“This had better be some kind of joke Lieutenant! Did you suddenly develop a sense of humor?!” Essa Von Braun screeched at the man who stood in her doorway. She was already in her nightgown and had taken her hair down from the businesslike bun that she usually kept it in.
“No ma’am! They took everyone completely by surprise. With only one ship docked and no others on scanners most of our men were on stand-down.”
“No doubt getting drunk in Halloway’s infernal bar. I’m going to revoke his occupational permit first thing in the morning!” she shouted as she walked over to the dresser at the opposite end of her quarters. With nearly six hundred square feet of living space her accommodations were nearly three times larger than most but despite having a taste for decorating her office and the dining hall elaborately her quarters were furnished in a very spartan fashion. That was Essa Von Braun though, put on a good show to impress others but when it came down to it she only wanted two things, money and power. The man standing in her open doorway averted his eyes as she quickly stripped and started fumbling to get into her uniform.
“In fact,” she started as she reached for the weapon stashed in the drawer of her night stand, “I’ll never understand why corporate even allows private businesses on this station. If you ask me it’s only competition.”
“Competition ma’am? It’s a bar.”
“Yes, and IPH could just as well run their own and keep all of the profits.”
What the Lieutenant didn’t know was that Essa had no intention of revoking Halloway’s permit. She’d spoken harshly in a moment of anger but in truth she liked having the private establishments on Aeolus. She could squeeze them for extra cash that was easy to keep under the table. The second thing that Lt. Okeke didn’t know was that the weapon stashed in the commander’s drawer was a Klepton Arms 7Z. Even more-so than Captain Tarsik’s sidearm of choice the KA7Z was a nasty weapon, so nasty in fact that it was highly illegal to even possess. It fired a proton burst like most ray pistols but also delivered a heavy dose of radiation with each shot. Anything that it hit, if it didn’t die from the initial discharge, was doomed to a slow lingering death from radiation poisoning.
“Let’s go.” she barked as she holstered her weapon.
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Doctor Ramus sat in the ship’s cockpit along with Emily Faust and Junior Pilot Sam Herschel. They’d been attempting to break through the jamming signal that the station was broadcasting but with no luck. Suddenly one of the lights on Herschel’s console lit up and he tapped a few keys before turning to the others with a puzzled look on his face.
“What is it Herschel?”
“I’m...not sure ma’am. Scanners are picking up some strange energy discharges, very faint but coming from inside the station.”
The doctor put his head into his hands and let out a sigh. Herschel looked at the pilot with a quizzical expression, not understanding what was going on.
“The doctor here thinks that the captain has become impatient with our hosts and is attempting to effect self-release.”
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“Ma’am?”
This time the doctor interjected, “He’s shooting up the place.”
“What?! That’s insane! He’ll end up in prison, probably with us right alongside him!”
Faust allowed herself a quick chuckle, “Mr. Herschel you haven’t been onboard all that long, let me explain something to you. The captain may seem like a maniac at times but he knows what he’s doing. Once we’re clear of this station IPH won’t be able to touch us, it’ll all be a big misunderstanding. Well that is...” she bit her lip in thought.
“What?”
“If he doesn’t kill anybody of course, but I know Captain Tarsik, he’s not that stupid.”
“She’s right,” the doctor interjected, “Captain knows what he’s doing.” he paused for a moment, “Then again, with that thing” he pointed out of the window and toward where the light had been on the nearby tower, “not activated he probably doesn’t have everything worked out just yet.”
Emily Faust straightened up in her seat, “You’re right, how in the hell are they going to get from the airlock to the ship?”
“Is there anything we can do from here?” Doctor Ramus asked, now genuinely concerned.
“If they could get the doors open we could bring them their bubbles.”
“Good try Pilot but what about that automated sentry gun?”
She rubbed her chin for a moment in thought. “Any ideas Herschel?”
Sam looked around the cockpit as if the question had somehow been directed at another Herschel that was present. “I....how would I know what to do?”
“Well,” Faust responded, “at the moment you are probably the best technical mind we’ve got on the ship.”
Herschel scoffed at the absurdity, he knew a little about some very basic engineering concepts but really he was only qualified to fix basic things around the ship. His skills didn’t extend very far beyond “handyman”. Now if Ansul was aboard he could probably think of something...but he wasn’t, he was in there and had no way to get back to the ship. The pilot and the doctor fixated on him with questioning eyes.
“Crap,” Emily broke the silence, “what about that auxiliary crewman...what’s his name? Uh...Stilwitz is it? Didn’t he fix the relay in that nutri-vend that was causing the whole thing to overload and make nothing but piles of bratwurst?”
“Wait wait wait!” Herschel piped up, “Could we...overload that tower some kind of way?”
“That’s an interesting idea but I don’t know. That’s why we were asking you Herschel.”
The junior pilot stood up and began to pace in the small cockpit, he rubbed his beard in thought. “Okay, let’s pretend for a moment that I have even the slightest inkling about what I’m doing.”
Faust gave him a sarcastic nod while the doctor only raised a questioning eyebrow.
“The Honshu is an old design and back in those days most ships had a device for wirelessly transferring power from one ship to another. It was in case their fusion core stalled and they needed a ‘jump’ to get it going again. You see back then ships didn’t have the battery capacity to hold enough charge to restart their own cores....well not unless they were going into uncharted space and loaded them down with extra batteries but whenever they were within tele-wave range of help they didn’t bother.”
“Do we even still have that device on the ship? The captain has made a ton of changes over the years.” Faust had little confidence that they did and that even if it was still physically in place she doubted that it would function any longer.
Herschel sat back down at his console and began tapping away at the controls furiously. A moment later the cockpit’s screen crackled and slowly came to life. On it appeared to be a diagram of the internals of the ship.
“Look,” Sam said as the schematic began to zoom in to a spot a few decks below the cockpit. “The data-tapes call it a TAP, or Teleceiver for Auxiliary Power. It looks like ours is still in place...”
“But?” the doctor asked.
“It looks like when the Mark IX cannon was installed the power conduits connecting it to the grid were rerouted.”
Without wasting a moment Emily Faust reached for the microphone that hung over her chair and barked an order into it, “Any and all crewmen with mechanical skills are to report to Junior Pilot Herschel on deck 4 immediately. This is an emergency people, get to it or you will have to answer to me!”
“What?” a stunned Herschel asked his commanding officer.
“We need that TAP back on-line as soon as possible, get your ass down there mister that’s an order.”
The poor boy looked terrified as he left the cockpit. Doctor Ramus gave the pilot a little smile, “Trial by fire Miss Faust, trial by fire.”
“Let’s hope he passes, our friends’ lives may count on it.”