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bang-to-the-tan · 4 years

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Vessel Euphoria Chapter 2

► SciFi!AU

Thriller

Warnings: Major Character Death, Mind Control, Upsetting Themes Throughout, Alien Parasitism

↳ Summary: 6 months ago, the crew of the space vessel “Euphoria”—destined for a scientific study on a distant planet—dropped out of all communication. You and your fellow crewmates are inbound to reestablish communication with home base, but things are not as they seem and the fate of the mission is placed in grave danger.

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LOG DATE: 16.12.2212

Space Vessel Euphoria Model 2C-4S

Biology Specialist Kim Taehyung

The camera refuses to focus for a moment after the title blinks out, filled with bright blue light and a dark expanse around what looks to be a dinner plate. A finger flits over the screen, blown-out around the edges and made huge by its proximity. The view shakes as Taehyung fiddles with the controls, tutting once in impatience.

“Ahh, why won’t this focus?” He hums, off-screen. You can hear his pout. Finally, he toggles something and the picture comes into clear view. It’s a planet, filmed from one of the window-ports in what looks like the recreation room. It’s huge, and now that you can see it properly, it’s beautiful, almost glowing in the velvet sky.

“There, gotcha.” Taehyung makes a small, triumphant noise. “See it?”

His hand reappears into frame, pointing this time, pressing against the thick sheet of fiber glass that separates his finger from the vacuum of space. “There she is. That’s where we’ve been going for the past five months. It’s right there.”

The camera shakes as he flips it back around, and his face fills the frame as he sets the device down gingerly on some surface nearby. He settles more comfortably in his chair, throwing a grin upwards at the port over his shoulder.

“This is Biology Specialist Kim Taehyung of the Vessel Euphoria,” he says, and although his words are professional, his brow is quirked just a little too solemnly to be serious. “The spacecraft which is now hovering a few hours from our new home. We’re due to be landing soon, which is why I didn’t make a report for this week.”

His eyebrows twitch upwards, lips tugging into a frank half-grin. “I got reprimanded for that. Apparently that’s bad. So! Let’s see. What’s new with biology…”

You feel an answering smirk crawl across your own face at his exaggerated ponderous expression. In lieu of his actual study basis, Taehyung’s logs pre-landing were meant to be check-ins about the physical wellbeing of his crew—a fact that he carries with such disdain, it’s unreal. “Why would I need to worry about the crew?” He complains in one such log, about two and a half months into their voyage. “Have you seen Jungkook’s abs?”

Even though you don’t share his profession, you can share in his frustration. Being a communications expert doesn’t mean much when you’ve been stuck with the same three guys for months. After a while, you learn how to deal with their individual quirks and how to solve grievances with the kind of skill expected from their mothers. Sometimes, you miss being surprised by people.

“What’s new with biology…” he says again, casting a wide-eyed glance upwards, full lips moving into a pout. He blinks, and the way his eyes flit back to the camera incidentally makes your belly do a flop. That’s another thing Taehyung does in his logs. What can only be described as ‘bedroom eyes’. You don’t understand why. Who at central command is he flirting with? Or is it somehow an accident? The perfection in his timing, the way his tongue flits out briefly, the way he shifts back to stare almost predatorily through your screen, makes you doubtful.

“There’s nothing new with biology.” He says finally. He blinks again and rolls his eyes, leaning back more comfortably. The sultriness, the smooth player façade, evaporates instantly, and you’re left with a boy—bored and unsure of his place in the world. “Everyone in this crew is healthy as a horse.” He hesitates, staring off into some undetermined corner of the room.

“Our scans came back positive for life,” he begins anew, already catching an entirely separate train of thought, eyes distant. “Lots of life. Plant life especially. The runway that was put down before us is already starting to grow over. Jin—ah, Specialist Kim Seokjin—he says that if it was just a little bit more overgrown, we probably wouldn’t manage a secure landing. Which sounds weird to me.”

Taehyung looks back to the camera, eyebrows cocking conspiratorially.

“Obviously we made sure to lay down the scorcher really thick—what kind of plant life can regenerate that quickly?” He shifts. “I can’t wait to get my hands on some samples.”

