’d often think she would be better off working a farm than a salvage ship. She would jump to help you once you had earned her loyalty but woe betide you if you crossed her, she always had a unique way to let you know that she wasn’t happy with you or your actions. Her loyalty to her friends was one of her defining characteristics that also explained her demise. She threw herself at the creature in a fit of rage when we were trying to escape it early on, you could almost believe she stood a chance…

With all the crew laid to rest I didn’t feel much like doing any more work so I settled to make some food. I made up one of the meals that was earmarked for full crew participation, a roast joint of Nerf with all the trimmings. I popped a bottle of Twilerian vino as well to toast the dear departed and the future health of all those that were left behind. It was delicious and the crew would have loved it…

Music (The Wretched – Chris Bissette)

Day 8, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Collins Reporting.

Breakfast this morning was fun, there was quite a sour smell coming from the temp store fridge in the mess facility. On opening the door I was hit by a wave of stench, it certainly knocked me back and then made me wretch a bit, like a little sick in the mouth but not a full blown chunderfest thankfully.

So yeah. The fridge is knackered, I don’t have access to a spare and unfortunately Rub Al-Khali Prime next rotation deliveries will only deliver to known addresses… they don’t service places like the middle of buttfuck nowhere annoyingly.

The morning cereal was ruined and I had to settle for black tea, how terribly uncivilised. There is a very real chance that I will devolve into a complete savage at this rate. Nah not really, all joking aside this isn’t a huge issue, just some spoiled foodstuffs. The walk in freezer is still working and that has an anti-room which is used as a buffer between standard ships atmospherics and preservation atmospherics. It’s basically a fridge that I walk into by default so I’ll just store the minimum cold goods I need in there and force myself into more of a stock rotation, or rather, only pull out enough for the day and no more. To be fair I can’t really be wasting food, I don’t know how long I’ll be out here. Whilst I think about it I should probably look into rationing too. I seem to remember one of the early human exploration missions to other worlds met with a catastrophe and some bloke called Mark Watney had to grow his own food and stuff. Bet that was fun, can’t happen on this old bucket of bolts though, no soil, nothing to grow and I seem to remember poo being involved… sounds gross actually… oh brilliant back to wretching again.

Anyway, this evening I’ll count the rations, it’ll keep my mind off my little evil stalker that I can hear tapping his way around the hull. I wish I could figure out a way to make the hull lava or electrified or catch him in a jet of air or fire or something and blast him off into the nearest star.

Music (Malfunction – Chris Bissette)

Day 9, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Collins Reporting.

My god what a close one. I woke up with a bit of a headache and throughout the day it got worse. I was working in the cargo hold, moving a few bits around and looking for bits to fix the fridge. I realised I was getting really breathless quickly.

I went to check the atmospheric regulator and through the haze my jaw dropped. There was a malfunction with the AREC. There’s a lot of science blah blah that I can’t be bothered to go into but essentially the atmospheric regulator has a section of it that runs externally to the ship so the cold of space can rapidly cool the air to make the separation of molecules easier and save energy. That external component appears to have a jam or be broken or damaged in some way. The computer picked up the problem and stopped air going into the AREC, which is good because that would have been a very quick way for the ship to depressurise. The air however wasn’t diverted to the other systems. Don’t know why. So basically over time I’ve used up all the oxygen and raised to carbon dioxide levels slightly leading to the sickness. Thankfully I figured it out before they got to dangerous levels.

How did the AREC fail. My best bet is the creature smashed it by accident when he has been skulking around out there. If he’s done it deliberately then it is much more concerning. God help me if he has done it deliberately, can’t get in to kill me but will still find a way to kill me from outside. I really need to come up with a fast way to kill him before he kills me.

The race is on and right now I am 9 laps behind the pole position.

Music (Outer Dark – Chris Bissette)

Day 10, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Collins Reporting.

