Chapter 17
THE FIRST WEEK PAST by totally uneventfully; in fact, it was downright boring. Other than his duty shifts, Aurelius wasn’t prepared for just how slow life on a starship could be. What was worse, without the rising and the setting of the sun, it felt like one long, unrelenting night.
Aurelius kept telling himself this was the way it was supposed to be at the bottom of the barrel. He was the lowest rank on the ship. He had to keep telling himself he wouldn’t always be the guy fixing the chicken soup machines. By the end of the trip, he hoped he’d have his hands elbow deep in the Star Drive. The chief engineer wasn’t kidding about not letting him touch anything fancy. So far, Aurelius had got all the low man repair gigs. Everything from changing the lightbulbs in sick bay to fixing the alarms on the baked potato machines. You know, the more important aspects of starship maintenance. His responsibilities hadn’t brought him back to main engineering, even when the light bulbs needed changing. He had spent most of the time trying to stay out of trouble; it was easy. There was even less recreation on the Freedom’s Reach than there was work for someone of his rank.
The first bit of excitement on this trip was coming up. They were nearing the Epsilon Gate and would be passing through it soon.
Shipboard time was late afternoon. The morning shift had begun to clock off, making their way to their bunks. The evening crew had just awoken to their duties. Aurelius made his way down the corridor of Deck 6, Section C. He was in a hurry, walking with an upbeat tempo, which only made it harder to unwrap his soy-based protein bar. He hated them but didn’t have time for anything else. He had just gotten off duty, and the tool bag slung over his shoulder didn’t make things any easier. He had to fight with it to keep it from knocking the protein bar out of his hands as it swung with each hurried step. The wrapper made an unmistakable obnoxious crinkling noise, echoing down the corridors.
This is terrible, he thought, taking the first bite. It tasted like cardboard and bug spray. How it could pass for food was anyone’s guess.
His boots echoed with the wrapper as they smacked against the floor. The ship’s decks and corridors were like most others in the Service-Corp fleet. The paint was chipped, the air was stale, and the deck plates were covered in boot prints. Most of the ship was always three-quarters lit. If something was important, it got fixed, or, in most cases, was not allowed to break down in the first place. Like the chicken soup and baked potato machines, but if it broke, and they could make do without it, it stayed broken.
Aurelius was in a hurry to get to main engineering. His shift in there was getting ready to start and he was excited. There were no vending machines in the engineering sections of the ship which meant he might actually get some decent work.
The section wasn’t as chaotic as the last time Aurelius had seen it. There were only about half as many people and the room didn’t feel like it was going to wrench itself off the ship, but it was still a hive of activity.
Aurelius quickly spotted the rest of his work detail, Paul, Nyreen and Jerula were all standing in a cluster by one of the caffeine dispensers and talking, waiting for their shift to start.
Aurelius walked over to them, taking an offered cup and leaned up against the wall.
“So this your first time down here?” Paul asked.
“Nah, chief had all the new techs down here when we undocked from the Spire.” Aurelius said.
“You could have fooled me.” Jerula said.
“He does have that kid in a candy store look in his eyes.” Nyreen added helpfully.
“Can you blame me?” Aurelius said looking around him at the powerplants, the engines, and the huge spinning cylinder viewable through the rear viewports.
“This place is a candy store. I can’t wait to start taking things apart and putting them back together.”
“Hold on, there zippy.” Jerula said.
“Yeah. Today you’re going to be fetching coffee for people and holding my tools.” Paul said.
“I’ve had a bunk bed next to yours for a week. I know what you do with your tool and i’m not touching it.
“Well someone has to help him with it. He tends to let rust collect when it’s just him looking after things.” Nyreen added.
Aurelius was more than a little let down he was so close to it all, he could reach out and touch all the things he’d been dreaming about since he set foot on the ship.
“Relax Aurelius. It won’t be forever. We all start out at the bottom. We got to see what you don’t suck at before we trust you with anything serious.” Nyreen said seeing the look on his face.
“I’ve got to go calibrate one of the power regulators. Why don’t you come along. I won’t make you handle my tools, but I might let you see if you can figure out where the problem is.” Paul said, putting his cup down and gesturing for Aurelius to follow him.
The next three hours of their shift passed with Aurelius listening to Paul explain what he was doing while half buried in the guts of something Aurelius would have given an arm to be working on.
“See, sometimes you get buildup down here in the vent conduits. Mostly junk the filters can’t quite deal with and it causes the malfunction warnings. All you gotta do is get in there and blast the worst of it off the collectors. The whole thing takes about five minutes.” Paul said, his voice slightly echoey from the vent his head was stuck in.
“So it is a lot like the soup dispenser.” Aurelius said, trying not to let the boredom show in his voice.
“Well yeah, but you get to use a plasma torch.” Paul said somewhat weekly.
“The thing to remember is, you’ll mostly be doing stuff like this... Well until you become the Chief and can make other people do it for you. The big stuff matters too much to be tinkered with too often. Mostly it’s just the soft techs playing with numbers and flows. When something cool does need tinkering with, that’s usually a bad day for everyone, and any joy the stress doesn’t take out of it, the Chief will by looking over everything you do and shouting. It might be hard to accept, but learn to appreciate the crap jobs. They are basicly the best times you’re going to have.” Paul finished, pulling his head out of the vent and looking down at Aurelius.
“I guess so.” Aurelius said, not really believing it. The crap jobs may have been fine for Paul, but Aurelius doubted he could ever be content with lightbulbs, and air vents.
“So what’s next on our list?” Paul asked.
