The Spindle Station: Book 2 of the Alliance Conflict (33 page)

Regulation stated that when exiting hyperspace all crew members must have their boots, gloves, and helmet within arm’s reach. Colin had enforced that regulation primarily to build discipline, but it had saved the crew when the emergency pressure system failed to seal the ship. In some ways it was better that the ship hadn’t sealed because they had access to the entire ship versus being stranded in a tiny portion with air.

From there, they scrambled to rewire the ship to allow the secondary generator to function. They had performed the drill several times before in less time, but Colin was still proud that they managed to complete the procedure in under 5 minutes when it actually mattered.

Then, they were boarded by Hiriculans in HAS suits. The 5 marines hid in the hangar bay until power was restored. The entire hangar was dark, but the marines were wearing their night vision goggles underneath their helmets. The Hiriculans landed and spent almost a minute collecting themselves into an organized unit.

The HAS units activated their shields and tuned them to create a soft glow for lighting. Then they assembled what appeared to be 10 person tent and filled it with air. It was clear that the Hiriculans planned to pressurize the main corridor with the tent so that the bridge crew could open the security door.

Once they had the tent assembled, they formed into a single wide line of three HAS soldiers on each end and the two non-armored Hiriculans in the middle. Then they walked through the hangar toward the central corridor. Only the outer two HAS units had their weapons active. The middle two HAS units on each side pushed the tent.

The marines waited for the enemy to pass by and leaped from their hiding spaces. They immediately beheaded the outside 4 from behind. The marines then power jumped and stabbed the two remaining HAS units and two unarmored Hiriculans before their victims even turned around.

The battle was over in a moment. No, a moment is technically 90 seconds. That entire battle was over in only six. It took the marines far longer to drag the bodies to the edge of the hangar and chuck them off of the deck than it did to actually kill them.

Then came the enemy missiles. They struck seemingly everywhere and dented and damaged almost everything. All the systems were either off-line, fried, partially missing, or some other adjective Colin had yet to think of. In a nutshell, the ship was a mess.

Ben reentered engineering and Colin said, “Anything?”

Ben replied, “Well, the good news is that the caribou corridor sustained no damage. It’s in perfect shape.”

Talking while wearing smart spacesuits was unwieldy, but not impossible. The beings in the conversation simply had to stand fairly close together. The suit would broadcast the wearer’s speech a short distance. The listener’s suit would receive the message and play it.

Colin laughed and replied, “Yes. That is great news. How about the secondary reactor. It was spiking uncontrollably.”

Ben replied, “The aliens have temporarily stabilized the secondary reactor by limiting its output to 20%. However, the generator is no longer attached to…well to anything.”

Colin waved his hands to continue, so Ben said, “The main trunk line was damaged in one of the missile strikes. It won’t carry the load, even at the reduced 20% rate. If we can’t find a way to connect the energy to the ship, the secondary reactor will be useless.”

Colin said, “What exactly is wrong with the trunk line?”

Ben replied, “Something hit it and partially severed it about 1/3 of the way along the line.”

Colin brought up a schematic of the ship and started tracing lines. Finally, he said, “Look, the trunk line is 74 meters long. If the break is at 1/3, that means we still have at least 50 useable meters. If we cut the line, we could run it from the secondary generator directly to the ion cannon reservoir.”

Ben said, “It won’t work. It’s too far.”

Colin said, “No” and pointed to the schematic that he had been reviewing. Colin had cobbled together one working engineering station and powered it from a spare car battery.

He continued, “Look. We can run the line through here, directly up. The wire will be exposed, but it should be long enough to just barely fit.”

Ben shook his head and said, “We would have to drill through 3 decks to get there. It would take hours to complete.”

Colin responded, “Ben, that section of the ship is missing. You can run the line in an hour, 70 minutes at most.” Colin had just given Ben a task and a timeframe to complete. He had made it a personal challenge for Ben.

