“Helena! Wait! It’s heating up too fast! You have to give it time to cool.”
She ignored the increased voice of panic behind her and swung the railgun again. The smaller debris that she had shot was blasted away into smaller fragments that no longer posed a threat to their safety. Now all she had to do was hit the rest of them before they hit the ship or before the railgun overheated.
Eric moved across the panel and started to redirect as much coolant as he could. At the moment he noticed that coolant pumps were already pushed to their limit, but it wasn’t enough. The coolant leaks all over the ship were making the pumps ineffective.
Helena fired off several more shots. More meteor fragments were destroyed and pulverized to dust, but she had so many more to go. They were coming closer. But that wasn’t the only issue. She could feel the railgun controls start to heat up more and more.
“Helena!” Eric shouted. “The gauges are all in the red! It’s heating up too fast! Remember Vincent’s warning?! It will overheat and explode! You need to get out of there!”
“I only have a few more!”
She was able to count three more. All she had to do was squeeze of a few more rounds. Projectiles flew from her barrels one more time and again she was able to blast away the incoming rock into pieces of harmless debris.
But it was too late. The electronics and controls blew up in Helena’s face. Pieces of hot, scalding metal exploded everywhere and impaled themselves into her body. Hot steam seared her form. Pieces of metal that had turned to hot liquid poured onto her skin.
Helena screamed in excruciating pain. Her body was impaled, burned and scalded. Her skin blistered and boiled. She screamed again hoping that death would come soon.
The back control panel burst with the surge of electrical power. Electricity jumped across his board and fried circuits. Glass gauges burst open sending a shower of shards in all directions.
Eric had seen the buildup of overloading power and had jumped clear of the panel. He could hear the circuits frying. He could hear the controls being overloaded. He could hear Helena screaming in pain.
Eric’s heart went out to her. He was sure that she was already dead and didn’t know it yet. He had heard about such things from those who had gone on combat missions during his training. Individuals would have pieces of their bodies blown off and continued to move and talk without realizing that were already dead, it was just that their minds hadn’t accepted it yet or their adrenaline hadn’t stopped yet. However, if Helena wasn’t dead, then she was going to be soon. There was no way that he could get her medical help fast enough.
However, Helena’s well being was immediately forgotten about and Eric’s priorities shifted. One of the meteor fragments hit the haul of the ship with incredible force. The metal frame was torn asunder and ripped like it was paper.
Almost on instinct, Eric bolted for the open door to this room. He was trying to reach the portal and get it closed before the environment of space started to affect this room.
It was too late. Just as Eric reached for the door, the hull had ripped open and the vacuum of space pulled at his body. His hands reached out and caught the door. He hung on for dear life as his feet started to rise off of the floor and started to be pulled toward the impact spot.
The suction not only pulled on Eric’s body, but it was also pulling the oxygen out of the room, out of the hall, and out of the rest of the ship. It was starting to become difficult for him to breath.
The sound was deafening. As the air was being pulled past him, Eric’s ears could only hear the sound that was like that of a hurricane. The wind and air pressure was beyond loud and he was sure that he couldn’t even hear himself think.
And it was more than all of this. The vacuum was also pulling out the pressure of the atmosphere as well. The water in Eric’s body was starting to boil. It was an odd sensation. He wasn’t hot and yet he could feel the water in his system start to turn to vapor.
“Remember that, not only isn’t there isn’t any air in space, but there isn’t any air pressure either.”
The words of warning started to come back to him. The scientists and medical doctors had brought them all into a conference room to talk about the hazards of space. Although it was relatively boring, there were some bits of information that had shattered his ignorance of space. Between bouts of trying not to fall asleep, Eric had learned that water comes to a boil at a lower temperature when there was less air pressure. And, since there wasn’t any air pressure in space, water would boil at body temperature. This meant that the water in his system was turning to a gas.
Eric could feel the gas start to build in his system. His body started to bloat. His form started to swell. It was only a matter of time before his body was no longer able to function.
Eric pulled with all of his strength. He knew that one slip, one moment of weakness, and he would allow the vacuum to pull him through the gaping hole in ship and send him into the dark, freezing cold, void of space. Death would almost be instantaneous. The rest of the ship would follow if he didn’t at least close the door.
His body moved, inch by inch, slowly into the hall of the ship. If he could just pull his body all the way in, then he could close the door and seal off this room. It was the only way to save his life and the lives of those still aboard.
As Eric pulled his body through the doorway, another piece of meteor debris struck and rocked the whole ship. The frame shook hard and loosened his grip. His body slipped and he fell back into the room.
