The End of Winter -- Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Damage Assessment

 

July 23^rd, 2808

 

Curt called the crew meeting for 0900. “Well,” he remarked, “for the first time, we have a full crew…up and running! We’ll make this fast. 20MW isn’t going to cut it. Chimera needs much more than that for her light speed operation. And, even though all of us are alive, most are sick or weak. Let’s do an inventory.

“With the exception of a few…accidental injuries… (Misha was busily licking the Commander’s  wounds), I’m in good shape. Misha is weak but basically OK. Amazona, what’s you’re power level? Any damage?”

“No unrepaired damage, sir. Power is at about 5%.”

“Five percent? But you’ve been charging for three days!”

“High capacity, low charge rate…it takes a while. I should mention, sir, that my 5% is more than the rest of the crew combined, not counting Chimera. Wouldn’t want to be greedy…”

“Good point. Speaking of…Chimera? Your status?”

“Fully functional, sir! At this point, I am strictly energy limited.”

“What’s your maximum flow rate?”

“About 0.5 terawatt, sir.”

“What?”

“I can process about half a terawatt on a continuous basis. At 90% of the speed of light, you won’t even see me most of the time. Nobody really knows how this works.”

A pause. “More on that later. Cygnus?”

“Just give me something to fly, sir.”

Curt smiled, “Well, we may just see if we can do that! Behemoth? I trust you are charging happily?”

“Oh, very happily, sir!”

“Well, we may need to change that. Our most urgent need is for more power for Chimera. I’m also not happy with just one engine running. We are going to devote 50% of total power output to Chimera for a while. I need a full and complete assessment of both of the other two engines on the TriStar. How long will that take?”

“Oh, five or ten, give or take,” Chimera said.

“Five hours seems like a long time, Doc…”

Amazona knelt down to the Commander and whispered “Seconds, sir, not hours. She works on a different timescale than we do.”

 “Ahh…”

“Report ready at your convenience, sir,” Chimera chimed in before Amazona could even fully stand up.

“Before we go any further,” Curt said, “I need to get something cleared up. I had an exceptional view of the battle. Better than I might have liked, actually. First, the gunnery on this ship. Is that equipment from another dimension, or what? I’ve never seen laser cannon move so fast! And, while I obviously couldn’t watch it all, I didn’t see a single miss. How did you do that?”

Embarrassed, Cygnus said, “Behemoth and I have been working together for a long time, sir. We are…exceptionally well tuned…almost one mind when it comes to battle.”

“What were the results?”

“Well, given the shield issue, I assumed all the targets were my problem. 197 impacted the ship. We successfully splashed the other 2303.”

“How many were left?”

“Left, sir?”

“At the end of the battle.”

“Uh…none, Commander. I didn’t begin atmospheric entry until all targets were destroyed. They were faster than you were. I couldn’t leave any strays running around.”

The Commander was stunned into silence. “Cygnus, Behemoth, you saved me and my entire squadron. I will never forget this.”

“With respect, sir,” Cygnus said. “It seems to me you’ve more than returned the favor by now.”

After an awkward silence, Curt said, “OK then, now to this shield business. Spacecraft shield technology is older than dirt. Why don’t we have one that works?”

“Design flaw, sir,” Behemoth said.

“Explain.”

“About a year ago, we had a very tough battle with pirates, and lost the #3 engine.”

“What happened?”

“A small anti-matter tipped missile got past our old shields, and made it into the #3 engine.”

“Ouch. That had to hurt!”

“It was worse than that, sir. The power circuits were insufficiently isolated, resulting in multiple cascading failures. The shield circuits were completely fried, and we’ve been operating without them--and, obviously, without a #3 engine--since.”

“No shields for a year?”

“Not our first choice, of course, but as you noticed, Cygnus is pretty good….”

Something wasn’t right, and it niggled at Curt’s mind. Isolating circuits…multiple cascading failures…Earth Space Force had solved that problem 500 years ago…

“Behemoth!”

“Sir!”

“How old are you?”

It suddenly grew very quiet. “Well, sir, different systems are different ages, and there have been many patches…”

“Don’t bullshit me, crewman. Roughly, how old?”

“About 12,000 years old, sir.”

“Twelve…thousand…YEARS?”

“Yes sir, give or take some variation for different components.”

A very long pause followed. Not a soul was going to speak until the Commander did.

“Hmm, well, OK. Looks like I can’t shoot the silly son-of-a-bitch that made that design mistake. But, let’s put that on the list of things to fix, shall we?”

