by David Smith
‘Can you prepare another batch?’
‘Not in the timescale that has been indicated to me.’
Dave cursed under his breath. ‘Is there anything we can do that will slow the spread of the disease, or ease its symptoms?’
There was a pause as the Doctor considered this. ‘You should try alcohol.’
‘What??’
‘Alcohol. The symptoms are actually a reflection of chemical imbalances in the brain precipitated by a water-based agent. If we reduce the amount of water in the blood-stream it may ease the symptoms. I don’t have enough diuretics to treat the whole crew, but I suspect that everyone on this ship has access to alcohol, which is an effective natural diuretic.’
‘You’re shitting me!! The crew is behaving unreasonably and now you want me to get them drunk?’
The Doctor didn’t like having her advice questioned. ‘As a senior officer aboard this ship you will be well aware that the entire crew has an affinity for alcohol. I doubt there’s ever been a day when the entire crew has been sober. I don’t believe inebriation on duty is a significant issue given the circumstances.’
Dave was completely bewildered. ‘It just seems ridiculous to ply the crew with booze in a life or death situation.’
The Doctor couldn’t keep a note of huffiness out of her voice. ‘You asked for an opinion, I have given it: Alcohol is our best option. Would you like a second opinion?’
Dave rolled his eyes. He couldn’t believe this was their only option. ‘If you think that’s our best option, I think I would.’
‘Very well. It is also my opinion is that you are a rude, ungrateful individual who should consider the value of advice before asking for it.’ She cut the comm-link.
Dave sighed and went looking for Commander Romanov and her large bottle of vodka.
--------------------
Feeling slightly tipsy, Dave stared at the navigational data that ASBeau had managed to send down from the Bridge.
The ship was on a collision course with a huge chunk of rock massing several million tonnes, which now only half an hour away from them. The ship was still literally powerless and incapable of moving.
His engineers were working stoically in the face of a possibly lethal infection and bizarrely they were trying to help that situation by getting drunk.
His Engineering Officer, Commander Romanov, hadn’t taken kindly to this idea, even though she probably had the highest daily-average blood-alcohol level of any officer in the fleet. In truth, her mood probably hadn’t been improved by the fact that having spent the last twenty minutes running around the Engineering Deck bollock-naked, the ship’s Science Officer had now barricaded herself into Romanov’s office to evade the medic sent to assist her.
The loss of the Science Officer was making itself felt with regard to the complex calculations being undertaken to try to safely start the disabled warp-engines. The process of refining the formula had slowed appreciably, and the imbibing of large amounts of alcohol to ward off the effects of the infection weren’t helping.
The computer’s organic circuits weren’t immune from the virus, but Dave hoped to god they were immune to stomach acid: Crewman Park Si Yung had never drunk rum before and probably had even more reason not to now. He’d opened up the PILOCC’s casing to allow Nurse Benjani to administer an anti-viral hypo-spray to the organic secondary processors and promptly blown chunks over the computer, himself and the nurse.
Dave wasn’t sure how much rum Park had chugged, but there seemed to be a wholly unreasonable amount of vomit swilling around inside the computers casing now. He pushed the topic of who would be responsible for cleaning it out to the back of his mind, at least for the moment.
In truth the whole of the compartment had taken on something of a swamp-like appearance. Nervousness and a lack of familiarity with the strength of old-fashioned navy issue rum had caught several people by surprise, and the decks were awash with foul-smelling puddles of semi-digested food and undigested alcohol. With the ship’s ventilation system still re-configured to prevent the spread of the infection, there was nothing to clear the smell, which was eye-watering.
Dave had also been drinking straight rum, and kept topping his glass up as the smell of the rum was significantly better than the general atmosphere of the deck. Romanov had plenty of vodka, but was horrified by the prospect of having to share it. Fortunately plenty of rum had been available from a secret stash one of the engineers had admitted to.
