Fleet Academy

by M. Scott Cottrell

  “Thank you sir.”

  “I heard that you got some extra studying in last night.”

  “I’m sorry sir?” Matt asked questioningly.

  “Nothing to worry about, but you should know that when shuttles are in dock the flight recorder cameras are used for security in the cockpits.”

  Matt had a serious moment of ‘oh shit’ as he watched the Commander bounding ahead of him. “I didn’t realize that sir.”

  “I’m sure that Ensign Forester didn’t realize that either. Relations between officers are generally not frowned upon unless they are in the same chain of command. Since you now outrank her it wouldn’t really be appropriate to make something like that a habit. But I understand that it was her way of thanking you for saving her life.”

  “Yes sir.” Matt answered quietly.

  “By the way Mister Molter. I squashed the vid disk that was being made in security. It was bound to be a best seller around the ship.”

  “Thank you sir. I appreciate that.”

  “Not a problem Mister Molter. Next time, find a place that doesn’t have a security camera first.”

  “Aye sir.” Matt said as they reached the shuttle. As the lock cycled them through into the cargo container, Matt thought about how, or even whether, to tell Trina that they had been the stars of a new porn show in security.

  “EVA inside. We are ready to go to the next location.” The Commander radioed to the shuttle cabin.

  “Roger. Heading to the next location. Stand by. Transit time estimated at ten minutes.”

  “Roger. We will be standing by in the hold, so watch the g rates please.”

  “Affirmative, in that case make the time estimate fifteen minutes.”

  “Ok Mister Molter, go ahead and lock your servos and save the power until we get there.”

  “Aye sir.” Matt responded as he shut down all the servos on his suit except the arm units.

  The process was pretty much the same at the next two guns with only one more to go. Matt and the commander were standing near the rear of the cargo hold when Matt felt the deck pitch. Unlike the cabin area, the cargo hold had no artificial gravity, so even slight changes in attitude and acceleration were seriously felt. The tilt suddenly got a lot worse. Matt wasn’t sure what was happening until he heard the radio calls on his suits emergency channel.

  “Mayday… Mayday! This is shuttle Debeno! We have had a thruster failure and are going down. Mayday, Mayday!”

  “Brace yourself Mister Molter!” The Commander called. “It sounds like it’s going to be a rough landing!”

  Rough landing was an understatement. The shuttle hit the Martian landscape hard, nearly ripping the cargo pod off the shuttles body. Anything that wasn’t tied down went sailing through the air to end up in a pile in the front of the pod; that included the Commander and Matt.

  “Status check!” Matt called when his head cleared enough to realize what had happened. He got no response to the call. “Commander, status?” Matt called as he reactivated all his servo units and unburied himself from the pile of equipment that broken loose and piled on top of them. He looked around for the Commander, not initially seeing his hard suit in the tangle of debris. After rummaging around in the pile jammed against the front wall the container he saw a space boot sticking out and dug deeper, only to find the Commander pinned under a container holding several of the heavy power packs. Matt worked feverishly to move the container with an antigravity sled and free the Commander, a task made much more difficult by the almost thirty degree angle the cargo pod was sitting at.

  Finally free, Matt laid the Commander on top of the pile of debris and looked into his face shield. It was clear that he was unconscious and Matt could see a small trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. Matt pulled the buddy cable from his leg pocket and plugged into the Commanders suit, his diagnostic screen splitting to show that the commanders suit was holding pressure, despite some very bad cracks in the hard composite fiber plating of the suits main body. But the good news seemed to end there; the Commander’s bio signs weren’t looking too good. His heart rate was low and his respirations were erratic. He also saw something he didn’t expect. Instead of the nearly 100 Kilopascals inside the pressurized pod, it was down to ten and falling. There was no way he was going to be able to remove the suit here. He also wasn’t going to be able to get him unsuited in the forward pressure lock. It was too small. Matt struggled to drag him up the incline to the rear air lock, his suit servos whining with each step as he tried to battle both the additional weight and the steep incline. Cycling the lock open, he pushed the Commander up into the lock and then climbed in himself. Matt cycled it closed and watched as the pressure climbed. Unsnapping the helmet fasteners he rotated the commander’s helmet off, wanting to keep his on so he had the bio screen. Matt found blood on the back of the Commanders head as well as the dried blood on his face. It looked like he had taken a pretty hard lick. Matt used his emergency first aid pack to do what he could, which wasn’t much with the hard suit still on. For a few moments he considered removing the suit, but then realized that if he did they would both be trapped inside the lock, Matt unable to leave without killing the commander from decompression.