Becky was suddenly animated. She finished, “Yes. Then we could disconnect the trunk line from the power reservoir to the jump drives and connect it to the main junction box. This will give the ship power again.”

Ben said, “But only 20%.”

John said, “We need more power Colin.”

Ben turned to go and Colin said, “Wait. Stay out of the habit of calling them aliens. Say something more gentile like bridge officers or Alliance members or something. We certainly don’t want to lump them together with the Hiriculans.”

Ben replied “I’m glad you can tell the good aliens from the bad.” He left to grab some people and equipment for the arduous task.

Colin said, “John, you’re right. We do need more power. Even if we have time to fully charge the capacitors in the ion cannon reservoir, we can’t sustain the ship on only 20%.”

Becky said, “At full power, it takes 4 hours to charge the ion cannon. At 20% capacity, it will take exactly 5 times longer. I doubt we have 20 hours to wait anyway.”

“What then?” Colin asked.

Colin, Becky, and John each thought in silence for a moment. When it was clear there were no insights, Colin said, “Let’s start with the basics. What do we have?”

John answered, “The only other things we have aboard that produces power are the fighters and the shuttles.”

Becky shouted, “Daisy chain.”

Colin smiled and said, “That’s brilliant.” He drew a line on the schematic showing how to connect the 2 Hiriculan and 2 Alliance shuttles in series.

Becky said, “We should probably keep one shuttle separate in case we need to use it.”

Colin ran a power simulation and announced, “It looks like each shuttle could add 10% to our total power output. We can get back to 50% power.”

Colin ordered, “Becky go round up as many people as you need and make this happen. This is our top priority. Mike, find a way to repair the communication system. We need to be able to talk the bridge crew again.”

Mike said, “Aye, aye Colin” and left.

Colin continued, “John, you need to find a section of the ship that can still hold atmosphere and create a break room. Or repurpose that Hiriculan tent. People need a place to eat, drink, and go the restroom.” Colin realized his mistake as soon as he said it.

John responded, “So, you are telling me to go build a John.”

All three laughed. It seemed the first lighthearted moment they had had in quite a while. Becky asked, “Colin, what are you going to do?”

Colin responded, “I am going run a status check every shield generator and replace those that are damaged. We have plenty of spares, so it shouldn’t be an issue.”

The next few hours were a whirlwind of activity. Every crew member had been assigned to one of the 5 major repair teams. Ben’s team was the first to complete their task. It had only taken them 70 minutes to reroute the trunk line and attach the secondary power. Of course, Colin had awarded them with another task, lifting the 10 fighters out of storage and placing them into the hangar’s fighter elevator.

Becky was the last to finish. Wiring the shuttles’ power generators into a cohesive network proved to be a difficult task. Shuttles simply weren’t designed for this type of use. Fortunately, shuttles had a back-up power feed that allowed it to receive power when docked. Becky had to rewire each shuttle to give power instead of receive. Then she had to find a way to secure them to the hangar floor to ensure they didn’t randomly take-off.

Colin examined the temporary air shelter. John had dragged the Hiriculan tent into the pilots’ quarters and set it up so that it encompassed a few beds, the kitchen and the bathroom. It was unisex, but at least it worked. John had ceremoniously named the structure the john.

Colin completed the inspection and entered the hangar bay. He joined Becky, who was making last minute adjustments to the power system. With that final adjustment the power grid was ready for action, the john was on-line, and the fighters were loaded.

Colin gathered nearly everyone to tell them the news when he received a call from the bridge. His microphone to the crew members nearby was still open.

Solear informed him that a third enemy ship would be there in the next few minutes and asked for advice. Colin said the first thing that came into his mind, “Give em hell Captain.”

Then the communications system broke. This time it wasn’t a relatively simple connection problem; there must have been a fault in the hardware. They probably created a short circuit in the line when they attempted to rewire it and the resultant feedback killed the equipment that they couldn’t access.

