by CK Burch
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Laguardia hit the controls and quickly dragged the artifact into the cargo bay and let it free once it had cleared the opening. She might be bringing it in, but she didn't give a damn about whether or not it survived the process. Quickly, she deactivated the energy cables, then hit her comm. ″Captain, the artifact is in! Override door control and get us the hell out of here!″
″Roger that,″ came the reply, and after a long, agonizing moment, the cargo bay doors slowly closed inward until the bay was cut off from the outside again. Laguardia turned to Tybalt and reached one arm around the doctor's waist, using the other to type on her minipad, deactivating Tybalt’s magboots.
Laguardia watched the rad levels on her display fall quickly into non-lethal. She exhaled; she didn't realize that she'd been holding her breath for the last minute. Then she turned to the pressurization controls on the panel next to the cargo bay exit and waited for the bay to slowly restore gravity and atmosphere.
Before her, the artifact landed perfectly upright in the center of the cargo bay.
Well, at least something went right, she thought, and shook her head. Stupid fucking scientists and their stupid fucking self-sacrificing missions.
***
Mac shook his head and bit his lip; was anything going to go right on this fucking dive?
First the stupid fucking science bitch and her antics, now this. Clarke had pointed out the heat shielding was weaker near the port engine sequencer – the heat from the thrust, added to the exterior atmospheric heat, was pushing the limits of the bulkheads. Coupled on top of that was the fact that the Icarus had been turned round so that the port section was taking most of the heat, fucking literally too, so that Doctor McFucking Tybalt could receive the artifact over on the starboard side, away from the fucking sun. There was no equalization of pressures throughout the heat shielding; it was like firing a gun repeatedly into the same spot on a bulletproof vest to test the effectiveness. Only the impact point was right next to the fucking engine coils.
Mac ran along the length of engineering, towards the engine level, which was at the lowest point of the aft section. He ignored the lift and instead took the service duct, sliding his boots down the ladder rungs, hand over hand keeping himself upright. At the bottom he turned and came to the engine control room, a small half-moon shaped area with a large window looking out onto the massive thrusters themselves. Artificial gravity was purposefully kept off in the engine bay, to increase effectiveness of thrust and to delay wear and tear via friction. The control room here, on the starboard side, connected to the port control room via an insulated conduit bridge that ran beneath the engines and to the other side. Both engines could be manipulated from either control room, but individual repairs and systems were taken care of from the respective control boards...and the conduit bridge between the starboard and port sides had collapsed.
″How the fuck did it collapse?″ Mac shouted. The engineer before him, Hartman, was working the holo readouts at the starboard controls. According to the readouts, the starboard engine was well within safe temperature limits, but the port engine was reaching upwards steadily, not near critical mass yet, thank Christ, but if they didn't do something in the next five or six minutes, it would. And then five minutes more after that, without emergency coolant or engine shutdown, they would be looking at overload. Fucking scientists and their fucking –
Mac shook his head. Concentrate.
Hartman turned back and held up his hands. ″You got me!″ he shouted. He looked worried; worse than that. Hartman clearly understood the problematic situation if the engine coil overheated, especially given the circumstances and how close it was. To his credit, Hartman looked like he was keeping it together. So far. ″Best guess at this point is that the heat seeped through the insulation and broke down the stability within the framework! There's no way to get through there, and we've got another problem- – ″ Hartman pointed at the holo and Mac saw his worst fears coming to life: according to the data the circuit controls between the starboard and port sections had been severed and there was no way to manually override the engine functions from this side. If they couldn't find a way to get to the fucking port control room and quick, meltdown was pretty much fucking assured.
″Christ,″ Mac whispered.
″You're telling me!″ Hartman yelled. He pointed again at the holo. ″If I can get over there to the port controls, I think I can patch the system, shut down the port engine from there, and reestablish systems override to the starboard controls!″
Mac put his hand on Hartman's shoulder. ″Hartman, you're gonna stay right here, and I'm going to try and get across to the other side. If anyone should do it, it's me.″
″With all due respect, sir! If anyone should stay, it should be you! If I can't get this to work, then it'll be the chief engineer who can pull off a last-second miracle!″ Hartman smiled weakly; he believed it, but he certainly didn't want to.
