Running Black

by J. M. Anjewierden

  I have to remember to clean this up soon. With my luck as it is, Gertrude will stop by before I do, and then I’ll be in for one of the lectures she perfected on Haruhi about cleaning as I go.

  She staggered over to the shower, fumbling at her underwear, and leaned her head against the shower wall.

  “Computer, activate the shower, hottest setting.” Morgan sighed as hot water hit her, soothing her sore muscles and instantly helping with the itchy grimy feeling that had built up after so much physical exertion.

  Exhausted as I am, it really does feel good to have gotten my hands dirty with something useful. I just wish we could have figured out what the problem was. It still looks like a coolant issue, but there simply weren’t any leaks. It isn’t like the stuff could just hide anywhere…

  Wait. That’s it. What if there is a leak, and it is hiding? The sensors wouldn’t even catch it, they’re looking in the wrong places.

  Stumbling out of the shower, she grabbed her towel, realizing she didn’t remember where in her path across her quarters she’d ditched her uplink.

  She found it on top of her boots, literally the last place she could check as she retraced her steps.

  “Contact Gertrude, urgent,” she ordered the uplink as she scooped it up off the floor. Blast it, she thought, hastily adding, “Audio only.”

  Luckily, Gertrude hadn’t picked up yet, so her late command was still obeyed. She didn’t have anything to be embarrassed about if Gertrude saw her in a towel, but there was no way of knowing if anyone else was around.

  Gertrude picked up a few seconds later, a hologram of her upper body appearing above the uplink.

  “What’s wrong, Morgan? Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

  “What if the leak isn’t in the plants?” Morgan blurted out.

  “Wait, what?” Gertrude asked, then shook her head. “We discussed that. If the leak was anywhere else, the sensors would have detected it.”

  “In all the crew spaces, yes, they would.”

  “Morgan, the ducts don’t go anywhere else but the crew spaces. Where do you think the leak could be, aside from that?”

  “G, what about all the mothballed crew spaces? The areas that have been more or less sealed for years?” Morgan responded. A growing feeling in her gut told her she was right. She hoped she wasn’t, though, because the consequences of such a leak…

  “Oh, no,” Gertrude whispered, “How’d we miss something so obvious?”

  Chapter 10

  Lost to history is the origin of the phrase ‘it isn’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, but what you know that isn’t so,’ but it is still an apt quote. Humans tend to be a distrustful and suspicious lot, and the unknown will inspire wariness in the best of us. Some innocuous thing that we know isn’t an issue? That can be our downfall far easier.

  - Master Chief Augustus Hawthorne, Harkon Presidential Guard.

  Gertrude

  MERELY IDENTIFYING the problem hadn’t helped them much, of course. In fact, they weren’t even sure yet if Morgan’s theory was correct and that a leak in the mothballed sections of the ship was the problem. It fit the available facts, but it wasn’t the only possibility.

  To really know, they’d have to check, which was why Gertrude — and every other member of the engineering crews save those actively at duty stations — was crawling through conduits on skinsuited knees while everyone else with any appreciable mechanical knowledge was going through the larger compartments.

  Chief Engineer Matthews was coordinating everyone from DCC – Damage Control Central – but Gertrude wasn’t particularly jealous of the man. Sure, he was in a comfortable chair in his overalls rather than a skinsuit, but coordinating this many people at once was not included in any definition of fun Gertrude could conjure.

  It was a large crew for an even larger task, and that meant it was slow going.

  “Lieutenant, why don’t we just reopen all these unused sections of the ship? Won’t it be easier to find a leak that way?” one of the techs asked over their section of the engineering communication network.

  “That’s a terrible idea,” one of the others said. Gomez, Gertrude thought.

  Bit harder to keep their names straight when I can’t see them. Oh well. Gertrude cut in before they could start arguing. “It would be easier to find a leak, but it is also not a good idea,” she said, taking a deep breath before continuing, “Even with what is hopefully a slow leak, we’ve lost so much coolant that it is already going to be a major problem. Turning on the air plants for the rest of the ship will make it easier to spot, but it will almost certainly speed the leak up. If we find it fast, that’s one thing, but if we have to hunt around?”

  “Are we going to have to abort the trip, head back home?” another tech asked. Jones, this time.

  “I don’t know. Not if we can avoid it.”

  “But couldn’t we just jump back, fix the leak, refill the coolant, and then head out right away?” It was the first tech again. What was her name? Tak something… Takemura? Yes, that was it.

  Gertrude sighed.

  “We’d be at least a month late, probably more like six weeks.”

  “And?” Gertrude wasn’t sure who’d asked. It didn’t really matter; they were probably all thinking it.

  “And we lose so much in penalties we’ll lose money on the trip, the miners will be dangerously short on perishables and consumables, and we might even lose the contract.” Gertrude paused again, mulling it over before deciding that with this crowd a more personal reason would help. “And we all lose the bonuses they promised us for this run.”

  That ended the conversation dead, and the progress reports over the next quarter hour told her that they’d even picked up their pace a bit.

