by Dayton Ward
“Let’s give her some room, lads,” he said. Putting a hand on J’lenn’s shoulder he added, “Slow deep breaths, Lieutenant. We’ll get ye somethin’ to help ye breathe easier.”
Footsteps echoed in the corridor and Scott looked up to see a haggard-looking man jogging into the room. He wore a red standard-issue Starfleet utility jumpsuit that was sullied by sweat, grease, and grime. Scott could tell by his gaunt features that it had been days since the man had enjoyed anything even resembling a decent night’s sleep. Given the situation here, he was sure that all of the outpost’s personnel were feeling the same way.
“You have no idea how great it is to see you,” the man said, a smile breaking out onto his tired face. Running a hand through his thick, dirty-blond hair, he said, “I’m Celine…Evert Celine, chief of operations. Commander Thompson got trapped below during our last cave-in, so I’m in charge up here for the time being.” Noticing J’lenn’s difficulty, he asked, “Is she okay?”
“This air’s too thin for her,” Scott offered. “She’s Alpha Centauran, so it’s a bit rougher on her than the rest of us. Do ye have a rebreather or some tri-ox compound handy?”
Celine nodded. “The rebreathers we have left are being used by other station personnel, but I can get the doc up here with some tri-ox.” Retrieving a portable communicator from a pocket of his jumpsuit, he opened the unit’s antenna grid and adjusted the frequency knob. “Celine to Dr. Hoyt. Doc, I’m in the main EA prep room and I need some tri-ox compound for one of our guests. Can you get up here?”
A gravelly voice, sounding every bit as exhausted as Celine’s, answered seconds later. “On my way, Chief. Have the patient lie down and try to relax until I get there.”
“Roger that. Celine out.” Returning the communicator to his pocket, Celine regarded the landing party. “Main communications are down, so we’re stuck using portable comm until we can get it fixed. One of the many items on our things-to-do list, I’m afraid.”
Scott nodded in understanding. “I can only imagine how hard it’s been to hold this place together since the storm.”
Letting a small laugh slip out, Celine smiled wearily. “There isn’t a system on this entire rock that isn’t compromised, jury-rigged, cross-connected, or just plain fried. We’ve been running between circuit panels and crawling through access tubes for days.”
They were interrupted as another man entered the room. Noticeably older, he was bald except for gray stubble on the sides and back of his head. He wore a blue jumpsuit and carried what Scott recognized to be a field medical pouch. The man’s shoulders were slumped as he walked, and whether it was due to age, fatigue, or both was anyone’s guess.
“Somebody call a doctor?” Hoyt asked, a tired smile crossing his weathered features.
“Over here, Doctor,” Scott said, waving the other man over to where he had made J’lenn lie down on a bench near the prep room’s dressing area.
Moving over to kneel beside the young engineer, Hoyt gave her a quick look as he drew a hypospray from his medical pouch and affixed a liquid-filled ampule to one end. Pressing the hypospray to her shoulder, he said, “This will help you. Just give it a second to kick in.”
At the hiss of the injection, J’lenn closed her eyes and bit down on her lower lip as she focused on inhaling deeply through her flared nostrils. After a moment she nodded as her breathing slowly began to return to normal. “That’s much better now.” Smiling up at Scott she added, “I’m okay now, Scotty. Thank you.” She made an attempt to raise herself to a sitting position, but Hoyt restrained her, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“You just stay right there for a few more minutes, young lady,” the doctor said, his voice gentle yet firm like that of a trusted grandfather. “That tri-ox compound will help you for a few hours, but you’ll need booster shots. Between the two of us, what say we keep track of the time, all right? I know you engineering types like to run yourselves ragged, but try to call me before you pass out, okay?”
J’lenn laughed a bit, nodding in agreement. “No problem, Doctor. Thanks.”
Scott sighed in momentary relief. It was tempting to hope that all of the problems they would face in restoring the station to normal operations would be solved so easily, but he knew that such hope was misplaced.