Mac looked out the window at the engine bay, calculating the amount of heat out there. Christ. It was his responsibility to leap across that hell, not Hartman's, but the junior engineer had a point: if Hartman didn't succeed, the fate of the ship would rest in the chief's hands. Mac sighed. There wasn't enough time to contemplate further. ″What's your plan?″ he shouted.
″Coat my HES in raw coolant!″ Hartman shouted. He pointed at one of the coiled tubes lining the ceiling. ″We break open the emergency valve long enough to cover me, and the coolant should keep my exterior temp cool enough long enough for me to get to the other side! I can manually shut down the port engine, and you can reroute power to the starboard engine so we still have enough thrust to get the hell out of here!″
Mac smiled. The kid had been on the boat only a couple of weeks, but he was an inventive one. ″Let's fucking do it!″ Mac shouted.
Hartman walked over beneath the coolant emergency spill duct, and Mac stood by the controls.
″Ready?″ Mac shouted.
Hartman gave the thumbs up.
Mac opened the valves: red lights and alerts began to sound as translucent blue coolant spilled forth, diverted from the flow to the starboard engine. Heat temp spiked momentarily, and when Mac felt Hartman was slimed enough, he restored the flow to the engine. Instantly everything fell back into nominal levels. Hartman, meanwhile, looked like he'd taken a roll in K-Y jelly.
″Okay! Let's do this!″ Hartman yelled. He kept his magboots activated so he wouldn't slip in the coolant, and exited the control room towards the engine bay. There was a junction between the control and the bay for depressurization, and as Hartman waited for the equalization to occur, Mac watched the rising temperature on the port engine inch closer to the red. They were cutting this too fucking close.
Captain Markov's voice sounded in his ear: ″Mac, it's the captain. Bridge control has some nasty readings on the engines. What's your situation?″
″Doing a very delicate procedure Captain! If you don't hear back from me in exactly two minutes, go to override, shut down engine power and go directly to maneuvering thrust only!″
There was a pause; oh, the captain probably did not want to hear that, especially considering that there was no way to exit this depth using only maneuvering thrust. ″Say that again, Mac. I don't think I heard you right.″
Over in the junction, the pressurization finished. ″You heard me right, Captain. More in a minute. Mac, out.″ He flipped his comm to Hartman's frequency. ″Talk to me, Hartman.″
″Coolant's keeping the temp in the green so far,″ Hartman said. Mac watched as the young man stepped out into the zero gravity of the engine bay, then slowly walked across the top of the covered conduit bridge, passing dangerously close to the engines. ″It's starting to get a little hot though, I'm not going to lie.″
″Keep your head clear, keep your ass moving,″ Mac said. ″Can you get into the conduit bridge where it collapsed?″
″Negative, there's no opening. Almost to the port side!″ Even f
rom this distance, Mac saw the coolant jelly on Hartman's HES was beginning to steam and smoke. That sort of temp wouldn't burn through the HES, it was designed for worse temps, but the inside of the suit would get far too hot for any human functionality. That was always the damn problem with these goddamn systems: everyone always worried about systems functions, never about the humans who were operating them.
Hartman climbed up to the junction between the bay and the port side. He entered in and waited for pressure equalization.
Mac looked down at the temp: thirteen degrees away from critical mass, twenty-seven away from overload. Sweat pooled in his armpits that had nothing to do with heat.