He pauses. Moves again, straightens, as though suddenly remembering. “Oh! The—ah, the camera! I’ve sent in a request for a better camera. For biology purposes. Please see that it gets here soon.” He frowns, gaze drifting away once more. His voice is soft, thoughtful. “It’s already late, but…”

Your comm crackles into static again, and you’re distracted from the rest of Taehyung’s log. His voice continues in the background.

“Requesting all hands to flight control immediately.” It’s Jimin. He sounds almost panicked. You grab it swiftly, already moving to stand.

“Communications, copy.”

The screen flickers and shuts down with a sharp noise when you turn it off. It only takes a moment to clamber through your quarters and make your way to the flight control room, stepping in a brisk walk.

“Maintenance copies.” Shockingly on-time. Even Yoongi won’t afford a quip when Jimin is obviously upset by something enough to call attention to it. The entire crew’s attention, no less.

The control room doors open with the fssh of pressurized air, leading into a tech head’s paradise of a room. Wall-to-wall communication grids and outlined maps of the ship’s systems, each lit with indicators. Buttons, levers, switches—every instance of navigation is managed by this room, sorted by purpose. You send them a cursory glance, wondering what it is that has your colleague so distressed, but they all look fine. Everything functional, working just as intended. You turn away with a look of confusion. Jimin is seated at his usual chair by the central navigation hub at the front of the room, frowning at the screen in front of him. Officer Jung hangs over the back of his chair, staring intently at the self-same monitor. The display is taken entirely up by…flowers? It’s an ocean of red and blue, waving gently in some alien breeze. Even from an aerial view, they stretch as far as the eye can see. Millions of them. It casts a weird pallor over the entire room, dances over everyone’s faces. It’s almost pretty.

“Preliminary landing drone,” Jimin explains. You swallow down the urge to remind him that you went through the same schooling he did. You know what the flashing symbol in the corner is—used to draw it on the corners of your navigational notes. You let him continue anyways. “That’s the flight path.”

You blink.

“What do you mean ‘that’s the flight path’?”

“I mean that is the flight path. Look at the coords.” He points a finger to the screen.

“Are they the wrong ones?”

“No, I didn’t put in the wrong ones.” He snaps. “That’s the landing strip.”

“No offense, but that can’t be the landing strip, Jimin.” Yoongi suddenly pipes up from behind you. “That isn’t a landing strip.”

“I checked the coordinates myself,” your Officer says quietly. “Twice.”

“There’s no way. The Euphoria sent the scorcher ahead before she landed—it would have cleared the runway before she hit.”

“Then it grew over.”

“In a year?”

“The crew logs,” you interrupt. “The crew logs from around their landing timeframe. All of them mention how quickly the local plant life grew back after being pruned.”

“We all saw the logs,” Yoongi argues back, “but there’s literally no way. After the kind of radial damage from the scorcher, even if it was just wide enough to safely land, and if no one maintained the runway, it would still take years for local plant life to regain even half the ground. Years. Multiple of them. I think the coords are wrong.”

Jimin spins in his chair, jumping to his feet.

“The coordinates are fine,” he spits, eyes wide. “I already told you, I know how to do my job.”

“Then the system is on the fritz.”

“I know how to maintain the system, too, thanks!”

“Guys—” you start, stepping forward between them, arms raised placatingly.

“Stand down, both of you,” Officer Jung says. Neither of them move. “Specialist Park, what are our options?”

“We have to reroute, sir,” Jimin replies, but he’s still glaring at Yoongi, who only returns his gaze levelly.

“Rerouting so close to the surface is dangerous, sir,” Yoongi snaps back. “Inertia will pull us off whatever course we chart this late in the landing.”

“Can we risk trying to land on the strip when it’s hidden like that? Is that an option, Specialist Park?”

“It would be driving blind. Unless we drove it completely straight, directly onto the strip, we risk hitting irregularities in the terrain. Causing damage to the ship and the environment. Possibly the main tower itself.”

Yoongi goes to open his mouth again, but you look to the captain.

“Permission to speak, sir.”

“Granted, thank you for asking, Not-Specialist Park.”

Yoongi looks away with a barely-hidden roll of his eyes and a smothered scoff.

