by David Smith
They’d come so far, thought Dave as his forehead throbbed gently against the table. They were within sight of Hole, and had actually got a fully functioning ship back to the area of contention nearly a month before Izzy had felt the need to make an inadvertent call for help.
Sitting up, Dave steeled himself. “QUIET!!!”
All heads turned to face him, and silence descended. They quietly sat down, and Dave reminded himself that he was lucky to have such good people to work with. For all their quirks, they were a brilliant team.
A chastened Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara sat down last, still mumbling “….it’s only fifty-to-one. It’s not like we’re flipping a bloody coin …. “
Dave silenced her with a hard stare and continued.
“I’m sorry team, but the numbers change nothing. There’s more here at stake than you, or me or the whole ship, or even the colleagues we left behind in Sha T’Al space. We need to act quickly to prevent war breaking out between the Sha T’Al, the Tana, and our allies in the Independent Sha T’Al Homeworlds.
“Personally I think our only real option is to try the drive with plasma venting. All things considered, I think I’d rather that the ship didn’t explode, so O’Mara, I want you to work with the engineers to minimise the chances of that happening. Get your team to re-run the simulations that resulted in an explosion, go through them with a fine-tooth comb, find out what went wrong and work out how we can avoid it.”
“In the meantime I’ll recommend to the Captain that ……. “
There were loud groans and much rolling of eyeballs all around the table.
“Hey, guys, come on!” said Dave holding his hands up. “This is serious stuff now, and I have to at least give the skipper a chance to do his job!”
“That’ll be a first!” mumbled Crash.
ASBeau went a little further “You do realize that we’ll give a logically appointed argument of the pro’s and con’s of each scenario, work hard to provide a balanced account of all factors, give a solid rationale to our recommendation and compile a detailed but concise report for him to review? And when we’ve done all that, the skipper will ignore it and carry on humping which ever Yeoman takes him the report?”
“Of course he won’t!” said Dave, and then stared at the looks of surprise now directed at him. “Well ok, he will, but that doesn’t mean we can just cut him out of the loop!”
There was a general slumping of shoulders, drawing of deep breaths and mutinous murmuring.
Dave tried to galvanise the team “Look, we all do what we have to do. What the skipper decides is beyond our control, so we just carry on as planned and consider what we can do with regard to stabilizing the situation at the border without creating any cause and effect paradoxes. As it stands at the moment, everyone else in the Galaxy thinks we’ve just arrived at Arcturus and are about to begin our first tests. It’s not until we leave Arcturus in about four weeks time that we can safely become a factor in this timeline again, because we know that after that point we didn’t interact with anyone until we got here.”
“If the plasma-venting idea doesn’t work, we’ve got four weeks of floating in deep space before we can return to Hole. That should give us time to come up with other ideas. If it does work, I want first thoughts tomorrow on how we can usefully employ four weeks of free-time before we’re in a position to interact with this time-line.”
“And unless someone comes up with an absolute cast-iron reason not to, we take the information to the Captain and request further instruction from him, before doing our own thing. Dismissed.”
Chapter 21
On board Tiger everyone was nervous. Sat in the Captain’s chair on the Bridge, Dave’s mind ran through Commander Romanov’s explanation of the potential explosion from venting plasma directly into their own warp-field:
“We think the explosions that occurred in the simulations were caused by the warp-field collapsing like a popped balloon. We re-ran the simulation a dozen times with plasma being vented in tiny quantities from several different locations all of which caused the field to collapse in a more uniform manner. We’re confident we can do this safely now.”
“So we’re good to go?” Dave had asked, hopefully.
“Nothing is ever certain on this ship sir, but we won’t go bang, if that’s any comfort” said the engineer.
They floated in deep space, on the fringes of Hole’s solar system, still a few a light-hours from their home base. Dave had listened to several suggestions why they shouldn’t consult the Captain, most of which were variations on a theme, and all of which could be classified as gross insubordination.
The report had gone to the skipper via Yeoman Sandra Fielding, a short, cheerful, buxom brunette, with a winning smile and exceptionally low self-esteem.