″Okay, I'm in!″ Hartman shouted. ″Christ, it's fucking hot in here.″ Mac looked up and across the way: he could see Hartman working in the port control station, working at the system controls. ″Chief, systems are fried in here! I'll have to pull open the goddamn paneling to get at the circuitry!″
Mac looked down; ten degrees. ″We're looking at twenty-five degrees to overload, Hartman. No time for pleasantries. Get in there!″
″Roger!″ Hartman disappeared from view. ″Opening up the front panel. Yeah, it's fucked up in here...I'm using my multitool to access the basic synapses of the ops board!″
Mac thought quickly: the basic synapses connected to the coolant systems. If Hartman was attempting to cool the engine down at this point, they'd only be staving off the inevitable critical mass. ″No,″ Mac said, ″fuck the coolant systems, we need to shut down the port thruster completely! Otherwise we're just putting a band-aid on a missing leg! Tie the damn thing off!″
″Sir, I think I can get the coolant to flow through override systems, and we can use the port engine long enough to ride out of the dive! I just need another minute – ″
A bright red flashing light appeared on the console in front of Mac, and he saw that they were fifteen degrees from overload. ″Hartman! Shut the goddamn thing down now! That's an order! Do you hear me? That's a goddamn order!″
″Shit!″ Hartman yelled. ″Okay, okay, beginning systems override – ″
Mac switched over to the captain's frequency. ″Captain, I hope you're ready to override the main thrusters – ″
″Mac, if we do that we're not coming out of this dive.″
The chief engineer closed his eyes and prayed. ″Wait for my mark.″
″Mac – ″
He switched again. ″Hartman, talk to me.″
″Three overrides down, one more to go and then – ″
Mac looked down. Oh god. The kid wasn't going to make it. He held his finger over the minipad, ready to switch to the captain. One second more, just one –
″Done!″ Hartman whooped and crowed and laughed hysterically. ″Systems override done! Port engine shutdown initialized! Reroute power through to starboard thruster!″
Mac realized he'd been holding his goddamned breath and exhaled sharply enough to spit on the inside of his helmet. The console display confirmed it: temperatures on the port engine were decreasing, slowly, but steadily enough to remove the threat of engine overload. ″Jesus, kid, you cut that close,″ Mac said, not surprised at how unsteady his voice sounded, and he routed all available engine core power from port flow to the starboard engine. The remaining thruster would take a heady toll shouldering the weight of the ship getting out of the dive, but once they were away from the chromosphere and back into standard orbit, Mac would worry about making repairs then.
″What do you mean I cut it close? You kept yelling in my ear.″ Hartman sounded happier than a fucking pig in shit.
″Yeah, yeah. Just get the hell back over to this side. Temps in the engine bay should be okay enough for you to cross.″ Mac flipped the frequency. ″Captain, Mac here.″
″Mac, I've got people freaking out up here. We lost an engine.″
″We nearly lost the whole damn ship. The port engine was close to critical, we had to shut it down and reroute power flow to the starboard thruster. We should have more than enough power for escape velocity out of the chromosphere.″
″A minute ago you were talking about maneuvering thrusters only. How bad was it?″
″Bad enough that your heart will do better hearing about it once we hit standard orbit.″ Mac wanted to get out of his fucking suit and run the decks naked. He was tired, hot, and tired of being hot. ″Can we go back to having a fucking ship that actually works when we try to use things on it?″
″Open channel, Chief,″ Markov warned. ″Doctor Tybalt had her own problems, but we've got the artifact aboard and we're turning into escape thrust now. Keep an eye on the ship for another five minutes until we're clear of this mess and we'll talk about that whiskey.″
″Aye-fucking-aye, Captain.″ Mac grinned. But there was still work to do; five minutes in the Sun was still five minutes surrounded by electromagnetic storms and burning hydrogen. He switched his frequency once more. ″Clarke, it's Mac. Keep the lid on for five more minutes, we're headed home free!″
***
Just outside the cargo bay doors, Straub held up his communicator to call the captain, when Markov's voice spoke almost intuitively. Straub nearly dropped the damn thing. Jesus, he was on edge. But from the look of things, he was doing a lot better than Kerrick, who was pacing madly, left and right and left and right, with all the grace and poise of a first-year ice skating student. She had come around almost instantly after being tossed into the bulkhead, but she’d been quiet and stormy and had ignored his asking if she was okay, and had started that strange pacing. She was clearly pissed but he couldn’t give a good god damn about it at the moment.