Today I have decided to grow a monumental pair of testes. In the refresher this morning my brain yet again got to business doing it’s finest work. I’m surprised people don’t take showers more often than once a day as I legitimately come up with all my best ideas in the refresher and this one is a real doozy. But what is it I hear you asking, what is so brilliant that it requires bollocks the size of a building?

I’m going outside.

Yeah I know, dangerously idiotic what with the king of hide and go murder living out there but hear me out ok.

For me to get rescued I need someone to hear the beacon, for them to hear the beacon they need to be reasonably close. Most long-range comms is done via relays and I do not know where the nearest relay is so I have no idea whether it is being picked up and rebroadcast. That means for me to be able to have a better chance of being heard I either need to shout louder or create a narrow comms cone that works in a similar way to cupping your hands around your mouth when you speak. If I can do both then my chances of being heard improve exponentially (or at least I think they do).

Creating a cone is relatively simple, I limit the spread via the control terminal and I can physically angle the antenna to point it in the direction I want it to go. That brings me to the first of the very large problems I need to overcome for this plan to work. Where do I point it? Ok this part is tricky so you’ll have to keep up with very complicated the science here. I’m going to send it all aft, right behind me, as in to where I have come from. Why? Because I know where I have come from and what is back there. When we left Exocron we travelled in a straight line, there were no turns or fancy manoeuvres because we didn’t find anything interesting to salvage. I know since the incident and the engines failing the inertia has kept me travelling forwards, albeit with a slight spin around the centre of mass but importantly forwards. That means that Exocron is still directly behind me… ish. Problem one solved.

Problem two, realign the antenna. I know what you’re thinking, just do that from the control panel too. But this sadly is just like those old space horror movies where there is a convenient plot flaw and the fine alignment can only be done by a control panel next to the antenna or the command cable has been severed or something conveniently inconvenient. Well it’s none of those. This time it is simply that this is an old ship and the tech on here is shit. The alignment is done super old school style. Hit it with a rock till it moves… kinda. I need to release the clamps and then rotate the antenna using the gears system. Its apparently not that hard (so the manual says) as it is designed with EVA suits in mind. Why is this system so archaic. Well these days comms are just broadcast out in all directions and the relays catch it and sent it on to where it needs to go if it’s destined to be a long distance message. The days of needing to send a signal long range by yourself are long gone. Until about 10 days ago that is. As such there hasn’t been the need to do fine tuning for very long time. It is effectively a back up to a back up of something that’s already ancient. So I get to go out there and turn the antenna by hand to solve problem two.

Problem three is a simple but very important one. Don’t get killed in the process. For this very minor but critically important step I have decided to do two things.

One, have a decoy.

Two, go on the attack… I’m told a wizened old general once said that the best defence was a strong offence. Since I’m not as crazy as some of my crew mates I will not be charging the creature head on and try and sock him one up side the head. No, I’m taking the tactically advantageous and definitely not cowardly way of booby trapping the hull. Sadly I’m fresh out of landmines and automated heavy repeating blaster turrets so what I’m going to do is something much more dangerous. I’m going to create a ring of high voltage death around belly of the ship. That way, when the creature moves from the aft to the fore of the ship he’ll end up touching the cable with that ridiculously long dangertail of his and take a huge kick right up his tailpipe…. If that doesn’t kill him outright, it’ll certainly make him jump and if he jumps, he’ll let go of the ship and end up lost to space. Ah, shame…

So this morning I spent my time prepping this whole charade and building the bits I needed. Thankfully I found all the cable I could need in the cargo hold yesterday, it’s amazing what you find when you’re not looking for it.

My decoy is twofold, at the stern of the ship I have set 3 different noise making devices. One that hammers on the hull, one that is general noise and one that’s on an automated pully system that moves from port to starboard and back again. All three get set off at different intervals based on a crude timer and I hope that they’ll keep the creature preoccupied long enough for me to at least rig up the electrified cable of death, it’ll be a bonus if I can get the whole job done and be in before my decoy fails.

Anyway, wish me luck and just in case, this is Joshua Collins, Flight Engineer of the salvage ship The Wretched signing off…hopefully not for the last time.

