by Pete Molina
Chapter 58
Captain Janet Whetherstone was relieved, to say the least, when the engineers and damage control teams down on the Engineering deck reported that they had the antimatter contained for the moment. For the last half hour, since they’d been disabled by the attack from the object, she had considered giving the order to abandon ship. All but the most essential crew had been briefly dispatched to sit in the lifeboats just in case things took a turn for the worse. Fortunately, the buoy had already made it far enough away that they weren’t in danger of losing their backups, just the ship.
The Powel had sustained massive damage; that was clear. The attacks from the surface wouldn’t have caused nearly as much damage if the enemy hadn’t had such a large supply of antimatter to throw at them. There wasn’t much one could do to defend against it. She hadn’t heard any reports from Lt. Commander Bowman or from Agent Dawson in some time, not since they had entered the object.
The COM officer motioned for her attention as she was staring at the tactical display that was still up on the bridge. Hopefully the object had given up all it had and they were safe because they couldn’t maneuver on more than just limited thrusters until they were rescued or managed to repair the engines, which she doubted was possible.
“What is it, Orus?” she asked the young officer. The girl was holding up well under the pressure of the recent events, and she was doing well in her rotation to COM from NAV. The Captain made a mental note to put her in for a commendation.
“We have The Golden Rule on. They’re still four hours away, so there’s still some delay,” Orus informed her.
“Put it on,” the Captain ordered.
“Captain, this is The Golden Rule. Report, please?” Damon Harding’s voice came over the channel. It repeated over and over due to the time delay, waiting for a response.
“Mr. Harding, we’ve sustained heavy damage assaulting the Kupier object but have managed to disable its defenses. About ten minutes ago Agent Dawson, along with his contingent of Marines, entered the object, I haven’t heard any thing from them since,” she reported.
Harding’s response took two minutes. “What is the extent of the Powel’s damage?”
“We’ve lost our antimatter reaction chamber. We almost lost containment of our antimatter supply. That’s been stabilized now, but we’re operating on reserve power and minimal thrusters. We require immediate evacuation until the Powel can be repaired.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Captain. I’ll be there in about three hours and fifty minutes. Can you hold out that long? If you receive anything from Agent Dawson, you’re to relay it to me immediately,” Harding replied. She couldn’t tell if he was sincere.
“We can certainly hold out that long. We’ve launched our buoy on the following vector, just in case. We still have had no report from the surface team,” she said, having the buoy’s vector transmitted with her message.
“Understood, it’s coming my way. I’ll just let it go, and we can pick it up on our way back,” Damon replied.
While she was listening, she noticed the images from the probes on the far side of the object turn to white static. “What’s going on with the probes?” she asked.
“It appears that they’ve been destroyed,” the Tactical Officer reported.
“By what?”
“Surface laser or something. Our sensors aren’t functioning well enough for us to get a positive confirmation of that,” Tactical responded.
“Nav, make sure we stay on this side of the object, I don’t want move in to range of any active weapons.”
“Mr. Harding, we’ve just lost our probes that are on the far side of the object, apparently due to some type of attack. This region may not be safe. You should hold distant. We can’t assure your safety.” She waited as the minutes ticked off.
“Affirmative, is there any kind of activity you can detect on the far side?” Harding asked.
“Our sensors are damaged. We can’t see much at the moment,” the Captain responded.
“Captain, Engineering reports that we have containment at a hundred percent in the backup unit. We’re out of that danger now. We can have our auxiliary antimatter reactor started in a half hour,” Lt. Commander Smith reported. He was filling in for Bowman while he was away. The Powel carried a small antimatter generator that with some rigging could provide them with power and some maneuvering, along with limited weapons and defenses. It had been somewhat damaged in the attack as well but not nearly as severely as the main reactor.
“Excellent. Mr. Harding, it appears we will have our auxiliary generator running in a half hour. However, we are still running low on fuel. We will probably be able to limp away and at least get out of range.”
Two minutes later the response came back. “Negative, Captain. You’re to remain where you are until the surface team reports or returns. I’m still coming, and I’ll refuel you.”
She hadn’t expected anything different. She wouldn’t leave without the surface team anyway, unless they had no choice. Not that they were going anywhere at the moment, but in about twenty five minutes they’d at least be able to power up again and get some of the systems running that were down, including a number of the SS systems. The SS systems were great as long as you had sufficient power, but without that precious commodity they were just lumps of carbon.
Ten more minutes passed, and then Orus pointed towards the screen with a look of horror on her face. “My god!” she got out.
The Captain looked from the tactical to the main viewer in which the object had been plainly visible, its dirty brown standing out against the black background. But now the surface was erupting in hot white light, huge fragments moving towards them. There was no time.
“It’s exploding! Get us out of here, Nav!” the Captain ordered futilely.
They were too close. The Powel was doomed. The Captain wondered how much antimatter that explosion represented briefly and managed to wonder what her restored version would think when she woke up back on Earth, having lost her ship. She wouldn’t remember anything past breakfast this morning, before they’d arrived.
The wave of flaming debris swept over the Powel, cracking the ship like an egg. Then seconds later a secondary antimatter explosion was unleashed as the backup containment unit on the Powel succumbed to the awesome force. Briefly it appeared as if there were a new sun, then the darkness of space returned.