by David Smith
Another smaller piece smashed into the ground at Chen’s feet, causing him to yell in alarm.
“We can’t just leave O’Mara!” he shouted and instinctively backed towards the boulder, looking upwards nervously as he did.
A big chunk of ice smashed down into the rocks behind him making him spin around, and even as he did another rock smashed into the ground inches from one of the frantically burrowing crewmen.
Up on the Bridge, Dave had been listening to the conversation and was forced to intervene: “Chen, you can’t help O’Mara if you’re dead. Take cover. That’s an order.”
Closing the comm-link, he spoke to ASBeau, “What sort of re-entry velocities are those rocks showing?”
“It’s all sub-orbital debris, just thrown high and hard. The biggest stuff has fallen close to the point of impact, but the smaller stuff is travelling further. The atmosphere is thick enough to take a lot of the force out of the chunks, but the bigger rocky ones could still be potentially lethal.” He shook his head, then said “Hey, I got an idea!”
Dave turned around, his eyebrows raised. The tone of surprise in ASBeau’s voice made it sound as if this was a rare event.
“We can beam some plates down!!” said the grinning Tactical Officer.
“Plates? I hardly think they’ve got time for a picnic!!”
“No no no! Plates, like armour …. Y’know?” he expanded.
Dave shook his head, thinking that this might be why the Tactical Officers ideas might be so rare. “And where would we find armour plate in the middle of an interstellar dust cloud?”
“Down on the shooting range, Sir!”
“We don’t need armour in the shooting range: we just use low-power phaser settings. Why would anyone want armour plate in a shooting range?” asked Dave and almost instantly wished he hadn’t.
“Me and Chief Belle like to spend a little time down on the range with our ….. er ….. antiques?”
“What the hell kind of antique needs armour plate on a shooting range??”
“The sort of antiques that reduced the human population by about ninety percent during the twenty second century sir” said ASBeau blushing slightly.
Dave was about to enquire if this sort of antique was even remotely legal, but realised it didn’t matter just now. “Great. Do it. And do it quick.” As an afterthought he asked “How big are these plates?”
“Only a tonne or two, sir”
Dave winced “Please try not to squish anyone.”
“No problem sir, Chief Carstairs is brilliant with this sort of gig!” said ASBeau confidently.
Andy Carstairs got Chen to send a detailed scan of the area and called back when he saw the data on his console in the Transporter Room. “Chen, get everyone clear of the boulder, I’m going to try and drop a plate at sixty degrees and lean it against the boulder to give O’Mara some protection.”
The team scrambled away and the swirl of energy patterns threw flickering shadows and streaks of light across the landscape as the transporter worked at close to its maximum capacity to shift the huge sheet of metal.
It landed exactly as Carstairs planned, and from his position cowering on the light-facing side of a boulder, Chen could make out a thick, square plate of burnished alloy. It was scarred and pitted, with several areas having been subjected to some horrendous trauma or other. It had come not a second to soon, as a two kilogram chunk of rock hurtled from the sky, striking a glancing blow and careening off the thick metal and into the dust and dirt below it with a resounding clang.
The rock didn’t even scratch the surface of the plate and Chen and the others wondered where the plate had come from and what had caused the horrific gouges, scorch marks and craters in such an incredibly resilient material.
Other chunks of rock and ice were still raining down and the away team took shelter wherever they could. There were very few decent size rocks on the surface and they pressed themselves against them on the leeward side from the meteors impact.
On the Bridge of the Tiger, Chief Obote and ASBeau scanned the skies looking for projectiles that might prove dangerous even to those taking cover. Obote was reading through the spectrographic analysis and said, “Well if nothing else, this solves the mystery of the free water. The meteor strike has thrown thousands of tonnes of ice and vapour into the atmosphere and the wind is carrying much of it to the boundary between the light and dark sides. The whole ecology seems to hinge on the planet getting pummeled by rocks. Bizarre!”
“I’m not sure the away team will take much comfort from that” grumbled Dave.
