T-Plus 13

  They packed as many of the intact intricate computer parts that they could into their backpacks. The poor computer had already been conveniently broken into pieces from its whirl around the room, and it was just a matter of wrapping up what was left of it and fitting them into as many compartments of their backpacks as possible. The more intact parts went into the main pocket of their backpacks, and required a bit skill in jigsaw puzzles so they wouldn’t damage any further.

  The men gave the lighter pieces to Esther, keeping the bulky or awkward ones for themselves. It took several tries for them to figure out the best configuration to pack everything, but once a weird corner wasn’t poking into Soup or Aaron’s back, they were set.

“Did you find space for all of the medicines you picked up?” Aaron asked Esther as they headed back the way they came.

  Along with the parts they gave her, Esther sorted through the usable medicines she had already looted from the clinic’s medical storage along the walls. The layout was similar to her own, so it didn’t take long for her to find what she was searching for. With the bulky packages and bottles of medicine capsules in mind, she managed to fit most of what was important into her backpack.

“I crammed in all the first-aid I could,” she responded before pointing at her pockets. “Whatever wasn’t too important are either in my coat pockets or left behind.”

“Do you really think we’ll need all of that?” Kuznetsov inquired.

“Knowing the technicians in our group, yes,” Esther said, pointing her flashlight back down the dark corridor that led to the Engineering Bay.

  Everything was quiet. They had kept their remaining jars of aliens at hand, knowing what was in store for them on the route back. Each of them held one life-saving jar along with their flashlight. 

“I hope they have the power fixed by the time we make it back,” Aaron muttered as she fell in step with the two of them.

  Kuznetsov took the lead as Aaron shepherded them forward. The engineer glanced over his shoulder, hearing the Navigator’s wish.

“Probably not. The gravitational anomalies were strong even before the accident in ARCNAV occurred. If my hypothesis is correct, then they’ll need to find more supplies for the repairs. We might need to help them search that sea of boxes anyway, whether for computer parts or transformer parts, whichever they deem is more important.”

“So what I’m hearing is, we should take our time going back,” Esther said.

  Her mind thought back to the hangar full of disorganized crates and blanched at having to go back into that mess. A duet of agreement noises echoed her statement. She noticed with a small snort that Kuznetsov slowed his steps to only two-thirds of his normal stride, and neither of them said a word.

***

  Oliver leaned over the open crate he’d just inspected, sneezing and coughing his lung out of accumulated dust. Once he caught his breath again, making sure he didn’t breathe in another mouthful of dust he just managed to hack out, he straightened to survey the hangar. Their group of five had spread out and separated the hangar into quadrants, and each of them was responsible for searching for the parts they needed. Well, the four technicians were in charge and Toast just followed the Chief to help him open boxes.

  The closest one to Oliver was Joey, and like him, the intern was also taking a momentary breather. He was leaning against a stack taller than him, staring at the open boxes that spanned out in a small radius with him as the center. Oliver left his quadrant and made his way over to Joey, climbing over a few rows of crates to reach him.

“Any luck?”

“No,” the intern sighed, gesturing at the already checked boxes. “Just a bunch of extra computer parts. Mr. Hensley, why didn’t we label everything when we put them away in boxes? There’s so many of them!”

“They were labeled. Well, the shelves and areas they used to be in,” Oliver explained with a sigh as he rubbed the back of his head in shame.

  Evidently, the Engineering Bay’s collective laziness to label every single box had come back to bite them in the ass. 

“When was the last time we sorted through all of this anyway? Like, before the aliens, I mean. Some of this stuff is outdated by a few years,” the intern asked.

  Joey pointed at some of the boxes nearby. Oliver raised his eyebrows, and pointed his light at them. Jutting out of the boxes from their original positions after Joey’s rummaging were several metal sheets. Other boxes had pipes poking out. Oliver recognized them at a glance as the spare parts for the Station’s hidden infrastructure, ranging from exterior walls to interior water system.

“Just because they haven’t seen the light of the sun in so long, doesn’t mean they’re ‘outdated’,” Oliver said, flicking Joey’s head. “Keep note of this. We might need these later.”

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“You don’t think we’ll need to crawl through the walls to fix something, right?” the intern gasped, reeling in horror at the thought. “I thought we were only fixing the power!”

“Just because we’ll get the power on, doesn’t mean all the lights are working properly,” Oliver corrected. “And I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. Just remember where this is.”

“What for?”

“Just in case.”

  After assuring that Joey remembered the general location of those exact boxes, Oliver went back to his own quadrant of the hangar to continue yanking lids off of crates. About two short breathers and a snack break later, several beams of lights shone from the direction of the hangar’s entrance. Taking advantage of the time after sorting through another useless crate, Oliver looked up to see Emerson’s group had returned from their escapade. The backpacks they had taken with them weren’t on them, but seeing how they didn’t look fatigued and defeated, they must’ve had a successful run.