  “EVA to Shuttle. Can you say status?”

  “Shuttle here.” he heard weakly. “Were alive, but I don’t know for how long. We are showing that were losing pressure. Systems are not keeping up. No contact with Mars station. Unknown if Saint Claire is picking up our distress beacon or not. What is your status?”

  “I’m a bit banged up, but the Commander has taken a bad hit to the head. I suspect he has a concussion and maybe some internal beading. His blood pressure is low, his respirations are erratic and his heartbeat is lower than normal. Also the cargo pod is losing air as well.”

  “Understood.” The Lieutenant responded. “Status shows that several of the locks have sprung, so we expect that the forward hatch is no longer useable. I estimate we have less than fifteen minutes of air left. We are looking for the leak, but have not located it yet.”

  “Roger. I don’t know what I can do, but I will take a look.”

  Matt put the commander’s helmet back on, set the override for his oxygen levels to seventy percent and disconnected his buddy cable as soon as he was sure the suit was functioning. He also realized that once he drained the air lock, without life support from the shuttle, the pod air lock was only going to have one more pressurization cycle in its reserves. He had a choice, go back out and be stuck out, or go into the bay and be stuck in the bay. Either way, he wasn’t going to get back through the airlock. He probably wouldn’t be able to reach it from outside anyway, given the severe tilt of the deck. Matt decided it would be easier to get out than in, so he cycled the lock and slid into the cargo pod. Scrambling back up the deck again, he closed the door and cycled the lock one more time, just in case the commander had a leak he didn’t find in his suit. This would help keep him alive longer Matt told himself hopefully. He dug through the debris, looking for a particular crate, finding it half buried at one side of the pile. It contained some tools that were to be dropped at one of the outposts on the way out, including a new plasma cutter. It would go through the sides of the pod like a hot knife through butter. Matt picked a spot that he thought was above ground and cut a large opening, large enough that he felt like he could crawl out easily. Calling it a hole would be fair, but it was neither round nor square. In fact, it was pretty irregular, but it got the job done. Matt crawled out into the bright morning Martian sun.

  Matt turned and surveyed the wreckage, shaking his head at the sight before him. The shuttle had impacted with its nose down at a steep angle, partially burying it in a soft sandy material at the base of a cliff. The cargo pod had broken loose, lying under the body of the shuttle, but also at a severe angle. He wondered how they had made it at all, nearly impacting into the side of the sheer cliff. The soft sandy material that had collected here must have softened the crash, or the shuttle would
have been a crumpled wreck. He knew he had little hope of finding a leak if it was buried under the small mountain of sand that obscured most of the shuttle cockpit. Matt surveyed the shuttle, walking up the new dune and onto the exposed portion of the cockpit. He dug down to find one of the shuttle windows and tried to peer inside. The darkened faceplate of his helmet made it impossible to see anything inside.

  “How are you doing in there?” Matt radioed.

  “Not good.” A gasping breath responded. “No joy on the leak.”

