Ed "Shark" Teeth asks Mich Saginaw if he was expecting
to alter jump time. Mich -- also on the bridge -- replies that he
did indeed expect this. That seems to satisfy Shark, but leaves him
wondering when to have someone on duty for jump exit.
Helia Sarina replies that she is always on the bridge.
That's part of her job, she says.
Shark suggests taking a survey of the planet before
landing. Misha Ravanos agrees, and orders it to be so -- do as much
as they can on the way there, and make one low-level orbit on the way in.
Shark wonders whether the zacks and scuba "zoot"
suits act as pressure suits. He thinks probably not.
All this becomes moot, however, at five seconds short of six days since they entered jump...
The ship is rocked with a heavy explosion, and all the power goes out. On the bridge, they see the stars rotating around the ship. Everything is in zero-g.
"Mich!" shout several people..
Backup power starts to come online. The boards
show serious trouble throughout the ship, the worst of it on Mich's Engineering
console.
Misha asks, "Were we hit, or was it something internal?"
Shark replies, "I'm going back to Engineering, I'll
tell you in a minute!"
Mich quickly reports the ship's status. Large
areas of the ship are in vacuum. There is a hull breach in Engineering.
All power systems are down, including artificial gravity. The pod
is apparently undamaged. The crew quarters on the starboard corridor
are in vacuum, including several staterooms, the Sick Bay, and the Armory.
The bridge is secure.
Grand Admiral Baron
Bridgehead was in the Sick Bay. Teri Cralla is in the exercise room
off the port corridor and should be fine. Vonish Kehnaan and Sagan
are unaccounted for, although likely to be in the module, probably the
galley or lounge area on the starboard side of the pod. The double
bulkhead comprised of the pod shell and the pod receptacle makes the module
much safer. The bassalope spends almost all its time in the module,
too. Otto Harkaman has also not responded, and should have been on
watch in Engineering at the time of the explosion.
Most of the crew climb into a vaccsuits, whether
experienced in them or not. Those who do have skill help check those
who do not. The zero-g conditions make this more difficult for most
of them, although several have environmental combat, and of course Helia
has no problems since she can use her wings to move around.
As soon as he's in his suit, Shark calls Teri.
She's already in her battledress, and Shark tells her to cross over to
the starboard side to find the Doc. He'll join her as soon as he
can.
Shark and Mich enter the port corridor from the
bridge; Mich of course is heading for Engineering.
The easiest way from the exercise room to the Sick
Bay is through the pod; Teri is already heading that way, and Shark will
follow the same route.
Teri reports that Vonish Kehnaan and Sagan are safe
in the module. Shark asks her to get them into vaccsuits as a precaution.
Shark reaches Sick Bay. He forces the door
open with the help of Misha. They see Bridgehead in his vaccsuit,
sitting looking at the door. Shark turns the Doc's suit radio on
for him, and immediately is assailed by the Baron's questions and demands.
What happened? Where are the wounded? Get air back in here!
Shark asks the Doc if he can move around in zero-g.
The old man replies that he can, and gets gear together to set up a temporary
medical center in the pod. Misha escorts him while Shark moves aft
towards Engineering.
Mich has now reached the airlock into Engineering.
Beyond the lock, the area is in vacuum. He checks for radiation,
and gets a reading above normal but not at dangerous levels. He cycles
the lock and steps into the compartment.
It doesn't look good here. It's a big mess.
The port side is the main power reactor -- the casing of the unit is intact,
although the consoles and control systems are mostly wrecked. There's
a big gaping hole in the hull amidships, where engineering cuts through
to the starboard side, underneath the tail. His decides his first
priority will be to get the reactor online, which will restore power for
other purposes.
Shark, meanwhile, has reached the airlock to Engineering
at the starboard corridor. The airlock here has failed, allowing
the air from the crew quarters to escape into the vacuum beyond.
He looks around for Otto, but he doesn't know where to start. It
looks like a bomb went off in here. He can see the hole in the hull.
He starts by checking the vaccsuit lockers, to see if Otto managed to get
into a suit; most are still closed with all the suits present, but the
aft locker is completely destroyed.
