Oh?
Well fine then!
Have sum more why don't ya!
I have been slow in posting considering that this HAS been done for months...
CH. 6
The rising cacophony of tiny mineralogical impacts against the hull continued to rise to an ear splitting intensity. Engineering Spec McCoy knelt near to Commander Davenport and held an oscolitic spanner for him to further open the manifold’s injection point as the officer fired his last remaining phaser.
At the helm, Bronstien held hands clenched to his aching ears and watched as the flurry of miniature meteors ate away at the forward viewport. The transparent screen was now very much brown from all the material it had lost. The console display showed it retained less than twenty percent of its strength and would soon breach.
Their tiny shuttle was already in motion, coaxed up to a meager two thousand meters per second via the remaining RCS thrusters. But this would not likely carry them free of this three million-kilometer expanse of meteoric activity before they ran out of time. Johnathan looked back his CO’s direction.
“Any luck on that miracle, yet?”
“Almost done!” Called back McCoy. Davenport did not budge from where he was working.
“Will we be able to fire up the nav deflector? ‘Cause if not, we’re dead anyway!”
McCoy dropped the spanner she held and ran a step to the engineering display. She peered into its indicators and called up a new interface on the blue screen. “Navigational deflector is operable…sorta… It’ll last for a little bit.”
“You’re not helping my confidence here!”
Ron cut the phaser beam from his pistol and tossed the drained weapon to the deck. “Done!” He picked up the manifold cover plate and slammed it into place and turned the hand-crank. “Activate converters!”
Smith was swift to respond, hands dropping from his own ears and plying across the ops panel.
“Engines online!”
Lieutenant Bronstien slapped a waiting trio of yellow keys, firing the impulse drive and the deflector controls together. The beleaguered shuttle jumped ahead, suddenly propelled to a fraction of the speed of light. John and Noah were slammed hard into their acceleration seats as the inertial dampners were overcome. McCoy was violently thrown into her waiting chair in the after compartment. Davenport was bodily thrown to the aft bulkhead and struck with a loud bang.
The thump and thud of a few stray meteor projectiles ended after a few moments. Then silence reined about that small craft. Johnathan killed the forward thrust after a time, turning and declaring to the crew, “We’re clear of the swarm, guys. I’m killing thrust to keep what power we have left.”
Ron sagged painfully at the aft hatch.
“I’m billing you for my chiropractor, Mister Bronstien.”
“That’s fine. Just as long as we make it somewhere that has one.”
Smith turned from his own seat to look upon their technical wizards. “How much power did we burn?”
McCoy stood (Ron felt like lying there a bit longer…) and addressed her engineering screen again. “We’re down to eighteen Cochrans now. Enough to get our signal off…”
Davenport finished from there, now rising from the cold deck. Main life support had been off long enough now that his breath could be seen as he spoke. “But not enough to live very long if we make it a very powerful signal. Mister Smith, prepare a powered down signal beacon for Endeavour to trace. No more than moderate range expectancy, ten milliCochrans per minute.”
Just enough to find us if they get close, Ron thought to himself. This would give them a few days worth of life support. It also depended on his faith that Endeavour was about to roar in here at warp speed pretty soon. If she didn’t, and he had been wrong about his friend… Ron steeled himself to the fear creeping up his throat and forced himself to sit down on the starboard side bunk. He’d get some rest after all those hours of bending and draining those infernal phasers.
Something moving outside the main port caught his eye. Smith was facing away from it, eyeing McCoy’s form as she checked over the ship’s status. Johnathan had seen it too, and looked back in cold hard fear as Ron recognized what it was coming in at them. There was no mistaking the ramifications the huge mountain speeding toward them represented. As the ops officer stared at the behemoth screaming in at them, he reflected how hard it would be for things to get worse…
The bridge doors parted before Captain Ford as he strode swiftly down into the command section with renewed vigor. He halted by the conn and glanced left to engineering. Tolin herself was seated there, before a shining new console that had been swiftly made ready within the last day and a half. The lieutenant commander met his gaze and held it evenly. He was glad not to see resentment there. He wasn’t so sure he’d have been as forgiving.
“Warp drive?”
“Ready, Captain.”
Ford glanced back to Nechayev manning weapons.
“Shields?”
“Ready at full power forward.” The man’s Slavic accent returned.
Ford gave then all a quick glance and a confirming nod.
“Bring the port nacelle online.”
“Charging subspace coils.” Responded Xia, who spun to face the station and get to work. “Plasma concentration coming to one hundred percent and holding.” The deck thrummed with its power, but felt oddly off with one engine pod shut down.
Ford felt suddenly lop-sided.
“Tactical, signal Red Alert and sound the collision alarm.”
The lighting dimmed as both alarms called off alternately. Bathed in flashing crimson tracers, Chevy approached the helmsman and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Mister Millunzi, man the conn.”
The thirty-something CPO looked back at him with some confusion. The odd order only served to confuse him. Surely he’d been ordered here because of his years in the service. He was no primary helmsman, but he scored better than the remainder of the crew, from XO on down.
“I relieve you, Petty Officer. I have the helm.”
CPO Millunzi grinned back as realization flooded into him. There was one more man aboard with more helm time than he; the captain, who served as Admiral Sharp’s primary navigator for twenty years.
The petty officer slid smoothly from his post and offered Ford the blue chair. Both exchanged grins as the skipper sat down and drew the console close to him. “I stand relieved, sir.” The NCO said in military fashion.
“Enjoy my seat, Chief.” Ford shot back without looking. Still grinning, Millunzi figured he’d indulge in just that.