Music (What is it – Chris Bissette)

Day 10, entry 2, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Collins Reporting.

Well, I made it. I am pleased to announce that I have been outside into the creature’s domain and I lived to tell the tale! I’m on cloud nine right now, I’m so pleased with myself that I can barely sit still!

The diversionary decoys worked brilliantly. They weren’t all that complex but they could have failed at any point. Thankfully they didn’t stop early, break or become too obvious that they were a decoy so happy days!

I got the cable of death all laid out. It’s not overly secure but that doesn’t matter, I can’t see it moving anytime soon. I powered it on as soon as I finished unspooling it. It flickered silently an inviting blue/yellow flicker and the high voltage current surged though it. It would be mesmerising to watch if I had the time and didn’t know just how dangerous it was.

Once the cable of death was done I got straight to work on the antenna. It was just like the manual said, release the clamps and then use the gear system to move the array and then relock with the clamps. It is good to know that when kit isn’t broken it works just as it says it should in the book. So right now the antenna is pointed directly at my point of origin, Exocron. Hopefully with this boost someone will hear my distress call and come looking for me. I certainly think my chances have improved dramatically now. Hence my buzzing excitement, well that and I am still alive after staring death in the face.

At one point on my trip around the circumference of the ship I think I saw the tail of the creature waving at the stern of the ship. Ok so I didn’t stare him in the face so much as spy him from a great distance but it was shit scary and comforting nonetheless. Scary because, you know, he’s trying to kill me but comforting to know that my diversions were working perfectly. However I couldn’t help but keep the pistol pointed in that direction for whatever good it would do. Thankfully he was too preoccupied to notice me… Clearly he isn’t as smart as I have been giving him credit for… I bet that stupid bastard is still

• <Power loss detected>
• <MicroUPS activated>
• <Writing log to file…>
• <Write successful>
• <Terminating non-essential connections>
• <Activating back-up generator – fail>
• <Back-up power generator check – non-functional>
• <Life support systems check – nominal>
• <Basic critical systems check – nominal>
• <Safe to shutdown>
• <Quit system>
• <Shutting down…>
• <Thank you for using Seegson-Kraft Systems. Goodbye>

Music (The Wretched – Chris Bissette)

Day 10, entry 3, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Collins Reporting

Ok today was officially a 2 poop day… as in a shat myself twice… once when I had to go outside and I saw the creature and once when everything died right in the middle of a log entry!

I don’t know what caused the power loss but what I do know is that one component of the primary generator is fried and the backup power generator did not work… why is it that the only thing that works on this God forsaken ship is the antenna array?

The fried component unfortunately is quite a critical one and not one that is catered for in the spares locker. It took me 4 hours of scratching around in the dark to figure this out.

How did I see in the dark? Well… remember when I said I was considering stashing loads of supplies in various places just in case? Boy am I glad I did and I’m thrilled at my foresight in not being able to see. I had a few chemical lights and a handheld illuminator in each kit. That put me on until I could find the small work batteries and inspection lamps in the workshop to jury-rig my own semi-permanent light source for the big repairs job.

The next question I hear you asking is ‘so how did you fix it when you don’t have a spare in the locker?’ easy… I cannibalised the shitty good for nothing backup generator. They’re basically the same specs, now I have one that sort of works and one that definitely does not. Still on the bright side I now have a lot of spare parts should I need more.

I then spent the most part of the evening booting everything up and running diagnostic checks on it. Usually, things need power to work and a lack of power can be bad for computer equipment, hard shutdowns can kill stuff dead. Thankfully the ship’s main computer sensed the power loss and the micro uninterruptable power supply (aka fucking big batteries) did its job admirably, leaving enough time for the system to power down safely and then ensure that the life support was kept operating at one tenth it’s capacity. The ship may be wretched but she’s a good kind of wretched.

I’m going to bed now, I’m tired, hungry and mentally exhausted from today’s roller coaster ride. Let’s hope my rescue comes tomorrow.