Eric quickly reached out and caught hold of the door again. The sudden impact pulled at his arm. He brought his second arm around and pulled again. Slowly, inch by inch, against the strain of the vacuum and coldness of space Eric made his way back into the hall of the ship.
One last look back, out of respect toward Helena, told him that whatever pain she had been in was now over. Her dead body had been caught on some of the broken pieces of the ship’s hull and was dangling in the vacuum of space.
‘I’m … sorry.’
He thought that there was something else that he could do, something else that he could say as he closed the door and sealed it behind him.
Chapter: 14
The first engine room that Denise had entered off of the main hallway was as equally a disaster area as was the computer mainframe room and that wasn’t just because of the mess. It had looked like some college dorm room with dirty clothing, dirty dishes and came complete with its own risqué calendar pinup-poster. On top of that, dirty oil rags and loose tools were tossed about with abandon and she had to carefully watch her footing as she made her way along.
Denise gave a scoff of disgust. It wasn’t just the inability of the crew to clean up after themselves, but it was how this crew viewed women. She was glad that she didn’t have to be on this vessel that much longer and was looking forward to getting off of it as soon as she could. This only spurred her on to a more hurried pace to fix the engine room and the singularity containment field.
The first part of the engine room was more of a control room and monitor station of the particular engine that was assigned here. There was a chair that sat up next to a station with several monitors, control dials, levers, and instrument display panels. Most of the display panels showed various aspects of the engine in the red zone. Lights were flashing with warning displays. Others showed that power was off in certain areas where it should be on.
On the other side of the room was the door that led to the engine itself. This would be one of six main engines. There were several smaller engines that were more difficult to get to. Those would be the maneuvering thrusters and would be less of a concern. There would also be the one singularity drive, the area that she was heading toward, but she had wanted to stick her head in this room to get a sense of just how bad things had become.
The six main engines were along the bottom of the Harbinger with three on the starboard side and three on the port side. Each engine could run independently from ea
ch other and could be shut down for repairs while the others were running. Technically, the ship could run on just one engine, although it wouldn’t be very powerful and it would take quite a bit of maneuvering to make sure that the ship wasn’t going around in circles. However, if she could just fix one of them then they would be able to limp along until she fixed another and then another.
However, like the maneuvering thrusters, these would have to wait. Her first priority was to fix the singularity drive containment field. This was located in the very aft of the ship and she had to bypass these three engine rooms along this side of the ship to get to it. Time was of the essence before the warp core completely collapsed and they were sucked into the black hole that was powering their ship. With this in mind, Denise continued down the hall with Vincent in tow.
The sound of her footsteps echoed off of the empty metal corridor. To her, it seemed like the sound of something dead, something haunting. What she was looking forward to hearing was the rumbling of the engines and the vibrations that would course through the hull and tickle her feet. Each engine would have a unique sound and vibration and each ship would have almost a song, a chorus of sounds that would tell her how everything ran. She could tell if something was slightly off or what might be wrong just by the sound or the feel of the vibration that it would make.
They passed the next two doors on their right hand side that would lead to the last two engine rooms on this side of the ship and they continued on until they reached the first portal on the left. After a few quick turns of the locking wheel, Denise opened the door to the singularity engine room. It was worse than she thought.
The room beyond was similar in design to the other engine rooms. There was a single chair up against a working desk. Here, there were instrumental displays, dials, buttons, and levers that not only controlled the engine that was powered directly from the singularity, but also controlled the containment field.
Above the controls of the computer, taking up much of the aft wall, was the thick window that looked out into the singularity itself. The window would have a blast shield that could be dropped in case the room beyond, the room that contained the singularity, had to be jettisoned. Denise hoped it wouldn’t come to that. It would be a long trip to anywhere without the ability to warp space.
With the blast shield up, she was able to see the singularity in the other room. The red illuminating lights in the four corners did little to light up the room and where their lighting ended, the singularity began. The singularity itself was, essentially, nothing more than a very black spot in the middle of the large room. It looked no bigger than a baseball floating in the center of the chamber. However, this really wasn’t the singularity itself; this was the object’s event horizon where not even light could escape the singularity’s gravitational pull. The singularity itself was much smaller and was somewhere inside that black veil. But Denise knew better than to let the size of the object fool her. That thing could crush this entire ship and everything on it in a matter of a few moments. She couldn’t help but remember the quote that history had recorded being stated during the first atomic bomb testing:
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Denise gave one last look at the thing of beauty and destruction, of the most powerful force in the entire known universe before setting her mind to what she needed to do.
“Alright,” she said more to herself than to Vincent. “Let’s get started.”
