A short piece of FTL fan fiction. An ensign stationed aboard a rebel ship reflects on a previous battle and thinks about the implications of a new technology. His thoughts are interrupted by an infamous Federation vessel armed to the teeth.
For readers who haven't played FTL, it's a rogue-like game that lets players live out their Star Trek fantasies for about five minutes before discovering that war crimes are a more effective tactic. The wiki has information about the Clone Bay game mechanics.
The ensign drifted in and out focus as status lights steadily blinked. The rebel fleet had secured this backwater jump beacon weeks ago, and his disruptor-class frigate was tasked with patrolling the perimeter in case the Federation launched a counterattack. The ensign wondered why they even bothered. There was nothing in the nebula of interest and too much plasma to use it as a shortcut. Regardless, the disruptor was well-suited for this job, featuring traditional armaments to deter smaller vessels and electronic warfare equipment to disable larger vessels and buy enough time to call in reinforcements or, for this backwater assignment, escape.
One new piece of equipment installed on the disruptor was the clone bay, which replaced the medbay. Medbays deploy nanobots capable of rapidly healing most injuries, saving countless crewmembers across a dozen empires on the brinks of quite gratuitous deaths. The ensign's eyes wandered to an unremarkable scar on his hand, and his mind wandered to memories of shrapnel nearly severing his arm and memories of the nanobots healing it in seconds, watching as bone reassembled, skin fused, and blood returned. The ensign was lucky, and he knew it. Had his comrades been slower dragging him to the medbay, or had the shrapnel struck a more important artery, or had the pilot failed to juke the second incoming missile, he would've run out of time.
He tried not to think about it much.
He redirected his thoughts to the clone bay. The clone bay improved on the medbay in the only way possible. Medbays, miraculous as they are, only allow avoiding death. A medbay cannot reverse death. But a clone bay can. Clone bays analyze crewmembers much like the crew teleporter used by boarding parties, but clone bays improve on this principle by drastically extending the range and storing a live feed of the crew's molecular structures. If a crewmember's vital signs ceased, the clone bay was able to reconstruct them from a combination of the most recent feed data and a reference of them in a more intact state. While the ensign had not yet died himself, he had been reassured by a petty officer that the experience was indeed similar to using the crew teleporter. The ensign deemed it inappropriate to remind the petty officer that the crew teleporter tends not to also fire seven phaser rifle bolts at the user's chest.
Regardless, it was reassuring: death was no longer something to be feared. Death had been tamed. Death had become a new weapon on the battlefield. The ensign wondered if the rumors he had heard of pirates strapping bomb vests to their boarding parties were true. Surrender meant the pirates win. Fighting meant their victims lose.
A red light illuminated as an alarm began to blare. The ensign's mind snapped back to reality as his sensor panel showed the energy outburst of an FTL engine. Radar and visual scanners briefly showed a delta-shaped starship with a distinctive digital camo pattern before it vanished: the DA-SR 12.
The entire rebel fleet was hunting that ship. It was a prototype stealth cruiser and it possessed data that would enable the Federation to crush the rebellion, but the ensign's eyes widened because it had singlehandedly destroyed twenty-three rebel ships and his sensors showed that its weapons were powering up.
The stealth cruiser winked into existence again and the bridge became a frenzy.
"Captain, enemy ship reappeared behind us!"
"Helm, spin us around!"
"Hacking drone ready!"
"Target their shields!"
"Missile launcher ready!"
"Fire!"
"Burst laser ready!"
"Hold your fire!"
A flash, shrapnel, and flames emerged from the enemy's hull. Direct hit. The ensign didn't see it. He was focused on the hacking drone, waiting for its spider-like legs to dig into the stealth cruiser.
There! He flipped a switch. The protective bubble around the enemy began fading and flickering.
"Captain, their shields are down!"
"Fire burst laser!"
The fluorescent tubes in the ceiling of the bridge dimmed five times as the burst laser fired. Five green streaks followed the vapor trail left by the missile towards... nothing?
"They cloaked again!"
"Helm, turn around again!"
"Aye, Captain!"
The disruptor spun around as the stealth ship decloaked. The two ships stared each other down. The stealth cruiser fired its ion cannon three times before the disruptor's burst laser could recharge or its missile launcher could be reloaded. The ensign watched in horror as one, then two, then all three layers of the disruptor's shields were stripped away.
"Shields d-"
The ensign died before he could finish his sentence, but the rest of the bridge crew inferred what he meant in the brief moment before they met the same fate. A beam pierced the bridge and melted hull and flesh alike as it cut the disruptor from stem to stern. The disruptor broke in two. Its black box automatically sent a distress signal to the rest of the rebel fleet in range, and word would spread that the DA-SR 12 destroyed a twenty-fourth rebel ship by itself. Eventually. The plasma-rich nebula would interfere with the distress signal. Surely the rebel brass would notice an entire ship had gone AWOL.
A skilled operator can fire a beam with surgical precision, and the operator aboard the stealth cruiser was selective when targeting the disruptor. Its bridge, shields, and weapons were destroyed, but most of the other systems were still intact. Notably, the disruptor's reactor still provided power. The hacking system still pinged the drone with radio waves outrun by its assailant's FTL engine. And the clone bay began its work, dutifully reconstructing the bodies of the deceased crewmembers.
The ensign heard a hiss as his consciousness returned. Where was he? What happened? There was a fight. Did they lose? The clone bay's cloning pod door opened, and the ensign floated into the vacuum of space. He inhaled, or more accurately he contracted his diaphragm. It took the ensign's body a moment to register that there was no air. He contracted his diaphragm again. Still no air. He panicked, frantically grabbing his throat and the nothingness in front of him as his vision faded.
The ensign heard a hiss as his consciousness returned. Where was he? What happened? Wait. He remembered. He was in the cloning pod. The door opened again, and the ensign floated into the vacuum of space. He contracted his diaphragm once again but failed to inhale. The ensign panicked as his vision and consciousness became nothingness.
The ensign heard a hiss as his consciousness returned. Oh no. Oh God. The cloning pod door opened a third time and the engisn floated into vacuum once again. He saw a uniformed body floating nearby and scrambled to reach it. He grabbed the body and turned it. The face was familiar, but wrong. It was a mirror image of the face the ensign saw every morning in the mirror. The ensign's final thought was a horrifying realization that neither the body nor the uniform showed traces of burns from a ship-mounted beam.
The ensign heard a hiss as his consciousness returned. Dear God kill me for real. The ensign took the biggest breath possible as he pushed the cloning pod door open and swung around. Wires. Hoses. Conduits. There has to be something! No. No no no no no. There was nothing exposed for the ensign to disable. This was a military-grade clone bay, after all. Its titanium casing was designed to protect it even from direct hits in a firefight.
A starship's FTL engine requires speciality fuel, but all other systems including huge power drains such as the subluminal engines or weapons are powered by the ship's reactor. Reactor fuel is not particularly a concern.
The ensign heard a hiss as his consciousness returned.
Ships typically refuel after months of service, and some ships built for exploration don't need to refuel for over a year.
The ensign heard a hiss as his consciousness returned.
However, if a ship powers off its engines or doesn't engage in combat, the largest drains on the reactor are powered off and save significant amounts of fuel.
The ensign heard a hiss as his consciousness returned.
The disruptor had been refueled recently when it was upgraded with a hacking system and retrofitted with a clone bay, so with no drain from its engines or weapons, its fuel reserves ought to outlast the reactor's service life.
The ensign heard a hiss as his consciousness returned.
The ensign heard a hiss as his consciousness returned.
The ensign heard a hiss as his consciousness returned.
