“I remember reading about that,” John replied, “one of the early design problems of the station.”
The admiral nodded. “Yes, Commander, but after years of orbiting Mars you get used to it. Phobos tracks around the planet at low altitude every eleven hours. It routinely likes to track right through our geocentric orbit above Mars. We just step aside and continue about our business in a new position.”
“Understood,” John acknowledged the admiral’s reasoning. “I was hoping for a satellite update before we headed down.”
“I made that a priority for the techs after our last briefing,” Admiral Conrad replied. “We launched three new satellites in the last hour. As soon as they reach a suitable orbit, I'll make sure to send you the feed groundside.”
“Appreciate it, Admiral,” John thanked her.
Without warning the entire office began to rumble as if experiencing a minor earthquake. Managing to stay on their feet, John and Kyle looked on as the Admiral brought up the station's systems. Reading the source of the disturbance from the docking bay, she switched on the relevant cameras. From four different angles, they watched as the ore carrier blasted away from the station. Without warning another tremor, this time powerful enough to knock them off their feet, tumbled the three of them across the room.
A series of station-wide alarms sounded. Trying to recover their senses each of them returned to the vidcomm display.
“What was that?” the admiral remarked as she brought up the video feed from seconds ago. The three of them watched as the ore carrier exploded. The impact of the explosion had shattered the docking bay connection to the U.S.S. Columbus. It now floated freely in space beside the station. The ship appeared damaged, but largely intact.
Minimizing the external feed, the admiral brought up engineering.
“Lieutenant Vogt!” the admiral paged with authority. “Lieutenant, I need a damage report!”
The MARC engineer was flying about between two different workstations. Without taking the time to look at the vidcomm, he responded as he continued to work.
“Admiral,” he replied, “structural integrity is sound.” He paused, checking a variety of systems before continuing. “The docking bays are fried, and all computer systems on board are down.” The engineer continued to examine multiple systems at a feverish pace, and then just stopped. He stood staring at the screen for a moment, only to say. “Oh no...” He didn't get to finish his thought.
A massive explosion rocked the station again. The volume alone from the blast racked their hearing and again knocked them to the ground. The entire station seemed to vibrate this time, the primary force of the explosion continuing for nearly five seconds.
Once again trying to shake the disorientation, John managed to pull himself to the Admiral's workstation. Looking around, he saw Kyle on the floor of the office, motionless. The Admiral was visibly battered and sitting with her back against a wall. Though she looked in bad shape, at least she was moving.
Prioritizing injuries, John jumped over to Kyle's side and checked for a pulse. It was strong, and he could see his chest rising and falling. Without seeing any visible injuries, he quickly hopped over to the admiral.
“Admiral, are you OK?” John began his first responder training.
She moved her head to the side and opened her eyes.
“I've felt better,” she replied with a smirk and a cough. “I think I'd better sit here though. I've that familiar feeling of cracked ribs if that's the worst of it.”
John checked over the admiral. She was likely dealing with a host of broken bones. She wasn't screaming in pain, that was a bad sign.
“What’s wrong with my station?” the admiral managed to voice.
John stood up and went over to her workstation. The screens that had displayed engineering were static. He brought up a map of the entire station. A color coded visual of the station appeared on the screen. The configuration, however, was mangled. A quarter of the station was torn away from the main body and dangled by a thread. The entire top of the station was gone, and all related systems from engineering were listed as offline. Life-support was listed as partially functional as were power systems.
“Admiral,” John paused. “If I'm reading this right, our section of the station is a few support beams away from floating off into deep space. Main engineering on the decks above… it's… gone. The rest of the station is operating on partial power and life-support.”
The admiral nodded, trying to absorb the magnitude of the report as she fought off the increasing stabs of pain in her body. With a struggle she motioned for John to attend to her side.
As he knelt next to her, she forced herself to lift her Ksync from her belt and pressed it to his hand.
“Take this,” the admiral directed him. “Read everything... you need to know.”
Marshaling her strength she added, “Commander, get everyone off...Phobos...” but she did not finish. Her eyes were still and the pain she had been gone forever.
As John closed her eyes, he noticed Kyle was starting to move.
“Careful there amigo,” he warned his friend. “Make sure you have everything still attached before you move too much.”
Kyle slowly sat up and took stock of the situation.
Seeing the admiral motionless, he motioned to her and asked, “She alright?”
“I'm afraid not,” John replied. “She must have had internal injuries from that last blast.”
John returned to the workstation. He scanned the command prompts until he found the one he was looking for. Muting the alarms, John put himself on station-wide communication. Taking a deep breath, he announced, “This is Commander Quinn. Acting upon orders from Admiral Conrad I am declaring a station evacuation. All hands abandon the station. Repeat, all hands abandon the station.”
“What did I miss?” Kyle asked. “Why are we bailing out?”
John searched through a bank of functional external cameras before finding the view he wanted. Bringing it up on the workstation, a picture of Phobos filled the screen. A countdown timer clicked on the bottom right noting time of impact.