Ford scanned the face of the helm visually for a moment. This was nothing like the control face he’d operated for so long aboard the Constitution-Class starship, years prior. But he was familiar with it. He could do this. He set his hands at key locations to either side of the board, just as a typist might and readied himself mentally for this challenge. Almost on their own, his hands began to work.
“Engaging engine at warp factor one.” The chime coming from the panel was like a musical note beginning a very long concerto.
The rumble of the drive core began to build in the air as Endeavour started to slowly accelerate ahead. The take-off felt so sluggish. Ford felt a pang of remorse for his injured starship. This ship was a leading member of his family. Her pain, like Mister Thomas’s down in sickbay, was his own.
The flash of subspace radiation in the viewer’s center denoted their piercing the warp threshold.
“Warp one achieved, Captain.” Came Tolin’s alto voice from engineering. Ford did not respond, eyeing the main plot monitor. Their course, thus far, was stable.
“She’d holdin’ steady.” He called out. His hand raised to the velocity controls. “Increasing to factor two.”
Going from the speed of light to ten times that velocity had once been one of the most daring and hazardous ventures in mankind’s history. It had taken better than fifty years to establish the necessary techniques to bring Earth vessels to a speed where interplanetary travel was a real option. Now they were doing something just as dangerous more than a hundred years later.
The reactor core ramped up in output. The deck began to vibrate uncomfortably as the noise level increased. Several of the crew grabbed up a secure hold on their console to brace against the unexpected.
Ford himself was bracing himself against the sides of the helm.
“Speed holding steady at warp two.”
There was so little space to any direction of Endeavour’s flight path that it was akin to flying down a tight, irregularly shaped tunnel. Chevis has once driven a jet-wheeler down a dirt road. This feeling was much the same. The rush of looking up at the gasses rushing past on the viewer was mesmerizing. The captain had to admit some small part of him was beginning to have fun with this. But, much like that past, ill-advised stunt on the jet-wheeler, this instance could have deadly consequences…and not only for just himself…
Tolin swung from her repeaters. Several red indicators were winking at them both.
“We are experiencing a radial field oscillation in the forward envelope. Subspace shear increasing!”
Her report was punctuated by a startling slam from the bow. Several tiny alarms were barking at engineering. Tolin’s hands flew about her station as she and two techs tried to iron out the warp field. The turbulence within the deck continued to grow in ferocity. Ford glanced back at his plot display.
“We’re sluing astarboard!” He growled. This was where it would begin to get hairy… “I’m attempting to restore our course!”
Chevy manipulated the helm to resist the ship’s inclination to careen right and ram through a sheer wall of plasma. The long stream of super hot, billowing blue gas roiled and twisted before them on the main screen as they zoomed perilously closer. At last, the energy string fell away as though some puppeteer had dragged away scenery from his production. Ford hissed a small sigh of relief.
“Forward field stress returning to normal,” Xia called off, “But the dorsal radials are showing severe degradation. If I can’t corr—“
Endeavour jumped beneath them all. Aft, Lieutenant Nechayev fell to the deck and rolled away from tactical as the huge Excelsior abruptly began to climb out of control. The roar of the engine core was such that one could hear nothing else. Alarms and proximity warnings were assuredly blaring; no one could hear them. A flat sheen of shimmering energy showed before them on the main viewer and grew to fearful proportions with frightening quickness. Ford’s eyes gaped open and his hands fell to the RCS controls. He could do only one thing before their impending impact.
The image on the screen turned on its bottom as Endeavour rolled over on her back and accelerated away from doom. The deck beneath them was all but bucking under their feet. Parts of damaged consoles were clattering to the floor along with several dislodged crewers. The captain glanced down at the proximity sensors. They’d gained eleven thousand kilometers on the wall of plasma. But only sixty thousand remained to the next. He responded by pulling the same maneuver again, though at a slower, more measured pace.
The helmsman he’d relieved slid out of the conn with a gasp as the mounting centrifugal forces mounted within the compartment. Ford locked his feet beneath his chair so as not to lose his battle against gravity and inertia. “Get me some attitude control!”
“Attempting to stabilize field components!” Tolin gasped in her accented tone. “Stabilization not possible!”
“Then set up a predictable rotation pattern! I don’t need much control, just get me within twenty degrees of center!”
“Aye!”
The groan and rumble of the engines began to rise and fall, and then to stretch out into a slower and slower pattern. Waves of turbulence rushed through the hull with each burst of noise. Ford looked up now and then to the fore screen. The ship was now indeed stabilizing into a straighter course, mainly yawing, port to starboard. There was very little pitch in their movement. This made Chevy all the more wary.
“Report!”
“Field stability is still below fifty percent, Captain.” The chief engineer replied. She did not spare her captain any further looks. Her eyes were glued to her monitor now. “I would not advise higher speeds.”
Chevy nodded even though she was not likely to see it. In his mind he mentally calculated an ETA to reach his shuttle crew’s general location. At ten times c, they would traverse the four light days of distance in just over nine hours. This was much better than five days of high impulse travel, which would eat up almost all their deuterium reserve by breaching the ‘full impulse’ mark. But it would require a very patient and alert man to watch over the helm in the mean time. He glanced down to the CPO he’d sent to the conn. Millunzi looked back at him with a nervous, but genuine smile from his new seat on the fore step.
“Chief, find a yeoman to get some coffee up here. Really strong, and lots of sugar!”
“Aye, sir.”
***
I hope that last scene was as fun to read as it was to write. Let me know something, y'all!
--thu guv!
Topic: Endeavour Story #3: Side Trip (Read 11958 times)