--------------------
For over an hour the rocks kept plummeting from the sky, and the away team huddled in fear. Poor Crewman Vincent of the Security team left his leg sticking out too far and was lucky that the rock that struck his foot was less than a kilo in mass. Nonetheless, it smashed his foot to pulp and tore his environmental suit, forcing him to risk dragging himself clear of the boulder so he could transport back to Tiger before his air supply leaked away completely.
As soon as he felt the rain of debris was beginning to ease, Chen called the Bridge “Are we clear yet?”
ASBeau was still scanning the surface and said “There are no more significant chunks still in the air. There’s probably a lot of smaller stuff flying around, but if it’s too small for the sensors to record individually, it’ll be too small to do much damage to your suits. I’ll keep scanning and if anything catches my eye you’ll be the first to know.”
Chen sneaked a nervous look towards the sky and said “Ok, team you heard the man, let’s get O’Mara out of that hole.”
As one, the team crawled from relative safety back out into the open, and began digging away at the loose regolith. From a meter under the slab, Orderly Weiss shouted back, “I found a boulder under here. O’Mara’s a lucky, lucky girl. When the slab toppled it looks like it hit this boulder before it came to rest on her torso. If it hadn’t been here she’d have been crushed for sure.”
Chen was still keeping a weather eye on the sky and said “Is she injured?”
There was a pause as Weiss manoeuvred himself to run a tricorder over O’Mara. “She’s got a load of cracked ribs, some internal bleeding, a punctured right lung and severe concussion. She’s out cold and pulse and breathing are both weak. I’m not sure she can hold on much longer.”
Chen cursed. The Science Officer was clearly in a bad way. “Can we move her yet?”
“Not a chance, sir. I think she’ll only need to drop a few centimeters for her back-pack to clear the slab, but it’s going to take ages. I’m going to start scraping out some of this dirt from underneath her, but we need a plan B”
“Ok, do your best, we’ve lost more time ducking rocks than she can afford. Benelli watch the rock with a tricorder, if it moves a millimeter, yell. I don’t want to be having to dig two people out from under it.”
Chen called the Bridge: “Were you monitoring our conversation Commander?”
Dave pressed a general comm-link and addressed everyone on the away team “Yes, I copy that. Tell Weiss to keep trying, and I’ll see what else we can come up with. Hollins out.”
O’Mara was in real danger. Dave spoke to Chief Obote and told her to contact the Science Team. “Chief, we need to dig Lieutenant-Commander out from under that slab. We can’t do it quick enough by hand. I want ideas and I want them now. Get everyone in Science Department thinking about it and come back to me in five minutes!”
Dave was just about to call the Engineering Deck to see if Romanov could come up with anything, when his comm-set showed a priority request from PO Park in the Cybernetics Lab.
“Make it quick Park, we’ve got a situation down on the planet.” To Dave’s surprise it wasn’t Park’s voice that replied.
“Commander Hollins, this is IPAD. The Science staff have been monitoring the situation on the planet’s surface with great concern and I believe I am in a position to help.”
“I’m sorry, in what
way do you think you could help?” said Dave, slightly confused.
“It seems this a problem of geology and mineral extraction, and I have an app for that!”
“An app?”
“Indeed. I am a 448 series IPAD and come with the i-Dig© appliance as standard” said the robot, as if this made everything clear.
“I’m sorry. This helps us ….. how?”
“If you would be so kind as to transport me to the surface I will use my on-board mineral extraction appliance to free the Lieutenant-Commander”
Dave was confused “I thought you were ….. are ….. a service ….. robot?” He managed to stop himself from saying “android” just in time. “Why do you have a mining tool??”
“It’s a competitive market Commander Hollins. A unique selling point is an essential resource for any A’Pel product!”
“But a mining tool??”
“Well, I am a 448 series IPAD. They’d fitted everything that was likely to be of any real use by the introduction of the 32 series models, about two hundred years ago. I just consider myself lucky I’m not a 237 series model: They were lumbered with on-board potter’s wheel and sandwich toaster. Really spoiled the lines of the chassis” IPAD suggested ruefully.