“Fire up the thrusters and let's get the heck out of this orbit,” Kyle gave more than a suggestion.
John looked up at the ceiling of the office and said, “We're a little light up top Kyle. As in we don't have any station thrusters to fire.”
“Okay, that's bad,” Kyle indicated.
Just then a priority page flashed on the vidcomm. John put the communication on screen. An image of Ashley appeared.
“John, I heard your voice over the all-call. Are you alright?” Ashley asked with more than a hint of concern in her voice.
“You know I have a hard head,” John played off the seriousness of the situation. “Kyle and I are just fine. The admiral though, didn't make it.” Ashley shook her head in disbelief.
“You're sealed off, John,” Ashley confirmed his readout. “We can't get to that part the ship. Almost everything out here is off-line or half-working.”
“You have the kids?” John asked.
“I have them now,” Ashley confirmed.
“Then you find the nearest escape pod and get the heck off this station,” John told her with a firmness in his voice.
“You know I'm not doing that, John,” she replied.
John paused, summoning the only words that would get her to leave.
“I need to start trying to find a way out of here Ashley, and I can't do that and worry about all of you. You can't play this game, not with the kids.” John could see her starting to tear up. “I'm not giving up, not for a second, we're going to find a way out of here,” he tried to comfort her. “Don't give up on me yet.”
“I'll make sure he gets back to you, Ashley,” Kyle added. “Find that sassy friend of yours and get her planet-side, pronto.”
John took his finger and pretended to write on the vidcomm. He wrote an invisible giant “I,” followed by the outline of a heart, and ended with a “U.” He
then blew her a kiss and turned off the connection before he could witness anything that would break him.
Guessing his friend could use a diversion, Kyle tried to bring John back to situation at hand.
“What now, Kimosabe?” Kyle asked John recalling that odd term Glennay had used.
John snapped out of his gaze and cracked a bit of a smile.
“Well, Watson, the game is certainly afoot. I think we need a plan,” John replied.
“I just got on board with the whole Kimosabe thing, can we keep it to that for a while?” Kyle joked back.
John enlarged the floor plans of their area.
“The designers apparently assumed we'd be able to make it to that escape pod there in case of emergency,” John said pointing at the map on the vidcomm.
“If it wasn't for the fact this part of the ship's been peeled like a banana skin from the main hub, then yeah sure,” Kyle added.
“That pod, if it's still there, is smack dab in wide open outer space now,” John confirmed.
Turning away from the vidcomm, he felt a sense of rage fill him. Why did it seem like this whole mission had been doomed from the start? Every corner they turned, something was kicking them when they were down, and here they were again.
His eyes caught one of the display cases that lined the walls of the admiral's office. That's when he realized, though they've been down in the count many times, they'd always found a way to stand back up. And they would keep getting up.
Walking over to the display case, John pressed the panel to open it. Inside of this particular case were several MARC suits. Each one was a historical timeline of the suits worn by the members of the MARC program. The last two suits, though, were designed for a very important purpose.
Kyle noticed John's actions and walked over to the case himself. Trying to figure out what John was up to, he watched as the commander pulled out two older MARC station suits.
Noting the nature of the suits, Kyle protested, “You can't be serious! I’m sure there’s another way.”
Smiling at Kyle, John handed one of the two suits to him.
“Well Shirley we need a plan, and don’t call me serious,” John remarked, secretly enjoying his use of an old joke.
Chapter 29 Jump
One development of the MARC spacesuits was their ability to use magnetic fields to move around in space. Rather than rely on cords or cumbersome thrust packs, the magnetic fields allowed the wearer to safely walk, jump, and twirl about as needed – provided there was something magnetic around to use.
Once John and Kyle had made it to the exterior of the ship, they climbed out and stood upon the outer hall. Both men had spacewalked several times before, but always in orbit around Earth. The sight of Mars below them was one to behold.
Kyle tapped John on the arm and pointed to the side of the planet. A gigantic shadow seemed to block out the stars.
“That must be Phobos. It’s not a very bright object,” commented the Lieutenant.
“We need to get a move on, I'd rather not be here when it stops by,” John remarked.
Moving skillfully along the hull, the two men avoided the twisted metal that used to connect them to the main hub. Carefully walking across the connection that remained, they made their way toward the main hub. As the progressed, the last few escape pods blasted out of the station toward the ground below.
“I'm glad you found that maintenance hatch, or we'd still be stuck in that tin can,” Kyle said shaking his head.
After climbing around several obstacles, the two stopped at the remnants of a junction. The schematics had indicated the junction housed the nearest escape pod. If they hadn't been in spacesuits, a look of dismay would have been visible on their faces. Both men paused and stared at an empty pod bay.
“Okay, so we're here,” Kyle stated, “was there a second part to this plan?”
John looked at Kyle and replied, “I liked you better as a straight man.”
Kyle, clearly confused countered, “I'm as straight as it gets.”
