Up on the Arc's launch deck the preparation crew were frantically preparing the automated pilot system for its launch.
"Come on Dan, get a fucking move on!" the man shouted over to his colleague. "The fucking cattle's being loaded already, We'll be done for if we are last again, the loading crew will never let us hear the end of it."
Manically tapping away at his keyboard with one hand the man held up his other hand, extended his middle finger in the direction of his friend and shook his head.
"Not helping Boris!" he said without taking his eyes of the screen.
Frantically tapping in the co-ordinates he punched the last few buttons hard as the program uploaded. Spinning in his chair he didn't feel the arm of the chair gently brush the gyroscopic calibration dial as the interstellar compass shifted by just 2.37 degree's.
"See, fucking done. Jeez, you're cranky when you have a date!" the man joked. Turning back round he pushed down the protective cover on the controls and locked them shut.
"Voyager-13 bridge prepared, over to you Lantea Control." he said over the radio.
"Come on" his boss said "I've been trying to get Maria on a date for months, I'm not going to let you make me late!" he said.
"Still need to do the final checks on the gyroscope don't we?"
"Fuck that, we've only just installed and calibrated it this morning. Just sign the fucking forms and we'll get out of here." he said as Dan shrugged. Boris wouldn't realise the implication of his decision, but for the 5,000 occupants of the Voyager 13 it was a decision that changed their destinies forever.
The launch occurred exactly as planned with a single fault, not that the occupants had any idea what was going on as their bodies were controlled in deep stasis. It took nearly 10 years before anyone suspected something was up, until then there had been no reason to suspect that Voyager 13 was anything but on track. The automated radio signals suddenly stopped one day, little did earth realise this was down to the slight alignment of the gyroscope finally pushing the ship outside of the communications path of sight.
Over a three month period concerns grew about the whereabouts of the arc, as radio signals that took 2 weeks to go between Earth and Lantea figured that the ship wasn't on the path it was supposed to be on.
Voyager 13 was written off as the biggest disaster in space history, the theories ranging from meteor impact through to engine failure. The HubbleX space telescope could find no trace of the ship along the programmed flightpath, and all the checks on the ships systems prior to take off were all green. After 30 years when it was scheduled to arrive even the most optimistic of people had to give up on it ever being found, it never showed up at Lantea
Voyager-13 was lost, and as the final Arc set sail from the earth leaving only the most unfortunate behind to die with the planet, all hope of tracing the ship was gone.
