>>5214596>>5214622>>5214735>>At the time of the vote’s closing, the living quarters section won out.In the shadow of the <span class="mu-i">Olympia</span>, you can only now appreciate the sheer size of the former starship. Even in her diminished state, the wreck speaks volumes of humanity prior to the Cataclysm. The <span class="mu-i">Magellan</span> clocks in at around 8.2 meters, but it would take at least two dozen to match the height of the wreckage. And even then, there’s still plenty that’s buried underneath the shifting sands.
“Standby for thruster and jet burn,” you intone, thumbing switches and knobs on the dashboard. “What’s the angle of approach?”
HOPI runs the math, and displays the trajectory of your “flight” path on the HUD. “This should get you on one of the less-mangled floors. From there, it’s just finding a path towards the maintenance shaft from residential to cargo.”
“Copy that.” Then to the <span class="mu-i">Calyspo</span>, you radio, “ACOMMS, This is Razor. I’m starting my infiltration of the <span class="mu-i">Olympia</span>.”
Without waiting for a reply, you fire both thrusters and jets to blast off the ocean floor. In your wake is a cloud of dust and scattering wildlife as 23.7 tons of industrial, pre-Cataclysm machinery gracefully soars through the water. What then follows is a game of chicken as you cut propulsion, then wait to fire off just enough so that you won’t go through the floor.
Thankfully, HOPI does all the math for you, leaving almost no room for human error. When the pop-up comes, you fire off another controlled burst, slowing you down to make a comparatively light impact on the flooring. The metal groans, but holds fast.
“Touchdown on forward compartment…” you pause to check the schematic, “Residential 4FA. Commencing infiltration…”
The residential quarters of the <span class="mu-i">Olympia</span>’s forward compartment could be compared to the low-income housing complexes scattered across Dockside. Just enough space for two people to live comfortably, maybe four or five accounting for young children. Comfort seems to have been a secondary concern compared to fitting as many colonists as possible to populate the solar system.
But the halls are spacious enough, surprisingly. Just both high and wide enough to drive a forklift through them. Not nearly so large for the <span class="mu-i">Maggie</span> to stand upright, or even crawl without scraping either paint or critical components off the PUEXO’s rear. Parts of the interior have buckled to the point of inaccessibility, if not outright blocked by debris.
“What was that about having to get on my knees?” you grunt as you finagle the PUEXO through a tight corridor.
Eventually, you give up, and resort to pulling out the plasma cutter. It takes you the better part of twenty minutes, but you manage to make enough space for an entry point by shearing through the flooring of Deck 5FA.
(cont.)
