by Jacen Aster
Henry came up behind her. Resting a hand on her shoulder, he asked, “Never seen a whale before, huh?”
Her only answer was a shake of her head.
“Not a surprise really, I suppose. They're mostly spotted traveling the space lanes. You see them on rare occasion if you serve or travel on a ship long enough. They seem almost drawn to starships for reasons no one really understands. Not that we know that much about them all the way around, really. Not even how they travel at FTL speeds. Still, they're considered good luck for ships. Seems fitting to see them here now.”
She cocked her head to one side. “How are we hearing that song? There's hard space between them and us?”
Henry chuckled. “You really don't know much about them, do you? No one knows is the short answer. We can track the frequencies they are using, but no one has been able to determine why it's audible when it hits ships and stations. Best guess is that it somehow turns the hull itself into a receiver and speaker.”
She just nodded as they watched the pair curl around into a shared orbit with the station. Then the screen split as it showed another pair entering into the system.
“Hmmm. That's odd. You don't see two mated pairs together often.”
The screen split again, this time showing an extremely large male entering the system alone. Then another split moments later as another whale entered. Then another.
“Very very odd,” Henry whispered uneasily under his breath.
Then Henry saw the seventh and eighth whale coming into orbit from another direction...and cursed. His drink shattered on the floor as he spun on one heel and sprinted out of the gallery without so much as a word more.
Startled and thoroughly confused, Irene just stared after him, then back at the whales, then after him again. She repeated the baffled motion right up until twenty additional whales appeared in rapid succession and her portable began screaming priority alarms.
Fearfully opening the device, she stared in disbelief at the numbers it was feeding her. Why was the station producing more power than it should? The cooling lines couldn't handle that kind of strain. Wait...Henry. She opened a line to Henry. As soon as it connected, she demanded, "Henry, you left before the alarms even went off. What the hell is going on?"
Henry answered, breathing hard, obviously still at full sprint. "It's the whales. They generate an energy field to protect themselves from the vacuum of space. It tends to bleed into any nearby power system. One whale, or even a family, wouldn't be an issue. But if I'm right and that's a breeding gathering, then we are so utterly screwed. Call the power techs, get them to shut down the fusion plants. ALL of them. No, wait. Tell them to shut down two plants completely and take the third down to standby but don't let it feed into the grid, just in case I'm wrong."
"Henry! We can't do that. The station would shut down. It takes days to get them back online."
He snapped. "I know that! The whole point is for the station to run off the energy reserves. Override the system, keep everything running off the reserves rather than going into emergency mode. A breeding gathering for whales lasts months and involves up to a thousand whales. Even a small one is a couple of hundred. If we have any hope or prayer at all of buying the time we need to sort out a means of venting the excess power, without overtaxing our broken ass cooling system, there has to be somewhere for the bloody power to go! Empty as much of the reserves as you can. Now!"
Irene's shaky voice came back through. "Fuck, Henry. Are you sure? No, never mind, of course you're sure. I'll make the calls." The line went dead.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Henry slammed into the bulkhead, pushing off and around the corner, vying for more speed. He refused to slow just to make the turn. Huffing and swearing to himself that station life had made him soft, he pushed to reach the nearest control nexus. Rounding the last corner, he shouted an override at the door, forcing it open as he skidded through. He came to a stop in a dim room, lit only with emergency lights. Emergency mode, good. That meant the fusion plants were already offline.
“Atta girl,” he muttered.
Sparing it no further thought, he punched an override into the only powered console, bringing the entire nexus online at full power. Another code, this time Irene's, which he shouldn't even have, transferred station technical control to this nexus. More commands, a screen was up and showing the whales and their numbers. A second quickly joined it showing station power levels and system temperature.
“Fifty whales, power dropping fast. Good, good, but that won't last. Gotta drop it more while I still can. Buy time.”
Fingers flying as he talked to himself, he systematically threw every system on the station into its highest stress testing mode. The shields came first, powering to maximum, and other systems rapidly followed: manufacturing, environmental controls, internal security, tactical simulations, entertainment, computers, and hologram systems.
Reserve power went from falling to plummeting as the systems came online. The boards lit up as people all over the station commed maintenance, undoubtedly scrambling to find out why internal force fields had sealed them in, why the environmental controls were prematurely recycling air, and why the manufacturing plants were pumping out random parts. Doubtless even the food processors were coughing up hundreds of meals randomly at this point.
Someone in station command reacted and tried to seize control of the nexus remotely. He countered them, but it was only a matter of time. Then the attempt stopped. Irene must have reached them. Good woman. Damn smart, that one. Whispering a thank you to the Almighty for good fortune and competent women, he soldiered on. Eighty whales now, power loss was slowing. Not good. Flipped switches, offering free power to every ship. Most VIM's took it immediately on their ship's behalf. The drop increased but it wouldn't last. Those ships would be full soon, they were getting the power boost from the whales too. Nothing left to activate, now what?
