A Light In The Dark

by Lowell, Nathan

  “Engineering, Captain. Waiting for damage report now.”

  As she spoke Ralphie’s voice came from the speakers in the suit radios. “Engineering secured. All hands accounted for.”

  Gunderson keyed his mic before speaking. “Report, Ralphie. What’s happening down there?”

  “We took a rock. Hole almost directly in the bow. Emergency patch in place.” Several heartbeats passed before Ralphie continued. “You’re going to want to come down here, Cap’n.”

  “Be right there, Ralphie.” Gunderson said. He turned to the bridge crew. “Nancy, you’ve got the conn. Ernest, get us a plot to Breakall and a burn to bring us on course.”

  A chorus of “aye, aye’s” followed him down the ladder.

  When he got to engineering, he found bits of metal and plastic scattered across the deck. A faint haze of smoke obscured his vision and he frowned. “Ralphie?”

  The chief engineer stepped out from behind one of the massive generators and waved a gloved hand. “Here, Captain.”

  “What’s the smoke from, Ralphie? We’re not on fire are we?”

  Ralphie looked around as if just noticing the smoke. “Not any more, Skipper. We had a bit of a smudge but it’s out now. Scrubbers’ll clear that in a few ticks.”

  The captain looked at the pale, ordinary spacer leaning against the bulkhead, a portable fire extinguisher still clutched in his hands, his eyes wide and rolling. “Good job, Mr. Curtis.”

  “Thank you, sar.”

  “You’ll wanna see this yourself, Skipper.” Ralphie beckoned to the captain.

  Gunderson picked his way carefully through the odd bits of rubble on the deck until he got to where his chief engineer stood beside a shattered console. He stood there for several long heartbeats staring at the slagged remains of the ship’s jump drive.

  “Report, Chief,” the captain said.

  “Rock, about a centimeter. Came through the hull over there.” He pointed to where a bright yellow emergency hull patch splashed against the gray skin of the bulkhead. “Almost head on. It managed to catch the Burleson drive right about here.” He leaned down and pointed to a place just below the mid-line on what would have been the drive. “There was enough energy in it to shatter the casing and slag the internals. The heat caught the deck coat, but Curtis got that under control. It’s still hot, but it’s not melting any more.”

  Ralphie straightened up and looked at the captain. Gunderson read the truth in his bleak look.

  “You can’t repair it,” the captain said.

  Ralphie shook his head a couple of times, his lips pressed into a grim line.

  “Not with a full dry dock and a crew of engineers. There’s not enough left to repair.” He turned to look at it again. “We’re lucky we survived that one.”

  “How do you mean?” Gunderson asked. “Ships get hit by rocks all the time.”

  “Yeah, but usually they’re the size of a grain of sand or rice and they zip through without hitting anything solid. You hardly ever hear of anybody getting hit by anything bigger.” He cast a sardonic smile at the captain. “I don’t think it’s because they don’t get hit by bigger rocks, do you?”

  Gunderson sighed and shook his head. “No. They just don’t get to tell anybody after.”

  Ralphie grunted his agreement and nodded toward the console at the back of the compartment. “Take a look at this, too.”

  They shuffled through the debris from the shattered casing and Ralphie pointed to the plot on the console display. “Inertial dampeners,” he said. The trace spiked from a normal green through yellow and well into the red before dropping back to normal range.

  Gunderson blanched. “Holy crap.”

  “Another few ergs and we’d have lost the dampeners and none of us would have been left to scrape the spacer paste off the bulkheads.”

  Gunderson shook his head. “Okay, well, we did survive and now we need to assess the damage and come up with a plan.”

  “Yes, we do, Skipper. What do you want to do first?”

  Gunderson looked around engineering. “Pick up this mess. See if anything else is broken. I’ll get Ernest on the distress call and we’ll see where we are after that.”

  Chapter Eight

  Deep Dark: September 14, 2333

  Ralphie clambered up the ladder to the bridge and his scowl threatened to weld his eyebrows together. “Deaf and mute, Skipper.”

  Gunderson’s eyes went to the long-range display on the overhead.

