Manifesting the Fall of Destiny

A thousand years ago, a huge shining silver and white cylinder blasted through space, boring a tunnel through a fairly dusty region of the local galaxy at a reasonable fraction of the speed of light. As fast as it was going, it was trying its damnest to slow down, which it could only do by, essentially, detonating the combined nuclear armament of every nation on Kerbin at the start of World War III. Every second. Anyone watching down carefully in the direction of travel during the brief reprieve between instances of Nuclear Armageddon would see a bright blue star, getting brighter and whiter with each passing day. And looking up through the vast cupola at the front of the ship would see a dim orange star getting dimmer and, in fact, whiter with each passing day. Emblazoned on the side of the ship in brilliant glowing white text was the name of the vessel: U.S.C. Manifest Destiny. It would still be another year of deceleration before the Manifest Destiny arrived at its destination: the exomoon Kaywell A-dII, also known as Kerbmun.

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A little green woman -- Dr. Jenala Kerman -- floated down the ladders leading to the Mission Control Deck. She shyly peeked her head into the room.

Two dozen crew in button-down shirts with ties and *Kerbal Interstellar Consortium* Badges on their shoulders were sitting in front of computer screens, idly typing, glancing at the viewscreen in the center of the room, unpacking snacks, and writing on sticky-notes.

Jenala pulled herself towards the desk of the FlIght Dynamics Officer. He didn't look up. Jenala took a deep breath.

"FIDO, I have some concerns with the Oberth-maneuver you've scheduled," Jenala Kerman said.

"What is that woman doing on the bridge? She's not in uniform," said the Flight Dynamics Officer, Gimmal Kerman, only glancing up at Jenala for a brief moment.

"Let's hear what she has to say, Gimmal," said Hidbrud Kerman, the Head of Mission Control.

"I'm Dr. Jenala Kerman. I'm an astronomer and a trajectory analyst, and I've been monitoring our trajectory with respect to Kaywell A-d."

"We're calling the planet by its proper name, ma'am," Gimmal sneered.

"With all due respect Mr. FIDO, I believe we're on a collision course with Kay--err--Mesbin," Jenala said.

"That's absurd," Gimmal said, pulling up the files on his computer screen, "See, look at this. We have a safety factor of 1.5, well within mission tolerances. We'll avoid the radius of Mesbin by the radius of Kerbin!"

"I've double-checked my observations, and ran it through a few of my colleagues. My math checks out. We're on a collision course. Just barely, but very certainly," insisted Jenala.

"Well WE double checked with MechBob 9000. And its math checks out for sure. Periapsis will be no closer than two thousand kilometers from the center of the planet," Gimmal said.

"That's not what the problem is. No offense intended, but if you don't issue a course correction we will actually crash. No doubt about it," Jenala said, punching one fist into the other.

"Hmm... I'm inclined to trust Mr. Gimmal," said Hidbrud, "and I'm especially inclined to trust MechBob. We'll look into the problem. You should get back up to the habitation section before we decelerate."

Jenala lingered for a few moments, as Hidbrud turned around to talk, quietly, to another Mission Control Officer, before turning around. "You're dismissed, Dr. Jenala," Hidbrud said. Jenala, worriedly, climbed back up the ladder and out of the room.

"We'll send Jenala," she mumbled to herself, "it's her data, it'll be great." Jenala made her way back up to the habitat module, muttering "sure, send the shy woman, that'll solve our problem."

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"MULCH! MULCH! That Kraken-sworn egg-head was right. BOOSTER, we have to abort NOW!" Gimmal said.

"What? WHAT?" Said the BOOSTER officer.

"SHE TRIED TO TELL ME, I CAN'T BELIEVE I MISSED IT," yelled Gimmal.

"WHAT WAS IT?" Hidbrud yelled, running over to Gimmal.

"LOOK AT THE VIEWSCREEN OF MESBIN. SEE THAT?" Gimmal's eyes were wide. A vast, parabolic terrain was laid out before them, and it was gradually getting larger.

"OH MY GOD," Exclaimed Hidbrud. Gasps and expletives were uttered in the room, which fell silent for a moment.

"The curvature of the horizon... it's... it's oblate. The pile of mulch must be spinning faster than a whirligig, the thing's twice as wide as we thought it was."

Gimmal desperately tried to lay out a flight plan, but the surface was getting closer and closer. Finally he yelled out, "DAMNIT BOOSTER JUST TURN THE ENGINES ON AS MUCH AS YOU CAN!"

The BOOSTER officer complied and issued an order to the engine room to double up the nuclear charges and detonate ASAP. There was no time to ready the inertial dampers. Hidbrud issued a Red Alert and everyone strapped into their seats, reclining them back to turn them into acceleration couches. The first nuclear charge went off, slamming everyone down into the back of their seats. This was accompanied by expletives. More than a few of the Mission Control crew thought, for a brief second, that that was it, they had crashed, they were dead. The thought wore off just long enough for the terror to come back a second later when the crew were slammed into their seats again. This repeated a few times. The novelty wore off after a minute.

"GUIDO, status?" Screamed Hidbrud.

"Velocity down to 900 meters per second, altitude uncertain," said the Guidance Officer.

Ten seconds later, the blasts stopped, and the Guidance Officer said, "We've stopped. FIDO, you had better have a plan, because we're falling, and I have no clue how high we a--"

Before he finished his sentence, everyone was slammed into their seats one last time.

The nuclear pulse engine and engineering decks were completely pulverized, exploding into a mass of rock, dust, and twisted metal as it smashed into the surface. The mission control deck was flattened like a tin can, as well as the main computer deck and the lower habitation decks. The upper half of the Manifest Destiny rested for a few moments on the smashed debris after it finally came to a stop. And the it began tilting, until it fell over, deforming but not breaching the whole starboard of the spacecraft. The interstellar dust shield, a large flat disk at the front of the ship, shattered into huge chunks as it hit the surface.

Jenala woke up on the starboard wall of her quarters. It was a mess, with furniture, papers, filing cabinets, her computer, and her chair dumped unceremoniously around her. She tried to stand, before shouting to no one in particular, "HECK!" Her leg was broken, but she had mostly shouted out of frustration. "Now what?" She mumbled to herself.

She looked out the window of her cabin. She could see a black sky and a bright rocky Munlike surface, the reflected light from which was the only thing that was lighting up the room.

"Welcome to Mesbin," Jenala said, and rested her head back on the wall.

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With careful application of decoupling bolts and struts, the front of the Manifest Destiny was separated and lay upright on the surface of Mesbin. That section of the starship was the unpressurized cargo bay, and took the form of a large crumpled tuna can. The surviving engineers had hoped to salvage the spacecrafts and other equipment that were contained within the bay. With their space suits and checklists, some of the engineers went to take stock of what equipment was salvageable and what wasn't.

Most of the cargo, despite being stored in Fuzz-O-Co Safety Sheets, was damaged. All of the spacecrafts and shuttles were damaged enough that they wouldn't be spaceworthy, most of the rovers and vehicles were damaged, and the solar panels and reactors were all damaged beyond repair.

Living in a sideways spacecraft that was designed to be upright was vastly uncomfortable and impractical, so the engineers, with the help of some more volunteers, worked to set up some surface bases. None of the deployable homes and buildings intended to be set up on Kerbmun were pressurized, but they were airtight, which was a start. Some of the rovers, cranes, and other construction equipment that were least damaged were assembled and used to dismantle the Manifest Destiny's crew compartments and set them up vertically on the surface of Mesbin.