by J. W. Kurtz
Face turning red, Totts was a statue, he didn't know what to say or how to respond. He frequently insulted the ship and its crew, and Wray rarely called him on it. He honestly wasn't sure why Wray...the Captain of the Bellerophon, didn't defend the honor of his crew or ship more often. The honor of the ship and crew was something most captains took very seriously for some reason. He assumed it was something one learned in the military. Totts was glad he never served in the military and missed such a silly lesson. A waste of time. A ship is a piece of equipment that can be abused and replaced and a crew is...the same as far as his accounting ledgers were concerned. Totts thought to himself while still frozen from the remarks of Wray. He decided he wouldn't take the bait offered by the Captain. Totts didn't give a damn if Wray or his crew of dishonorably discharged misfits enjoyed his company. He didn't give a damn one bit.
"I know what you're doing. Changing the subject from the datapad. I see it clearly," Totts said as he leaned forward and placed a hand on the aforementioned piece of technology sitting before Wray on that hideous desk of his. But, before he could pick up the mysterious prize, the datapad, Wray with a lightning fast move that Totts failed to predict, seized the offending wrist of Totts in a powerfully strong and painful grip. The temperature in the room plunged.
In all the disagreements the two "co-workers" shared over their time working together it had never become physical. Totts was in pained shock. Shocked by the pain of the crushing grip Wray had of his wrist, and shocked that someone he viewed as a subordinate would touch him. Fueled by the fermented courage gained from recently imbibing on the spirits of his flask, and greatly emboldened by his sense of superiority, Totts rose to his feet prepared for action. Wray matched his move. The two were eye-to-eye. Totts grinned knowing that at minimum this would be a full forfeiture of paid shares for Wray and his asshole crew for this hop. Totts also reveled in the mental report he was preparing for the I2 lawyers regarding the various contract violations the crew of the Bellerophon had committed up to this point. Just as he was about to voice his outrage concerning this most recent affront the room turned upside down.
Chapter 7:
Time: 16:10 (Zulu)
The first sense to return to Captain Wray was sight. The rest of his senses remained on pause, numbed from shock, as his eyes opened and focused. Wray realized he was face down on the deck. Thick, ugly, fire-retardant rug, covering the deck footprint immediately around the area of his desk was staring back up at him. With numbness abating he could now feel the squishy wet rug, wet with blood, his blood, where his face rested.
A searing pain, sharp and throbbing that made his eyeballs hurt, radiated from his nose. Wray knew for sure that his nose was broken. He didn't attempt to touch it with his hand knowing the pain would only increase tenfold if he did so. A separate throbbing, most likely from a scalp laceration, also contributed to his troubles.
Slowly but surely, his brain began to put things in order, order from the chaos that had occurred sans the least bit of warning. He rolled over onto his back and noticed that the normal steady white lights of his cabin had been replaced by flickering red lights... The emergency backups. Wray took several long labored breaths while resting on his back. Eventually his training and muscle memory took over.
Wray bolted to his feet. He quickly realized his exuberance was a mistake because he was almost immediately forced to steady himself against his overturned desk, as a tremendous wave of lightheadedness and nausea conspired to return him to the deck. A self assessment led him to assume that the nausea and fuzziness were a result of a concussion. His nose and scalp laceration continued a steady stream of blood down his face to pool at his feet. He hoped the scalp laceration, which was by now had grown from a throbbing to a searing pain, was no more than that and not a cracked skull.
As he stood there recovering, taking deep breaths, willing his body to listen to his now rebooted brain, he took in the disheveled room. Datapads, drawers from his desk, personal belongings that had been unsecured, were a jumbled mess in half the cabin. The condition of the other half of the room caused the Captain to think his eyes were playing tricks on him, or perhaps simply the concussion was worse than he thought. The other half of the cabin had the scattered objects...floating!? Not good. The artificial gravity plates in the subfloor on that half of the cabin were damaged or auxiliary power was not providing enough juice. He remembered two things just then; the datapad and Totts.