They had nothing to lose, everything to gain and not enough time to give him a choice. “Ok IPAD, show us what you can do.”
Dave called the Transporter Room “Chief Carstairs, lock on to the IPAD. Beam him direct to the away team site.”
--------------------
Weiss was a huge muscular man and worked tirelessly under the rock, but frankly wasn’t getting far.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught the shimmering, twinkling energy patterns that heralded someone arriving via the transporter system.
“Please move aside Crewman Weiss” came an unfamiliar mechanical voice.
Weiss wriggled out, and was brushed aside by the small silver robot that dived past him towards the small space he’d just excavated under the rock. As it passed him, one of its fore-arms opened up revealing an incredibly complex arrangement of circuits and hardware.
He barely had time to register a spade like attachment that unfolded itself where the left hand had been, and a long tube that suddenly exploded from the robots bottom, trailing behind it in the dirt. Without another word it dived head-first into the small space just vacated by Weiss.
Before anyone could say a word, much less ask what the robot was doing, a huge cloud of dust exploded from the tube, showering Chen in sand and grit, forcing them to step back from the gap under the rock “What the …..???”
Within seconds the little robot said “I believe we’re down far enough, Lieutenant Chen. If you pull the Lieutenant-Commander out gently by her arms, I’ll guide her.”
Weiss and Nurse Benjani grabbed an arm each, and pulled as gently as they could, easing her out millimeter by millimeter.
Every so often they’d pause as the bulky backpack of O’Mara’s suit got wedged, and IPAD would burrow a little bit further while Benelli stood by nervously with a tricorder checking that the slab of rock wasn’t moving.
Eventually, her back-pack cleared the edge of the rock and they were able to drag her clear. As soon as she was out from under the rock, Chen called Carstairs in the Transporter Room. “Immediate transport to Sick-bay, one patient, myself and Nurse Benjani.”
The little robot sprang out of the hole under the rock and dusted itself down with what appeared to be a vacuum hose that had popped out of its right hand. The display screen on its face carried a couple of simple geometric shapes that appeared to be a smile.
The rest of the small group watched as Chen, Benjani and O’Mara disappeared in a swirl of energy patterns and Benelli called the Bridge. “We’ve recovered Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara, sir. Any further instructions?”
Dave breathed a sigh of relief “Good work team. Thank you IPAD, that was ….. unexpected ….. but definitely most welcome. I know O’Mara wanted to find out everything she could about Yin-yang, but I think I’d rather get you back on board before something else goes wrong.”
The Chief was still casting nervous glances skyward for stray meteors. “Not gonna argue with that, sir! Benelli out.”
Chapter 18
“Ok team, how are we looking?” Dave asked the assembled senior staff in the Officer’s Mess.
Romanov spoke first “We’re nearly there with the warp-drive sir. The coils are fitted, the engine nacelles are altered, plasma injectors are now optimal and we’re making good progress re-tuning the dilithium circuits to the new coil configuration. We’re actually well ahead of schedule. I believe we’ll be in a position to power the system up in forty-eight hours.”
“That’s excellent news Commander! Please pass my congratulations and thanks to all of the Engineering Department.”
“My pleasure, First Officer.”
ASBeau was next to speak. “Dolplop and I have been working with Susan and have completed the preliminary round of calculations for the revised coils. I’ve talked to Commander Romanov and we’re loathe to go any further until we get some kind of a feel for how the new coil arrangement will behave, as we have no datum point from which to gauge how the generated warp-field will shape up.”
“We’ve consulted with Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara too, but she’s still on a lot of pain-killers and her input can be a little hit or miss. This morning I asked her to look over a field density matrix our calcs had produced and she told me she couldn’t because the voices in her head told her I was the spawn of Satan.”
“Well I’m just glad O’Mara is talking even if it is gibberish. I thought for a while we were going to lose her” Dave replied.
