There are gradients of bad things. Some make you say “Oh, shit!” Some cause you to exclaim “Oh, fuck!” And, then there are those times when the shit is rolling down hill so fast you don’t have time to speak.

The sole official duty of a Space Academy cadet was to be the “buoy boy”. That’s what the Petty Officers called it when there were no officers around. Except me, of course. I wasn’t really an officer, just a hunk of meat that was in the way.

Each ship of the Terran Navy carries an Omega Beacon. The beacon is launched when the bridge crew or the ship’s onboard computer determines that the ship will not survive whatever is happening. It contains the ship’s log and as much of the final sensor readings as it is possible to copy to the beacon before launch. That way, when, if, the beacon’s signal is heard and the beacon recovered the powers that be can determine what caused the horrid fate of the ship that launched it.

Since the beacon was a manmade body, and had small maneuvering thrusters, the brass had long ago determined that those qualities made it a space vessel. All space vessels had to have a captain, and all captains had to be officers.

No officer worth his salt wants to be ejected from a fighting ship in the middle of a battle. Thus the position of “buoy boy” fell onto the broad and manly shoulders of the most junior officer. Um… that would be me, in this case.

The drill was that on call to stations, I was to run to the beacon hatch, seat myself in the beacon and seal the hatch behind me. My clue that things had gone awry would be the violent acceleration of the beacon.

Our captain was thorough. We held a call to stations at least once a week, usually at meal time or in the middle of the sleep period. Or, so it seemed. After a dismal showing the first few times, I took a moment to scope out the ship’s plans and discovered that I could access any number of zero gee utilities tubes and that I could get to my station far more rapidly that way. All I had to do was not be seen opening the hatch that said “No Access” or be seen coming out of the one closest to the beacon.

I had also donated a night of sleep to a long and detailed examination of the beacon and the publicly available plans for the beacon. My job would be to flip the switch that scrubbed memory storage if the beacon was picked up by anybody but the Navy. Flip two covers up and flip two switches. I could also maneuver the beacon slightly if I somehow magically discovered that a piece of debris was about to hit us. You see, there were no sensors, no radio other than the beacon’s signal, and limited rations and air.