Chapter 8
It was no secret everyone aboard was anxious for the 17:00 jump to light. There was a very definite get-out-of-here and get-on-with-it sentiment throughout the ship. When 17:00 came and went with no change to our starlight, I was thankful I had Bridge access.
The Bridge occupies a hemispherical, forward section of the ship. It's similar to a small version of Mission Control. When things are going well, everyone remains seated at their assigned consoles. The Jump Director watches from the command balcony and calls out the necessary procedural steps over the net. When the doors to the Bridge opened, that was the scene unfolding in front of me. It is extremely prudent to always be careful of what you say on the Command Network. Everything is recorded and stored neatly away, and when you screw up they come and play it back to you. You wind up testifying against yourself at your own trial.
I waited for someone else to enter and followed them in to draw less attention, then quickly moved a few steps to the right to get out of the way. There are no observation windows on the Bridge. Instead, there are three two-story view screens mounted against the curving front bulkhead. On the right, a reduced image displayed the alien craft in its entirety. There was something wrong with the left-hand display. The image was flickering, interrupted by thin, white, horizontal lines. It was a full panel of stars. I guessed it to be our destination coordinates for the jump we didn’t seem to be making. The center screen had been set to display the current test data.
A few inches above my head was the low ceiling formed by the Command Officer's Control balcony and just to my right the guide rails for one of the circular elevators that provided access to it. I knew Captain Grey, Commander Tolson, and one of the Jump Directors were up there doing their best to unravel whatever was wrong. I looked out across the controlled hysteria for a place I could view a data display monitor. On the opposite side of the room, the ugly yellow three-bay Range-Safety console stuck out above the Engineering Stations. Chief Safety Officer Ray Tolson was standing alongside it. Only one of the three seats at the position was taken. I weaved my way as inconspicuously as possible through the busy traffic and stood beside him. He nodded a brief greeting and turned his attention back to the monitors. At the back of the room, on the raised Command Platform, Grey, Tolson and Jump Director Terry Osterly were huddled together in a discussion. Tolson looked up for a moment and caught my eye, his only acknowledgment I had arrived.
I scanned the range safety monitors. There was not much to see. The printouts on the screens had stopped during an Initiation Subsystems Test of the main engines. The displays read ‘Auto Termination, step 10056789-1003, 400 No Gos, 000 SE-Data No Gos’.
Grey's voice broke in over the net speakers, barely audible over the room noise. "Cap to MECO, did we, or did we not pass this initiation test only thirty minutes ago?"
"MECO, that's affirmative, Sir."
"And you're certain the test had the same checksum?"
"Sir, inspection has the header printout in their hand right now."
"So, from All-Go to four hundred No-Gos in thirty minutes with no changes?"
"That's the way we read it, Captain."
Grey moved out from behind the director’s console and came up to the protective waist-high barrier at the edge of the platform. He looked out over the Bridge and rested his hands on the railing. He pushed his headset microphone away from his face and spoke so loudly it wasn't needed. "Alright everyone, quiet please... I said quiet!"
The crowd noise stopped abruptly. Everyone stared up at him and waited.
"Alright, this is what we're going to do. We're going to secure the main engines and come back to them later. Then we're going to use maneuvering thrusters to back us at least a kilometer away from that piece of junk out there. We're going to bring her around to the jump heading and go to station keeping. We're going to do that right now! Does anyone not understand?"
Stunned silence. People began scooting back to their stations. Grey returned to his position behind the director’s console.
“Helm, please call up manual mode and input five seconds of the aft starboard thrusters. You will execute on my command.”
“Five seconds of aft starboard thrusters, Captain. Ready to engage.”
“Execute.”
We all watched the center display, expecting it to swing away from the alien ship. Nothing happened.
Captain’s Grey’s voice sounded more than annoyed. “MECO, we see error code ast03. What happened?”
MECO responded nervously. “That’s loss of handshake with the thruster assembly, Captain. We’ll have to run diagnostics to analyze it.”
We all heard the Captain’s long exhale over the com. “Alright then, people, we shall go the other way. Helm, input five seconds of one hundred percent to the aft port thruster. Execute on my command.”
“Five seconds of the aft port thrusters ready, Captain.”
“Execute.”
Once again, nothing happened. This time the Captain sounded genuinely frustrated. “MECO, we see error code apt03. Do you concur?”
“Yes, Captain. It’s the same failure.”
Grey paused a moment to collect himself. “All jump personnel, please stand down and secure the Bridge while we evaluate these error codes.”
A nervous tone filled the Bridge as people attended to their shutdown duties. Captain Grey and his staff quietly exited. There would be no jumping this evening.
I was unexpectedly called to the Bridge briefing room about an hour later. Grey and Tolson were the only ones there. They had been debating for some time. I was entering in the middle of it.
“It was bad enough with the nav computer fiasco, and now that, for Christ’s sake. We'll manufacture bumpers and attach them to the scouts if we have to. You'd better get them running simulations on it right now because if we can't get thruster control back it'll be all we've got. We'll be shootin' from the hip, goddamn it."
"Jean, we may not even have that."
"What are you talking about?"
“Those scout ships aren’t tugs. They’re light-weights, thin-skinned. I’m not sure there is structural integrity enough to attach bumpers much less push a large mass object. And, you know better than I, Electra wasn’t designed to be pushed. Tugs would use tractor beams to distribute the stress evenly. We’ll have to either find some structure in the right place or reinforce somehow. It’ll take hours. We'd have to depressurize the high bay and then put men in spacesuits out there to bring out the reinforcement gear and guide the scouts in. The pilots would have to sit in their pressurized cockpits the whole time the EVA guys were setting up."
"Look Carl, you get the Engineering teams together and tell them they get one more shot at making their systems work. Then we try something else. We're not going to keep bringing the teams up to the line and then not snapping the ball. You work the Engineering end, I'll see if I can find out anything else useful from the Emissary. Meet me in my office at 21:00."
Grey shook his head as he exited through the door. Tolson turned to me with a touch of worry in his eye, something not often seen.
"Adrian, There is another possibility the Captain and I have been discussing. It's why you're here."
"I am dying to help, Commander."
Tolson exhaled deeply and rubbed one hand across his mouth. He straightened up and tugged at the bottom of his uniform jacket to clear the wrinkles. "How would you feel about taking another look inside that ship out there?"
"Really?"
“It’s not a done deal, but it needs to be in our back pocket. The Doctor wants some of that organic material pretty badly, but that wouldn’t be the primary mission.”
“I can’t wait to hear what that would be.”
“It would be their power systems. We would want them all shutdown. It would be a search and secure mission. If we must remain here longer than planned, we’d like to know that ship is inert; completely dead.”
“I
understand that part.”
“Think about whom you’d like to have along on that kind of EVA and what you’d want to bring with you, if you know what I mean. Work it all out yourself quietly, and if this gets stepped up to the next level I’ll give you plenty of warning.”
“I have one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Who’s the Emissary?”
“That’s a need-to-know basis. You don’t need to know.”