  “Blind, too,” the engineer spat.

  “How can that be, Ralphie? I’m getting a trace...”

  Ralphie shook his head. “Naw. You’re only seeing what the scanner thinks it’s doing. There’s nothing on the other end and there’s nothing obvious out there to tell you you’re not seeing anything.”

  “What happened?”

  “Hot metal from the Burleson drive cut through the distribution panel. Melted the underlayment and took out all the comms routing to the outer hull.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  Ralphie looked to the second mate. “Ernest, I’ll need your help to rebuild this one. It’s not strictly engineering. I’ve got a spare box but the board in it needs to be replaced and that’s not a stocked spare.”

  “Can do, Ralphie. Soon as we’re done here?”

  Ralphie nodded and took a seat at the engineering console.

  Gunderson walked to the front of the bridge and turned to look at the assembled crew. He took a moment to scan the faces in front of him. The officers all appeared calm and collected. Of the ratings Kravitz and Curtis looked the calmest, but Jordan seemed jumpy. His hands didn’t want stop fluttering. His eyes had heavy circles under them. Gunderson also knew he wasn’t seeing what his officers were really feeling, with the exception of Ralph Winslow. His machines were broken and his distress painted itself across his face.

  “Okay, me hearties,” Gunderson began with a small grin. “We’re stuck in it and we need to figure out what to do to get out of it.”

  He waited to see if there would be any reaction. When there wasn’t, he continued.

  “Vasily? How we fixed for stores?”

  Vasily Dubrovka scratched his left ear with a fingertip before answering. “As nearly as I can tell, Captain, we have sufficient food supplies for the regulation one hundred and twenty days, less about fifteen we used on the run out to the Burleson limit. Call it three months, in round numbers.”

  “Anything we can do to spread that out?” Gunderson asked.

  “Rationing, of course,” Vasily said. “Get the survival rations from the life pods.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the after part of the ship. “Break into one of the cans back there and grab some of the steaks. That’s all I can think of, off hand, Captain.”

  Gunderson glanced to the armorglass at the back of the bridge. “Fifteen metric kilotons in each can? You think that’s enough?”

  Vasily snickered. “I suspect we’d be able to survive for several stanyers on just one of those cans, Skipper. Vitamin deficiency diseases and other artifacts of an unbalanced diet would be a problem.”

  “Thanks, Vasily. Chief? How we fixed for water?”

  Ralphie shook his head. “About six or eight months worth, I’d guess, Skipper. It’s not an exact science and depends. With the ship buttoned up good like this, we only lose about a half liter or so a day per person. The rest gets recycled pretty well.”

  “Air? Power?”

  “Power’s good, long as nothin’ else turns up busted. Air will be good until we run out of scrubber filters. Say, four months.”

  “Can you stretch that out?”

  Ralphie’s eyes searched the overhead for a few heartbeats while he thought about it. “The scrubbers are over engineered, Skipper. If we shut down one scrubber and live on the other, filters will last twice as long.”

  “Eight months?” Gunderson asked.

  “Maybe nine.”

  “Ernest, did you run those plots I asked for?” />
  “Sure did, Skipper.” The second mate tapped a couple of keys on his console and the overhead display lit up with what looked like two bundles of straw. “This bunch here...” Ernest pushed a couple of buttons and one bundle blinked twice, “That’s the course plots for all our jumps between Welliver and Breakall, either direction. The other bunch are the plots between Dree and Jett, likewise, either direction.”

  “What’s the scale on this, Ernest?” Nancy asked.

  “Ten AUs. The longest trace was three days, the shortest just under one. We’ve always been moving pretty fast, until this trip.”

  “Where are we now? Relative to the crossroads?” the captain asked.

  He hit a couple more keys and a blue dot began pulsing on the screen near the end of one of the bundles.

  Gunderson stepped closer to the screen and squinted up at it. “Is that right, Ernest? Two days and we’ve barely moved?”

  The second mate ground out a gravely chuckle. “Well, by comparison, Cap’n, ya. We lost about eighty percent of our velocity, maybe a little more, when that rock hit.”