At the same time he’d ordered ASBeau to treat everyone in the main hull using the most obvious and plentiful source: Chief Burns’ cabin. The chef would be furious when he got out of Sick-bay, but if this didn’t work, Tiger would mostly likely end up as a stain on one face of a very large rock. Dave reasoned that facing the chef’s ire would be the lesser of two evils.
Even by the standards of USS Tiger, this was not a good day.
Through the haze of alcohol and above the noise of the engineers working, Dave was uncomfortably aware of the rising hiss as more and more tiny particles of the shattered planet sand-blasted the ship. More worrying was the intermittent clang of something more significant impacting on the outer surface of the hull.
It would have probably been a nerve-shredding experience if everyone hadn’t been so pissed.
At least the Doctor’s anti-viral seemed to be working on the ship’s computer: Park had managed to boot the system up in between sprints for the toilet pan. The holographic interface was working and hadn’t yet thrown another tantrum.
They were now beginning to get systems back on-line, but they had yet to resolve the issue of restarting the engines; The intermix formula that would control the injection of matter and anti-matter fuel into the warp-core was still a work in progress, and Dave knew that at some stage they’d be forced to risk using it or face being pulverised by a giant rock.
He looked across to the warp-core control console and to his surprise Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara was there. She was still naked apart from her boots, which Dave guessed was a reflection of the amount vomit on the decks. Evidently the medic had given up trying to cure her and moved on, as she was slurring her words in a heated debate with Cumbers and Jonsen.
‘Id’ll fecking work oi tell ya!’ she grumbled.
‘But it’s nothing like the formula we’ve worked out!’ moaned Jonsen.
As Dave approached he could see Cumbers studying a complex formula on the screen intently, although she did take a short break when her stomach rebelled against the rum she’d been drinking in a noisy and colourful fountain.
‘What’s going on?’ Dave asked.
‘Oi’m trying ta convince turnip-head here that I’ve got the hintermix thingy sorted’ slurred O’Mara, while swaying unsteadily.
Jonsen was swaying too, but Dave wasn’t certain if this was the effect of the infection or the alcohol consumed to mitigate the effect of the infection. ‘She’s off her trolley! Thatsh rub(hic)ish. S’nothing like the formula we worked out.’
Dave looked at the screen to see two formulae, one above the other. Although most of the elements were the same, the way in which they were arranged was completely different.
‘Dosn’ matter’ slurred O’Mara. ‘Id’ll feckin’ work oi tell ya. Sure as eggs is eggs. It’s more of a sure thing than my cousin Kathleen. She puts out for a bag o’chips, you know. And she’ll even buy you the chips!’ giggled O’Mara.
‘How? (hic)’ asked Jonsen. ‘How d’you know it’ll work?’
‘I have it from a feckin’ well respected and completely (belch) feckin' awesome genius, thatsh how’ grinned O’Mara.
‘An’ who would that be?’ asked Jonsen.
‘Me!!’ replied O’Mara, throwing her arms in the air for dramatic effect and nearly throwing herself off balance in the process.
Dave rolled his eyes. They didn’t have time for this. ‘Aisling, if it’s only a personal hunch . . . ‘
She regained her balance long enough to lunge at him, and tried to
grab hold of his tunic which he wasn’t wearing. She looked at his chest and carefully took handfuls of the sweater he was wearing in order to shake some sense into him. ‘Nononono!! Iss not a huu(belch)nch, i’s me. Oi sent me a message (hic). I know the feckin’ thing works ‘cos oi sent mesel’ a message to say so. Me. Sent it to me. But in the past.’
She waved an arm in the general direction of the deck behind, nearly over-coming what little sense of balance she still had.
She was trying to make eye-contact to convince him she was serious, but it wasn’t easy. Not only was she still naked, but her efforts to shake someone much larger than herself meant that she was the one rocking back and forth. Her eyes were already struggling to stay in focus, and she could only get one at a time to point in Hollins general direction.
When he did manage to look into one of her eyes, there seemed to be a degree of passionate honesty that surprised him.