She returned two hours later looking tired and disheveled and walking in a most distracting bow-legged fashion. She passed the pad with the report back to Dave, and he thumb-printed the screen to unlock the Captain’s reply:
“Give this to Joynes to sort out.
Ps. You have the Bridge.
PPs. I’ve run out of lubricant, get Mengele to send more.
PPPs. Or change the roster and send me a relief Yeoman.”
Sighing, and trying hard to ignore ASBeau’s “I-told-you-so” stare, Dave handed the pad back to Yeoman Fielding. “You’d better take this down to Sick-bay, Sandra.”
“Yes sir!” she replied brightly, but as she turned to waddle away, she paused and turned back to ask “Excuse me, but does anyone know if the galley serves ice-cream outside meal-times?”
Lieutenant Shearer was the Bridge’s authority on desserts: “Corse they do, but it’s limitid choice, liek? Wat flava was yeh thinkin ov?”
“It doesn’t really matter, I won’t be eating it” sighed Sandra as she waddled gingerly towards the turbo-lift.
Deciding the Captain’s input was now complete, Dave took a deep breath and pressed on.
“Helm, what’s our status?”
Crash replied, “We’re two point eight light-hours from Hole, sir, coasting at half light-speed.”
O’Mara looked up from her position at one of the science consoles and said “All sensors and data-recording systems are on-line and slaved to the drive controls, sir. As soon as we hit the drive we’ll be recording engine performance, field dynamics and spatial and temporal co-ordinates automatically.”
Lieutenant Shearer added “Ah have pic tup incummin comm traffic from Hawl Shippin Controol, sir. They haven’t acknawledged uz yet.”
“Ok, so were still stealthy, it’s just about us now.” He pressed the button on the comm-set to call Engineering “Are we all set Commander?”
Olga Romanov cleared her throat but still sounded nervous as she replied “Both Tana coils and Fleet coils are ready to go on line. We’re as ready as we’ll ever be sir.”
“Thank you, Commander, please stand-by.”
He cut the comm-link and said to no-one in particular, “Ok. Let’s do this.”
He tapped the icon on the arm of the chair that activated the Red Alert Klaxon and opened a general broadcast channel throughout the ship. “Red Alert. This is Commander Hollins, we are about to vent plasma directly into our warp-field. Be prepared to respond to possible emergencies resulting from worm-holes, space-time anomalies and …. er …. the ship exploding. Hollins out.”
Taking an involuntary deep breath Dave killed the comm-link, silenced the Red Alert klaxon and said “Crash, blip the warp-drive.”
“Aye sir!”
There was the faintest of sensations of movement and the stars on the view-screen crackled and swam crazily before returning to their starting positions, just as all the lights on the Bridge went out.
They sat in silence and darkness, everything on the Bridge looking ominous under the blinking red-flashes of the Red Alert system. Unsure what had happened, Dave addressed the Science Officer who was peering intently at her display. “What happened, O’Mara?”
> “It’s not looking good sir. A wormhole was definitely formed as we vented the plasma, but it collapsed instantly as we cut power to the coils.”
“Damn.” Dave had a moment of panic, fearing they’d been thrown far, far away again. “Crash, can you confirm we’re still in our original location?”
“Aye sir. We’re still on the same course and heading, picking up enough navigation data to confirm our position exactly. Readings from nearby pulsars conform too, sir, we’re still where and when we started the drive.”
“Ok” said Dave with a sigh of relief. The light flickered and came back on and he slumped back into the Captain’s chair. “So we still can’t use the Tana coils, but at least we didn’t get thrown three hundred light-years this time. We’ve got four weeks in which to work out some way of getting the drive working properly. O’Mara …… “
Dave was interrupted by Sharon Shearer “Sir, we may hav a problem. I canna get Shipping Controol, only sum sorta awtamayted message liek?”
She transferred a broadcast message she’d received onto the bridge speakers:
“This is the Commander of Fortress Hole. This space is the province of the Terran Empire. Any attempt to approach Hole will be met with force until the state of war that exists between the Terran Empire and the accursed Sha T’Al - Tana Alliance is resolved by glorious victory for the Empire. Long Live the Empire!”
Well that’s not good, thought Dave.
The Crew of USS Tiger will return soon in
Tiger: Enemy Mine