by T S Paul
I lost all respect, if any, that I had for Porter. Crewman were not slaves. I hurried over and took some of the load off the crew.
“Ensign Porter, help drag that cart over here. Crewman Bartleby, start distributing the equipment and gear. Give everyone equal amounts of gear. Take only what you are sure that you need. Remember, the ship is right here. It can always send something to you. Porter! Are you listening to me! Help with that cart!” He was starting to really piss me off.
“I don't have to listen to you.” Porter looked smug as he tried to tell me off. “Commander Arthur says you're not a real engineer anyway.”
That's it!
“Porter you are on report right now!” I looked around, peering at the small groups of crew. Ah ha, I spotted who I wanted.
“Master at Arms?” The somewhat portly officer approached me.
“Something I can do for you lieutenant?” He said.
“Yes, please put Ensign Porter on report and under arrest for failing to obey a direct order from a superior officer” The officer turned glaring at Porter. “What did the ensign do?”
I recounted what had happened and the comments that were made. Using my link I sent him a vid record of the event.
“She lies! She's making it all up.” Porter, red faced, shouted at the officer.
The MAA motioned to a couple of marines that were standing by.
“Ensign, I have vid of the charges. We are placing you under arrest at this time.” The marines grabbed the now struggling ensign and handcuffed him.
Seeing this the XO came over. Great, now I'm in trouble.
“Is there a problem Lieutenant? Why is the ensign under arrest?” Commander Wang, the XO, turned to the Master at Arms, “Charges?”
“Sir, conduct unbecoming, disobeying orders, and now, resisting arrest.” Sending my vid to the XO, the chief added his own.
“Place the ensign in the brig until this action is over.” Turning to me he motioned, “Lieutenant a moment?”
We both walked over near the wall. Giving me a half grin the commander smiled at me. “Is dealing with the other officers in your section similar to this incident? Tell me the truth.”
Hesitant, I replied “Yes sir. The other officers don't like having a woman in their ranks. Most don't even acknowledge me. I think, that they intended for me not to come back from this assignment.”
“Those are very serious charges, Lee.” I sent him the vid of the other engineers eating donuts. “Hmmm, I see your point. Well we don't have a lot of time. Make one of your crew a temporary midshipman. I will deal with engineering when we return.” The XO walked back to the center of the room.
“Your attention please!”
“LISTEN UP!” Commander Wang could be loud when he wanted to be.
“We are less than ten minutes out. Both ships appear to have serious battle damage. The larger one, a freighter called the Happy is in the worst shape. They both have fires in engineering and little or no life support. Teams are to take whatever actions are necessary to preserve lives. We need answers people! Dead sailors tell us nothing. Do your jobs! That will be all.”
We approached the Happy first. Using external cameras the damage was seen by us on large projection screens. It was bad. The Happy was an older ship of a design not used anymore. It had a central pod and storage area. The fusion thrusters were on pylons outside the ship. The aft area was the worst. The left outboard engine looked like it was still on fire. Laser burns covered the ship. From the scorching I could see that the weapons used were of an older style called ‘War’ shot. That was bad news for the ship’s crew. The older lasers did not have the frequency modulators that newer weapons did. Without them, the bursts were sharper and more concentrated. This caused burning through the hull and destroying whatever they hit. The second ship was called the Gilmore G. This sleek looking ship was newer. It had been converted to a convoy support ship sporting torpedo's and a pair of laser turrets for defense.
“OK people start loading the shuttles. Shuttle one is going to the Happy, engineering crews and rescue teams only. Shuttle two is going to the Gilmore G. I need the marine intelligence units, navigation, and security teams onboard that ship. Marine Lieutenant Dar is in charge of shuttle two. I will be on shuttle one with the rescue teams. Let's go people.” Commander Wang opened the hatch and watched as we entered the shuttle.
As our shuttle approached the Happy we could see sections where the hull was burned all the way through. How did they pilot this ship here? Having seen this kind of carnage first hand I knew that when we popped the hatches it was going to be like the lower depths of hell.
I turned to my engineering crew, “Masks on and ship suits sealed. Buddy check each other! If you have to vomit do it in your suit, do NOT unseal until ordered. Conditions are going to be really bad over there. Watch for plasma and fusion leaks. Report anything that looks like trouble, I mean it people, anything.”
The XO was watching me. “Seen something like this before Lee?”
“Yes sir. During the war.” I replied.
He nodded. Looking to the med teams he gave them similar instructions. The shuttle shook then a loud thump sounded. There was the sound of pressure equalizing and then the hatch opened.
Chapter 6
Calling this the lower depths of Hell was being kind. It was bad, really bad. As the hatch opened smoke and ash from the fires boiled into the shuttle. With smoke rolling around the bay we could see scorched and burned crewmen trying to put out one of the fires. My suit sensors said that oxygen was down to 18% and falling. We had to move fast. Our XO grabbed the nearest ship’s crewman and they started talking. A make-shift hospital had been set up and our med team sprang into action.