  Ralphie muttered and Nancy made a soft “Oh” sound.

  Gunderson turned to the second mate. “So, what normally takes a day or so will take, what? Ten?”

  The older man nodded. “Yeah. About that, unless we slow down a bit, we’ll be out of the zone here in about eight or nine more days.”

  The crew stood there, listening to the sound of the blowers and staring at the plot.

  “What’s the next system in the direction of drift?” Vasily asked.

  “An unnamed star system about twenty thousand years away,” Ernest murmured.

  A short, nervous sounding laugh bubbled out of Nancy. “You looked?”

  He shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Can we stop?” Jordan asked, his eyes wide and searching the faces around him. “Sar? Can we stop at the crossroads?”

  Gunderson gave the man a nod and a smile. “That’s the question, Mr. Jordan.” He turned to look at the second mate with a raised eyebrow. “Ernest? Can we?”

  Ernest shrugged and then shook his head. “Not with this mass, Skipper. We don’t have enough fuel to kill the momentum.”

  “Can we lighten ship?” Gunderson looked around the bridge and his eyes came to rest on Vasily. “Can we drop a couple of cans?”

  Vasily shrugged. “Of course, Captain. It may take a little maneuvering, but I think so.” He frowned as he considered it. “We need to get somebody out there at the stern to release the safety latch, but we should be able to uncouple them.”

  “Ernest? Will forty-five metric kilotons make a difference in the firings?”

  Ernest turned to his console and banged furiously for several ticks. “Not enough, to stop us, but it’ll slow us a lot.”

  “How much?”

  “Four or five weeks to transit the area, Skipper. Is that enough?”

  Gunderson sighed and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck as he considered. “Maybe so, maybe no,” he said at last. “Better’n what we got which is not much.”

  “What do we do first, Skipper?” Nancy asked.

  “All of it. We need to get squawking as soon as we can, and we need to be able to see. We need to slow this ship down so we stay where there’s most likely to be other ships.”

  Vasily asked, “Why do you think there are ships in this spot, Captain?”

  “Least cost course between the key ports. That’s where we jumped in the past. Others who come through here won’t be too far off that mark. It’s not foolproof, but it’s the best we got.”

  The first mate added, “We’ve almost always seen at least one or two other ships when we’ve made this transit, Vasily. This really is a crossroads.”

  “But it’s not the only course, correct?” Vasily asked looking from one to another of the bridge crew. Eventually his eyes rested on the Ernest.

  “Nope. Not the only. Just the cheapest. There’ll be some minor variations.” He poked a thumb at the overhead. “You can see the different tracks we took right there. Jumps are always a bit iffy—plus or minus a bit from where you think you’re going. Jumpin’ into the Deep ain’t that much different, but the cheapest is to pick a spot halfway between. That’s it.”

  Vasily nodded, his eyes half closed in concentration, then he smiled. “I see. Thank you. We don’t see much down in the galley.”

  Gunderson looked around as the crew all looked to him. “Okay, folks. Here’s what we gotta do...”

  Chapter Nine

  Deep Dark: September 15, 2333

  For the better part of the afternoon, Ralphie labored in the ship’s only hard suit Gunderson and Nancy watched from the back of the bridge while Vasily worked the main lock.

  “How many of these steaks are we going to grab, Skipper?” Nancy asked as Ralphie picked his way aft for his third trip.

  “This should be the last trip. Vasily is weighing it as it comes aboard. We want a metric ton. That’s enough meat to push our food supply beyond what we got in atmosphere.”

  She turned a wry look in the captain’s direction. “So we’ll eat good, right up until we suffocate?”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “Something like that.”

  “How long will we have to wait for rescue, Captain?” Jordan asked from the helm.

  Gunderson turned to look at the spacer. The dark circles under they young man’s eyes and the sweaty patches on his shipsuit told a tale. “Long as it takes, Mr. Jordan.” He twitched one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.

  “We are going to get rescued, though, right?”

  “We’re going to work real hard at that, Mr. Jordan,” Gunderson said.

  The younger man kept scanning faces.