  Oliver whistled for the others to gather by the door now that one of the teams had returned. The group gathered in the conference room again. Soup pulled out their spoils... or rather, he pulled out what appeared to be parts of what once was a computer. He arranged them on the table between them, pulling out multiple parts from multiple pockets. The pieces varied from completely intact parts to small chips that had snapped off to functioning wires and cords. Once Soup set all of them out, the three of them stared at the four technicians in the room.

  Aaron then picked up the remnants of another computer off the floor to set it on the last clear spot of the conference room. This one was a lot more intact than the one Soup had been unpacking, but something must’ve been wrong with it if they didn’t just bring that one.

“Is that one the one from Emerson’s office?” Oliver asked, pointing at the intact one. “Or is that one?”

“Mine was soaked in my bamboo’s water,” Emerson answered, pointing at the intact one. “We’re not sure if it works after so long, but at least the frame is still okay. The one in pieces is the one from the other clinic.”

  Daniel stepped up and pointed his light at the conference table. He picked up some of the pieces, squinting at them. After going through the whole set, he tapped the table and sighed in defeat.

“Is it salvageable?” Richardson asked.

“Well, I’m not the resident expert,” Daniel said. “We’d have to wait for Johnson to come back. From what I can see, some of these parts are still usable, but most of them are beyond repair. As for Dr. Emerson’s computer, we’ll have to see when the power’s back on. Don’t get your hopes up though.”

  Richardson sighed, crossing his arms and leaning forward on the table with his elbows. It wasn’t as obvious, but the other two that had brought back the parts also had tired and defeated looks on their faces.

“Did you discover anything else over there?” Joey asked, changing the subject.

  Under Daniel’s instructions, the intern was setting aside the parts into a corner of the room to clear the table for other discussions.

  Emerson sighed, reporting their new observations about the aliens. The room was silent again as worry set in. Well, it was a better explanation on why there were bone aliens despite not having enough bones to go around. It also explained a few other things, the reason why they preferred being cannibals being the main one. After mulling over the new information for long enough, Oliver clapped his hands and pushed himself out of his chair.

“Okay, enough thinking. Now that you’re here, we have more hands to open boxes.”

  Soup immediately turned to the three that had gone with him, and proclaimed while pointing at Oliver, “See? What did I tell you?”

  Richardson gave an awkward chuckle, rubbing the back of his head. Emerson sighed, shaking her head and standing from her seat to grab something out of one of the backpacks. She pulled a thin bag out of one of the smaller pockets. The doctor opened the bag and pulled out a number of medical masks.

  Oliver bounced over to her, taking one from her with the greatest ‘thank you’ he could muster from the bottom of his heart. The others also took one for themselves, and together they headed back into the hangar to stare at the less intimidating sea of crates.

“What are we looking for exactly?” Soup asked as they started splitting roles again.

“The transformer box outside the hangar needs new plating. The ports on it are dented, so we need to install a set of new ones otherwise we won’t be able to feed electricity back to the Station. Well, that and we need to find temporary solar panels. The ones we had installed out there got knocked away.”

“Any luck in finding any of that yet?”

  Daniel sighed, his shoulders sagging as Joey and the Chief began preparing for the plunge back into the dusty boxes. He pointed his light at the still unopened boxes.

“Well, we haven’t found what we needed yet, so that narrows it down, right?”

  Soup only sighed as heavily as Daniel had. With three new people to help, the opening of boxes went a lot faster. Toast and the Chief were paired up again, Joey had Soup’s help, Richardson shuffled over to Daniel, and Emerson stuck with Oliver since his quadrant was the closest to the hangar’s exit. The pairs split up and continued back to where they had left off.

  It’d been a while since it was just Oliver and Emerson, or so he thought. They worked in silence. He opened a box; she opened a box, and Oliver would lean over to check its contents before he opened another box of his own. On occasion, when Emerson couldn’t keep standing, she would hop onto a closed crate and watch as he continued opening a few more before taking a break of his own.

  During one of their mutual breaks, Emerson broke the silence.

“Once we find the necessary parts, how long do you think it’ll take to get off the Station?”

Oliver did some quick calculations before answering her query.

“Could take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on the true extent of damage. Then from there, we would start focusing on repairing any viable communication device that can reach Triton. At that point, their response could take anywhere from instantaneous to days.”

  The doctor only nodded, retreating back to their original silence as she sank into her thoughts. Oliver paused in his box opening, and glanced at her. It’d been a while since she last asked when they would be able to leave the Station. As the days grew more hectic, he had thought she wouldn’t mind it anymore as they were focusing on survival. He could only sigh to himself and continue opening crates so she could get her wish sooner.

  When the hours passed and it didn’t seem like the three that went downstairs were going to return any time soon, they called it quits and got ready to take a break or to catch up on some needed sleep.