He asks Mich where the special device they installed
would be located; Mich replies it would be right where the hole is now,
over the zuchai crystals.
Shark starts to try to assess the situation, but there's a lot of debris
still floating around in here. Rather than puncture his vaccsuit,
he summons Teri, who can continue the search for Otto in her battledress.
Shark retires to a corner and observes from there.
Mich reports. There is no further danger of
exposure to vacuum. The Bridge is safe, the pod is safe, and the
port side of the crew section is safe. Unless something further breaks,
which is unlikely, they'll be OK. In response to Shark's question,
he says they will need to get the reactor back online even to run sensors.
Life support will be limited until then too.
Helia tells them that as far as she can tell -- looking
out the front window -- they're not going to hit anything in the near future.
They hadn't been accelerating long enough to be arriving at the mainworld
any time soon. She peels off her vaccsuit, and stretches her wings
outside her zack.
Misha helps the Doc set up his temporary medical
facility, as do Vonish and Sagan, although both the vilani
and the hiver are somewhat
in shock.
The mechanical and electronic workshops are on the
port side, which is less damaged. The engineering shop is on the
starboard side, closer to the jump drive section, but is still usable.
Shark suggests patching up the starboard airlock
so they can repressurize that area of the ship. Mich replies that
his priority is restoring power, and getting life support and grav plates
online. Shark is comforted by the knowledge that the gcarrier
is almost certainly undamaged, and can act as a very serviceable lifeboat
if needed. Teri suggests locking the vehicle bays out of bounds just
in case someone decides to do something stupid.
Mich's assessment is that he can rig something up
to get the power back online at about 5% in a few hours of vacuum / zero-g
work. That will get life support running, and running the grav plates
low enough to get the debris to the floor. It's been established
that 1/10th of a g is just adequate to prevent zero-g injuries among
unskilled personnel.
Shark checks the two vehicle bays; the gravcraft
are all undamaged, but there's no way to lock access to them. Teri
was obviously thinking of military ships. He is, however, relieved
to find that both bays are pressurized.
Captain's and First Officer's quarters were on the
port side, so they're OK. Engineer's and Pilot - Astrogator's quarters
were on the starboard side -- Mich and Helia can use the spare staterooms
in the pod until their own rooms are restored. The pod itself has
its own limited power and life-support too. Helia replies that she'll
just sleep on the bridge, like she usually does.
Teri has found no sign of Otto. Shark is ready
to pronounce him dead, even if they did find his body.
The Doc snaps, "I'll make that decision, young man!"
Helia's only comment is, "That sucks." It
had to be said, she muses sadly.
Teri calls Mich on a private frequency. "There's
not much left over this side."
"I didn't expect much," says Mich, "It's a big mess."
"Something big went off in here. I don't know
what I can do. Can I help you with anything?"
"Can you weld? Perhaps a patch over some of
the big holes?"
"I'm better at blowing things up, but I can patch
things together too. It won't be pretty."
The hull breach is about 10 meters across. Not only is the hull material gone, but of course so are the lanthanum jump grid lines. Unfortunately that might be irrelevant, since the jump drive could be toast anyway. Then they'd be stuck in a Red Zone, where no-one comes -- except the IFSS occasionally. They could be stuck here for years.
Shark requests that Mich and Teri collect the debris
for forensic analysis. He intends to determine the cause beyond any
doubt.
Helia asks, "Do you think it was the box that blew
up?"
"I'm personally certain that it was," says Shark.
"Do you think they gave us a bomb? Do you
think it was deliberate?"
"I'm 99% certain it was the box... but there's also
the new guy on board, who's missing, with no body. So there is still
yet another possibility -- not a big one, but..."
Mich wonders if Otto tampered with the box out of
curiosity. They were warned not to open it, after all. That
wouldn't be like the swordworlder,
though, who seemed like a good reliable crewman.
After two hours of work, Mich and Teri manage to
bring the power back online. Life support is restored, sensors are
back, and there's 1/10th g on the grav plates.
Unfortunately it's not soon enough for Vonish, who
managed to break his right ankle while they were still under zero-g.
At least the Doc has something to do -- it seems to have made him happy
anyway.