Turning back to Celine, he said, “Chief, ye know best where ye need us first.” Indicating the rest of the landing party with a nod of his head, he added, “The sooner we get to work, the faster we can get this place back up and runnin’. So, where do we start?”
In response, Celine reached for the tricorder hanging from his shoulder. Activating the unit, he adjusted its controls before passing it to Scott. “Our first priorities are life support and the main reactor. The life-support system repairs are pretty straightforward, but we have no way to get to our maintenance section for the replacement parts we need.”
“We’ll get whatever we need from the Lovell,” al-Khaled replied. “No problem there.”
Celine nodded in appreciation before continuing. “The reactor is the major concern, though. That ion storm showered the fuel core with energy spikes that were off the scale. Fission balances are completely out of line, and unchecked power surges are overloading systems all over the outpost as fast as we can repair them. All in all it’s a great big mess.”
Almost on cue, a resonating hum filled the air and the room’s lighting grew brighter. One overhead fixture popped and sparked, sending wafts of smoke across the room’s ceiling. Rushing to a wall control, Celine slapped it with the palm of his hand and the entire room was plunged into darkness for several seconds until emergency backup lighting was activated.
Scott closed the tricorder’s flip-top cover as the hum of the power surge subsided. Turning to al-Khaled, he said, “We should split up, Mahmud, and go after the reactor and life support at the same time.” He looked over at J’lenn, who by now had pulled herself to a sitting position. “You know your way around these outposts. Think ye can find your way to the reactor core?”
“Just follow the glow, right?” J’lenn offered with a wry grin.
“Not exactly,” Celine replied as he activated the room’s main lighting again. When the lights came back on, they were even dimmer than they had been when the landing party had first arrived. “We can’t get to the reactor chamber from up here. The passageway on that level between that area and the turbolift is partially collapsed from a cave-in. If we’re going to get to it, we’re going to have to dig.”
Scott nodded in understanding. The asteroid’s mineral composition, featuring huge amounts of elmyracite, idrenium, and a whole host of other trace elements all combined to make transporters and sensors useless beyond a few hundred meters.
“We have a whole host of portable drilling equipment aboard the Lovell, including a few Mark III laser-drilling packs,” al-Khaled said. “They should handle this job quite nicely.”
Scotty nodded his approval. Those drills were used to create the very type of subterranean networks common to outposts like these, to say nothing of facilities and colonies on otherwise inhospitable planets.
“And guess who got herself rated on that particular model just last month?” J’lenn replied.
Al-Khaled smiled. “Excellent. You’re hired.” Indicating one of the engineers who had beamed down with them from the Lovell, he added, “I’m sending Kellerman with you. Those are his babies.” Looking to the remaining members of his team he said, “Anderson, O’Halloran, you’re on the life-support detail.”
“I’ll send one of my people with them,” Celine said.
Scott nodded his concurrence with the plan of action. Al-Khaled was certainly demonstrating his mettle as both an engineer and a leader, he decided. The younger man had analyzed the situation confronting them, and he had quickly and decisively issued orders and gotten his people to work. Within the ranks of the Corps of Engineers, opportunity for taking charge presented itself at every turn, Scott was discovering. These creative and resourceful m
inds rarely waited to fly ideas past their commanding officers, a function of the necessary speed of their work. An axiom for any engineer, Scott had learned, was that oftentimes it was easier to request forgiveness than to obtain permission. That line of thinking was proving to be quite applicable in the Corps as well.
“And what about you three?” J’lenn asked, a teasing smile on her face. “It’s nowhere near happy hour yet.”
Scott could not suppress a chuckle, relieved to see that the young engineer was obviously feeling better and had regained her sense of humor. “The drinks’ll be on me when ye cut us a path to the reactor.”
“Is it possible to get a report on the reactor’s current status?” al-Khaled asked. “I want to make sure it’s stable before I send anyone down there, and I want to see the path they’ll have to take.”