“Yes sir!” Behemoth said. Behemoth didn’t breathe, of course, but you could almost imagine he’d been holding it.

“Behemoth. I trust you have turned on your internal sensors again?”

“Yes sir. The ones that work anyhow. To quote an eloquent engineer I recently met: ‘You are the most messed up friggin’ machine I’ve ever seen in my life’.”

Curt tried to hide his smile. “OK. What’s the hardest problem for getting this crewman back in to space?”

“Sir, no disrespect intended, but it’s just not possible. I am now a derelict.”

“The hell you say!“ Chimera burst out. “We don’t abandon our people! I can absolutely get you flying again. It’s just a question of power!”

“Unfortunately, that’s exactly right,” Curt said. “What’s the status on those TriStar engines?”

Chimera said with a smirky grin, “Oh, well, the #2 is now running fine, and I tweaked the #3, so it’s in good shape too. We’ve now got 100MW continuous power, with 400MW available for short periods. I’ve got some connection parts problems with the #1, though. I can fix it, but it will take a little time.”

Curt did a double take. He didn’t believe what he had just heard. “You mean the #2 engine is fixed? It’s RUNNING?” He had just expected a diagnosis!

“Well, sure. I had to do something while you guys were jawboning in here.” Over the next month, Curt would come to know that smirky grin very well.

Misha, still around Curt’s neck, just said, “Get used to it…”

Well, hell, maybe this might work after all.

“OK,” Curt said, “but power is still the problem here. Chimera: assuming only what you have available, how long to fix that #1 TriStar engine?”

“Several hours, at least…maybe a day. It’s jammed up in there pretty good. Lots of connection damage…”

“What if you can take it out, fix it, and leave it out?”

“Leave it out? 60 minutes total, tops. Piece of cake.”

“Then get it running, and hooked up to the power grid. How long to repair the TriStar so that it’s space worthy again? Without the #1 engine attached?”

“Hmmm…aerodynamics isn’t my specialty, sir. Too computational. I can do it, but it would take maybe a day for me to do the design work. Maybe two.”

“I’ll have full construction specs and blueprints available and printed within the hour,” Behemoth said. “After all, what good is all this computational capacity if I can’t use it?”

You could almost hear him smile.

“Cygnus, you wanted something to fly. Get ready to saddle up, son!”

“Yes, sir!” His smile was so broad it looked like his face would break.

“OK, next item. What’s the limiting factor getting this structure in the air?”

“Basically, we’re all busted up. “ Behemoth said “The notion of ‘structural integrity’ is a joke. Chimera has MedLab and the bridge in pretty good shape, but other than that, there isn’t one other chamber….not one, other than anti-matter containment and fuel…that will hold air.”

“So, what caused that?” Curt asked.

“Rocks. Big ones. We hit hard. Oh, and 200 impacts and explosions from suicide renegade hits didn’t help either. We have a bunch of minor holes and such, but we have at least five huge structural failures to fix.”

“Ouch. OK. Engine power. We all know #3 is charred rubble. #2 was running at impact, but Cygnus was apparently doing some weird things to it to keep it that way. #1 looks bad, but might still be usable.”

“Sir,” Behemoth said, “even if #2 was factory new, we’d still need to start it. These puppies take a gigawatt just to get fired up. Where are we going to get that kind of power?”

“Actually, I have an idea on that, but we’ll deal with that later.  Chimera!”

“Sir!”

“I know we’re not talking about the bottle rockets we use in the TriStar. How long for an estimate of the condition of engines #2 and #1 on Behemoth?”

“#2 doesn’t look too bad at a quick glance. Don’t know about #1. My apologies, sir, but these are big. It’s going to take a while. Would a noon report tomorrow be acceptable?”

“That would be fine. Faster than light drive?”

“We have no reason to believe it will work, but the anti-matter containment chamber is in good shape. Of course, since we’re here, that’s probably obvious…”

“Navigation?”

“Actually, good news on this one. Most of the antennae are on top, and they’re fine. Work to do, but no crisis.”

“Power distribution?”

“Good shape. Unless you want to do something weird…and then we’ll need to talk.”

“You guys are learning…system and helm control?”

“Well, if we had any systems that worked, I might be able to answer…” Chimera said.

“Smartass. Communication?”

“As far as we know, everything is fine. We can turn it on at any time.”

“Really?” Curt said. “That’s not what I heard. I heard there was at least another week of testing needed. The Comm system is not to be turned on without my specific personal approval. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir!”

Amazona said quietly “What was THAT about?”

And Behemoth whispered “I don’t think either of us wants to know.”