He answered the comm. ″Straub here.″
″Good news,″ Markov said. ″Laguardia reports that she's retrieved the artifact and Doctor Tybalt. The doctor is unconscious, but her vitals are stable. Once the cargo bay repressurizes, help Laguardia take Doctor Tybalt to sick bay to ensure her health.″
″Thank god,″ Straub breathed.
″Thank something,″ Markov retorted. He sounded irritated. ″The doctor pulled a foolhardy stunt in there. I'm going to wrap up things on the bridge and then meet you all in the sick bay for a debriefing, first with you and Kerrick, then with Tybalt once Doctor Gaines gives her an okay bill of health. I'm not entirely happy with how this all took place, Doctor Straub.″
″For the record, I was against the plan of action, sir.″ Straub refused to look over at Kerrick; he could feel her burning stare without actually taking it in. ″I went along with it to try and prevent anything serious from taking place.″
″You may have done just that.″ The captain cleared his throat then continued. ″Regardless, we'll settle all this when we meet in sick bay. Markov, out.″
Straub placed the comm back in his jumpsuit pocket and stood still. She was just staring at him. What the hell was her problem? ″You know, we did the right thing by contacting the captain.″ He refused to meet her glare, instead choosing to speak to the empty wall. For a minute there, just before Doctor Tybalt had come down the corridor, he'd thought that maybe, just maybe they'd still have a chance at salvaging whatever it was that they'd started a few weeks ago. Now he knew for sure, dead certain, that ″they″ were over. Now it would be the uncomfortable ride home as ″colleagues″ and awkward research partners.
He'd done that before. With Sarah.
God, was that why he had found Kerrick so attractive? Because she reminded him of Sarah? And with that thought, he recalled the way Kerrick's pussy tasted in her quarters, how sweet and warm it was, how he'd thought of nothing but Sarah while deep within her, how he couldn't go to his own quarters without the portrait of his fiancee staring at him, encapsulating his guilt, underscoring the way he felt that he was betraying her, no matter how long gone she was, no matter how many times he remember that yes, Sarah was dead. Sarah had been dead for over two years now. She was gone, and he needed to move on. And for a while he thought he had. And now this. This huge setback. Which wasn't really Kerrick's
fault; it was his own. He sighed.
He turned to look at Kerrick and stopped.
She was not simply glaring. The veins on her forehead were standing out, her eyes were red. Jesus, it looked like a blood vessel had burst, the white of her left eye nothing but fuzzy red matter, angry and irritated. Had that been from being thrown against the wall? A trail of mucus streamed from her left nostril, like a matching image, down and over her lips which were pressed so tight that he could hardly make out where her mouth really was. She had her fists balled up tight, her shoulders hunched up to her ears. She did not simply look pissed off; she looked murderous.
Straub felt afraid. This was not a look he'd seen in a human being before.
″Sydney?″ he ventured.
″Don't call me that,″ she whispered, a hissing sound that underlined fury and retort. ″Don't you dare. You will refer to me as Doctor Kerrick for the rest of this expedition, and I assure you, Doctor Straub, that Doctor Tybalt will hear about your betrayal, selling us out to the captain, who you know has no interest in anything that Doctor Tybalt deems best for our scientific matters, something he is certainly unfit to judge!″ Words were accentuated, gunshots amid tense sentences, and Straub took a step back.
″Doctor Kerrick,″ he said slowly, ″are you feeling well?″
″Feeling well?″ she shouted. The cargo bay doors began to open behind her, but she paid no attention. ″Feeling well? How dare you! How dare you ask me that! You fucked me and then you fucked me over! Me and Doctor Tybalt! You're a turncoat! A two-faced asshole! A military stooge! You said her name while you were fucking me and you fucking dare to ask me if I'm feeling well?!"
Straub couldn't speak. Behind Kerrick, Laguardia was emerging from the cargo bay, carrying Doctor Tybalt's unconscious body. Both were still in their HESs. He reached towards them, to point them out, but before he could do anything else his face stung, hard and fierce, and he heard the slap before he felt it. His hand went to his left cheek – the sting there told him that she hadn't just slapped him, she'd scratched him. Deep.