The Alpha Protocol: Alpha Protocol Book 1

by Duncan M. Hamilton

  ‘Enough for it to have fragmented.’

  Samson grimaced, and his heart increased its pace a few beats. Reaction matter was a crystal precisely shaped during manufacture—a perfect sphere that was then held suspended in a magnetic field. The exposed surface area of the sphere was one of the factors that controlled reaction rate. The reaction chamber’s injectors bombarded the reaction matter with energised particles that created a multitude of tiny fusion reactions, the combination of which gave them power for propulsion, and to charge their agitator and the many other energy-hungry systems on a space-going vessel.

  With pure reaction matter, the reaction matter crystal held its shape, slowly reducing in size as it was used until it could no longer provide a sufficient reaction rate. When that happened, it would be replaced during a standard space-dock service. When there were imperfections in the reaction matter—dirt or flaws introduced during substandard manufacture—the crystal could fragment under particle bombardment, increasing the surface area and causing reaction rate to increase uncontrollably, usually completely without warning. More than one ship had been vaporised as a result.

  It was a problem Samson had been very hopeful he would not encounter. In the Navy, bad reaction matter was unheard of. On a junker like the Bounty? Apparently not.

  ‘Is fragmented matter the only answer?’ Samson said.

  Vachon nodded. ‘Might not always be the only answer, but this time it is. It’s not too bad right now, but it’s definitely fragmented, and that’s a sign of things to come, as often as not.’

  ‘Could powering up too quickly have shocked the crystal?’ Samson said. If that were the case, another fragmentation was unlikely to happen. A dirty crystal, on the other hand, could have numerous flaws and the potential for many more fragmentations.

  Vachon shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t say it helped, but a good crystal shouldn’t be fragmented by the way we powered up. Only time that happens is when there’s foreign material in it. What kind of fool uses dirty reaction matter?’

  ‘The type who shoots at heavily armed Marines,’ Samson said.

  He rubbed his temples, trying to remember the protocols for dealing with fragmenting reaction matter—he didn’t want to have to ask Vachon for a refresher. In this day and age, it wasn’t something that happened on naval vessels, or any vessel operating at the standards required by the safety codes. There were plenty of ships that didn’t meet them, but this was a new problem for Samson. Even a heavily damaged naval vessel would be destroyed by other issues before the shielded reaction chamber became a problem. Even then, there were ejection systems, and always a store of spare crystals. He was a warfare officer, and the exotic problems one might encounter when dealing with reaction chamber matters weren’t his daily problems. He pulled the procedure out of the murk of his memory.

  ‘Okay, let’s power back to idle and see how the crystal holds up. If it keeps fragmenting, we’ll eject and re-prime the chamber with a fresh crystal.’

  Vachon grimaced.

  ‘There aren’t any spare crystals?’

  Vachon shook his head. ‘Not that I can find.’

  ‘Wow,’ Samson said. ‘This guy really must not have enjoyed living.’ He let his breath whistle out between his teeth. ‘Okay, we have to power back, so let’s do that now. If we’re lucky, it’ll stabilise, and we can increase the injection rate again slowly. No more than we need. If we have to spend a few hours hove-to at the Nexus portal, so be it.’ With a hostile ship on the loose, it wasn’t ideal, but it was a choice between certain death and possible death.

  Vachon nodded and started tapping on the reaction chamber’s control panel. It was taking Vachon longer than Samson reckoned it should.

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘Nothing beyond what we already know. The crystal’s not gone into cascade yet, but we have to assume it will.’

  ‘Ah. That’s something, at least,’ Samson said. ‘What’s the reaction rate?’

  ‘Just at threshold,’ Vachon said.

  It could have been worse, Samson thought. ‘Keep it under control,’ he said. ‘Ejecting the reaction matter is the absolute last resort. Do whatever you can to slow it, and keep me updated, but do not eject the matter without my say-so.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Samson went out to the corridor, and waited for the door to close before balling his fists and letting out a frustrated groan. If the reaction matter went into a cascade, the crystal would fragment into hundreds of pieces, creating so much reaction surface that the reactor would overload, and then explode with enough energy to rip the ship apart. They could shut it down before that happened, but cascades often occurred so quickly there was no time to react. You were usually dead before you knew what had happened.

  He could be ultra-cautious and eject it now, but without the reaction matter they would have no power. They’d be adrift. Ships did pass through this system to serve the small population on Dobson, which was too far for them to reach with the Bounty’s resources. There was a slim chance a ship would happen upon their localised distress call and get to them before they suffocated. They wouldn’t have long until everyone on the ship was dead, though. That much he already knew for certain.

  He’d never heard of a cascade being stopped and reversed. He could tell that Vachon hadn’t either, from the expression on his face. Although they weren’t in cascade yet, he knew it was very likely they soon would be. The rule was that a cascade always followed a fragmentation when dirty reaction matter was involved. What was he to do? Risk instantaneous death by explosion, or slow death by freezing or asphyxiating in a ship without power—they weren’t choices he had ever hoped to be faced with. Which risk was the greater?