Chapter: 15
If Denise remembered the layout of the ship, then the engine itself would be beneath this area, through the hatch in the middle of this room. It wasn’t difficult to find. The latch had been counter sunk and a quick yank brought it up. A sudden twist and the hatch hissed with the release of its air tight seal.
Denise dropped into the room below her. This was more of a cramped space than an actual room. If everything was running correctly, the engine could just be run from the control room above. However, if anything needed to be fixed then this small room with its access points was all that was needed. However, Denise realized the flaw in this. The small, cramped area had hardly any room at all and all the access panels had to be removed if she wanted to go deeper into the engine.
From what she could tell without removing the access panels was that there was quite a bit of electrical short circuits and blown fuses. She stuck her head out of the hatch like some marmot and turned toward Vincent.
“There should be a supply cabinet nearby with spare parts. I need four one hundred amp fuses and hand me my tool kit before you go.”
Again, Vincent wasn’t used to women who were confident with what they were doing or knowledgeable in what she was doing. However, he was sure that he was beginning to enjoy being around Denise, even if she was a little pushy. He gave a nod, handed her the tool kit, and went off in search of the fuses.
Denise ducked back into the hole and opened her tool box. The first thing she did was take out her ohmmeter. A quick turn of the dial and a couple of applications told her where her next problem was. She then gave a swift look about and found the panel she needed. Her electric screw driver released the panel from the main hull before she started in on a second one. By the time Vincent came back, she had two other panels removed.
“Here’s your…”
Denise had popped out of her hole, snatched the fuses from Vincent’s hand and had returned to her work before Vincent could finish his sentence. He stood there slightly dumbfounded and didn’t know what to say. He had thought about sending down the comment of “You’re welcome” in a sarcastic tone when his attention was redirected to the control panel.
Lights lit up across the display panels and while this seemed to be a good sign, the signals didn’t look good. There were flashing lights, displays that were in the red, and others that didn’t show any power at all.
“We’ve got…”
“You should have power,” Denise interrupted.
Vincent shook his head. He wished she would stop doing that.
A series of bangs and clanks echoed from below him. He could hear Denise talking about one part of the engine or another and how one part was damaged or another part was broken. The names of the parts of the engine went over Vincent’s head. He really had no idea what she was talking about. She could just as well be talking in some foreign language or even making up fictional parts of the ship or the engine, but she had said it was such authority that it sounded like she knew what she was doing, and for the sake of them all he hoped that she did.
Suddenly the lights in the control room flickered once, threatened to wink out all together and then flickered a second time. Then what sounded like a motor coming to life with power, the sound of the singularity engine roared through the control room. Vincent could feel the vibrations of the engine running through the ship and through his body. He had never been this close to the engine room; he had never had to, and had never experienced this feeling before. Now he could see why Denise might enjoy it, it felt like strength and power and life.
On top of the engine being turned on, all of the monitor lights moved into their normal slots. Most of the gauges returned to their green zones while a few only dropped to yellow. Power lights came on, flickered a few times and then stayed on. Other lights seemed to blink, yet not in any threatening fashion, or at least to Vincent’s knowledge.
Denise hopped out of her hole and looked about the control panel. She gave a few twists of a couple of the dials, flicked a couple of switches, pushed a few buttons and tossed a lever or two before giving an approving nod. A few of the gauges dropped out of their yellow zone.
“I had to bypass some of the more minor functions. I wouldn’t recommend this for any length of time, but it will do, at least for now.”
“So, we have warp drive now?”
Denise shook her head. “No, we have singularity containment. We can’t make the jump to light speed this close to the system’s sun or its planets, the gravitational field of the system wil
l mess with the gravitational field of the singularity and will tear this ship apart. We have to be in deeper space to go into warp drive. I’ve only stabilized the singularity. Now, I have to work on at least one engine, two if possible, to get us out of this system so we can get into hyper drive. However, I still need to fix navigations so we don’t end up bouncing through some asteroid belt. That would end our trip real quick.”
“So, which engine do you want to work on next?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, any one will do, but I would like to get two going if I can. That would stabilize our trajectory and give us a backup in case one fails again. Once I get us underway, I’ll start in on the others. The more engines we have online, the faster we can go and the sooner we can get some real repairs.”
It didn’t take long to head back down the hall that connected to the three engine rooms on this side of the ship. The first two engine rooms looked like they needed more repair work than the initial one she had looked at. This followed the pattern of an overload from the singularity drive following the paths of the engines. Those closest to the aft of the ship would be in worse condition. If the other side of the ship followed suit then she already knew which engine she would work on next.
Harbinger Page 9