  Gunderson sighed to himself.

  “That’s all we need, Captain.” Vasily’s voice sounded scratchy on the intercom.

  Nancy responded from the OD’s console. “Roger that, Vasily.”

  “We ready to shake off the cans, Ernest?” the captain asked without turning from the view.

  “Ready, Cap’n. We’ve got axis of travel right down the center-line. They should fall off as soon as we hit it.”

  “Nancy, tell Ralphie to pull the pin and then get in here, would ya?”

  “Will do, Skipper.”

  They watched the stumpy, suited figure disappear behind the stern of the ship one more time, maneuvering jets flickering brightly against the dark.

  In a few heartbeats, the radio crackled. “Pin pulled. Heading back in.”

  Nancy acknowledged the call and they waited. The suited shape slipped alongside, heading for the lock in the bow. In a matter of moments, it disappeared from view around the curve of the hull.

  The captain turned and leaned back against the frigid armorglass of the port and watched the engineering display the lock cycle from red to yellow to green and then off.

  “I’m in, Skipper.” Ralphie’ voice came on the intercom.

  “Let ‘em go,” Gunderson said.

  Nancy keyed her mic. “Vasily? Release the cargo.”

  His response came almost immediately. “Releasing the cargo, aye, aye.”

  Gunderson felt the mushy thump when the cargo latch retracted into the hull.

  “Cargo latch released.”

  Nancy acknowledged the confirmation.

  “Goose it, Ernest,” Gunderson ordered.

  Vasily bounded up over the ladder and watched silently as the cans appeared to slide away from the ship on their own. Brief flickers of attitude jets slowed the ship’s main body and the cans seemed to speed up as the hull slowed.

  “That’s a lot of steaks, Captain. Mr. Malthus is not going to be happy,” Vasily said with an almost gleeful grin.

  Gunderson snorted. “Maybe so, maybe no. He’ll like it even less if we don’t get the ship back intact.”

  Vasily nodded. “That’s true enough, Captain. And it’s not like we couldn’t find them again.”

  Gunderson turned to Ernest. “We do
have position and vector on those cans, don’t we, Ernest.”

  “We do, Cap’n. Assuming we don’t wait too long, we should be able to find them quickly enough.” Ernest tapped a couple of keys and added, “The warning beacons should be live, too, Skipper. Anybody within ten thousand kilometers should spot them.”

  They watched the trio of cargo pods as they appeared to drift away from the ship faster and faster.

  Gunderson grunted in satisfaction. “Alright then. One more lil task and we’ll start slowing down. You got that system mod done, Ernest.”

  The older man didn’t look up from his screens. “Dang near it, Skipper. Just testin’ now. Don’t wanna blow this one.”

  “No, you don’t.” Gunderson turned to the first mate. “I’m gonna go give Ralphie a hand and see if we can move this along.”

  Nancy nodded. “We’ll just hang out here for a bit, won’t we, Mr. Curtis?”

  He looked startled for a moment. “Oh, you mean since we have the watch, sar?”

  Nancy barked a soft laugh. “Something like that, Fred, yeah.” She smiled at the captain but Gunderson frowned as he considered the helmsman for a few heartbeats before dropping down the ladder and heading for Engineering.

  When Gunderson got to engineering he found Vasily, Ralphie, and Kravitz stacking emergency rations on a grav pallet beside the life pod hatch.

  “That’s the last of them, sar,” Kravitz said to Vasily.

  :”Anything else we can scavenge from there, Ralphie?” Gunderson asked.

  Ralphie rubbed a hand along the back of his neck and stared at the decking for a few moments. “I’ve pulled all the spare bottles of O2 and siphoned off the water, skipper,” he said at last. “I can’t think of anything else. We don’t want to short the volatiles, and I can’t think of anything else we can consume.”

  Gunderson looked to Vasily who just shook his head and shrugged.

  Kravitz shook her head, too.

  “Well, button it up and let’s get this thing squawking. See if we can attract some attention.”

  Kravitz jumped out of the hatch and Ralphie dogged it behind her. The captain keyed the intercom and said, “You ready up there?”