He looked across to Cumbers who shrugged before throwing up all over Jonsen’s feet. O’Mara was still trying shake him but suddenly stopped as she pulled herself right up close to him. She nearly changed his mind for him when she whispered ‘God you smell amazing; fancy a shag?’, but Dave made his decision and hoped he wasn’t suffering from the effects of alcohol or virally-induced insanity.
‘Jonsen, we’re going with O’Mara’s formula’
Jonsen made his objections known by throwing up too.
--------------------
The Main Engineering Deck was a hive of activity as the engineers frantically prepared to get the ship underway. The ever-present sound if particles impacting on the ship’s hull had become a roar loud enough to require them to talk loudly to make themselves heard and larger impacts had become a steady percussion. Every so often a particularly large impact would be loud enough to make everyone flinch, then pause, waiting for the hiss of leaking atmosphere that would suggest the hull had been breached. Each time so far, the ship’s hull had resisted the impact and the engineers had nervously returned to their work.
Observing from the warp-core control console, Dave shouted ‘How are we doing ASBeau?’
The computer had got all the ship’s comm systems back on line and amplified ASBeau’s reply from the Bridge so it was audible among the noise and activity. The nervousness in his voice was apparent to all. ‘The fragment is closing at around eighty metres per second. We’ve got one minute twenty-three to go until . . . uh . . . well, you know.’
Jonsen heaved again but had nothing left to come out.
Romanov looked across to Chief Deng at the engine console, who nodded, before she replied ‘We’re as ready as were ever going to be sir.’
Dave took a deep breath and said ‘Now or never, Commander.’
Romanov muttered something under her breath, took a big swig of vodka and activated the anti-matter injectors.
Dave held his breath. In normal circumstances, they would have started at one percent of normal power capacity and worked up to full power over a period of hours. There just wasn’t enough time.
Instead of a gradually increasing blue-white glow, there was an instant, gigantic bang that seemed to shake the entire ship and the crew from the inside outwards. The compartment was instantly flooded with harsh, blindingly bright light, as if the transparent warp-core was filled with a bolt of lightning and everyone had to shield their eyes. For an instant Dave was sure he could see the bones of his hand in front of his closed eyes.
The warp-core and the plasma-conduits that siphoned off the unimaginable quantities of energy were suddenly filled with hyper-energetic plasma and creaked and groaned and rumbled under the sudden stress. Alarms rang and klaxons sounded as every power system on the ship was instantly over-loaded.
The control systems fed enough energy to each engine nacelle to activate the warp coils for the fraction of a second needed for them to fold space just enough to carry the ship out of harm’s way.
Dave wasn’t sure if he imagined it, or if he really felt the way space and time suddenly warped around them. As it did, his life flashed before his eyes, or at least the last few days.
Despite living and working aboard a starship for several years now, Dave was aware that this felt different somehow. He had the strangest sensation of falling backwards, or perhaps the ship was moving forward, but leaving a part of him behind.
Above the cacophony of noise and light he heard Romanov shout ‘Ебать мене!! It worked!’
The noise and glare faded and Dave re-opened the comm-link to the Bridge. ‘How are we looking ASBeau?’
ASBeau sounded heartily relieved. ‘We jumped straight to warp eight point five for about two seconds sir, we’re well clear of the debris field now.’
‘Thank god for that!’ sighed Dave. They’d made it. He took another big swig of rum.
--------------------
Dave was sat on the Bridge as the ship returned to the orbit that Sigma Epsilon Iota Eight Delta had previously occupied.
As had been vaguely hinted at in the Fleet’s historical records, there had been an inexplicable side-effect to cold starting the ship’s engines.
The sudden explosive warping of the space-time continuum had warped time as much as space and in managing to extricate the ship from the debris field, they’d also thrown themselves backwards through time. The greater power of Tiger’s engines meant this effect was more pronounced than had been noted previously, and the ship had found itself over an hour into her own past.