Aurelius didn’t have a chance to answer though, because it was that moment when the ship rocked, nearly throwing Aurelius from his feet.
“What the hell!” Paul shouted, steadying himself and looking around. Aurelius looked around too. Everywhere emergency lights were flashing, klaxon were blaring and people were scrambling, but that wasn’t what worried Aurelius. What caught his eye, and evidently the eyes of a few other members of the engineering staff was the big energy collector that took in power from the huge rotting cylinders and fed it back out to different areas on the ship. The collector was silent, a single red light flashing on it, and it’s access consoles running through some sort of emergency shutdown.
“What the hell was that!?” Chief Marcus barked as he burst from his office.
Aurelius shook his head as the Chief pushed passed him toward the main monitoring station.
“Attention crew. The Freedom’s Reach is in emergency mode. After stepping down from FTL for our final approach to the gate we were struck by a large piece of debris. We’re assessing damage reports now. Please log any damage or injuries in your area to your section chief. More in a moment.”
Chief Marcus pulled up a holographic diagram of the ship on his console. The image displayed the impact location and the damage left by the debris. To everyone’s amazement there was a large piece of another ship embedded in the port steering strut. The look of fear on the Chiefs face was palpable as he buried his mouth in his hand.
“Damage reports are starting to filter in.” A crewmen off to his right said as he pulled up a scrolling list off to one side of the diagram of the ship.
Out of the corner of his eye Aurelius watched Jerula and Nyreen enter the room. Jerula wasted no time approaching the command console and the Chief. His eyes darted back and forth as he assessed the list of compromised systems. Aurelius didn’t need to read the entire list to figure out the ship had automatically triggered the core’s stand by mode. This was to prevent the reactors from becoming unstable in an event like this.
“How did the bridge not see something that big?” The chief asked almost rhetorically.
“Didn’t the captain say we’re approaching the gate? If we’re within an AU or less the solar winds could be obstructing our view of anything.”
“But something that big? I mean piece of debris that big? It’s the size of a three story building.” Paul added.
Just then a chime came over the Chiefs dog tags. He was getting an incoming call from the bridge, “Chief, This is Maher. What’s your assessment of the situation?”
“Not good.” the Chief said, “Very not good. We’ve got all sorts of scrapes and bruises from minor debris but we’ve got a giant piece of another ship caught up under our skirt.”
“I see that.” governor Maher said, “Can we safely pass through the gate?”
“No way. Our maneuvering options have been cut in half. The tidal forces of of one of the transmission vortexes would toss us around to much. I’m not even sure we could resist the gravitational field of the start right now. We’ve gotta get that thing cut loose from the hull before we can assess the damage to the maneuvering engines.”
“Can we launch a utility craft?” The governor asked.
“Maybe to cut away the bulk of the object but i’d recommend an EVA to get it free of the hull. We’re going to need a scalpel to remove it, not a butcher knife.”
“The Captain says it’s too dangerous to send out a standard EVA team.” Governor Maher continued, “Archer’s Agony Station tells us they’ve been cleaning up a debris cloud in our transit trajectory for the last few weeks. Anyone we send out there is going to be in a shooting gallery.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Chief Marcus said, “We’ve got three prototype slush suits on board that should handle things just fine, problem is this is a three man job, and we’ve only got two people on staff rated to use them.”
“I don’t care what you have to do to get that piece of debris out from under our skirt I just need it done. Weather that means sticking an untrained body in the suit, or you doing it yourself. Get us moving, chief ”
“Aye-aye, sir. Marcus out.”
The chief took a moment after his tags went silent. Aurelius watched him survey engineering, but whatever he was looking for he clearly didn’t find it. What seemed like an eternity later but was probably less than a minute he called for Paul and Nyrene to come join him. The three spoke together for a few moments, Nyrene and the chief clearly disagreeing about something. Aurelius couldn’t hear the whole conversation, but he did catch the words, “Jenkins was the only other one rated for a slut suit” and “Its dangerous... qualified.”
Not quite sure what possessed him to do it Aurelius strode over to where the three were talking, “Sorry to interupt, but it sounds like this Jenkins guy was the only other person qualified to do this thing and people keep reminding me I am replacing him. So if you need a third body for the suit I’m in.” Aurelius said, meeting the chief’s eyes with his own.
“No. No way am I putting you in a slush suit. If I wanted to kill you there are more fun and less expensive ways to do it.”
“He has a point chief.” Paul said, interjecting himself into the conversation for the first time.
“I don’t care if he’s replacing the Captain. These are my suits, and this is my department and I don’t really feel like writing a letter to anyone’s family this afternoon.”
“Chief, Paul and I can look after him, we’re both rated for the suits and we’ll have Jerula running support if anything really goes wrong.” Nyrene said.
“Did someone say my name? Please tell me you’re not volunteering me for an EVA.” Jerula said stepping up beside them.
“Nah, you get to stay here.” Nyreen said.
“Good.”
“You’re going to help us babysit dead man’s boots here while he does it.” she finished.
“Why does that not seem much better?” Jerula said.
“Because it’s not. At least if I was cramming Jerula into a suit I’d know for a fact that the body in it had a brain.” The chief said.
“Is that really fair to say…” Paul started before turning to Aurelius, “Aurelius? I mean he’s not been here long, but he picks things up quickly.” He finished.
“I have a brain, Sir. Bought it just before I came on board, guy who had it before used to keep it in a jar, but it seems to be working well enough.” Aurelius said.
“See there you go, the kid will be just fine.” Nyreen said.
“I don’t like it.” The chief said.
“Got another hard-tech in mind, sir?” Aurelius asked, almost sarcastically.