The Resolute

by G. Weldon Tucker

  “We took some kind of a hit, Commander, midsection, upper ninety or more decks. We are not sure, but it appears to have taken out a big section of the upper decks. Spook indicates at least eighteen hundred feet longitudinally, and circular to six hundred feet deep. We do not know the reason, or the threat, but teams are on the way!”

  “Where is Commander Davis?” He was the duty Commander for late evening up to her time on at two.

  “In the head, ma’am. He sort of… imploded!”

  “What do you mean, is he sick?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Sort of!” The Lieutenant was pink, embarrassed, but was doing his best not to speak ill of his Commander, but it became obvious Davis was not handling the crisis well, if at all.

  “Where is the Captain?” she asked, sharply, studying the Christmas tree effect on the alarm boards. In fact, the lights for the damaged section of the ship did look like an upside down Christmas tree. Still, it was a small one for the huge number of lights that followed their sensors, established in every room, big or small, on the entire ship.

  Yellow was gas intrusion, or carbon dioxide, which would indicate improper air handling, and usually easily fixed. Red meant space intrusion, the most dangerous of all. This was a bright red Christmas tree.

  “He has not answered his hail, ma’am, but all of you were only notified a few minutes ago. You are the first to arrive. What do we do, Commander?”

  “First, seal all affected regions so we do not lose atmosphere! Second, verify there is no credible threat in the area. We have to make sure we are not under attack.”

  “Spook sealed the damaged area immediately, Commander. Twenty-four hundred airtight doors, ma’am. The fire and emergency teams were all ordered out by the system, too. They will arrive at the damaged zone for assessment in five minutes. There is no fire registering, which speaks of breach to space. And we perceive no threats outside the vessel, ma’am!”

  All in all, for a new Lieutenant, JG, that was a damned fine report, and she sort of said so, “Good job, Lieutenant!”

  The system was like an ocean going vessel. A breach caused an automatic lockdown of any water door within range of the damage and had saved countless ships on the water. It could do the same in space. It was, however, often a death sentence to those trapped on the wrong side of the door.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. Not immediately in danger of annihilation, then. “How far out are you checking, Lieutenant?”

  “Our systems show we are alone in space out to ten thousand miles. We suspect an asteroid hit. It came in detection range blindingly fast just forward of us and due to our relative speed, hit almost perpendicular to us. We estimate its speed at sixteen thousand miles a second, ma’am.”

  She knew that like most cruise ships, the top level of society demanded the top decks. She suddenly realized that this meant that if it took the right bite, they might not even have a Council.

  “Hail the Council members all, and keep at it every other minute until either they or the emergency crew answer that hail. Send a runner for the Captain, we need him here on the bridge, now!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” The young Lieutenant saluted her and turned to the details.

  Angela studied the board. She then looked to the motion indicator for Captain Morgan. It showed no movement in his quarters. Maybe he was out and unreachable…

  CHAPTER 7

  The call came in two minutes. “Commander Washington to the Captain’s quarters, now!” The system was merely repeating instructions and had no empathy for the problem, nor force for the order. But Angela raced out of the bridge, yelling to the Lieutenant Commander, Francis Upperlee, “Lieutenant Commander! You have the bridge. Find Commander Davis!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” but she saluted to a quickly retreating back as Angela hurried downstairs.

  Two other Commanders were headed up when she stopped, accepted their salute and said, “Stand the bridge and do what is necessary to save the Resolute, Willits. Davis may be out of it. Apparently an asteroid, but no one is sure. I am checking on Captain Morgan.”

  “Is he all right, ma’am?”

  “He does not answer his hail. In fact, Commander Rogers, come with me!”

  Rogers was galley and food services, anxious to get assigned the bridge, and until trained, he would be useless upstairs. He would make a good witness, however. And, she thought, her mind always full of working compartments, a good replacement for Davis.

  “Yes, ma’am!” Dale Willits cried and saluted. He was six years her junior, and helped her feel old, now and then.

  A young Ensign stood outside the Captain’s quarters, the door closed. He looked green.

  “Are you all right, Ensign Langols?”

  “I… yes… well, no, ma’am! It is the Captain, I think he is dead, ma’am!”

  “You THINK! Did you call emergency services?”

  “Yes, ma’am, they have no one to send! They are trying to find over sixteen thousand people, ma’am!”

  “Shit. Open the door, Langols!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He inserted a keycard and pushed the steel door in.

  Angela walked in, Rogers on her heels. The Captain was half on the bunk, held by his thigh strap, and his chest, arms and head floating in the gravity free air. Odd, and awkward. She checked for a pulse, finding nothing at his neck or his wrist. She could feel how cold he was, already. The collision was less than a half an hour old, and it had tossed him around, apparently, but not as it had her, right out of the bunk. He looked as if he had been also struck with that last heart attack.

  She realized that he would never have wanted anyone to see him undignified, and she loosened the thigh straps and eased him out of the bunk and onto the floor, face down. He weighed nothing without gravity. Pulling the magnet lined cover from the bunk, she laid it over him to his neck, the steel floor holding the blanket just fine.