Irene slid into the nexus. “Henry! What do you need?”
Henry growled as the energy drop began to slow even further. “Pull up everything on the cooling systems we took offline. All of it, primaries and secondaries both. Main display.”
Not even blinking, Irene's fingers flashed across the command boards at her console. Schematics began flying onto the nexus's primary screen, showing the various pieces of the primary and backup cooling systems they had shut down or bypassed while they struggled to get the station stable. Henry strode forward with quick, sure steps, eyes rapidly scanning as more and more schematics joined those already displayed.
Soon, the new data slowed, then stopped, and Irene moved up to stand beside him. “Any brilliant ideas?”
“Yes, but Si'Fillian is probably going to shoot me personally.”
“If whatever you're thinking works, I promise I'll protect you...or at least visit you in the hospital. Besides, he doesn't even know who you are. He'll probably shoot me instead.”
Henry snorted, then pointed to one of the biggest chunks of the primary system currently offline. “We'll start here. We have to put as many of these back online as we can, fast. Preferably before the power stops falling and starts climbing.”
Irene just looked at him cockeyed before a gloriously sarcastic tone leapt from her. “Oh sure, Henry, we'll just ask the space fairies to magic up a working system. Because obviously that's all we need to do to spontaneously cut three months of work down to a few hours.”
“Which is why Si'Fillian is going to kill me.” Moving his hands, he began patching systems together on the main screen, marking systems for reactivation and linking it all together at emergency crossovers between the primaries and backups. “Call the crews and load them up with emergency line patch kits. Send them to the systems in the order I'm marking.”
Irene just gaped at him for a moment. “What! But—”
Henry cut her off. “But emergency kits completely destroy the longevity of the lines they are used on. Law, not to mention good sense, requires complete line replacement as
soon as physically possible. I am aware of the consequences. As it stands, however, either we get those systems online or the whole station dies.”
“Shit, Henry, Si'Fillian really is going to kill you! The amount of hardware we will end up replacing—” She cut herself off this time and took a deep, steadying breath before moving jerkily to a console. Grimly, she bit out, “But there's nothing else to do. Right, I'm on it.”
As she worked, she finally gave in and asked, “Henry?”
“Yes?”
“I thought whales were supposed to be good fortune. These seem like awful bad luck to me.”
Henry managed a half grin at her tone of voice. Without stopping his work, he addressed her. “They are considered good luck, miss neophyte, for the very reason they are our nightmare. They are almost entirely harmless, a nice, fun thing to watch in otherwise boring space, and most importantly, they provide free power to anyone they travel alongside. In small numbers, or even in large numbers but with a properly working cooling system, the Imeric whales are a huge boon to any peaceful ship they encounter. It's only poor us, with lots of whales and a crippled cooling system, that desperately don't want them nearby.”
“Oh.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
The next two hours were a frantic scramble. Henry was ruthless in activing the newly patchworked systems and Irene cracked the whip, driving the crews to near exhaustion plugging the massive leaks that sprung up as pressure blew holes in every section activated. More people moved into the nexus, too many for the small space, and they were eventually forced to take over the larger space of the station's command bridge. Si'Fillian had tried to stop them, only to be told in no uncertain terms that they'd call an all-hands evacuation if he didn't back off. Now he was glowering over their shoulders, mumbling curses and imprecations against everyone on the bridge as they poured good money after bad, trying to hold the station together.
Irene's exhausted voice rang out over the clamor and chaos of the bridge. “That's the last one we can activate without a complete blowout, Henry! The rest are just too weak to use.”
Henry grimly nodded and punched up the figures on the main screen. Even after all their efforts, less than two thirds of the main system and less than half the backups were active. The rest were far too unstable to support the pressures involved, even with such drastic emergency measures. A few more taps and a graph of projected system temperatures, a count of the whales, and current temperature numbers became the new focus of the primary screens. Hearts sank as everyone took in what they saw. Two hundred and forty-seven whales, power reserves full and the heat...climbing. It was a slow climb, but the graph showed that slow climb hitting critical levels within less than twenty-four hours.
Irene's voice was the first heard again in the sudden silence. Voice uncharacteristically weak, she asked, “I don't suppose whale breeding pods ever move on in less than twenty-four hours?”
Henry's grim voice answered, “No, they always stick around for weeks at least, sometimes months.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah.”
“Shall I trigger the evacuation alert then?”
Henry didn't answer, he wasn’t used to being beat and didn’t like it, not at all. He wracked his brain for something, anything.
It was the voice of the station administrator, not Henry, that finally answered her. From the back of the command deck where he had been relegated, he said, “There seems to be no other choice.” With only a moment’s more hesitation, voice ringing with a grim finality, he ordered, “Do it.”
Irene tapped in the command and looked over at Henry one more time. He didn't look up, and she pressed the button. Or rather she tried to. Suddenly, Henry's hand held hers in an iron grip as he stared sightlessly ahead.