It took a moment but Simon Totts was located unconscious beneath a chair near the hatch. One arm was folded and bent in an unnatural angle underneath his torso. Obviously broken. The hand on the other arm remarkably still clutched the aforementioned datapad Totts had grabbed just prior to the world turning upside down. The weasel of a man was just now coming to a state of consciousness, his eyes blinking at the ceiling as they struggled to come into focus as he too began to process inputs and question internally why he was staring at the ceiling with a chair atop him...and probably why his arm really, really hurt.
Totts was in a pretty obvious state of shock. If there were internal injuries there was nothing Wray could do about it right now. His priority was to get to the bridge. On his way to the hatch he bent down, which brought on another bout of dizziness, and retrieved the datapad from his hold. The imbedded I2 administrator did not put up a protest in losing his prize. Wray then tossed the broken chair off the injured man. The broken chair cart wheeled away, toward the side of the cabin with the malfunctioning artificial gravity, and then it absurdly floated the rest of the way, through the hovering cloud of debris, to "clunk" against the wall. Wray staggered, as if drunk, to the his wall-mounted safe recessed into a bulkhead near where his desk used to sit upright. He wiped away the warm blood streaming down his face with his sleeve before leaning in to allow the safe to run a quick retinal scan. Thankfully the mini-vault was still functional. A result by design that equipped it with an uninterrupted backup power-supply in case of issues such as those currently afflicting the compartment. The retinal scan security feature confirmed it was Wray, and the small receptacle opened allowing the datapad to be safely deposited. With the datapad secured he hurried to the hatch. He turned as he hit the "OPEN" button on the hatch of the cabin. He had to shout over the suddenly very loud and obnoxious alarm now screaming from the speaker near the hatch, the same speaker that was previously thought to be defective but now apparently worked like a charm and then some.
"Totts! TOTTS! Get up. Get your ass into the acceleration couch. Remember your training! Now! Get your ass up!" Wray yelled.
That was the best Wray could do for the man. The annoying I2 employee was on his own. He had been trained like everyone else in emergency procedures. If Totts had been one of his crew, even the newest hire, Wray would have dragged him over to an acceleration couch and placed him or her in the protective contraption. Crew were expensive to replace. Totts on the other hand...with his lone job being to hamstring and complicate operations, he could be replaced with another corporate drone quite easily. Totts had absolutely no value in an emergency situation for he had no action station and no specialty that could possibly come in handy. He was responsible for himself. The Captain couldn't worry about anything having to do with the company man right now. His lone priority was getting to the bridge and appraise the situation straight away. Besides, if they survived this, and the lone casualty was Totts, moral may actually improve. Wray grimaced to himself about having such a dark and yet enjoyable thought, however the momentary elation vanished when he reminded himself that a replacement would be assigned. And the odds were against them that they wouldn't send another annoying arrogant prick since that seemed to be the primary job description.
Wray had slapped the oversized button on the wall panel to open the hatch of his cabin and he was greeted with more flickering red emergency lights in the corridor immediately outside. The flickering lights were no real obstacle. Wray had traversed the short distance from cabin to bridge in complete darkness before. He kne
w the path well. Halfway down the corridor, at the base of the bulkheads on either side, steady yellow caution indicators glowed signaling loss of artificial gravity. At the end of the corridor was the doublewide primary hatch of the bridge. There were no hazard lights glowing at the base of the bridge hatch. The bridge should have artificial gravity then, Wray thought, not that it really mattered. If they were about to, or were already engaged in a ship-to-ship action, the loss of gravity on the bridge would have little to do with the outcome of the fight because he, the rest of the bridge crew, and hopefully the rest of the crew of the Belle' would safely be in acceleration couches when their own maneuvering began.