  “Understood.” Matt replied, settling down to sit in the sand, wondering if help was going to get there soon enough. Space was a dangerous place indeed, but he had no intention of losing a friend if there was anything he could to do prevent it. “Hang in there Sparks I have an idea that might get you some air.” He practically sprinted back around to the cargo pod. One of the many supplies that were to be dropped at the outpost was a set of liquid oxygen tanks. All he had to do was to figure a way to hook one of them to the shuttle. Matt looked at the pile of debris in the front of the pod, trying to find an idea. Finally one hit. He removed a large coil of metal tube from the pile, and then dug around until he found the welding kit that was with the tools. It didn’t take him long to scavenge the regulator, but the rest of the parts he needed might be harder to find. After some trial and error, he managed to cobble the coil of tube to one of the tanks, and the regulator to the other end of the tube. He carefully hauled the contraption outside the pod and up next to where the pod and the cabin would have been mated if things weren’t torn up. The heat from the sun would heat the coil enough to turn the cryogenic liquid back into gas, but now he had to find a way to pipe that gas into the cabin. The lines for the cargo pod had been ripped out where they attached between the front of the pod and the shuttles umbilical port. Matt grabbed the exposed end of the line, seeing a small plume of vapor exiting the hose. Sure enough, this was the leak, but plugging it would only stop the leak, not replace the O2 had been exhausted already, O2 that the girls were going to need if they were to survive until help got here. It took much longer with the bulky gloves, but Matt managed to get the hose attached to the regulator jammed into the broken umbilical hose. He scrambled across the soft sand to the liquid oxygen cylinder and cracked the valve. Putting his helmet against the valve, he could hear slight vibrations of the liquid flowing out of the bottle and into the coil. Hopefully that meant that the gas was going into the shuttle.

  “Ok shuttle. I have an oxygen supply connected to the broken line from the container. Can you backflow into the cabin?”

  There was no answer from the shuttle.

  “EVA to shuttle… do you copy?” Matt called. Still no answer.

  “Damn!” Matt said out loud as he sat down in the sand next to the shuttle. “Too fucking slow!”

  The hours passed, as did the Martian sun, as he sat in his suit he started doing the math of survival. He figured the suit was good for about ten hours total, and he had already been suited for three by the time of the crash. That meant that if they didn’t find them by 1600 he would be out of power and air. The alarms had started going off long before the sun had reached down to touch the horizon, but all Matt could do was to turn down the suit temp and O2 to try to make it last. It looked like his bad luck was about to finish him off. Every time he went out on a mission, something went wrong. Matt began to wonder if he was just jinxed or what. Warning alerts changed to critical alarms as the power pack slowly drained. It looked like the power would die before his air. CO2 buildup in his suit would kill him just as dead, he thought.

  “The hell with this! I’m not going down without a fight!” He shouted at himself as he crawled into the bay, the power drive of his suit draining what little power he had even faster. It only took a minute to locate the second liquid oxygen bottle before looking around to find the crate of weapons they had loaded. Rummaging through the overturned crate he pulled out a Mark-19 pulse energy rifle. The status indicator showed that the high energy pack was still partly charged, at least some good news. Now to figure out how to get his suit connected to it.

  He used a piece of equipment to smash the end of the emergency buddy cable from his suit. It was tricky with the thick working gloves that were never intended to do this kind of delicate work, but he managed to separate the wires and the small tube. He stuffed the tube into the end of the bottle of oxygen and taped it in place with some metal tape he found in the debris pile. He cracked the valve open a little. There were leaks everywhere, but his suit monitor showed that it was feeding into his suit. All that was left was power. Remembering the systems from doing maintenance a few days before, he smashed the rifle open with the same piece of equipment that he used to destroy the buddy cable, taking care to not hit the power cell. That would certainly bring this to an end a lot quicker, he thought to himself. It would probably scatter pieces of the shuttle for half a mile. He pulled the power cell from the destroyed weapon and looked it over. This was either going to work or blow every circuit in his suit. Matt had six wires sticking out from the buddy cable, which two were the right ones? He guessed that it was the biggest two; one red and one black. He touched the black to one terminal of the power pack and taped it into place. Then he quickly touched the red one to the other terminal, not for long, just a quick brush across it. He got sparks. He held it a little longer the second time. His suit saw the power and tied it into the suit system as if he had plugged into a buddy. For a second all his systems lit up. As soon as he let go it went back down. Matt used the roll of tape to secure the red wire in place, his suit lighting back up as he worked. It looked like he might get a little more time anyway. The first power pack lasted nearly a half an hour. He pulled another rifle from the crate and checked it. It also was below half power. He smashed it open and connected it like the other one. A half hour later he smashed the third and last one. This one had even less power. Matt connected it and sat back to wait. No telling how long now. He shut down everything he could, the lower half motor systems, heaters, scrubbers to minimum. He left only the O2 and power indicators on in the suit monitor, he didn’t really want to see how bad the rest was.