They’d missed a lot of the observations they were hoping to take when the PILOCC had shut the ships systems down. Although they couldn’t re-enter the debris field for fear of interacting with their older selves, they were hoping to capture some usable data from a distance before moving on.
There was a swish from one of the turbo-lift doors at the rear of the Bridge and Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara entered.
Dave was gratified to see that at least she was fully dressed now, although like many of the crew, her uniform had been dyed a non- standard colour. Dave mentally noted that green seemed to suit her.
She took a seat at the new Mission Operations Station in front of the Captain’s chair and to his right, but audibly winced as she sat down. A little surprised, Dave left his chair and went down to discreetly check how she was.
‘Everything ok Aisling?’
‘Oh I’m fine sir’ she replied, while gently massaging her left buttock, ‘I just don’t know why Chen couldn’t inject that serum into my arm like he did for everyone else.’
Dave raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps it was because you were the only one twerking at him when he came down to engineering?’
She blushed bright red. ‘Oh. I’d sort of forgotten that.’
Dave couldn’t resist teasing the shy and self-conscious woman. He leaned in closer and whispered ‘Have you also “sort of forgotten” that you propositioned me?’
O’Mara looked mortified and was so red Dave thought she might burst.
‘That wasn’t me!!’ she squealed in discomfort. ‘Well it was, but it wasn’t. I wouldn’t dream of propositioning you!! Not that I’m saying I don’t fancy you.’
She squirmed in her chair, looking more and more hideously embarrassed as she tried to dig herself out of hole, but just kept burying herself deeper and deeper. ‘Of course I don’t fancy you. Ah. That didn’t come out right. What I’m trying to say is that you are quite fanciable, but you aren’t my type, although I could see the attraction for other women, but even if you were my type I wouldn’t dream of propositioning you unless I was drunk or had some crazy brain infection, although when I say ‘unless’, what I mean by that is that drunkness or sickness would be compromising my judgement because you’re my commanding officer, obviously, and that would be completely inappropriate, rather than affecting my judgement because I wouldn’t fancy you normally . . . ‘
Dave held his hand up to stop her before she suffocated herself in a torrent of babble. ‘It’s ok Aisling, I was just teasing. I know it was just t
he virus affecting you. It just came as a bit of a bolt from the blue. I’ve never heard you make any sort of comment like that before. I’d always assumed that you weren’t interested in that sort of thing.’
O’Mara was still blushing but looked terribly disappointed. ‘Oh I do get the urge now and then, but I just never seem to find the right person at the right time. You know how it is . . . ’
‘Yes, of course. Career, missions, all that sort of stuff’ said Dave with real sympathy. ‘It was just a real surprise to hear it come out. I could understand it from Mercedes Bent or Skye L’Amour, but coming from yourself it honestly shocked me.’
She smiled wistfully. ‘Ah well, you know how it is. Infected by a rare virus, lowered inhibitions, raised libido, remembering you haven’t had sex for three years . . . ‘
‘THREE YEARS??’ he blurted out.
The bright red flush returned to her face in an instant. ‘Alright! Alright! Keep it down: no need to advertise the fact!’ she hissed.
‘Sorry. That’s quite a dry spell.’
‘Tell me about it. I’m the nearest thing to a bloody virgin on this ship’ she sighed. She looked up at him and he noticed for the first time that she had very pretty blue-green eyes. For just an instant there was a connection, but she flushed again and looked away.
She cleared her throat. ‘Anyway sir, if I embarrassed you I apologise sincerely and I promise I won’t do it again.’
‘That’s quite alright Lieutenant-Commander, no harm done, after all. I’m just glad you’re feeling better.’ He turned to go back to his seat, but suddenly remembered something that had been bothering him.
‘Aisling?’
‘Yes sir?’
‘When you brought up that alternative formula, you said you’d sent yourself a message. Were you having some kind of schizoid episode?’
She thought about it for a second and a sudden epiphany was apparent on her face. She sprang out of her seat and rushed over to the Comms Station, barged past Lieutenant Shearer and began frantically typing on the Comms Officer’s console.