  Should I tell them to slow down, tell them it is more important not to miss anything? No, better not. They know their jobs better than I do, and they certainly know the ship better than I do. They’re motivated, let them get about it.

  In the meantime, Gertrude had finished the section of access tunnels she’d assigned herself, coming out into one of the mothballed factory sections.

  Like the rest of the ‘cold storage’ sections, the air was thin, with a far higher nitrogen content than the rest of the ship. It wasn’t as good at preserving everything as an actual vacuum would have been, but maintaining vacuum on only parts of the ship was so complicated and dangerous that the benefits were far outweighed by the costs.

  Ignoring the equipment for the moment, she focused on the ductwork overhead and at her feet. The airflow had been shut off to these sections, but the conduits for moving the air around had only been closed, not removed. Any leak would be there.

  It was difficult to tell, but it felt like there was a slight blue tinge to the air, which would be a sign the leak was in this compartment, assuming her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her with the rather monotone metal gray of pretty much everything in the room.

  Walking around, it wasn’t long before she started hearing a whistling noise, very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that she was sure she’d have missed it if anyone else was in the room with her.

  Moving toward the source of the sound — as best she could tell — proved harder than she’d have liked. The machinery twisted and turned about, clearly set up for function and to fit in the available space rather than to make access easy.

  Reaching one of the exterior walls, she tried following it, having to hug it and squeeze through a few places, but at least making progress.

  Finally finding the source, Gertrude’s first thought was that it was a lot smaller than she’d have expected, followed immediately by relief that it was. Her third thought was that she wasn’t imagining there being a blue gas hanging in the air.

  The hole in the wall was no more than two millimeters across, the whistling sound coming from the air being pulled through it at a rather rapid pace, despite the small size.

  Gertrude barely knew her way around the parts of the ship she was familia
r with; she had no idea what lay beyond this wall. That was what her uplink was for.

  Pulling up a holographic map of the ship, she zoomed in to her current location.

  Beyond the wall should be one of the modular cargo bays… but all the cargo bays were still full. How did anything have enough power to punch all the way through the bay’s thick armor and all the cargo and not make enough of a mess that it wasn’t immediately noticed? For that matter, how had something punched through the hull at all and not been immediately noticed, period? Looking closer, Gertrude was able to figure it out — that low on the wall, the bulkhead wasn’t actually adjacent to the cargo bay, but adjacent to the gap between one bay and the next. That particular section was directly exposed to space on the outer side.

  Gertrude looked at the hole, feeling incredibly uneasy that, regardless of how small it was, she was being exposed directly to the vastness of space.

  That unease spurred her to action. Pulling one of the emergency seals from her skinsuit, she slapped it over the hole. Normally it wouldn’t have been remotely sufficient, but for something that small, it would do for the time being.

  That only solved one problem, however. One they didn’t even know they’d had. The hole was slowly siphoning off their atmosphere, but that wouldn’t have affected the environmental plant in any way, since this was still the sealed portion of the ship. The obvious question, then, was simple. Where had the micrometeor gone after it punched through the wall? What else had it damaged before coming to a stop?

  A careful once-over of the machinery behind her didn’t reveal any damage, which was great because repairing something that old would have been an absolute pain, but it was also bad, because that removed most of the obvious paths the meteor could have traveled.

  Ugh, I should have checked the hole for trajectory before plugging it. Too late now, I’m not going to take the patch off just to check. Not that I have the tools to do so anyway. Emergency patches are hard to break or remove for a reason, after all. Maybe some extra hands would help… “Third Engineer Suoh to DCC Central, I’ve found a leak in section…” Gertrude paused and glanced back at the map, “32-Alpha. I need more hands to help search the area for the rest of the damage.”

  “You’ve found the leak in the coolant system?” Chief Engineer Matthews responded after a few moments, “That’s great news.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not sure about that yet, Chief. The leak I’ve found is in the outer hull. Micrometeorite from the looks of it. With all the manufacturing equipment packed in this section, I’m having trouble tracing the meteor’s path after it punched through the hull. Hopefully this is our culprit, and I am seeing some coolant in the air, but I wouldn’t call off the other search parties just yet.” Gertrude looked around as she spoke, but there still wasn’t anything standing out.

  “Understood, Suoh. Does there appear to be any damage to the machines? That section is part of the gate building process; I’d hate to have lost any of it.”

  “Doesn’t look like it, the meteorite came in low, probably passed underneath it all.”

  “Very well. Looks like Lt. Black’s group is nearest, I’ll send some of them your way.”

  “Understood, DCC.”

  Chapter 11

  Height is a curious thing. How tall – or short – we are impacts many things in our lives, beyond even the obvious. I’m sure if I bring up the stereotype of the ‘short person with something to prove,’ most of you will instantly be able to think of a specific individual you know that I could be talking about. Conversely, tall people tend to be more confident, one might say, and again most of you can think of someone like that. Those are both gross exaggerations, of course, and hardly indicative of every short or tall person. If I asked a random person here to think of a shorter person they know that is extremely confident, I am certain they could do it. About the only thing I’ll say for certain is that being short is often a benefit on spaceships.