  The cold started to seep into him, working its way into his body from every direction, making him curl up in the suit involuntarily. The motors hummed as he moved his arms, making the power drop faster. ‘Stupid!’ he thought to himself. Moving just made the power level drop faster. He tried to sit still, and finally turned the power to all the motors off, knowing that he couldn’t move at all now. His hand was frozen over the keypad, only his fingers able to move. If anything happened, he might not be able to turn the motors back on.

  He laughed out loud at himself. “If anything happens? What the hell do you call this you dumb shit?” He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable as the Martian night closed in around the crippled shuttle, his body starting to shiver uncontrollably inside the slowly dying suit, staring out the jagged hole he had cut, hoping to see help come.

  Chapter 6 - Rescue

  At first he was confused. Things were moving that weren’t supposed to be. In the extreme darkness he couldn’t really tell if his eyes were open or closed, but he could have sworn that he sensed something move. Maybe it was an animal, but then he realized that was stupid, there weren’t any animals on mars. He saw it again, this time he was sure. He tried to move, but was frozen stiff, only his hands able to move. It took a minute to remember that he shut down his suit. He pressed a code on his suit and it blinked into life again.

  “Hey. In here!” he heard through the speakers in his helmet.

  “On my way.” He heard another familiar voice say. Two figures crawled into the cargo bay through the hole Matt had cut, bright lights held out in front of them. One of them walked up to him and looked down.

  “Would you look at this mess? What the hell does he have hooked up here?” The voice asked.

  “Damn! Would you look at this shit? He jury rigged more life support for his suit.”

&n
bsp; Matt felt his suit go dead as his cable was unplugged, and then practically spring into life as a new power cable was connected. He felt the fans kick in and start circulating the air again gulping it in like a thirsty man in a desert.

  “He’s alive.” The voice said again.

  “Yeah… Looks like it, let’s get him out of here.” The second voice said as they picked him up as if he weighed nothing at all.

  “Get the Commander.” Matt croaked into the radio.

  “Did he say something?” The first voice asked.

  “Yeah, hold up a second.”

  “Get the Commander.” Matt croaked again.

  “Ok son. Where is he?” The second voice said,

  “Air lock.” Was all he could say.

  “Sounds like he said in the air lock.” The first voice said.

  “Yeah, let’s check as soon as we get him out of here.” The second voice said.

  Matt felt himself be carried out of the cargo pod. He expected to be drenched in bright light, but it was as dark outside as it was inside. Matt saw a shuttle sitting on the ground nearby and was carried into the airlock and set down. His suit went dead as it had been only minutes before, and then the two space suited figures were gone, the darkness of the outside suddenly replaced by the glare of artificial light inside the lock. Unable to even move his hand to shield his eyes, he lie there, grogginess creeping over him again as the air inside his helmet deteriorated. After the lock cycled, a team of medics rushed into the air lock from the cargo pod side and pulled him into the pod, closing the air lock behind them. His helmet was removed and fresh air hit his face, rejuvenating him for several seconds before he slipped back down the slope of exhaustion. The medic removed the upper portion of the suit and then extracted him from the bottom portion, placing him on a stretcher. They carried him into a curtained area, putting him on the table. Matt’s fuzzy brain wondered if this is what a thanksgiving turkey felt like. A face floated in front of him, one that he remembered, finally connecting the name that belonged to the face.