Star Man 1: Star Bourne

by I. G. Roberts

  Once we were all settled, I scanned the faces of the people who were there with me before calling the meeting to order. They all seemed to be quite excited by the hope of finally being able to fix the ship’s problems and bringing her back under control. I began the meeting by asking each of them to introduce themselves, and to tell me something of their specialties, experience and their positions under the previous command structure. They each took their turn, all the departments were represented, navigation, helm, communications, sensors, tactical, engineering, catering, medical, security, environmental, science and logistics. Some, I hoped most of their responsibilities could remain largely unchanged. I very much wanted to keep things as undisturbed as possible because I felt this crew had already been through more than enough disruption as it was on this voyage, right then, they needed a return of stability to give them time to adjust to everything that’d already happened.

  It turned out that finding someone to manage many of the departments was quite easy. Medical of course, had lost nobody during the fighting so it could just stay the way it was already with Eri in charge. Much the same was true for catering, even though the mess staff were heavily involved in the fighting, there were no casualties among their number. Navigation had lost the senior navigation officer but we still had the senior navigation rating. I decided to put him in charge of the navigation department with instructions to make sure he checked everything before approving it. Much the same situation existed for the tactical group even though we didn’t currently have any operational weapons. Helm wasn’t a problem because the Captain, was in charge of that which meant I would just be relying heavily on the expertise of the people who were actually qualified to do the work. The same went for both communications, and sensors. Environmental was really just a sub department of engineering.

  Engineering was one area where we really did have some major problems, at least till we could get the ship under control again. Solan had coordinated many different teams, keeping them doing what needed to be done, prioritising tasks and such. In the short term, I knew I would need to devote a large chunk of my time to keeping an eye on the various engineering teams. I thought I needed to observe the engineering staff closely to see if someone could take over at least some of the work Solan normally did. That only left science. As far as I was concerned, science didn’t matter much at that point so I decided I could simply leave them to their own devices.

  Once all the senior personnel finished introducing themselves to me I introduced myself to them. I told them of my engineering experience back home before I admitted candidly that I had no experience in running a starship. I asked them to help if they thought I was on the wrong path, to be willing to give me advice freely if they thought I needed it. I also admitted to them I did not know much about what made the ship tick before telling them I knew I was on a very steep learning curve and repeating the fact that I would need help and guidance from them. I also told them what I expected from them. I told them that when I was trying to make a decision on something, their input was welcome but once the decision was made, I would expect it to be carried out unless it would clearly place the ship in excessive danger. They seemed fine with all these comments, probably I think because it was pretty much what they expected from me.

  Once I found out all I could absorb about the state of the ship’s crew, I dismissed all but the engineering staff. I asked them if they knew the reason why the ship still had no drives or maneuvering thrusters. They told me there were multiple breaks in both the power feeders and signal lines for both of those systems. I asked if they had been making any progress in locating the damage. They sheepishly admitted they hadn’t done very much along those lines since before we were boarded by the pirates.

  In reply, I said, “As of now, your highest priority was to be maneuvering thrusters first, followed by main drives. The only other thing to change those priorities is if something arises that might endanger the ship or the crew, something like a life support failure.”

  I think we all knew we needed to bring the ship back under control. Once we managed to achieve that, we needed to turn her around so we could head back towards the jump point as a matter of urgency. I broke up the meeting with orders to start fault finding the most important systems immediately, namely the maneuvering thrusters followed by the main drives. When they all left, I flopped back into my chair feeling completely drained.

  THE BROKEN SHIP

  After I assumed command of FNS Destiny, the crew seemed to become more energised, performing their duties with a renewed purpose. The engineering crews now had a clear direction and an idea of what was expected of them. They moved through the ship, slowly identifying and cataloguing all the damage they could find so we were able to prioritise our repairs. They found some of the maneuvering thrusters were too badly damaged to be easily repairable. While we had some spares, we did not have enough to replace all of the damaged units. I met with the helm and navigational ratings to identify which, if any maneuvering thrusters we could move from other locations to replace these badly damaged ones. This tactic would I hoped, result in the ship only being a little less maneuverable than she was prior to hitting the four mines, but would still enable us to regain control of the ship.

  I started repair crews removing the damaged thrusters so the good ones could be moved in to replace them. As they removed each damaged thruster, I asked them to bring it into the ship’s engineering workshops. Once we had all of the damaged thruster units in the workshops, I hoped the engineering staff would able to carry out a better evaluation of whether or not any of the units could somehow be repaired. Being the eternal optimist, I hoped we could perhaps build some additional thrusters using parts from other damaged ones. At the same time as all this was underway, I set other crews to repairing the control lines for all the maneuvering thrusters. I felt a need to be able to stop the ship’s tumbling motion first. If we could bring the thrusters back on-line, I thought we would also have a limited ability to avoid collisions with any objects we came across. Once the damaged thrusters were removed, we also needed to repair some of the structure around the thruster mounts because it had been quite badly damaged by the same forces that damaged the thrusts themselves. Thankfully we had enough raw materials to achieve the necessary structural repairs for the thruster mountings. Any damaged parts we had to remove were taken inside the pressure hull for later recycling.