“We don’t have contact with the Vessel Euphoria. If there is anything of importance to the mission hidden in the undergrowth—if there are crew members hidden in the undergrowth— we’re too liable to hit them.” You gesture to the screen. “It goes on for miles, sir. Considering our lack of communication…we can’t risk damaging Euphoria’s mission or crew.”

“Then our options?”

“We either stay course and risk damage to the area by trying to navigate the main landing strip or we reroute to the secondary station and risk damage to the ship from the shift in flight path.”

“How far away is the secondary station?”

“200 klicks, give or take.”

“That’s one hell of a divergence,” Yoongi butts in again. Hoseok ignores his lack of etiquette this time, too deep in thought. “At the rate we’re travelling, we’re absolutely gonna knock the terrain.”

“Can we get estimates for potential damage?”

“Not before we run out of range,” Jimin insists. “We don’t have more than ten minutes before we fall out of the range we need to charter a turn. This thing can’t turn on a dime, not at the speeds we’re going.”

“But we can get estimates for potential damage.”

“While we’re already on the path. Not before.”

“And the landing will be easier by the second tower.”

“The terrain is flat, has to be to establish a base. The radius is wide enough that even if we miss the landing strip, we can land,” you add. “Minimal damage to anything important.”

Officer Jung hesitates. His tongue bulges the side of his cheek. He blinks, shakes his head to the side and finally looks back up, meeting all of your eyes.

“Specialist Park, reroute our path. Aim for the secondary tower but keep the coords loose. Worst case I want to be behind it, not through the damn thing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Specialist Min. Damage estimates. Get to work on controlling it before we hit. Move vitals out of any vulnerable positions. I want to know what we’re going to need repairs on, and what we’ll need replaced. The secondary tower should have the supplies we need.”

“I disagree with this decision, sir.”

“I’m not risking running over the people we’ve come here to assist, Min. If we don’t have a visual and we don’t have contact with the primary hub, we have to assume it is unsafe to land there. You can disagree all you like. And finally—“

“Yes, sir,” you straighten.

“Send out another landing drone. I want it at the secondary tower as soon as possible. We’ll land there, restock, repair, refuel. From there, we’ll take a buggy and make our way out to the primary hub. Maximum an additional two days added to our itinerary. Do we understand?”

“Yes, sir.” All of you echo, but you are the only one of your crew that doesn’t sound bitter.

“I’m going to be getting in touch with central command and letting them know about the divergence. I want sound-off and status reports before we land. Scatter.”

Yoongi turns a little too briskly on his heel to walk out, and your officer follows him after a pause and a glance about the room. Jimin glares scathing holes into Yoongi’s back.

Your mind is already racing you to the drone cabinet, reeling with procedures and potentials and logistics. It unlocks easily, swiftly, under your hand, the pre-set coordinates for the secondary tower just a tap away. With a klunk and another hiss of air, the doors close around the capsule, shunting it downwards violently, throwing it into space. You step back to better reach the panel on its side and navigate the screen to connect, giving it a brief countdown to warm up.

Three, two….

On ‘one’, you’ve connected. By ‘zero’, you’ve pulled up the pathfinding systems. While you’re there, you order the initial drone back to recharge.

“Thanks for taking my side,” Jimin pipes up. You hazard a glance at him over your shoulder. He’s still hunched over his station, eyes studying the screens with his brow furrowed and his lips pursed. Anyone who didn’t know him better would think he was incredibly engrossed in his difficult work. But you know that much of the actual math is done by the AI embedded in the controls. And you know him better. He could reroute in his sleep; even a turn like this.

“I wasn’t taking a side,” you reply, turning back to your screen. The drone’s speed is excellent, but not so good that you aren’t now trapped in here trying to maintain Jimin’s bruised ego. You love him, really, but sometimes he needs a delicate touch. “It’s a logical scenario and I was telling Officer Jung what logical course of action I suggest we take. There aren’t life support systems on the secondary hub, so there isn’t liable to be any crew members—just in case we can’t navigate those plant things.”

“I can’t believe Yoongi would rather believe that I put in the wrong coordinates.”

You repress the urge to sigh.