After only a few strides down the corridor, a corridor now noisy with klaxons and warning announcements blaring over the main circuit, Wray made it to the section of the corridor lacking gravity. His 40-plus years of experience in space showed as he deftly navigated the invisible line between standard-g and zero-g. Now floating in the weightlessness of corridor he guided himself using handholds located along the corridor for just such a contingency as zero-g maneuvering. The 20-meters of zero-g travel lasted only a moment and then the Captain was at the hatch to the bridge. In his wake he left drifting globules of blood from his head wound. He maintained his grip on a handhold and with his left hand and with his right he pressed the oversized hatch access button with his bloody palm. The heavy hatch quickly slid aside into the bulkhead recess with a "kathunkkk!" Wray pulled himself from the chaotic corridor of flashing lights, blaring alarms, and floating blood into the relative calm of the bridge. He transitioned easily from the weightlessness of the corridor to the standard gravity environment currently enjoyed by the bridge. His feet now rested firmly on the deck where they belonged.
He secured the heavy hatch behind him cutting off the chaotic sounds just outside. The red lit bridge was silent, save for the voice of the officer of the deck, Oren Pfeiffer, as he spoke steadily into the microphone of his headset asking for reports from various action stations throughout the ship and issuing orders. Pfeiffer looked up from his display at Wray and nodded acknowledgment then turned back to task before him. The Captain knew better than to disturb a bridge officer in mid-crisis. He would wait until Pfeiffer was ready to report to him. Demanding a report during a crisis, obviously before it was ready to be given, would only hamper their process of regrouping and gathering their own momentum in response. While he waited, he attempted to wipe the still streaming blood from his face, but really only achieved success in smearing it about with his blood soaked shirt sleeves. He gently probed the cut on his scalp and was relieved that is was not as deep as he initially thought, but being a scalp wound, he knew it would continue to bleed like a bitch.
During travel through regular space, while under conventional propulsion of the electromagnetic drive, there were always three members of the crew assigned to duty on the bridge to watch over the myriad of ships systems. Conversely, while traveling through transit space, where half of those systems such as sensors and weapons were inactive, the number of crew dropped to just two. Since they were, up until movements ago, traveling under the ripper and maintainer drives in transit space, there should be a second member of the crew on duty at a station on the bridge.
Wray quickly scanned the room. He noted that one of the three main displays at the front of the bridge, the port view, showed nothing but static, which could mean the feed was cut physically from the source or the camera was damaged. The other two screens just showed indistinguishable open space, not that he expected to see anything on the displays with everything in space happening so quickly and often at such great distances that the human eye failed to catch anything worthwhile. The displays were usually on for no other reason than out of habit for humans to see things beyond what sensors shed light upon.
Finally, Wray located the missing crew member that was supposed to be on duty with Pfeiffer on the bridge. She was wedged between two stations on the starboard side of the bridge. She must have been getting a report from the nearby engineering station when whatever violent action that had stricken the Belle' occurred. Wray rushed over to check on her status. The Captain didn't need to take her pulse to know she was dead. This was not the first time lifeless eyes had stared back at him. He gently closed those lifeless brown eyes of Stacy Franks for the last time. He surmised that her neck was broken when she was thrown off her feet in the impact. She was new to the crew, and he felt bad for a moment that he had not gotten to know her better, but thought better of it because if he had formed a stronger connection he would feel the loss more. He tried to think of her as just another lost hired hand. He knew he would still feel her loss but the impact would be far less than that of losing a true friend. He had lost far too many of those over the years.
"...affirmative. Switch that station to automatic and get to a couch immediately. High-g combat maneuvering will commence in 30-seconds," Pfeiffer calmly relayed into his headset. The experienced bridge officer turned to the bloodied Wray kneeling nearby over the lifeless body of Franks. "Captain," he said, "ready to report," before turning back to his station and active displays screaming for his attention.
Wray snapped out of his revelry, stood, and approached the lively tactical station occupied by Pfeiffer. He leaned over the back of the chair occupied by Pfeiffer and took in the information flowing across the screens.
"What's our status, Oren?"