The ship's computers are also brought online.
Once everything's stable, Helia and Mich decide to stabilize the ship's
orientation and bring up the astrogation systems. The engineer orders
everyone to strap down, then shunts all the power to the attitude thrusters.
Inertial compensators are still off. Helia gives a short burst and
brings the ship out of her tumble. She reports that to Mich, and
he transfers power back to the environmental systems.
Now Mich has better tools and conditions to repair
the rest of engineering. Shark offers his help, and Misha adds his
assistance too.
Mich accepts gratefully, "As Otto said, a lot of
engineering is sweeping."
Passive sensors are back online too, and Robert
mans the sensor board, checking for any signals or encroachments.
Helia starts running diagnostics.
Teri has fixed the starboard engineering airlock,
but the hull breach will take more people to fix. Ten meters is a
large hole. Nevertheless, now they can pressurize the starboard crew
quarters. Mich runs a quick check, then restores life support to
the starboard compartment. The Baron is very grateful to have the
Sick Bay back online. Now only Engineering remains in vacuum.
With the ship stabilized, at Shark's request Teri
steps outside the hull to do a visual search for Otto. There's no
sign of him -- not that they expected any, but it was worth a try.
It's easy for Shark to determine where the center
of the explosion was. It is consistent with a nuclear satchel charge,
a directed blast pointed at the zuchai crystals. Nothing remains
of the crystal array. That would mean no jump capability... on any
other ship, anyway.
The priority now is to get the maneuver drive operating. The first stage is to assess the damage fully, which will take some time. Mich gets started on the task. He points out that their sole defense against the star's waves was a jump-0, and now they can't jump at all. The light from the stellar material emission would reach them at the same time as the wave which interacts with jump drives. And he can't repair the jump grid with the materials here.
The timing of the explosion is suspicious.
If they didn't have their secret jump drive, they would still be in jump
when the explosion occurred -- by at least five seconds.
Helia wonders if it's possible the sun was doing
its thing when they came out, but Robert reports no possibility of that,
according to the sensor readings.
After half an hour, Mich has finished his diagnostics.
He believes he can hack together a 1G capability with six hours of work.
That's about the limit for the present, as the thruster plates themselves
are damaged.
Mich studies the data from the jump drive systems
through the jump and the explosion. It looks perfectly normal, including
power to the box. There is an environmental alarm a tiny fraction
of a second before the sensor was taken out, which would be consistent
with an explosion of this severity.
"It doesn't make sense, boss," says Shark.
"If they wanted to kill us, they would have blown it up four days into
jump. That didn't happen. We never told anyone that we were
six-day jumping, and this thing went off just under six days."
Helia says, "What are the chances that there's something
on our ship, that if we came to some area like Zett,
that it would blow? Perhaps receives signal from the beacon, sets
a timer, and goes off?"
Shark ponders the situation. The explosion
was definitely from the inside out. The passive sensor logs would
see any signal that they received, and aside from the transponder they
transmitted nothing. There was no time for the mainworld to receive
the transponder signal and transmit a destruct command, and the sensors
showed no object within range that could have been responsible for something
like that either. Perhaps Otto tampered with it, or tried to shut
it off -- expected it to quit drawing power and it didn't? The device
must have been set to trap them here, otherwise why wait so long before
blowing up?
Helia suggests that maybe someone had heard that
they were doing something special, and wanted to find out if they really
were. If they were making normal jumps, they'd be destroyed, but
if they weren't they'd be trapped here now. When they go back, they're
nailed. Nobody does less than six days, so they will definitely know
then that they are. "Everything else being equal," she says, "Our
biggest worry is who's going to be popping out of jump here in the next
day or two?"
Mich asks why they'd even suspect they could do
less than six days?
"Because you're aboard. A lot of people know
about you. You've already been kidnapped. The fact is, if we
die so what, but if we show up we've got something that they want."
Misha says, "I don't buy the 'so what.'"
Shark laughs, "You don't know who you're working
with!"
Helia says, "Why? It's a minor gamble on their
part. A ship blows up, oh well."
Shark adds, "Cost them a bomb."
Misha says he's skeptical because there are simpler
explanations.