  “Sorry, Captain Morgan. It had to happen, sooner or later,” she whispered as she knelt beside him.

  Rogers had said nothing, done nothing since she came in, but then, she was essentially the new Captain. At least until the Council made their decisions.

  Angela sat down on the spacious bunk. “Commander Rogers, notify the remaining Council, if you can find them. Unless they have a very valid reason, I will assume command. Move it!”

  “Yes, Comm… Captain!” he blurted, saluted, accepted one in return, and hurried away to find an active comm.

  “Ensign Langols, find me at least one emergency serviceman who can pronounce the Captain. Hurry it up. I know they are all near the upper decks, amidships. Find one!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” He, too saluted and was gone. Frankly, he had been stationed here by the first Lieutenant that came down, and that man was looking for EMTs, too. But better to be absent and doing busywork than quivering under the stern eye of the Captain.

  Left alone, Angela studied the old man’s craggy face, turned toward her. It showed pain, a lot of it, and it was apparent to her that this was not a glorious way to die. But she was not a worrier, nor a politician, and the stresses would be much less, she hoped. Unless the Council denied her promotion.

  Then, well stresses would be high. She did not know, yet, what she would do, but it might not be pleasant…

  -----

  Ten minutes later, Commander Rogers brought back a young EMT, another Ensign, accompanied by Councilman Derek Rollander, the only black member of the board, and behind him came Ensign Langols.

  “Good job, men. Let’s get this cleared up as soon as possible. We need no questions about the top, we need consistency. Councilman Rollander, how many of the Council did we lose?”

  Rollander sat down heavily at the Captain’s workstation and shook his head. “That thing missed my cabin by a mere ten feet. All the Council quarters behind me were taken out, as well as a hundred other rooms on my level, headed down along the back of the Resolute. God knows how many below me.”

  “What do you actually know, Coucilman Rollande
r?” She did not lean on him, merely brought his attention out of conjecture and into the real world.

  He took a breath and thought about it. “The Lion is gone, along with Councilwoman Gravisov who was only in the third quarters behind me. One other, for sure. The rest are… missing. As most are toward the midsection, upper decks, it seems… logical they are gone. What a… shock. I thought there was nothing out here. Nothing.”

  “If so, Councilman, you were misinformed.” Which meant, more likely, he did not pay attention in all that free schooling. “All space education aboard has taught that there are black holes, rogue planets, fast moving asteroids, super novas, I mean, the list is endless. We have traveled over two hundred and thiry light years with only two or three minor incidents. And what will save us now is the size of the Resolute. She is big, and can take a huge hit and keep on going.”

  “But, can it happen again?”

  Dense, maybe. “We will work on trying to identify anything else out here, but if it was traveling several thousand miles per second, we had no chance of missing it, anyway.”

  “You mean there might be… others right away?”

  Calmly, helping to bring Rollander down, too, she replied, “We do not know, Councilman. Now, you need to get back upstairs, find out who is left for Council, backfill, at least temporarily, and call a meeting. Let the emergency people handle the repairs and such. I am in command as Captain until you tell me otherwise, but I want the promotion, if it stands, in writing. Can you do that?”

  She was not commanding, she was simply speaking, but there was no denying the command demeanor. She was a natural.

  Rollander looked at the Ice Queen, for that was her nickname from everyone to everyone, but not to her face, and nodded. Nothing ruffled her feathers or got her upset. Amazing. And, as top of the heap, a good thing. He hurried out to find his other members. But his mind was made up. Commander Angela Washington had his vote, right now!

  -----

  An hour and a half later, closing on two o’clock, oh two hundred, as the military clocks proclaimed, a runner showed up with documents that gave Angela her promotion. It was signed by High Councilman Rollander. He had moved quickly. In there was a note. Rollander had recruited the undersecretary replacements for the Council to remain staffed at six, pending confirmation of the death of the others. Her appointment, her promotion, was official.

  Along with it was a packet including the card key to the Captain’s quarters and the Captain’s boards for her epaulets. Calmly, she read the contents, the orders clear. Then she had Commander Willits read the orders. He saluted her smartly, and said, “Congratulations, ma’am. I am sure you wanted it under better circumstances, but you earned it, all the same!” He stepped forward and replaced her Commander boards with the Captain’s rank.

  “Thank you Commander. Have one of the runners clear out the Captain’s quarters. Another to move me, Ensign or above. I need to be as close to the bridge as possible when I am not on it, personally.”

  There came a soft purr near her elbow where she had sat down after the ‘ceremony.’

  “The Captain speaking!” she said, with enough force to make the point.

  It was a member of the emergency services crew, Cal Dolwin, with a report on damages. “Still flyable, ma’am. It is a half circle, about eighteen hundred feet diameter, which means it is better than seven or eight hundred down into the ship. Damages extend from stress almost another hundred around the outer edge and down into the decks.”

  “What is the procedure, Mr. Dolwin?”

  “Engineering says it will be a spacewalk for several days after we seal the inside. Sealing it from inside will be a day or so, assuming we can get in to it. It will be a minimum of fifteen days for full repair. It just flew by and took a hell of a bite out of our back. Thank God we are so big. Else it would have broken her back and we would be dust. We have plenty of material, ma’am. It is just time.”