"We were pulled from transit, sir. Has to be a Siren. There're no heavy bodies of gravity on the course we were plotted and traveling for almost four-parsecs. We weren't due for a vector change for approximately 96-hours, when we were plotted to dogleg into space near the Cove. It has to be heavy artificial gravity from a Siren, Boss. No other explanation. Active sensors have been on a rebooting loop. So I have nothing new on the board. I can confirm, now through the sensor log, that the first impact was with a smaller craft, half our mass, which was traveling at a thankfully slow speed, or we wouldn't be here," Pfeiffer said as he input a command into the tactical station which then brought up a 3D holographic display to hover before them. Floating and rotating slowing was the Belle', and she had far too many areas glowing red from damage. The port side in particular was glowing nearly contiguously in ominous reds and yellows.
"Looks from the damage on the port side that it was a glancing blow. If we'd been T-boned we'd surely have been in a lot worse shape as we'd of been cut in two. If we were lucky," Wray surmised. "They're probably scrambling like we are. Probably in worse shape too since we heavily out mass what hit us. Seems the spider was in a looping patrol around the web and we came out in an unexpected place. You said 'first impact.' There was more than one?" Wray asked.
"Affirmative. There were at least two. I have no hard data concerning the second impact. Felt like a missile strike to me but there was no detonation so maybe it was a dud or it was set for a delayed detonation...no detonation yet. Could've been a snap fired missile or torpedo from the guy that hit us. Maybe we were too close for it to arm? That first impact was the low speed glancing blow from the patrolling ship. That rocked us pretty good. We had cascading system failures from that, including the sensors, which as I said, went into a reboot loop. Which it is just about complete...yeah another couple seconds. When we recovered from the shock of first impact, Franks hurried over to the engineering station. She'd wasn't in the restraint chair of the station yet so when that second impact occurred she lost balance and went down hard. I couldn't check on her because I was busy here rerouting systems and locking out breached areas. I knew it was bad because she wasn't answering."
A grim faced Wray responded.
"Yeah it's bad. Broke her neck. Nothing you could do. Staying at your station, stabilizing things from here, that was what you had to do. I only remember the first impact. I imagine others throughout the ship were just as dazed. How does the board look? Are our people in their iron maidens yet?"
The work of Pfeiffer at his station never paused during the conversation with Wray. His hands
flew over the controls with a speed and accuracy only achieved through practice and experience. One of the displays before him flashed from a live feed, showing priming energy weapon progress versus available coolant, to a display with 150 individual boxes each coded with a color. Thirty of the boxes were green. Quick math by Wray confirmed that everyone was secured minus Pfeiffer, the unfortunate Franks, and himself. The ship was nearly ready for combat maneuvers at high-g now beyond that which the inertial dampeners could safely handle. It seems Totts had even dragged himself to a couch according to the displayed readout.
"You ready to run the NIFS?" Wray asked.
"Roger that, Boss. Just waiting to get greens on the acceleration couches and report to you," Pfeiffer said as he released the restraints of his chair and quickly left his station behind. He retrieved a large, heavy, helmet minus any visible visor, from a locker recessed in a bulkhead behind the tactical station. Several thickly braided wires lead away from leads attached to the helmet to be met up in one thick collection of wires with a single multi-pronged male connector. The helmet looked like a trash can with wires seemingly attached in a haphazard manner by a blind artist. Pfeiffer swiftly carried the ungainly NIFS helmet, or neural navigation and flight system, in both hands to one of the half-dozen vertical man-sized boxes lining the bulkhead on the starboard side of the bridge.
Wray was already there opening two of the "couches" and shucking his bloodied clothes. Pfeiffer set the NIFS helmet down and stripped out of his utility overalls as well. Again, like the stasis-sleep couches, the acceleration couches had nothing to do with leisure. Space combat was fast and furious. Maneuvering at high-g's was a necessity, and as much as man tried to outfox her, lady physics was a stubborn and clever vixen. Inertial dampeners could only do so much and they were only so reliable. In the event of even a temporary reduction in effectiveness the results on a human body could be instantly fatal and very messy.