My team looked to me for guidance. On the flight over I had made crewman Bartleby a temporary Midshipman, by the XO's orders. “Bartleby, take half the group and make your way to engineering. Shut down that fusion engine. Short of ejecting it, stop it anyway you can. Call me if you run into trouble. The rest of you with me. Life support is failing, we need to get it fixed.” I led my team past the hospital and over to the ship’s access panels.
“On these older ships there is conduit access that runs the length of the ship. The life support panel is supposed to be located at the center of the conduit. It can also be accessed via engineering through a heavily shielded hatch. This, is a shortcut.” I opened up the tube and climbed in.
The tube was very tight and we were at close quarters. We came to a T-junction. Pointing to the right I said “ in that direction is medical.” I pointed the other way, “the armory, and weapons controls should be down there.”
Smoke and ash began to drift into the tube, making little swirls of dust. Life support was still functioning, if only barely. We reached a series of hatches on either side of the tube. One of these should be life support.
I could see a fire ahead of us in the direction of engineering.
“Jacobs, attach a heat sensor to the right hatch before you open it. Lets check for fire.” I watched as my crew gave Jacobs a little room. The sensor lit up with a red blinking light. “Crap. I sure hope that's not the room we need.” Motioning my crew to one side I checked the door. No lights. Jacobs gave the hatch a pull, it was either stuck or locked tight.
“Lieutenant Lee? We don't have access tools with us. I could go back and try to find some.” Jacobs looked worried.
I looked around the door frame as I talked “Don't worry about it Jacobs. On these older ships they used key codes to secure vital locations.” At that I uncovered a hidden key pad behind bundled wires.
“The navy is given master codes for all these pads by the manufacturer for situations just like this one.” I inputted a numeric sequence and the door slid open.
Peering into the dimly lit room I said, “and here we are, life support.”
“Ma'am?” Jacobs and the other two team members looked puzzled. “How is it that YOU know the codes and all of that information about these ships?”<
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I sensed a teaching moment coming on. “Why don't you know these things? You knew what kind of ships we were approaching a full ten minutes before we docked. All of the schematics and codes for most civ ships are located in our data banks. You just have to look them up.”
“Ma'am, you are the first officer we have worked for that knew all that.” Well, that explained a lot.
The life support panel control had been damaged in the attack. There was a six inch melted hole through the panel, wall, and deck. No way we could fix that. Looking at it I wondered how it was even functioning.
“Nut's” I said. “This hole can't be fixed by us. Let me think. Help get the cover off this panel.” We had to pry the cover off in places where it had melted.
I looked at some of the undamaged circuits and thought of something. Many years ago when I had built my station I had a similar problem. “Jacobs and Ellery, crawl back through to the boat bay. I need as much of the conduit that we brought as you can get. Unroll it down to here. Contact the XO and see if he can get another shuttle or pinnace over to this ship. I have an idea.” The two crew took off. Time to get to work.
Jacobs returned a short while later with Commander Wang in tow. The commander waved off my salute. “Lieutenant, what do you have?” He saw the large hole. “Can you fix it?”
Shaking my head I replied “No, sir. But I can make something else work instead. Are we able to get another shuttle over here?”
He was watching me carefully. “Our captain sent one of the pinnaces, it should be here in twenty minutes. Why do you need it?”
Crewman Itoi and I had been stripping out the connectors to life support. The panel controlled all the small oxygen generators and carbon filters around the ship. It has fail safes but with that hole....Well, you know.
“What I intend to do is run conduit from here to the boat bay. We will connect the emergency life support pods and the ships themselves to the conduit. Our ships will power life support over here.”
“I have never heard of doing that, will it work? I don't want to damage those ships.” He had raised both of his eyebrows in surprise.
“Sir, it will work. I have done this before, sort of. We really don't have a choice. Life support is at” looking at the readout, “less than 8% and falling.”
“If it damages the ship's, I will hold you responsible. Do it.” He moved out of the way and let us work.
Ellery was almost to us, so I sent Jacobs to help her. We connected the conduit to the panel and rewired the system around the hole. Giving the three team members careful instructions, I sent them back to the boat bay to hook up the ships.
I had forgotten that Commander Wang was in the room, jumping when he spoke. “Why did you send your team instead of going yourself?”
I let out a breath. “What we are doing can be dangerous. I have done this before and trust myself more to do it right.” I glanced at the commander. “This engineering crew is very poorly trained, is that normal?”
“What do you mean, poorly trained?” He was scowling now.
“They show zero initiative, are somewhat ignorant of standard procedures and how things work. They know how to do their own jobs, but ask something else and they get lost.”
