Chapter 13

Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.

-John Sweigert

There was no dream this time. Ever since John was a child, he had unexplainable dreams. Vivid, every detail clear as if he was there. One of these dreams hit him during the first blackout of the deceleration burn, but not this one. If he did have one, it would be the first he could not remember.

“Claanngg!.” The emergency claxon repeatedly played over the master circuit system, repeating with a warning from the ship’s synthesized, emotionless voice. “Warning. Emergency subsystems offline. Unable to compensate. Life support systems are operating at thirty-two percent. Life support system failure imminent.” The computer’s call was vastly ignored the first several times, as the crew slowly slipped back into consciousness.

The 18 M.C. rang to life, interrupting the computer’s warning. “Con, C.I.C. someone please respond.” John could finally hear the Command Information Center calling out to the Bridge. He had no idea how long they had been trying to get ahold of someone. But he couldn’t move. Pain shot everywhere in his body, blood pouring out of his mouth, floating everywhere around him and mixing with the blood of the officers on the Bridge.

“I…….Is…..any……an…” John couldn’t talk, his lungs ripped with pain at each breath, crying out like an inured elephant every time he tried to reach the mic on the comm panel, his body not listening to commands, only responding with pain in complete protest.

John’s vision was slowly returning from a small dot to just barely covering his peripheral vision. Looking around, he gathered they were in a worse situation than when they started. The front and side viewports were entirely disabled, only showing the starry backdrop just beyond the ship—no readouts, no H.U.D. nothing. The rest of the non-essential displays that wrapped around the rear of the vessel displayed the Federation logo with ‘System Offline’ plastered all over them. Most of the crew was still unconscious, with a few of them having apparent severely broken bones. Blood pooled everywhere.

“Con, C.I.C.” someone over the 18MC could barely call out another request. Expecting the usual ‘Is someone there?’ response, playing on repeat every few minutes,

John heard a reply from just behind him. “C.I.C. Conn, hold all reports, we are securing the Bridge. Med teams will be with you soon.”

“C.I.C., aye.”

“Wa……wh……..w…w….” John was screaming inside for his body to respond, but it replied only with threats to do more damage if he continued this abusive path.

“Stop talking, sir. The situation is under control.” A deep voice is all John could hear just seconds before he blacked out for the third time.

“SITREP!!!” John shouted at the top of his lungs as he jumped up, suddenly awake from the deep sleep that consumed his body and soul. He had been out for only a matter of a few seconds, from his perspective, but it had been almost two full days.

“Sir! Calm down. You are in sickbay!” a nurse tried to comfort the delusional captain.

“What the hell happened?” John screamed out, demanding answers he knew the medical staff could not give.

“Con, Sickbay. Sir, the captain has awakened,” a nurse chirped over the 18 M.C.

“Thank you, nurse, please have the captain report to the Wardroom as soon as possible,” O’Connell requested as he closed the line, then his voice could be heard on the 1 M.C. “Attention, all hands, senior staff to the wardroom.”

“What happened?” John inquired, needing to know his medical state before going anywhere.

The nurse kindly told him everything she could without the doctor present. He was currently in surgery, attending some more severe injuries other members of the crew suffered during the incident. Not everyone fared as well as John did; three crew members died from complications incurred from the maneuver. John endured the most out of the bridge crew, with ruptures in major arteries throughout his body, along with severe cerebral hemorrhaging. John had to thank tissue-regeneration technology; without it, he would have died within minutes of the maneuver ending.

John’s walk to the wardroom was grim. Everywhere he walked, he saw signs of damage, either to the crew or to the ship herself. He couldn’t help but feel guilty and overwhelmed by the trauma that was caused. John would blame himself. Crew morale was down. Lazy and sly salutes were given as he passed crew members who were paying attention. Still, more often than that, the personnel was too busy repairing parts of the ship to notice their commanding officer passing by.