  After a week of hard work, we had all the necessary structural repairs completed for all of the thruster mountings, at least the ones we had thrusters for. We then began fitting the replacement thrusters starting with the spares we had in the ship’s stores. Meanwhile, an engineering team reported to me they could make an additional two thrusters using a combination of parts from the damaged ones, parts from spares and parts they were able to fabricate. That would leave us only two thrusters fewer than the full compliment. Our maneuvering ability would not be too seriously curtailed, at least we would be able to stop the tumbling and change course, even if the course changes were a little slower in two directions. Of course, on hearing this, I immediately authorised engineering to attempt the necessary repairs.

  In the meantime, the crews who were attempting to repair the thruster controls and power systems were making slow but steady progress. To some extent, the repairs were taking the form of two steps forward then one step back. Still, I considered our progress to be quite good. We identified some of our pirate prisoners who claimed some engineering and damage control experience. They volunteered to help for two reasons. First, they knew if we couldn’t fix the ship, they were going to die anyway. Second, I think they hoped they wouldn’t be judged quite so harshly if they willingly helped us to repair the ship. Of course we kept a close eye on them so they did not have any opportunity to deliberately cause major problems for either the ship or the crew. As it turned out, they didn’t try to cause any problems, they simply did exactly what they promised and what they were asked by Destiny’s crew.

  Bo
th the maneuvering thrusters and the main engines are electrically powered. They use a gas that is ionized before being expelled at very high velocities, after being accelerated by an electrical field within the thruster body. This system is very highly efficient, giving quite high levels of thrust for a relatively small expenditure of fuel or reaction mass. Of course, these thrusters required a great deal of electrical power to be able to work. To further enhance the effectivity of these drives, the ship itself is enclosed a a sort of spacial bubble and partially decoupled from our universe. That effectively minimises relativistic effects and significantly improves efficiency. I have learned since then that these thrusters are an older technology in the Federation and the new ship designs, at least the military ones, use a drive that actually warps space, projecting a gravitational field so the ship simply falls towards a gravitational source that is projected in the direction the ship is to travel. That drive system enables the ship to move much more quickly through space. Relativistic effects don’t occur within ship using this drive type because the drive field effectively disconnects it from our universe.

  On FNS Destiny, the power for the entire ship was provided by four fusion reactors. The ship remained fully functional with only three operational reactors and could keep the crew alive with seriously curtailed maneuvering and speed capability with only one. Thankfully, none of the reactors were damaged during any of our battles, as they were installed in the ship’s core where they are heavily shielded. In turn, the power from the reactors is routed to power distribution boards by superconducting power conduits. From these boards smaller conduits routed the power to wherever it was needed. While the main conduits for the maneuvering thrusters were undamaged many of the subsidiary conduits were damaged where they passed through the areas damaged by the mines. Thankfully, we had the means to repair these subsidiary conduits, or at least most of them but it was clear to us the repairs would take our repair crews at least a week or perhaps even more.

  I found myself to be very busy as I moved from one location to the next, keeping the repair crews on track, making judgement calls on what to repair next. I also visited the medical bay regularly, looking to see how our injured crew were progressing. On more than one occasion I had to order a crew-member to stay in medical when they wanted to discharge themselves early. My orders always specified they could only discharge themselves when Eri agreed. She and Kari continued to bully me, making sure I ate and slept regularly, or at least reasonably regularly. I was quite unhappy they felt the need to do this, mostly because they already had enough on their plates already, looking after their patients, without me taking even more of their time.

  A week after we defeated the pirate boarding party, Shasi finally woke. Eri told me she kept her asleep for that entire time so her body had enough time to at least partially repair the worst of the injuries. When she woke, she immediately asked who was hurt. Eri told her about all the officers being out.

  Shasi asked, “Who is in charge?” Eri just said, “Colin.”

  That was when Shasi tried to climb out of bed to see me. She was still very weak so Eri was able to keep her in the bed.

  Shasi exclaimed, “I need to keep an eye on him.”

  Eri managed to calm her by promising to tell me she was awake. Eri also promised Shasi she would ask me to come see her. She threatened to put Shasi back to sleep if she didn’t behave herself. With that Shasi subsided, reluctantly agreeing to stay in her bed for now as long as I came to visit soon. When Eri contacted me to let me know that Shasi was awake and would like to see me, she told me how Shasi clearly wasn’t happy about being stuck there. She explained how Shasi seemed a bit distressed about the situation we were in and asked me to help with some reassurance. As it happened, I was planning to go down to medical later that day anyway so decided to detour to there on my way to see how things were progressing with repairs to the maneuvering thrusters.