“Jimin…”

“We’ve been doing this for years. He knows I wouldn’t make a rookie mistake like that.”

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Not me.”

Despite yourself, you cast another look at him. He’s got his head propped up in one hand, clutching at his hair, still frowning downwards, but distantly. The lights and symbols spinning beneath him bathe his profile in greens and blues.

“Not us.” He adds, quiet. “You know I try so hard to keep up with everyone.”

“Jimin,” you interrupt, before he has the chance to spiral out of control with any continuation of that thought, “You aren’t ‘keeping up’ with anyone. You were second in your entire class.”

You spare a glance at the drone’s vitals before turning away and going to stand by your crewmate, who now looks like he’s about to start melting into the console in a puddle of despair and self-deprecation. When you put a comforting hand on his shoulder, he turns his head away.

“He was just trying to look for an explanation. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have faith in you. You’re a fantastic navigations specialist, Jimin. He knows that. We all do.”

There’s a pause.

His fingers creep up over his shoulder, brushing yours.

“Sure. Thanks.” He murmurs. You almost can’t hear him.

“Of course. What am I here for, anyways?”

“The mango shakes. Can’t get enough of them.”

You shove at him, feeling your heart lighten at the mischievous grin curling his lips when he jolts forward. “Fuck you, strawberry hog. I’ll get you, my pretty. And your delicious shakes, too.”

He snorts at that, and the drone pings to get your attention. When you return to it, you pull up the camera and squint at the grainy texture of the video stream. You frown.

“It might have been a better idea than you thought, anyways,” you say.

“What do you mean?” “There’s just enough burnt away for the ship to land, not far from the hub itself.”

“What?”

You hear a scuffle as he rises, and then he’s at your shoulder, peering forward.

The same field, waving in the breeze, of bright blue and red flowers, stretching off into the distance. But there, in the corner of the screen, sits the dome of the secondary communications hub. The towers themselves rise up just behind it, framed against an almost perfectly flat horizon. And in the foreground, entire sections of what looks like char. Burnt up, shrivelled, blasted away. The land has gone flat and sallow, bare enough for a safe landing, so long as you timed it just right.

“…The scorcher?” you hum, brow furrowing.

“No. No, the scorcher didn’t do this. Look at the edges. There’s no pattern.” Jimin’s finger rises to press against the monitor. “This was done by a person”

“What…? How?” “I have no fucking idea.”

“Somebody on the Euphoria had…what, a flamethrower…?”

“Hmm…Actually, I tried to acquisition firearms before we left.”

Your head tilts to better give him a disapproving look.

“You never know,” he insists, wide-eyed. “But anyways, they said it was

absolutely a no-go. The Euphoria’s mission is study-oriented, and none of the initial scans came back with any life that couldn’t be taken out with a tazer. Worst-case.”

“So you’re saying you think someone built? A flamethrower??”

“Could have. Disassembled the scorcher, repurposed it?”

“Why? Why go through the effort?”

He frowns deeper, goes back to studying the screen. He taps against it with one delicate fingertip and you allow him to parse the menus and commands without any argument—even though technically your officer had assigned that particular task to you. After Yoongi’s comment, Jimin will be doing his best to excel in everything he touches from here on out. Best to let him get the worst of it out on small stuff, like the drone. You can’t imagine what he’ll be like once you’re actually in front of the Officer Kim Namjoon.

“Look.” He gestures again, and you follow the motion. “It’s a trail. You can see where the flowers have grown over.”

It does look that way. A big, jagged shape burnt around the front of the hub, tapering off into lighter, newer, younger vegetation to the west.

“Bet you that leads to the primary station.” He says in a hush.

“I’d take that bet.”

He meets your eye again.

“Another route to the secondary tower?”

“Considering how quickly the entire landing strip was recovered, that means it’s recent.”

“Before the communication breakdown, even, do you think?”

“Maybe.”

“…Is that a good or a bad thing?”

You shake your head, still searching the monitor.

“I don’t know.”

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#bts fanfic #bts scifi au #bts thriller #vessel euphoria #do i know what science is? no #do i intend to let that stop me #oh buddy lmao #absolutely fucking not

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