  - Master Chief Augustus Hawthorne, Harkon Presidential Guard.

  MORGAN FOUND Gertrude lying on the floor on her stomach, peering under a truly stupendous piece of machinery, larger even than the environmental plant they’d been working on the day before.

  She couldn’t see her friend’s expression with her skinsuit’s helmet closed, but based on her body language, Gertrude was not particularly happy.

  “I hear you found something, Third Engineer,” Morgan said, trying to keep it as professional as she could while addressing her friend’s upturned rear. The work groups head been formed based on skills, not normal position, and Morgan had been assigned to lead a group of five technicians she didn’t know, all of whom were men older than her by quite a lot.

  “Ah, Morgan, good,” Gertrude replied, rolling over and looking up at her. “You’ll be helpful. Who else did you bring?” Even as she said it, Gertrude stood up and looked over the others. “No good, they’ll just have to go around the edges and look for anything unusual.”

  “Care to explain a bit more what you need from us?” Morgan said.

  Gertrude turned and pointed to a small patch on the wall, very near the floor, “That is where something punched through the hull. I’m hoping it’s also what caused our coolant leak, but to find that out, we need to figure out where it went from there. As best as I can tell it passed under the machinery, but I’m too big to fit underneath and look. The rest of you,” she waved towards the other technicians, “are all bigger than I am, so they can’t check either.” Gertrude turned back to Morgan. “You’ll fit, I think. It’ll still be a tight squeeze, though.”

  Why does it always come down to me crawling through things? Morgan thought. Mines, spaceships, space stations, terrorist bases, there’s always some small space involved. At least I’m used to it by now. “All right, let’s take a look then.”

  Morgan dropped down and looked at the gap between the machinery and floor. It was going to be very tight indeed, especially with the centimeters the skinsuit added to her frame, not only because of how thick the suit itself was. The oxygen tanks on the back were intentionally kept slim, but they still added width.

  “I’d be a lot more confident about this if I could take the suit off,” Morgan said, switching to a private channel with Gertrude.

  “The air in here isn’t breathable, M. Besides, you don’t have any clothes with you besides the skinsuit.”

  “I wasn’t planning on just stripping down!” Morgan hissed, glad for her visor’s level of tint as she felt her face heating up. “I’d go and get some coveralls while we pump air in here.”

  Gertrude shook her head.

  “It’d take too long, and we’d have to turn on the enviro plant to do it, which could easily just make things worse. Just think thin and look on the bright side.”

  “What bright side is that?”

  “You’ve filled in from the plank with muscles I met years ago.”

  “Gertrude!”

  “What? This is a good thing. It’ll help you find some nice guy, settle down.”

  “We are not having this conversation right now,” Morgan protested.

  Gertrude just shrugged.

  “This is what you get for avoiding the topic. You’re still a bit young to be marrying, but you aren’t too young to be dating.”

  Morgan very nearly retorted with Like you go out on dates? but managed to stop herself in time. She’d never met Naru, Gertrude’s deceased husband, but her continuing love for him — and grief at his loss — was plain for anyone who spent enough time with her, even if she didn’t talk about it much. Morgan did think Gertrude was ready to try again, at least tentatively, but hadn’t been able to broach the topic.

  I don’t talk about boys, you don’t talk about your husband, ugh. Maybe if I give in and start talking boys, we can work on your problem too? “All… all right,” Morgan stammered, “If I admit you might have a point can we get back to work? I think the techies are starting to stare at us.”

  Gertrude chuckled a bit.

>   “As you wish, M.”

  Morgan switched back to the local net so everyone in the room could hear her.

  “Not much else to do, with what we have on hand. I’ll check for damage underneath.” She pointed to two of the techs. “You two check along the walls for anything else, starting with the opposite side. The rest of you spread out, check everywhere you can. Focus on the low parts, but don’t ignore the rest. After it lost enough energy, the meteorite could have ricocheted off a corner or something and bounced up. Even at that point, it could have done a lot of damage.”

  As they headed off to do as she’d ordered, Morgan took off what little she could of the suit to maximize her chances of not getting stuck. Really this meant her tool belt, pistol and magazines, and little else.

  Turning on the lights attached to her helmet, she dropped down and slid under the machine.

  “You sure it went this way?” Morgan said after a few meters in with nothing to show for it.

  “Not entirely, no.”

  “But something actually did punch through the hull?”

  “Yep. I could have put my eye up to the hole and seen space, if I had wanted to.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a particularly smart thing to do.”

  “Didn’t say I actually did.”

  “How big again?”

  “Couple millimeters across.”

  Morgan muted herself for a moment so she could groan. This was going to take forever.

  Or maybe not.

  Just ahead of her, there was a groove running along the floor, perhaps a meter long. There was a tiny object gleaming at the end, but that wasn’t what initially drew her attention. No, the first thing she noticed was the stream of gas coming in through the middle of the groove, the telltale shade of blue that told her it was coolant.