A beeping noises wakes you. The air tastes wrong. The cryo-chamber is already open, and you rise shakily to your feet. Visions of ten thousand dreams blur into nothing behind your eyes and you pull yourself together as wrench pull on your uniform and lurch to the control panel in the bulkhead. You flick the switch for a status readout, and a printout begins to spool out from the wall. In block text, the computer reports;//S.N.S. DAWN, STATUS REPORT;//HULL INTEGRITY: [HOLDING NOMINAL]//PRESSURE AND OXYGEN: [HOLDING NOMINAL]//REACTOR INTEGRITY: [DECLINING, NOMINAL]//REACTOR FUEL: [CRITICAL]Your conditioning kicks in before the panic can rise in your throat. You and your crew have slept in her bowels in the embrace of cryo-chambers for long enough that the computer has auto-woken you - the reactor is running out of fuel. It might've been decades. Centuries. You realise you can't even remember your mission - why you were sent down. A jolt runs up your spine. Your antennae clatter against the low ceiling. Right now you have more immediate problems. If the reactor dies while you're down here you'll be stuck floating until you starve or freeze to death. The rest might not even make it long enough to wake up. You have a few options, though - at least the mechanism isn't breaking down, so you won't end up microwaved down here.You take a deep breath, and;>Set the engines to surface - try to contact the [Network]>Consult the [Charts] - see if you can triangulate your position from the computer's records and orient yourself.>Wake the crew and give the sub a maintenance run and once over. That's the protocol. You will maintain [Discipline].
>>6107545>Wake the crew and give the sub a maintenance run and once over. That's the protocol. You will maintain [Discipline].It's just better to have everyone on the same page before consulting the [Charts] and I am wary of going to the surface so unprepared. Also>Your antennae clatter against the low ceiling.non-humans, interesting.
>>6107545>>Consult the [Charts] - see if you can triangulate your position from the computer's records and orient yourself.
>>6107545>Wake the crew and give the sub a maintenance run and once over. That's the protocol. You will maintain [Discipline].
>>6107551>>6107558You take a long, slow breath as you stand over the sleeper control panel. You are the captain of this vessel - entrusted with its sacred charge and with its crew. You may not recall your mission here but adherence to protocol is the best course. You need the support of your crewmen to prepare and face whatever lies above the churn of the waves.As the chambers hiss and click open, you hear the slow rumble, the sound that heralds the waking your brother-sailors. The rotary pump of their hearts click and rumble as they restart. You begin with your foremost officers; your Second and three Lieutenants. Each presents himself sharply, standing to attention to meet you. Their eyes betray nothing - your own blank face staring back at you. You speak, the clipped naval cant of your lineage;"We are intact. Single-secure-certain. We're running short, double-secure, riding the gauge for too long. Clean her, and make her ready."They nod and turn to awaken the others, and spread the news to the rest of the crew.Soon, the cramped corridors swarm with clattering antennae and shuffling bodies as sailors attend to long-neglected duties. You project confidence, certainty - [Discipline] - they follow you.Before long, the ship is in full working order and ready. You have located yourself against the initial [Charts], the records of every movement the vessel has made since launching - 300 nautical miles south by southwest of Pelakho, along a winding course. As far from land as you could get - and it seems from the pressure gauge nearly as deep.You brief your Second, and consider what to do in a side-cabin.>>Retrace your steps to Pelakho, at speed. >>Consult the [Charts] - something's wrong.>>Surface, and establish contact with the [Network]
>>6107573>>>Consult the [Charts] - something's wrong.
>>6107573>>Consult the [Charts] - something's wrong.
>>6107573>Consult the [Charts] - something's wrong.Can submarines be moved by currents?
>>6107590>>6107638>>6107641The [Charts] are produced constantly - tracking each and every change in course, every change in status and every recorded position. By following them, the theory goes, you can keep track of precisely where you are, where you've been, and where you're going. They keep track of the movement of the satellite network, too - providing mathematically perfect orbital projections to allow you to be in the right place for uplink at the right time. Then, you can reference the endless reams of depth charts mapping the seafloor to know where you can go. Knowing the shape of the seafloor can be the difference between life and death in battle, and since you've no real windows it's the only way to avoid slamming into a rock-face and being crushed into ichor and paste.The [Charts] stand between you and a watery grave, the product of hundreds of hours of movement-tracking and decades of seafloor mapping expeditions. So it comes as quite a shock when you check your position against the maps, sink a depth-anchor, and realise you are not where you're supposed to be. Or, possibly, the seafloor beneath you has changed. A few test-soundings suggest the same broad topological features as you'd expect, but things have definitely moved on the smaller scale - enough to make travel on the seafloor immensely dangerous, and the position of that floor uncertain. If you'd followed proper course back to Pelakho there's every chance you'd've smashed into a seemingly newborn reef and been food for the worms.Troubling.>If things are as they should be, you can ascend and travel at surface level safest - you're in deep waters and in theory not near any atoll or shallow reef, you can head northwest and strike for land.>There should be a satellite passing by to the east - and an archipelago about 13 hours further past it. Used to be a hostile airbase - now, who knows?>You cannot risk exposure and detection. No radio, no sonar - travel as low to the seafloor as you dare and make your way back to home waters. It could be weeks. You might not have the fuel. But it's the only way to be certain - and it is [Protocol].
>>6107664>You cannot risk exposure and detection. No radio, no sonar - travel as low to the seafloor as you dare and make your way back to home waters. It could be weeks. You might not have the fuel. But it's the only way to be certain - and it is [Protocol].Because protocols are always right.
>>6107664>There should be a satellite passing by to the east - and an archipelago about 13 hours further past it. Used to be a hostile airbase - now, who knows?If enough time has passed for the seafloor to change, then I find it quite possible for the country we were at war with to not even exist anymore, imagine a ship from the Spanish Armada arriving in 2000's UK
>>6107573>The rotary pump of their hearts click and rumble as they restart.we're cyborgs then ? or those are just augments ?>>6107664>There should be a satellite passing by to the east - and an archipelago about 13 hours further past it. Used to be a hostile airbase - now, who knows?
>>6107664>There should be a satellite passing by to the east - and an archipelago about 13 hours further past it. Used to be a hostile airbase - now, who knows?
>>6107664>>You cannot risk exposure and detection. No radio, no sonar - travel as low to the seafloor as you dare and make your way back to home waters. It could be weeks. You might not have the fuel. But it's the only way to be certain - and it is [Protocol].
>>6107664>You cannot risk exposure and detection. No radio, no sonar - travel as low to the seafloor as you dare and make your way back to home waters. It could be weeks. You might not have the fuel. But it's the only way to be certain - and it is [Protocol].
>>6107664>There should be a satellite passing by to the east - and an archipelago about 13 hours further past it. Used to be a hostile airbase - now, who knows?also, what kind of weapons do we have? how capable are we of defending ourselves if this hostile airbase does turn out to be hostile?
>>6107664>There should be a satellite passing by to the east - and an archipelago about 13 hours further past it. Used to be a hostile airbase - now, who knows?> Write-in: do we have enough reactor fuel left to get our boat clear of possible hostile patrol before we initiate satellite uplink? Also, check for sonar contact along the way. The last thing we need is to be torpedoed by a potentially hostile party or rammed by an unsuspecting freighter. The fact that we even have cryochambers onboard meant that our boat's designed for missions that lasts a LONG time. Still, not having enough fuel meant getting home slowly without uplink sounds like a quick way to be on eternal patrol.
>>6107664>If things are as they should be, you can ascend and travel at surface level safest - you're in deep waters and in theory not near any atoll or shallow reef, you can head northwest and strike for land.