“Henry?” Her voice was rough and uncertain. “Henry, what is it?”
There was a long pause where he didn't answer and she started to pull her hand free.
“Wait! There might still be something we can do.”
Everyone stopped at Henry's unexpected outburst. Slowly, everyone turned to stare at him. It was Si'Fillian that spoke first, blatantly giving him a once over. With clear dismissal and agitation, he bit out, “And...who are you, exactly?”
Irene stepped in before Henry could say anything. “Henry is the consultant I told you about, sir. The one that's been fixing all the damage the contractors did.”
That just made Station 7's owner angrier than he already was. “So this is the nitwit I've been paying obscene amounts of money, only for him to accomplish NOTHING?”
Irene's eyes went ice cold. There was something space black and dangerous in her voice when she hissed out her reply. “No, sir. He is the under paid consultant that has managed to save your station from blowing up months ago.” Flicking a dismissive hand at her boss, she turned to Henry. “Harper, you've had a thought?”
Henry winced. This so wasn't going to go over well, particularly if she was angry enough in general to revert to his last name. He braced himself and plunged onward. “Well, our primary problem is that the idiots that built the whole cooling system didn't build enough tolerance in for the pressures involved, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, don't use liquid. The system is air tight, we can gas cool the lines.”
Disappointment and frustration colored her return. “Henry, there is no way air will be efficient enough to—”
“Not air. Hydrogen.”
That brought her up short. Hydrogen was efficient enough as a coolant to get the numbers they needed, but...but that was insane. Before she could even utter that thought, a pissed off Si'Fillian jumped right back in and spoke it for her.
“Are you completely insane, man! You want me to run hydrogen through my station's cooling lines? It's flammable as hell and the whole bloody point of all this is that the lines aren't just leaking, they are hemorrhaging. Everywhere! That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever—”
Henry cut him off. “No, it isn't. Regular air can handle the cooling for a few hours before everything burns up. We turn off the liquid, pump in air, and use the hours to plug the leaks, then run the hydrogen into the system.”
Everyone froze. Si'Fillian started to open his mouth in yet another angry tirade, but was preempted by Irene. “It could work.... No, it will work. Let's get to it, people!”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Over the next three hours, the station became an absolute flurry of activity. Irene had pulled every engineer and tech from every shift, plus hijacked every additional skilled hand she could from the station's civies and docked ship crews. Henry had been given the go-ahead and was brutal with following through. In addition to venting the liquid coolant via “proper” emergency procedure, he had also blown most of their jury-rigs open remotely, hemorrhaging high-pressure, but ultimately inert, coolant all over the service tunnels. The liquid was replaced with a standard air mix, drawn from emergency station supplies, in a record thirty minutes. Two and a half additional hours were spent patching every leak with XT-413 sealant.
So masterful was Irene at managing her motley crew of regulars and irregulars alike, that the flurry all came to a halt with a startling suddenness. Seemingly from one moment to the next, a hundred hands had gone from flying fingers to a sudden stop as they found no more work under them.
A few heartbeats passed and a few breaths were taken as the last reports processed. Then Irene's lilting voice rang clearly through the near silent command bridge. “Henry, that's the last major leak and the hydrogen tanks have been hooked in. Anything else will be caught by the environmental systems, sealing the areas containing leaks until we can spare the time to patch them. We need to go now if we're going to go at all.”
Henry looked up from the readouts he had been pouring over, absorbed in manipulating the station's systems to buy the most possible time, seemingly unaware of the chaos around him. With a grim nod, he seconded her. “Agreed. The numbers look as good as they're going to get
and I can't juggle the heat any longer. Another fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, and the air won't be enough anymore.”
Moving in almost perfect sync, a testament to their months working together up to that point, Henry and Irene took over the coolant system controls directly. Henry went to the main control panel, Irene to the jury-rigged hydrogen flow control systems. A few curious eyes noted the order, but none had the courage to question why the consultant was taking the primary position. Had they done so, Irene would have simply shrugged or waved them off. She had hired Henry for a reason after all, and for what really was princely pay whatever she told her boss. Half of what Henry did seemed blackest voodoo to Irene and that was fine with her, so long as it worked.
Fingers tapped, darted, and flicked. “Standing by,” was the cool statement of the Irish local.
And the only response was a half-distracted count from Henry. “Start the hydrogen flow in 3...2...1...Mark.”
A toggle was flipped and hydrogen flowed. Henry's hands went from fast to a blur as he took the feed and exchanged it with the air, using systems not intended for their current purpose. A purpose never dreamed by any other mind.
A minute passed, then five, and it was the station owner's panicky voice that finally broke the tense calm. “It's not working. Look. The temperature is going up.” He stabbed a finger at the temp readout on the main screen. Indeed, all could see it. Had, in fact, been glued to it.
Henry, still distracted, didn't reply for a few seconds. A few seconds that would become deadly moments later. “No, it's working fine. That's just the effect of the changove—”