  When I arrived at medical, Eri greeted me with a smile before escorting me through to see Shasi. As soon as Shasi saw me, she seemed pleased I had come to visit her so quickly. Once again she tried to climb out of her bed but I ordered her to stay where she was. Once she settled down again I asked her how she was feeling. She admitted she was still very sore, weak and drowsy. She asked me what happened that resulted in me being in command. I told her about the final battle with the pirates, about how when it was over, all the officers were either dead or critically wounded. I told her how Eri didn’t have enough of the necessary equipment, drugs or time to help any of the officers in time. I lamented the fact I was unable to convince the Captain to stay back, or at least order another officer to do so. I explained how we killed nearly all the pirate ringleaders and the rest of the pirates quickly surrendered as soon as they realised they were on their own now. Of course, Shasi was there in the thick of it for much of that battle but I had absolutely no idea exactly when she went down.

  She listened quietly then asked me how I came to be in charge, not in a belligerent manner, just curiously. I told her about my wandering about the ship trying to find someone else to take charge. I told her about Eri and Harlo approaching me to ask me to take command and how I tried to find a way to not do it but just couldn’t. I related the meeting in the hold, telling her how I left so they could make a decision without me influencing them. Then I told her about the oath I had taken when I took control of the ship. Shasi listened quietly, nodding from time to time as I told her the entire story.

  When I finally wound down, she nodded before saying, “You did the right thing Colin. It is tough on you, I know. I know it wasn’t your intention to steal the ship and don’t think the Federation authorities will consider you a pirate, at least not for very long.”

  Then she pleaded, “Please order Eri to let me out of here. You need all the helpers available to you.”

  I laughed as I replied, “You need to stay here till your wounds have healed a little more Shasi. I will not override the medical technicians on this ship when it comes to the health of you, or anyone else on the crew. In fact, my only order is for you to stay here till Eri deems it safe for you to leave your bed. Only she is authorised to discharge you from medical. When she does that, you will follow any restrictions she places on you. Do you understand?”

  Shasi subsided before asking how Ani was. Eri told her how Ani suffered slightly more serious injuries than she had but the plan was to wake Ani in a couple of days. At that point, the two of them would be able to recuperate together. I told Shasi how pleased I was to see her on the mend. She of course protested that she should be out there with me, protecting me or at least helping me but she quickly subsided when I shook my head. At that point I told her I was leaving to see how the repairs to the ship were progressing. I promised I would drop in to see her later, after I had completed my tour of the damage control teams.

  As I walked away, Eri came with me. She asked, “When did you sleep last, and how long did you sleep for?”

  I replied, “I woke about two or three hours ago. I slept for about ten hours”.

  I also complained to her about the crewman who I asked to wake me and hadn’t.”

  Eri laughed at that, telling me she countermanded my order so if I was going to be angry, I should be angry with her, not him. I gave her a bit of a dirty look but didn’t pursue it any further. I knew she was only looking after my wellbeing, and the wellbeing of the ship’s crew. Instead, I asked how Shasi was progressing. She told me Shasi was actually healing quite well. She thought she could be discharged to light duties in another four or perhaps five days. She then nagged me not to forget to eat. I promised to do so as soon as I finished my inspection of repairs. I pointed out the shift would be over in less than two hours so I could eat and rest then. Eri seemed reasonably happy about that. After that, I left the medical bay to head up towards the first of my stops to inspect the progress of repairs.

  Before I arrived there, I needed to don a vacuum suit. One had been fabricated for me when I took command of the
ship because at this stage, all the damage we needed to deal with was in vacuum. The Trooper who accompanied me checked to make sure the suit was correctly fitted and connected before finally allowing me to enter the air lock. My first stop was with a team who were repairing part of the segment of secondary power conduit leading to the forward maneuvering thrusters. We’d come to the conclusion we could power multiple thrusters from the same secondary power conduit. As l long as we were very careful about how many thrusters were active at any given time and kept an eye on the length of the burn we thought we should be able to use all the available thrusters on that conduit. The repair would however, require some rerouting of the tertiary power feeds to the thrusters. We had plenty of the cable for the tertiary feeds but much less spare material for the secondary conduits. Really, the primary and secondary conduits were incredibly reliable and well protected in general so the need to replace them was simply not foreseen. By carrying out these changes we expected to be able to make our repairs a lot more quickly.

  As the shift wore on, I moved around the ship from one repair crew to the next, checking on progress, making sure they were not being side tracked onto something less urgent and generally taking care to be seen. I didn’t try to tell them how to do their jobs, clearly that would have been stupid. Most likely doing so would simply have alienated them from me which was something I could not afford to let happen. Instead, I asked each crew member how they were progressing, answering any questions they might have to the best of my ability, asking for their advice if they asked me something technical, in general trying to build up their self-confidence. When I was asked to make a decision, I would discuss the options with the team, encouraging them to actually take responsibility for making the final decision.