Celine nodded. “The main operations center was heavily damaged during the storm, but we’ve converted the environmental-control room to work out as a substitute.”
“Then that’s where the party is,” al-Khaled replied.
On the grand scale of control rooms, Scott thought as he looked around the one governing Outpost 5’s environmental systems, this one ranks just above my dear mother’s tinkering shack back in Aberdeen.
In fairness, Scott could see that the small room had been hastily reconfigured in order to function as the outpost’s nerve center. At least a dozen extra display monitors and computer workstations had been added to the room’s already cramped array of consoles. Wiring and exposed circuitry littered the room and there was very little in the way of floor space.
“We’ve spent hours routing network paths to this place, so it’s not the most tidy of working environments,” Celine said almost apologetically as he stepped over a bundle of cables taped to the floor. “But you’ll be able to access just about any information you might need. We’ve transferred the entire workload to a backup power supply, so even if the reactor goes down we’ll still have some control over most systems for a time.”
Scott nodded as he surveyed the cramped quarters housing cobbled-together control panels. Many of the stations were dominated by older models of monochromatic display screens, the same type of nearly obsolete models supported by telescoping rods from the ceiling and the slightly slanting bulkheads that were likely being replaced aboard his new posting, the Starship Enterprise, at this very moment. “No, Chief, this place’ll do nicely. I daresay ye couldna done better with a week’s notice.”
Al-Khaled found a place in front of one set of display screens and turned one of the monitors toward him for a look. “Are these the readings for the reactor?”
Celine stepped beside him to see the viewer for himself, reaching across al-Khaled and toggling a few switches. “They are now. We’ve set things up so that we can monitor every system from each seat.”
“Aye, lad, that’s mighty convenient.” Scott seated himself at another station and peered at the bank of displays. Mimicking what he had seen Celine do, he scrolled through a series of data images until he found what he was looking for. “And this’d be a map of the corridors to this place, yes?”
Seeing what the engineer had called up, Celine nodded. “Yes, sir. The highlighted paths indicate clear passageways.”
Scott surveyed the map before him. The crisscross of red lines showed a number of dark gaps preventing them from connecting. He knew that each gap represented clots of rock and debris that blocked portions of various passages. Whole sections of living quarters and work areas were darkened, as was a stretch of the outpost’s main corridor that must have represented a collapsed area hundreds of meters long. It was that section of the station that was keeping them from reaching the now failing fission reactor, a failure that soon could spell death for them all if left unchecked.
“We’ve definitely got our work cut out for us,” he said, shaking his head. J’lenn and Kellerman had already been dispatched into the outpost’s lower levels. There, with the portable drilling equipment transported down from the Lovell, they would confront the collapsed passageway separating the reactor room from the rest of the station.
Al-Khaled shifted in his seat. “According to these readings, it doesn’t appear that the reactor has been damaged so much as it seems to be overheating. The readings in the last two hours in particular show a massive rise in internal operating temperature. If I had to guess, I’d say that the coolant regulator system was damaged. We might get away easy after all.”
Scott wasn’t so sure. “There’s an awful lot of rock separatin’ us from that room, lad. It won’t matter what’s ailin’ that beastie if we canna get to it.”
Chapter
5
With a sigh of resignation, J’lenn pulled the hood of her full-body protective garment over her head, sealing herself inside. She had always detested wearing the things. Even though they were lighter and less cumbersome than regular environmental suits used in space, they were still confining and did a magnificent job of retaining the wearer’s body heat.
“Okay, Scotty, we’re all bagged and ready to drill.” Introduced into general use a little more than a year ago, no one she knew liked wearing the garments. They had quickly earned the uncomplimentary nickname of “space bags” from engineers across Starfleet. However, the suits would protect her and Kellerman from the worst of the heat discharged by the laser drilling packs they would be using.
“Orange is really not my color, you know,” she added, looking down at herself.
