Sextus Taranza

## Sextus Taranza, 5th Colonial Governor of Sarawak

Taranza during 2012.

**Sextus Valerius Taranza** (5 December 1980- September 16th 2014) was the 5th Colonial Governor of Sarawak from 2006 until his death, he became the first leader to die in a rocket injury, after the ship he was in, *Tatum,* crashed into the ground.

Sextus was born in Nova Permus, Nova Australae (OTL Perth, WA) in 1980, as the son of Gaius Taranza (1934-2006) and Juliana Fannius (1931-2002), he has another brother named Constans (born 1981), Taranza was a cunning and smart man after his raising in 1996, He defeated a riot in Darwin in 2004, shortly after, he overthrew Publius Volta to become Colonial Governor of Sarawak.

## The 2014 Martian Fire

On September 16th 2014, He was using the time to run through his checklist again on Tatum, a juitarian coloniser space shuttle with 6 astronauts, when a momentary increase in AC Bus 2 voltage occurred. Nine seconds later (at 6:31:04.7), one of his astronauts (some listeners and laboratory analysis indicate Illus Poetelius) exclaimed "Hey!", "Fire!", or "Flame!"; this was followed by two seconds of scuffling sounds through Illus's open microphone. This was immediately followed at 6:31:06.2 (23:31:06.2 GMT) by someone (believed by most listeners, and supported by laboratory analysis, to be Sextus Marcellus) saying, "[I've, or We've] got a fire in the cockpit." After 6.8 seconds of silence, a second, badly garbled transmission was heard by various listeners as:

* "They're fighting a bad fire—Let's get out ... Open 'er up" - Placus Sulla,
* "We've got a bad fire—Let's get out ... We're burning up", - Julianus Hadrianus
* "I'm reporting a bad fire ... I'm getting out ..."- Sextus Taranza

The transmission lasted 5.0 seconds and ended with a cry of pain, During the chaos, The rocket fell onto its side and Taranza died after hitting his head on the roof of the rocket, He was 34.

Some blockhouse witnesses said that they saw Taranza on the television monitors, reaching for the inner hatch release handle as flames in the cabin spread from left to right.

The heat of the fire, fed by pure oxygen, caused the pressure to rise to 29 psi (200 kPa), which ruptured the command module's inner wall at 6:31:19 (23:31:19 GMT, initial phase of the fire). Flames and gases then rushed outside the command module through open access panels to two levels of the pad service structure. Intense heat, dense smoke, and ineffective gas masks designed for toxic fumes rather than heavy smoke hampered the ground crew's attempts to rescue the 6 men. There were fears the command module had exploded, or soon would, and that the fire might ignite the solid fuel rocket in the launch escape tower above the command module, which would have likely killed nearby ground personnel, and possibly have destroyed the pad.

It took five minutes for the pad workers to open all three hatch layers, and they could not drop the inner hatch to the cabin floor as intended, so they pushed it out of the way to one side. Although the cabin lights remained lit, they were at first unable to find the astronauts through the dense smoke. As the smoke cleared, they found the bodies, but were not able to remove them. The fire had partly melted their nylon space suits and the hoses connecting them to the life support system. Taranza and Sulla had removed their restraints and were lying on the floor of the spacecraft. Hadrianus and Marcellus's restraints were burned through, and they were found lying sideways just below the hatch. It was determined that Hadrianus had tried to open the hatch per the emergency procedure, but was not able to do so against the internal pressure. Augustus Gracchus and Poetelius were both found strapped into their right-hand seats, as procedure called for him to maintain communication until Taranza opened the hatch. Because of the large strands of melted nylon fusing the astronauts to the cabin interior, removing the bodies took nearly 90 minutes

Taranza was succeeded by Anthemius Gellius.

## Legacy

After Taranza's death, Queen Luna III called for a fixing of the Tatum Spacecraft, and it was repaired in Dec 2014, and renovated in Feb 2015.

Taranza left behind 4 children, Constantine (b.2002), Poppy (b.2004) Flaccus (b.2005) and Honorius (b.2006)

On January 27th, 2015, 2 months after Taranza's death, Hal Laboratory released a game called *Kirby Triple Deluxe*, in that game, Taranza was added as a spider being (See Flaccus Taranza)

On September 10th 2022, Taranza's eldest son, Constantine fathered his grandson, Numitor.