  He mulled over the two options as he walked slowly back to the bridge, taking as much time as he could. He’d have to tell the crew, but how would he break something like this to them? Should he make a decision and order them to go along with it, or allow them all to participate in a discussion first? Technically, the chain of command still existed—but after all that had happened, might they be justified in thinking everyone had a say in their fight for survival? He knew that the moment he gave away command authority, he would never get it back. Differing opinions would lead to conflict, which would damn them all.

  Harper gave him a curious look when he got back to the bridge. He returned to the command chair and made himself busy looking over information on its console, still trying to work out what his next step was. However stubbornly the flame of hope might burn, in Samson’s mind there was no realistic chance anyone would get to them in time to effect a rescue. They couldn’t get a message out of the system so they were reliant on whatever ships might happen along and detect a local distress signal. In a remote system like this one, the chance of that was pretty much zero.

  They were at least two weeks away from Dobson—more than a week longer than the Bounty would be able to keep them alive. Samson didn’t think it likely there would be any ships there able to get to them faster than that. He wasn’t confident there were any ships on Dobson at all. He discounted the chance of rescue from Dobson.

  No matter how he framed it, Samson knew his initial assessment of trying to return to the depot was right, and the fragmentation of the reaction matter didn’t change that. In the absence of any real prospect for rescue, the risk of instantaneous death was the best choice. There was always the possibility that the reaction matter would hold together long enough to get them to safety. If they made it through the Nexus transit, hopefully he could bring them out a short enough distance from the depot that they could nurse the power plant—run everything on minimum power so as to reduce the stress on the reaction matter. It would mean being cold, hungry, and struggling to breathe for the duration, but better that than blowing themselves to bits, and never being able to report back on what had happened to the Sidewinder. It was a tenuous plan, but in the absence of anything better, all of its consequences seemed to be the lesser evils presented to him.

  He
ran the calculation on the command console once again to be certain—if they shut down the power plant, their air would last three days. Their boarding suits would give them another twelve hours at the most. If they instituted rationing, food and water would last longer than that, so air was their limiting factor. There was definitely no help coming within three days. They’d have to keep the power plant running to stretch out that time. There was little effective difference between running the reactor at the bare minimum they’d need to survive while they waited for help versus the level they’d need to continue on to the naval depot. They’d already shocked the reaction matter, and the cascade would happen eventually, no matter what level the power plant was kept running at. He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, his mind made up. He hit the ship-wide intercom button. ‘All hands report to the bridge.’

  Harper cast him another look, but he wasn’t in the mood to have to outline his thoughts twice. She could wait to find out with the rest of them.

  8

  The crew all knew something was up, and looked as eager to hear what he said as Samson was to gauge their reactions to it. There was one matter he had to deal with first, and that was best done in front of the crew so they could see his decision process.

  ‘There is one populated planet in this system,’ Samson said. ‘It’s about as isolated as there is, and it’s two weeks away with a potentially hostile ship in the system. This ship won’t be able to keep us alive that long. Even if we could make it, that leaves us with the prospect of being stranded there until a supply ship passes by, whenever that might be.’

  ‘Every fourteen weeks,’ Harper said. ‘I think the next one will pass through here in six or seven weeks.’

  Samson nodded. Time for the hard part. ‘Okay. Considering the mission that falls to us—reporting the Sidewinder’s destruction, the potential presence of a hostile warship in this sector, and the… unusual items we discovered—being stranded on a remote planet for a couple of months, and then however long it takes us to get to somewhere we can send a message from, isn’t a realistic option. Given that we have an alternative—one that I think is in itself a better option—heading for the planet in hope of rescue would be dereliction of duty, plain and simple.’

  He took a deep breath. Now for the complicating part. ‘That judder you felt a little while ago was a power surge resulting from the reaction matter fracturing.’ He gave them a moment to consider it. The colour drained from Kushnir’s face, but it looked as though the rest of them had been expecting it—perhaps Vachon had already let it slip.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Harper said.

  ‘The matter’s fragmented, but it’s still only a small piece separated from the main body. A cascade hasn’t started—’

  ‘When reaction matter fragments, a cascade always follows,’ Harper said.

  Samson gave her a thin smile. ‘I’m aware of the details of this type of problem, Lieutenant. I’m also aware that there’s no way of predicting when the cascade will start, nor how quickly it will develop.’

  ‘But it is inevitable. The when and where is irrelevant. It could be in five minutes or five days. We can’t know, which is why standard operating procedure is to eject the reaction matter as soon as you become aware of a fragmentation.’

  ‘Again, I don’t need to be lectured on naval procedure or basic reactor safety,’ Samson said. ‘The simple fact is that we don’t have any more reaction matter on board. We eject it, and we’re adrift.’

  ‘So we eject it and wait for help,’ Harper said.

  ‘From where? You’ve just said the supply ship won’t come this way for six or seven weeks. We’ll be long dead by then.’ Samson looked around at the others, who appeared increasingly uncomfortable, but were keeping silent. Whose side would they be on? She had served with all of them far longer than he had. Her reputation was far less tarnished, and in terms of experience and date of commission, she was the senior lieutenant. His command of the boarding mission and his years at the Naval Academy were the only things giving him precedence. Technically his assigned mission was not yet over, so even if he were to disregard the traditional precedence given to Academy officers, the chain of command still placed him in charge. He was as comfortable as he could be that he was in the right to assert his continuing authority.