Shark suspects it was triggered by them coming out,
not by a six day timer. "I still can't see why you would set a six
day timer."
Helia says, "Because six days is minimum jump."
"All you need to do is record how long the jump
drive was on, inside the box which they know we are going to return or
we're going to be hunted down. They just need to record the data."
"But if we ever figure out what the heck it is..."
"We give them the box back and they say 'oh, it
was a less than six day jump,' they get us with the equipment intact.
Now they don't get us."
Mich agrees. "If the jump drive technology
is what they want, why blow it up when they could get a working example
of the jump drive?"
Helia replies, "Because if it takes six days to
get there, it's not what they want."
Shark says, "They could just have taken the ship
and tested it, and still have the ship. They don't need to trash
a multi-million credit..."
Misha says, "If they're powerful enough to have
set all this up, they're powerful enough just to have taken the ship to
test it."
"Something either opened it, or it was triggered
to keep us here for some reason. Now why are we here, boss?"
He has confirmed that it was a nuclear explosion, probably a shaped nuclear
blast. It was a very specialized explosive, and definitely was in
the box. But there's no reason to give them a delay of eleven minutes.
Mich asks, "Why did they get us to build a cage
around it?"
"So it would look good. So you'd buy it."
"Does it help position the box to ensure it fires
in the right direction?"
"So this charge was intended to take out the zuchai
crystals. The thing that makes you jump."
Misha asks, "Could they have done this with more
conventional explosives?"
"Yes, they could have done it with chemical.
It would not have punched a hole clear outside the ship. Possibly
if you did it with mere chemical explosives, it would have been repairable
if we had enough spares."
Mich says, "It would probably have destroyed the
entire array. If you crack powered crystals, even when they're almost
spent..."
"So they weren't out to kill us. They were
just out to strand us. So the average jump they would have been here,
we have one or two days before they arrive to get us. So are we going
to hide on the planet, or in the asteroid belt?"
Helia points out that there's virtually no defense
in the asteroid belt.
Mich agrees; they have no shielding from the star's
emissions in the asteroid belt, but they could get some protection from
the planet. If they're caught in open space, they're dead.
Misha decides they will go to the planet.
They can refuel there, and Mich can do his walk outside the hull to assess
external damage, and see what they can rig up inside. Once Mich has
restored maneuver power, it will take them just six hours to reach the
planet at 1G. It would take five and a half days to reach the asteroid
belt from here.
Shark asks Mich to make all the preparations he
can to make them very hard to find. That would include shielding
the transponder (an active shield they can just turn on at will), turning
the grav plates off, and running minimal life support. Any ship entering
the system would do so at least 100 diameters from the planet, and that
would work to their advantage too. Of course they couldn't run the
maneuver drive in that state, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't
be travelling -- they would only be vulnerable when decelerating.
When the maneuver drives are fixed, Helia sets course
for the mainworld at 1G. It will take six hours to arrive at the
planet.
During the journey, Robert runs the sensors to get
as much information about the planet as they can. The planet is ice-capped;
the beacon is at the southern edge of the northern ice-cap. About
40% of the planet is covered with ice. That would be a large area
to search if they hid in the ice. Gravity on the world is 0.58.
Mich suggests landing on the ice-cap and digging
themselves a hole. The ship has a point-defense laser just for that
sort of purpose, clearing undergrowth and so on. It would be really
nice, however, to fix a cover over the hole in Engineering so it doesn't
fill up with water.
Baron Bridgehead, the ship's tactics expert, agrees
with hiding at the pole under the ice. He says that a priority is
to refuel as soon as possible, and that it doesn't matter which pole they
choose.
In the meantime, Mich, Teri, and crew manage to patch the hole in engineering. They can't fix the jump grid, but they can seal the patch enough to keep the air in and the outside out, and no-one will fall out of the hole. It won't stand up to a hard atmospheric entry, or high speed atmospheric travel for that matter, but then Zett has no atmosphere so they don't have to worry about that for a while.
As they're cutting into the ice, Mich starts the
refueling process. By 15:00, all the routine operations are complete.