She heard laughter from over her communicator. It was al-Khaled. “It brings out your eyes.” A few seconds later, the engineer’s voice was all business. “Keep this channel open, J’lenn. We’ll be monitoring your progress and I want reports every few minutes.”
“Aye, sir,” J’lenn replied. In order to help her do that, Kellerman had provided a minor yet surprisingly effective demonstration of the type of field-expedient ingenuity for which engineers were well-known. He had rigged their communicators inside the head-pieces of their protective garments, leaving their hands free to work with the laser drills.
“Ye get a dram of Scotch for that one, lad,” Scott said over the channel. “We’re ready here when you are, J’lenn.”
“Affirmative,” J’lenn replied as she adjusted the straps on her laser drill’s backpack rig. “Kellerman, I don’t remember these things being so heavy during training.”
Kellerman grinned and bobbed his eyebrows mischievously. “You’re right. These are carrying a heavier battery pack than normal. I cannibalized a couple from a pair of old Mark IX artillery cannons.”
J’lenn nodded in understanding. The bulky Mark IXs had been carried aboard starships for years and had proven their reliability in a variety of situations, though as far as she knew they had never been used in the types of combat operations for which they were originally designed. In addition to their own self-contained battery packs, the weapons could also receive and reconfigure power transmitted directly from an orbiting ship. The cannons were in the process of being phased out in favor of lighter, self-propelled models, though, so J’lenn wasn’t surprised that engineers like Kellerman would seize the opportunity to salvage any useful parts.
“It’s like Lieutenant al-Khaled has been trying to tell you,” Kellerman began.
She smiled as she waved the rest of his statement away. “I know, there’s plenty of time for you and your team to tinker aboard the Lovell. I’m beginning to understand the magnitude of that statement, Ensign.” Taking hold of the drill itself, she hefted the tool in her hands and tested its weight. “I’m qualified to operate this thing, Kellerman, but that doesn’t mean I’m an expert in drilling. How do you think we should proceed?”
Nodding, Kellerman indicated the rock wall that formed the recently created barrier in the tunnel before them. “No problem, Lieutenant. I’ll make the first cut on my side, and then you just mirror what I do. Just watch out that we don’t cross our beams.” He smiled knowingly. “That would be bad.”
Cho
osing a point on the upper part of the rock barrier, Kellerman took aim with his own drill and pressed the firing stud. The tunnel was soon filled with a high-pitched whine as the laser drill ramped up to its full power. Rock immediately began to disintegrate under the beam’s power as the ensign carved into the wall.
Taking her cue from Kellerman, J’lenn activated her own drill and began to cut a similar path through the rock on her own side of the tunnel. It only took a few seconds for the pair of engineers to fall into a rhythm, working in tandem as they began to push their way forward. Even though the insulated material of her protective suit blocked most of the noise, it was still loud enough that she had to strain to hear the voices coming across the communicator channel.
“Aye, that’s the ticket, lass,” Scott’s voice sounded near her ear. “Yer makin’ some headway already.”
“This is great,” J’lenn said to no one in particular as she watched the effect of the drills on the tunnel wall. “I’ll admit to being a bit more optimistic about this now that we’ve started.”
“That’s fair to say, Lieutenant,” al-Khaled’s voice said over the communicator, “but we may not have as much time as we thought. The reactor’s temperature is continuing to rise. You’re going to have to speed things up a bit. No points for neatness.”
J’lenn grimaced as she continued to work. “I don’t suppose you have any good news for us?”
“Actually, we do,” Scott’s voice replied. “Anderson and O’Halloran must have connected the right two wires, because the life-support system is operatin’ normally again. No more tri-ox compound for you, I’m afraid.”
“Excellent,” J’lenn replied, never taking her eyes from where her drill’s beam continued to cut into the rock wall. “And the showers? I’m sweating enough to make a Tellarite jealous.”
Scott chuckled at that. “Let’s walk before we run, lass. What’s your status?”