The damage was extensive, major g-forces stress not only a human body out but machinery as well. Missiles can accelerate to 400g’s without damaging the tightly worked components inside. Still, a starship, even a destroyer designed for speed and agility, can only take forces up to 40g’s for no longer than thirty seconds before systems begin to fail catastrophically. 20g bursts typically wouldn’t affect the ship much. They wouldn’t make the gravity subsystems flinch, however, the vessel had to sustain a brief 250g instantaneous deceleration force when being thrown out of F.T.L. It was just for a split second. Still, it was enough for the crew to feel a huge jolt, gravity systems being overworked, and other major components on the ship to begin to fail.

“Sitrep,” John commanded as he walked into the wardroom, occupied with every member of the command staff, including Major Thomson, commanding officer of the Marine detachment onboard the WarpStar. “Starting with you, major.”

“Sir,” the major gave a salute as he and everyone around the table began to explain the events. John sat at one end, and O’Connell at the other.

The Marine corps has been running a program in secret for several years, since an incident where it was believed the Russians found a way to hack into the computer of a Federation Dreadnaught and force her drive core to be locked in flank speeds. The manipulation produced an impressive 85 g’s of acceleration for five hours straight before the engines finally burned out. All members of the crew were lost due to failure in the gravity subsystems. Officially, the report states that improper maintenance of the ion injectors caused the system to be locked and flooded, creating an uncontrollable expulsion of ions through the sublight engines. Federation intelligence insists it was a hack from nearby Russian forces.

The Marine corps saw this as an opportunity, in case this happened again. The detachment posted onboard every ship is trained to withstand extreme high g-forces for extended periods. Marine barracks are equipped with unique beds designed to reduce the effects of g-forces to an extreme degree. The WarpStar’s natural, artificial gravity generators, anti-gravity generators, and inertia dampeners helped reduce the 20g burst down to a 7g tolerance. The command crew squeezed another 2g reduction, reducing the forces felt to 5g. The crew felt five times of Earth gravity force on them for twenty seconds, causing blackouts and minor injuries. To the Marines, this was just a tickle on the back of their tongues.

When the ship’s gravity systems failed, and the full 20g force was thrusted on the crew for three seconds, causing significant damage to not only the ship but the crew themselves, the Marines only felt around 7g’s of force. The reason the Marine corps conducted this training in secret was for the next benefit; each soldier had basic training on flight operations of every class of Naval starship. In the event a crew gets incapacitated, the Marines were able to secure the ship and prevent any disasters that may happen, like getting off course and ramming into a gas giant, for example. It was widely feared among Marines brass that this training would be seen as possible mutiny training, preparation to remove starship command personnel that the major in charge deemed unfit for duty.

“We are currently in orbit around the fifth planet, a gas giant.”

“We will have a conversation later, major, about this.” John’s face could not hide his anger. Learning the Federation Marine detachment had the ability and capability to take control of the ship at whim did not rest easy on the young commanding officer.

“Sir, I regret,” The major tried his best at an apology he knew John deserved.

“Stow it... later”

“Sir, unfortunately, this gas giant will not work for our repairs,” Lieutenant Jeffery Donovan, the ship’s chief engineer, chimed in, not caring about the feud between the branches of military occupying the wardroom at the time.

“Options.”

Operations officer Robert Jackson gave his portion of the report. “The fourth planet, it’s a toxic atmosphere, type five, but doable.”

“The same one reported on initial contact with this system?” O’Connell asked..

“Aye, sir,” Jackson acknowledged. “There is a catch, however.”

“Of course there is,” Carr blurted out, dropping her head into her hands.

“Our sensors are damaged, pretty extensively. We will need to have a scout ahead of us to map out the planet’s magnetic fields so we can safely land the ship.”

“Our sensors are completely out? So we’re blind? How the hell did we get in orbit?” Carr seemed to have asked the only relevant question from the last report.

“Mostly, our gravimetric sensors are still online, and we were able to use those readings mapped with the sensor data we got when we first entered the system to map out the positions of the planets plausibly.”

“What else is out?” John continued the discussion.

“Well, to be frank, sir. Everything,” Donovan spoke up in a tired, thick Australian accent. “Life-support, gravity subsystems, sensors, FTL, Hyperdrive, secondary subsystems are failing. We only have about sixteen days of recycled o2. Food processors are down. We only have enough stored rations for a week. I believe half of our problems will be solved once I can get more than one fusion reactor started back up. Maybe the Antimatter reactor. Everything scrambled the moment we got thrown out of FTL.”