“I don't think that is a training issue. Commander Arthur likes his crew to follow his orders to the letter.” He was thinking now.
“We are engineers and free thinkers all. Innovation and creativity are our stock- in-trade.” The panel started to hum. Gauges and lights came on. The readings showed life support coming back on. I shut down those areas such as engineering that had known fires or hull breaches.
“There you go commander, life support restored. For now.”
Chapter 7
I headed for engineering, leaving crewman Itoi to monitor life support. We had to get the fires out and engineering under control. Traveling by access tube again we headed aft. Smoke and ash were billowing down the tube. It was getting too thick to see.
“Jacobs, Ellery, it’s getting too hot, we need to take the next starboard hatch up ahead.”
They both signaled that they received me. Through the smoke I could see a port side hatchway. Trying the hatch we found it unlocked. As soon as we exited the tube I saw that we were in the firefighting bunker room. Thank the space gods! I could see racks of bunker gear and air tanks on the walls.
“The engineering compartment is very close. Our suits can handle the heat from a fire only up to 1200 degrees. If the heat warnings go off on your suit, get out! This is the bunker room. Suit up. Make sure your air tank is full and if possible grab an extra. With that I suited up too.
We opened the compartment door and went out into a smoke filled corridor. Engineering was to starboard. Movement and flames could be seen through the door.
One of the Happy's crew saw us and ran over. “Are we glad to see you!”
I had to yell to be heard, “ What is the progress with the fire? Have you gotten it under control?”
“Um, that's your job. We have been spraying water on the fire but nothing seems to work. With you here we will get our people to safety.” He took off grabbing the other crew members.
Civilians! Damn it this is going to be rough. The main room of engineering was somewhat clear of debris. Hot smoke was rolling above the deck.
“We need to get the decks in here cooled down. All this hot smoke could cause a flash over and we will never get it under control. Activate the foam systems, if you can, in all compartments. Jacobs grab those fire hoses they were using and soak down everything as we move forward. We need at least an inch on all the decks to cool them down.” Following my instruction the crewman grabbed a fire hose. I told Ellery to go back to the fire room and get as many foam sprayers as she could find. Checking the readouts on the consoles, I could see that all of engineering was engulfed. So far there was no sign of Midshipman Bartleby and his team. I hope that they didn't get trapped.
Ellery returned with the sprayers. I motioned her closer so I didn't have to yell. “We need to start a boundary system here. That door”, pointing to the engine access door, “needs to be closed or anything we do is for naught.”
With Jacobs spraying us, we got to the door and manually closed it.
“Spray the door to help cool this side, then follow us. The hatch is designed to be fire-proof. It should hold for a little while. This room is now the warm zone. If you get overwhelmed this room is our last line of defense.” They followed me as I entered the rooms surrounding the engine spaces.
The first room was easy. The foam system had done it’s job here.
“This is the start of our boundary. This room can reignite at anytime. Keep a close eye on all cable accesses or portals. Jacobs soak it all down.” I heard yelling, it was coming from behind me. Looking back I saw Bartleby and his crew. Maybe there is a space god.
“Ma'am, we got trapped by the fire. When the suppression system kicked on we were able to get out.” All three of them looked tired.
“That main room is the warm zone, we need to keep it that way. Station one crewman in it to spray the walls and hatches with water. Send another back up the access tubes to the XO. Tell them we need firefighting help if possible. Then come with us, we have established a boundary and we need to keep it.” He turned and gave orders.
We might have a chance here if we can just get on top of it. Now we could open the next door. Smoke billowed out. The room was engulfed in flame. This was the plasma control room and the start of this mess. Using the hand held sprayers we began pushing the fire back. I spotted the cut off valve for the plasma array. A War Shot had penetrated the bulkhead and punched a hole through the automatic system. The manual controls looked intact.
I yelled at Midshipman Bartleby. “Get over here! You look stronger than me, try pumping this lever. These old systems work, they just need more muscle than I have!” The hydraulic pump was working. The plasma fire in this room was going out.
Jacobs was at his hoses end, so I s
ent him back to the warm zone to help out. This room was open to space so regular fires were not a problem anyway. The hatch to the engine room was melted, welding it shut. The metal bulkhead had actually buckled with the heat. We needed to backtrack.
Sealing the pressure doors behind us, we entered the main room.
“Ellery, switch with Jacobs. Jacobs I need for you to go and relieve crewman Itoi back in life support. Have him report here. Everyone else take five.” I bent over the main control panels looking at the damage. If we could repair it we might be able to stop the engine fire. “Bartleby, when you have rested take a look at this controller and see if you and your team can fix it.”
I was getting tired. The tube hatch slid open and one of my people stepped out, followed by the XO and several marines. Finally, some help.