“That's more like it,” chuckled John as he patted Kyle on the helmet and walked up the main hub of the station.
Kyle shook his head still confused, but followed after him.
John detached the Ksync from the belt on his suit. Patching in to the station's vidcomm, he searched for an alternative pod.
“Well, I've good news and bad news,” John told Kyle.
“Really?” Kyle replied. “We’re standing around in thirty year old spacesuits, on the outside of a space station, with a moon about to smack into us, and you want to play good news bad news?”
“So the good news,” John ignored him and continued, “it looks like everyone from the station made it out.”
Kyle waved a hand impatiently as he asked, “And the bad?”
“It looks like they exhausted all the functional escape pods,” John stated simply.
“This is not helping me keep my promise to Ashley,” Kyle commented. “How about a plan 'C'?”
“Jump off and point your toes toward an ocean?” John asked sarcastically.
Kyle shook his head and looked up at the stars as if to ask for help in more than one way.
“Why is the only relief I can get around here comic?” he asked the heavens. As his eyes came back down from the stars, they spotted a potential solution.
“What about her?” Kyle pointed outward from the station.
John looked in the direction he was pointing and followed it to the U.S.S. Columbus.
“The Columbus?” he asked.
“Yeah sure,” continued Kyle. “She's a ship right? She moves and it isn’t locked down to a station.”
John thought about his lieutenant's suggestion.
“There's clearly damage, but I spy with my little eye some thrusters,” he added. “So, I guess it's your turn, what's the plan?”
Kyle lifted his foot off the ground and shook his boot.
“Good ole fashioned leg work my friend,” he suggested. “We get a running start and jump over to her,” Kyle added, dead serious.
John looked at the magnetic dial on his suit. It was a great bit of hardware, but it wasn't exactly designed with ship jumping in mind.
“I guess it could work in theory,” John reasoned aloud. “We just run and jump to the Columbus, aiming for the middle I'd assume. Dialing down our magnetic field as we jumped, then turning it back up when we reached the Columbus. It could work.”
“You can't be the one with all the hair brained schemes,” Kyle joked.
“I suppose the upside is, if this doesn't work, I can blame it all on you when I see Ashley in the afterlife,” John replied.
“If you put it that way,” Kyle shot back, “then I better go first, to test it out.”
John was about to protest, but Kyle stopped him short.” No arguments on this one, family man.”
Kyle checked the dial on his suit to make sure the field would adjust up and down. Then taking a three step run he jumped toward the U.S.S. Columbus. The magnetic field from his suit dropped to near zero as he dialed it down. He floated for what seemed ages, but in reality was only a few seconds before closing in on the ship. As he floated within a few meters, he dialed the magnetic field back up. Like magic, the suit attached itself to the hull of the flagship.
Kyle turned and gave John a big wave. Seeing this, John waved back and prepared his own jump.
John said a small prayer and gave the sign of the cross. He ran several steps and jumped, dialing down his magnetic field as he did so. Hidden by darkness though was a twisted piece of the station that caught his leg as he started to float. The resulting bump nudged his flight path, so that he was no longer aiming toward the middle of the Columbus.
John's heart immediately started racing. He had to force it down with every bit of concentration he had.
After a few seconds, Kyle noticed that John was headed off-course.
“Um, John, buddy, what's going on?” Kyle asked John via his Ksync.
John pulled his Ksync out and replied, “It's okay, I think… yeah. I'll just dial up the magnetic field a bit sooner, and it should pull me right in to the ship.”
“Copy that, John,” Kyle replied.
John worked the magnetic dial with his free hand and turning it up. Nothing happened. He twisted it back to zero and then all the way up. Still nothing.
“Any time now, John,” Kyle added, his voice clearly showing some concern.
John checked the power indicator on his suit. It was nearly dead.
“Guess I should have used Duracells,” John joked, trying to hold back his own panic.
“Wait a second,” he muttered.
Pulling his suit's belt around so that he could see the battery pack, he checked its primary connection. Releasing the belt, he lifted his Ksync into his field of vision and pulled up its manual selector.
“Don't look at the stars. Look at your screen,” he told himself, as he went through the different functions of the device one at a time. “There you are.”
The Ksync's output link adjusted its configuration. John then connected his Ksync to the battery pack of the suit.
The power indicator on his suit came to life, showing a fast charge. John tried the dial again. This time, he could feel the pull as his course shifted. He was floating close enough to a navigation sensor that with a strained reach he grabbed its thin antennae. The antennae flexed but held, bringing John with it as it straightened.
John walked down the hull of the ship and after a couple minutes, met up with Kyle who met him halfway.
“That went well,” John stated simply.
“Yeah, smooth,” Kyle agreed.
The two of them continued on to the nearest airlock. John entered his command override code and the two of them slipped into the ship.
Chapter 30 A Perfectly Good Spaceship
The two sentinels entered the auxiliary bay of the U.S.S. Columbus. Checking the area's life support, they thankfully took off their helmets.
Curious Sols (The Sol Principle Book 1) Page 19