  “God must have blinked, Mr. Dolwin. Else we would not have lost sixteen thousand souls. But, thank you, Mr. Dolwin. I appreciate the full report.” She put down the handset and asked Willits, “What did the three dimensional picture look like, before and after the collision, Commander?”

  “I can play the relevant parts for you, ma’am, on your battle screen. Watch closely, it comes and goes in a mere flash.”

  Her personal battle screen was embedded in her desktop, bigger, by far, than the small duplicate in her quarters… her old quarters. Nothing, nothing, THERE! And like the man said, it was here and gone. “Any other objects we need to know about?”

  “No, ma’am, but we can only see out to twenty thousand miles around us, spherically. Optics are tunnel vision forward, Captain, but much more distance.”

  “Looks like there is nothing out here but us. Commander, let’s get engineering on the detection problem. I want to get a radius of twenty or thirty thousand miles under watch. It will give us a brief few seconds, but the system may help us miss the next one!”

  His look, even though he tried to mask it, was a bit incredulous.

  One could read the disbelief in his eyes, how the hell does a multi-million ton ship dodge a bullet that fast?

  But he managed, “Yes, ma’am. I will have them on it first thing in the mor…”

  A sharp cut of her hand in front of her body, between them, cut him off, as she snapped, “No! Now, Commander. I want them up and at it. We are under an emergency watch. Move them out!”

  He nodded, hastily, saying, “Yes, ma’am!” He saluted and hurried off to make those calls. Said calls had to go to Lieutenants, then to civilian liaison, then to the engineers, who would not be happy campers. But it was their lives on the line as much as it was hers.

  CHAPTER 8

  Throughout that first day, all of the Commanders, all of the Council Members remaining, including the four new ones, and every officer made it a point to visit the Captain in the bridge to congratulate her. Frankly, except for a very few, all thought she had it in the bag, anyway.

  Angela did not need the distraction, but it became obvious this was one of those political things she would have to learn how to do. Lots of false smiles, especially for people she had simply never heard of, and probably never heard of her. She put up with it, and in her estimation, it went well.

  During this hectic transition, she replaced Commander Davis with Commander Rogers. The latter would need some hard training for a week to be certain he was up to speed, but seemed much better suited for command. Davis made no complaint, but that was typical of the military. He knew full well that he had buckled.

  Finally, she was simply exhausted. She’d spent sixteen hours verifying everything on the ship worked as expected, and helping to design or at least suggest the improvement for the overall sphere detection. But the main focus was the forward optics so that they could see, by mammoth telescope systems, what might be ahead.

  Half the problem was that tunnel vision Commander Willits had eluded to. The original engineering specs called for a view of twenty-thousand miles in diameter, at up to a one million miles.

  That was nowhere near wide enough, or far enough to counter an asteroid approach. It was barely far enough to steer at that range. You do not move nine hundred million tons of mass off course, even a tiny bit in anything like five seconds.

  The alternate, already on the design boards, was some kind of quick action shielding. So far, all talk and little done.

  Having made all the suggestions to what she wanted, she requested emergency design and implementation. Requested, because one cannot order a civilian engineer to hurry. But they would move quickly enough. Dead could be as dead, military or civilian. This had been an eye opening experience for all…

  -----

  Meanwhile, the repairs were ongoing, as expected, and she was no longer needed. She suddenly yawned. Time to head to her new quarters.

  On the way down, she thought about the tragedy. They had been lucky. The asteroid killed roughly three and a half pe
rcent of the population, but removed only about two percent of the mass of the ship. A tragedy, no doubt, but it could have been much, much worse. Had the asteroid cut the ship in half, they would all be dead, the last two hundred and twenty-two years of travel entirely wasted. And there were plenty of asteroids out in space that were big enough to do it. In fact, many that were several times larger than Resolute, altogether.

  Space is not a friendly place.

  An Ensign had removed all of the old Captain’s clothing and personal affects, then a team had scoured any trace of the previous occupant away. Now, they moved Angela’s into the bigger place.

  She made it a point to retrieve the official portrait of Captain Morgan, eighteen inches on a side, displaying him in full uniform. She returned it to its rightful place. She had respected the old man immensely. Probably one of the few who did. And she wanted very much to be as successful as Captain Morgan. She stood back and saluted the picture, ignoring the exiting Ensign.

  She did not mention her unmentionables, and neither did he. But she bet he had an eyeful. She might be prim and proper on the outside, but she did love her own underwear. Things had not changed much since the lost Earth days, but there was still a distinction between utility and sexy. The latter was in and available in hundreds of shops on the ship. She made semi-annual trips to those shops for these things, trying her best not to be recognized. So far, so good. Still, necessary. Movies can be sooo helpful!

  Should have packed them myself, she thought, ruefully. She wondered how long it would take to make the rounds…

  -----

  Inside the ruined section, teams of ten engineers to a group, some teams repairing from the forward leading edge backward, and some from the aft edge forward, toward each other, worked inside space suits. They would save deck repair for when they had stabilized the interior. The most important thing was to get space out and atmosphere locked in.