ASBeau smiled “No, she’s definitely on the mend. Once she’d got past the Satan thing, she agreed to look over the matrix as long as I brought her a pint of Guinness.”
Next, Dave turned to Ensign David, who was attending as Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara was still recovering in Sick-bay. “Ensign, have we made any progress with navigation yet?”
“Well, I reckon we’ve only gone and cracked it, mate!”
Ignoring the Ensign’s incredible and obvious lack of interest in decorum and protocol, Dave prompted him to continue: “In what way?”
“Well, when we got here you could have smothered me in Cadbury’s and thrown me to the chocoholics! I was really surprised to find a big gap in the black and sticky stuff, but it was just what we needed. With a big gap like this you can see the coriolis effect in action. That’s the effect that makes most gravity wells rotate in the same direction. Looking from above, our whole galaxy rotates clockwise, and the vast majority of stars rotate in the same direction.”
“Being as isolated as it is, it’s incredibly unlikely that Seven-ball wouldn’t rotate that way too. The probes have confirmed there’s nothing within sixty light-years that could possibly affect its rotation. That told us the orientation of the ship in relation to galactic centre. Then we coupled that with the three biggest gravitational field readings. The biggest is obviously the galactic centre, but the next two are almost certainly the masses of the large and the small Magellanic clouds that sit just outside the Milky Way.”
He smiled triumphantly. “From that we can deduce we’re close to the border of the Beta Quadrant, so the direction we need to head in is that way!” He pointed vaguely in the direction of the port forward quarter.
“Great!!” said Dave, “Give us the heading and we’ll get underway as soon as the drive is back on line.”
The Ensign paused and looked a bit sheepish “Er …… we don’t have a bearing as such. I mean, we’re talking about gravity fields here .…. They’re more of an indication than a direction. So when I said “that way”, I mean “our best guess is that direction will take us closer to home than the opposite direction.”
Dave groaned, but before he could say anything, the Ensign continued.
“I’m serious mate! Just bung the ship roughly that way and we’ll sort out the
fine detail when we reach the edge of the cloud. Nailed it.”
Really? thought Dave.
“What the hell. Crash, set a heading: That way. Ish.”
--------------------
They returned to the Bridge slightly bemused by it all. Dave began running through standard operating procedures for setting out on an interstellar journey, but realised that he didn’t know where they were going, or even where they were starting from. There was clearly no other live traffic in the area, and even if there was dead traffic, the energy absorbing abilities of the LOAVES meant they wouldn’t see it even it were there. He gave up and opened and general broadcast channel across the whole ship.
“This is Commander Dave Hollins, First Officer. We are about to leave orbit and will shortly engage the warp-drive. Hopefully, we’ll be out of this dust cloud and into free-space soon, but as we haven’t been able to test the drive, we will be at yellow alert for the foreseeable future. Hollins out.”
Dave closed the general broadcast link and called Engineering, where Commander Romanov could clearly be heard barking orders at her team. “Everything good to go, Commander?”
“I’ve checked everything I can think of and it all looks good. I’ve asked Jonsen and Deng to check everything they can think of too, then cross checked everything again. We’ve run simulations for every scenario that could possibly happen and topped that off with quite a few scenarios that we don’t think could possibly happen, just to be on the safe side” said the engineer.
“So we’re confident the drive will work then?” asked Dave.
“No. Not even slightly. How long have you been on this ship?” she asked sounding distinctly annoyed. She paused, and Dave heard the familiar sound of vodka being poured into a tumbler. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll know if it all works in a while anyway, won’t we?”
Dave sighed and closed the comm-link. “All set Helm?”
“Aye sir, course laid in, heading “that-a-way” by “over-yonder”, said Crash nervously.
“Ok Crash, take us out of orbit, ahead a teeny-weeny bit on impulse power” retorted Dave “and as soon as we clear the gravity well of Yin-yang, engage main drive, warp factor something.”