  ‘We’ve just established that there’s virtually no traffic in this system,’ Samson said, ‘and any ship on Dobson would need to be pretty damn fast to get here in time to save us.’

  ‘What about the Sidewinder’s automatic distress beacon?’ Harper said.

  ‘We didn’t detect any signal when we powered up and scanned,’ Samson said. ‘Either it was destroyed, or there wasn’t time for it to launch.’

  ‘It still might have been able to get the distress signal out,’ Harper said. ‘That broadcasts a Nexus frequency. The nearest naval rescue ship could be here in less than a week.’

  ‘You’re willing to risk your life on that chance?’ Samson said.

  She nodded. ‘There was a trace of energy consistent with a Nexus signal having been sent in the noise left behind after the Sidewinder’s destruction,’ Harper said.

  ‘Consistent with, or caused by?’ Samson said. ‘Are you really willing to make a call that could cost us all our lives? I can think of a dozen things that can cause energy traces consistent with Nexus signals. Not to mention it could have been a signal sent by the ship that destroyed the Sidewinder.’

  Harper frowned. ‘There are ways to deal with this situation, but dumping the reaction matter is central to them all. We shut down all non-essentials, start producing food, natural carbon absorbers, produce and bottle as much oxygen as we can. I’m confident help will come.’

  ‘And what if the cascade happens while we’re doing all that? It’s as likely to happen then as when we’re running the engines,’ Samson said. He was growing concerned in equal measure that he had already allowed her to erode his authority, and that her plan might actually be better than his own. Might the Sidewinder’s beacon have gotten a Nexus transmission away? It seemed like a very slim hope.

  ‘We’re in an emergency situation,’ Harper said. ‘There’s no guarantee of success, but the best thing we can do is follow procedure for reaction matter fractures.’

  Samson grimaced at her phrasing. Following procedure blindly gave rise to as many disasters as it prevented. All the factors had to be considered, including mission priority. Were their lives more valuable than getting news of what they had discovered, and what had happened, back to the Admiralty? The naval officer in him said the mission was more important; the human part of him said the people were. He thought it ironic that Harper was using naval procedure in support of taking steps that were, in theory, more likely to keep them alive.

  He thought for a moment, flicking his eyes from crewperson to crewperson and doing his best to predict how they would react to his order.

  ‘If we eject the reaction matter, we’ll be dead in a few days,’ he said. ‘Long before help comes, distress beacon or not. If we keep the reactor running, we’ve got a better than even chance of getting back to the orbital depot, so that’s what we’re going to do. Let’s not forget there’s a hostile vessel out there somewhere, and we do not want to hang around long enough for it to find us. Any questions?’

  He did his best to sound more confident than he felt, but there was no immediate protest. He could tell by the look on Harper’s face that she wasn’t happy, but she made no move to disagree.

  ‘Good,’ Samson said. ‘Mister Vachon, I need you to stay in engineering. Keep the reaction matter under constant observation. Let me know at the first hint of further deterioration.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Vachon said.

  ‘Harper, keep monitoring for any sign of the unidentified vessel, and anyone else who might be able to help us. The rest of you, back to getting the Bounty ship-shape—she’s likely to be our only transport for some time. Dismissed.’

  The rest of the crew r
eturned to their stations, leaving Samson on the bridge with Harper, and a frosty silence. He considered trying to break it with an attempt at humour, but reckoned it would only make things worse. She was a sailor, and it was her duty to follow his orders, whether she liked it or not.

  Samson took the bridge watch for the first few hours of their journey toward the system’s Nexus portal. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep and was happy to let the others get some rest. He hoped some down time might give the crew the chance to come around to his way of thinking. He mulled over Harper’s suggestion that the Sidewinder’s automated distress beacon had been fired and had survived long enough to get a signal away, but he was far from convinced.

  Whatever had hit the Sidewinder had destroyed it fast, and completely. He didn’t think the beacon’s systems would have been able to react quickly enough. Any fragment of doubt he might have harboured wasn’t enough to bet his life on. With a little luck, the others would come around to that point of view once they’d had a chance to chew it over. He needed them at their best over the next few days, and that would only happen if they believed in what they were doing.

  He was startled from his thoughts when the hatch opened and Harper walked onto the bridge.

  ‘You’re early,’ Samson said, ‘although I appreciate the gesture.’ He was about to brief her on the ship’s status, which showed no further sign of deterioration, when she spoke.

  ‘I’m not sure if you will appreciate it,’ she said. ‘I want to ask you to reconsider your decision.’

  ‘About continuing on?’ Samson said incredulously. ‘Absolutely not. I thought we were agreed on it.’

  ‘If the beacon got its distress signal away, there could be help here within seven days. I’ve run the numbers with Mister Vachon, and we’re agreed. We can survive that long.’

  Samson’s stomach turned over. He knew what direction things were headed when crew members started discussing the command of the ship behind the commander’s back.