He then takes a walk around the ship in the ice cavern (in vacuum, of course),
which satisfies him that aside from the hole in the hull, the ship is externally
in good shape.
His next task is to assess the damage to the thruster
plates. Fortunately there are enough spares aboard, when supplemented
by parts that Mich makes himself, to fix the maneuver drive. It won't
look nice, but in 18 hours he can get back full thrust, including enough
power to run it. A full 24 hours of work will also restore full generating
capacity from the power plant. Allowing for time to sleep, that'll
be about 36 hours.
No other ships have come into the system, and the satellite probe has picked up nothing new at all. Solar output is as steady as a rock, no fluctuations at all. The advisories for this system do say that the stellar outbursts are unpredictable, though.
Mich asks Shark to check the football sensors; the First Officer reports back that there have been no abnormal readings.
The next task is to see what can be done for the
jump drive. The zuchai crystal array is completely gone, along with
a lot of associated equipment such as power management, power distribution
units, and so on.
To fix it is surely a staggering task, jury-rigging
scratch-built components to make it work. Mich hooks up the matter
phase inverters to run the drive entirely from that power source, eliminating
the need for the zuchai crystal array. The drive will be unreliable,
risky, and unlikely to be capable of more than one use. The jump
grid of course is also incomplete where the hull is breached in Engineering;
that can't be repaired here, without a source of pure lanthanum or barium
and the equipment to make the fix. They'd want to move everyone to
the front of the ship to minimize jump sickness, and even then a misjump
is pretty much certain.
Mich briefs Helia on the state of the jump drive,
and they discuss what the effects will be on jump calculations. There
will be a misjump on the time axis, but Helia believes she can make them
come out at least in the intended target system.
Mich then updates Ed and Misha. The best chance
would be to go to the starport and hope they have the resources they need
to fix the drive. The catch is that such facilities are only supposed
to be available at a class A or B starport, not a class E like on this
planet. Now if there's a junkyard with a crashed ship, that would
be a better possibility.
Ed also says that they could see if there are any
farspacers stranded here, survivors of ships lost in this system.
As Mich points out, the Third Eye has a reason to be here -- they
misjumped, as demonstrated by the big hole where the drive used to be.
Misha thinks about Marquis Marcus Crestworthy's story,
that brought them here in the first place. He decides to share it
with the whole crew (except the hiver). He tells them that if this
information gets into the wrong hands, it's probably their life and the
Marquis' life, and possibly others as well.
The short story is that Marquis Marc, back before
he was a Marquis, was in the Imperial Navy. They brought him to this
planet, took him out to the asteroid belt, and in some hidden place there
they put him through this test. The test went badly, and not only
did one of the test subjects die, but all the testers died too. The
only people to live were the Marquis and a friend of his -- Sir Geoffrey
of Adabicci, son of the Duke. They've actually met Sir Geoffrey --
he's the one who offered Vonish a job as his personal chef.
He then goes into details...
|
|
They're here to find that ship.
Ed points out that there's supposed to be lots of supplies there too, perhaps enough to fix the jump drives properly.
They need to decide what to do now. Misha vetoes
the idea of picking up any strangers (like stranded IFSS folks) until they're
on their way out. He says they need to search the asteroid belt for
objects of a certain size. It's a man-made object in an asteroid
belt, not itself in an asteroid.
Mich knows very little about standard Imperial Navy
meteor screen containers. It's probably constructed of hull material,
with a layer of absorbent or ablative material outside it. It's probably
black. They can do radar sweeps of the belt, looking for something
that looks suspicious. It's likely the object has some sort of active
defense as well. Locating it with passive sensors is hopeless --
they will have to use active sensors.
Ed wants to know how much risk they are running
by being in the area. What if the star does its wave thing?
Of course they don't have zuchai crystals to be affected, so they should
be able to jump out if they see the physical wave coming. He does
point out that if they do find the object, its active defenses could be
very dangerous to them.
A good solution might be to send out probes to do
a lot of the searching for them. Obviously they won't get the resolution
that the ship's sensors can manage, but they could at least scan the belt
to narrow down the search. There'll be time to prepare the probes
on the way out to the belt. They will pick up their satellite probe
on the way out through orbit.