Colin silently cursed himself. He had one chance to pass some key information to the bridge and all he had said was a catch phrase that the aliens probably didn’t even understand. Oh well, on to the next problem. There were 15 crew members that had passed the pilot exam and had volunteered to fly a fighter.

Colin initially thought that he would have time to make an informed decision, but with the news of imminent attack, that dissipated. Colin yelled, “Pilots line up.”

Colin quickly looked at the volunteers. Five of them were marines. They had focused on training in the MPS suits and hadn’t yet qualified on the missile loaders. Colin pointed at them to go. Colin then said, “Next five highest rankings, go.”

Fortunately, Colin had forced the engineers, including himself, to practice loading the missile launchers, so hopefully the engineers would be able to meet the firing rate.

They were down to 18 total people at this point. Colin left the existing missile firing teams as is and assigned the engineers to fill the gaps created by the volunteer pilots. He instructed both members of every team to touch the missile interlock switch. Then he waved his arm over his head in a circular ‘let’s go’ motion. Everyone raced to their posts. Colin left with Becky to man missile tube launcher number 1.

Colin and Becky reached their tube first, primarily because they had the shortest distance to run. Colin put his palm on the firing switch and Becky followed. Colin knew that they wouldn’t be able to deadlift the missiles like some of the other, stronger teams. However, he had chosen Becky on purpose. She was adroit with the hoist mechanism.

Becky said, “We aren’t going to be as fast as the others that do it manually.”

Colin replied, “We have no choice. Even though the teams that do it manually can consistently hit 25-30 seconds, we only have to beat 1 minute. We should be able to do that. Let’s help ourselves by preloading the launcher with a shield buster missile and put a second in the hoist.”

“That is technically against regulation. What if the weapons officer wants a defensive missile or a ship buster?” Becky asked.

Colin replied, “Then we will have guessed incorrectly and will fire the wrong missile I suppose.”

They didn’t have to wait long for the order to fire. Colin pressed his palm on the firing interlock mechanism and said, “That seemed too quick. I wonder if we are firing at the fighters.”

Becky replied, “I doubt it. The alien…I mean the bridge officer did request a shield buster missile. I would think that you would only fire a shield buster missile at an enemy ship.”

Colin couldn’t argue with her logic and nodded in agreement. In a way he felt like she was his girlfriend – he had yet to win an argument against her.

They again guessed shield buster missile and reloaded the missile tube. The firing order came a few seconds later. Fortunately, they had guessed correctly again. Colin palmed the weapon ready pad. The launcher fired a few seconds later.

They positioned the hoist over another shield buster missile and waited impatiently for the next missile order. A minute later they received the cease firing signal. The battle was apparently over; and since they were still alive, they must have won.

They started walking back to the hangar bay, but were stopped at the door leading from the caribou corridor to the hangar. It wasn’t the force field, the door was locked. By this time they were joined by a couple of other returning missile crews.

Becky palmed the switch, banged on it lightly with her palm, and tried again. One of the crew members behind her laughed and said, “There is nothing wrong with the door, the interlock is on because the fighters are about to land.”

Colin imagined that he could hear the fighters swoosh by and land in the elevator. This was of course impossible as there was no air to carry the sound waves. After a few seconds though, the interlock unfastened and allowed the door to open.

Becky was the first through the doorway and was followed by all 17 other humans. They walked as a group down to the fighter elevator and waited for the pilots to exit. Colin did a quick count; only 6 pilots returned – the 5 marines and one crew member.

Colin walked over to Paul Smith, the marine lieutenant and asked, “What happened?”

Paul looked like he was in a hurry. Colin could tell that he wanted to walk past him toward the shuttles. However, Paul did stop and responded, “The
Sunflower
fired two rounds of missiles and tore the enemy ship in half. The rear section is stationary and the front section is floating away into space.”

A second marine said, “Well, it was, we went ahead and blew it up.”

Colin said, “You said the back half stopped.”

Paul responded, “Yes. After the ship was blown in half, the rear section came to a complete stop while the front half continued drifting.”