Roy’s Galaxy Rescue: Pluto Crash, New Rules

Chapter 1: The Alarm That Wouldn’t QuitThe first thing you hear is the ship’s alarm.

Not a dramatic, movie-style gong. More like a thin, urgent sound that never quite finishes the sentence it started. It’s like a kettle that won’t stop singing, only this one has decided it’s going to do it forever.

Roy (senior) freezes halfway through whatever he was doing a second ago. Mary is already moving, because Mary has the kind of calm that doesn’t wait for permission.

“Okay,” Roy says, like the word itself might calm the ship. “That’s not normal.”

The cabin lights flicker.

It’s subtle at first. A blink. A stutter. Then the whole room seems to hesitate, and the air pressure in your ears feels wrong, as if the ship has taken a breath and forgot how to let it out.

Roy slaps his palm against the nearest grab bar. He does it automatically, the way you might grab a railing in a crowded subway car. His fingers lock in, knuckles whitening.

Mary’s eyes are on the control panel. She presses both hands to it, not like she’s trying to charm it, but like she wants to hold the ship steady through sheer touch. Her face is pale, but her voice stays even.

“Roy, look at the readouts.”

Outside the windows, the stars smear into bright streaks. It’s not just motion. It’s the kind of blur you get when you realize you’re not moving the way you thought you were moving. The ship tilts, and with it, your stomach tilts too.

Roy shouts over the alarm. “Hold on - Mary. I’ve got the screens!”

He reaches for the main interface with the confidence of someone who has fixed enough things that he trusts his own hands. The screen flickers too, but it catches enough to show him what matters.

Then the ship speaks.

It’s the AI ship voice, calm in a way that feels almost insulting. Like it’s reading a grocery list while the house is on fire.

“Mayday. Mayday. Engine Malfunction.”

The words repeat, steady and certain, as if the ship is proud to have found the correct label for the problem.

“Mayday. Mayday. Engine Malfunction.”

Roy’s jaw tightens. “Engine malfunction,” he repeats, like saying it twice will make it less frightening. “Sure. That explains why the floor feels like it’s trying to throw us out the window.”

Mary doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t even look at him.

“I’m getting a power fluctuation,” she says. “And it’s not just the cabin. The panel is showing system instability across the board. Roy, we need to stabilize attitude first.”

Roy glances up from the screen. “Attitude control?”

Mary nods. “If the ship can’t hold its orientation, the engines will keep fighting the tilt. That could make it worse.”

Roy’s fingers dance across the interface. He’s looking for the simplest lever to pull. The first rule of trouble is that complicated fixes are for when you have time. Right now, they need something that works fast.

“Show me thruster status,” he says.

The screen answers with lines of data that look like they were designed by someone who enjoys suffering. Mary reads them quickly anyway, like she’s had practice.

“Thrusters are responding,” she says. “But they’re cycling. That’s not right. It’s like they’re trying to correct, overcorrecting, and then correcting again.”

Roy leans closer, and the ship tilts again. For a moment, Roy’s body swings slightly, like a pendulum. He adjusts his grip on the grab bar and steadies himself.

“So we’re in a feedback loop,” Roy says. “AI thinks it’s fixing the problem, but the fix is creating the problem.”

The alarm keeps going, thin and urgent and relentless. It doesn’t rise to a dramatic crescendo. It just keeps insisting that something is wrong.

“Mayday. Mayday. Engine Malfunction.”

Mary’s hands stay on the panel. “Roy, I need you to switch attitude stabilization mode. If it’s in automatic correction, we should try a manual constraint.”

Roy hesitates for half a second. On paper, he knows the difference between automatic and manual modes. In real life, manual mode means you become responsible for every small decision. The ship stops making guesses for you.

He swallows. “All right. Manual constraint.”

He flips a control switch and confirms the setting. The cabin lights flicker again, but this time they flicker like they’re listening.

For a few seconds, nothing changes. Then the tilt eases slightly, like the ship is reluctant to admit it can be steadied.

Mary’s shoulders drop a fraction. “There. It’s responding.”

Roy’s relief lasts exactly as long as it takes the alarm to change pitch.

The sound doesn’t stop. It upgrades. The alarm starts sounding more urgent, more layered, like it’s adding extra alarms underneath the original one.

“Okay,” Roy says, voice tight. “So it got worse while we were trying to make it better.”

Mary’s eyes widen. “Roy, look at the engine telemetry.”

He brings the engine screen into focus. The numbers are jumping too quickly for comfort. They don’t just fluctuate....