“How did that happen, by the way?”

“I don’t know. I won’t know until we can cut all power from the engines so I can send a team into her belly to investigate.”

“How long until we hit Toxicville?” asked John, nicknaming the planet in an attempt to lighten the severe tension in the room.

“I can do four days. We will have to do bursts of 2 to 4 g’s in thirty-second intervals here and there, including decel. Our one fusion reactor can’t handle all five sublight engines.”

“Can we send a message to Earth?”

Commander O’Connell took his turn to chime in; communications fall under his direct line of responsibilities. “Negative, we do not have a connection to the Hyper-Network. There must not be a bouey in this system, or if there is, then it’s dormant.”

“I can start to prime the Antimatter reactor, and try to get her running so we can …” Donovan tried to add more before being interrupted by John

“No, we keep our one fusion reactor ‘that could,’ we make it to the planet, then shut everything down to enlist repairs.”

“Sir, the Antimatter reactor just scrambled, she’s not damaged.”

“I want to figure out what happened to the FTL drive before we attempt it again, once we turn the key on the main core, we won’t be able to get in her guts to investigate.”

“Aye, sir.”

“We do have another slight problem,” Jackson spoke up, attempting to get back to the big problem that he started to point out earlier. “Our sensors are down, and I won’t be able to properly send navigation data to the helm during our descent. If these readings are right from when we first entered the system, major wind gusts and other materials are floating in the atmosphere of that planet that is harmful to the ship.”

“So, we have to descend blind?” Carr chirped, getting ever more worried by the second.

“Well, we need a Lifeline.”

“We have a healthy supply of them onboard, don’t we?” John asked.

“We do, however, those won’t work. We need a manned ‘Lifeline.’ Someone has to take a shuttle out there and be our eyes.” The wardroom fell silent with the weight of the request.

“That’s a suicide mission,” the executive officer almost stuttered.

“The ship will likely crash without proper sensor data.” Jackson’s report turned Carr’s skin white. She was considered the best pilot the Federation has ever produced, outmaneuvering the best of the best as a cadet in flight school, never failing a mission or losing any wingman. This task, however, made her afraid.

“I'll do it,” Carr immediately replied with confidence.

“No,” John cut her response just as quickly.

“Sir?”

“I need you here, in the helm. You’re the best damn pilot in the fleet, and no one will be able to pilot this ship down with all those obstacles reported in the atmosphere.”

“But, sir, that is exactly why I need to be in that cockpit!”

“I’ll be in my fighter leading the way.”

Everyone in the room began to protest the second John uttered those words.

“Calm down. We need to take advantage of the two best pilots in the fleet. Unfortunately, I am one of them. If we do not utilize our skill set, we will fail. I cannot sit here and let a less-experienced pilot do this impossible maneuver while I am sitting comfortably in that command chair.”

“Sir, let me pilot the lifeline craft, you can take the helm of the WarpStar.”

“Negative. You’re better than I am,” John had to tear those words out of his mouth, never before admitting that his friend was superior to him in flight. His admission confirmed all those conflicts and fighting they had in the academy over who was the better pilot. John finally admitted he was not as good as Carr. “We need the best in the helm. We have 300 souls on board; it would be a failure of responsibility if those souls were to perish, and we did not have our best trying to save them.”

Charlene’s head fell to the ground. Three hundred souls. That is what she feared the most. In all her career as a pilot, from flying dust haulers and crop freighters as a kid to system hoppers and eventually fighters, she only had to worry about her own life. Some rare occasions a co-pilot, but never three hundred souls. She could not accept responsibility for that many people’s lives in her hands.

“Char, that is a direct order,” John interrupted Char’s continued protest.

“Alright, we need sensor data, and we need to land the ship. Get to whatever repairs you can during our four-day transit. Char, take a small three-person wing out and recon the system. We need to know what’s out here.”

“Sir, don’t we need Carr at the helm?” O’Connell interrupted, confused.

“Acceleration and braking maneuvers are simple tasks, commander. Besides, we need to give some of these junior officers hands-on time with the helm. This is the best time for it.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Alright, everyone, you know your assignments. Let’s get to work.”