The hallways blurred by as Violet achieved a top speed that she’d never known before. She palmed the intercom on the door in passing on her way to the control panel.
“Hector? Are you there?” she asked. There was delay and then she heard Hector’s voice.
“We’re cutting it close. Are you ready to proceed?”
Violet nearly groaned in frustration. “How about you stop with the updates then and let’s get down to work.”
Hector swore under his breath, but quickly regained his poise in spite of Violet’s goading. He cleared his throat and began coaching her through the sequence. “You should see the master control panel in front of you.”
“I do.”
“Is it powered up?”
Violet tapped the display and nothing happened. “I don’t think so.”
“Okay, here’s what you need to do then—three panels down there will be an access port at knee level along the wall. Go there and open it.”
Violet found the access port with no trouble. “Okay, now what?” she said.
“There should a fuse box to your left. Remove the covering.”
Violet did as he instructed and saw a box full of Imgen multicolor fuses in front of her. “I see it.”
“Now I want you to find the breaker marked with a red tab and the number five-zero-dash-seven on it. Pull it out and move it three slots down to the left.”
Violet saw it. It was about three inches long and skinny like a data card. She pulled on the breaker but it wouldn’t budge. “Uh, problem here. It’s stuck!”
Hector sighed loudly, whether he was exasperated at Violet or the overall situation, she couldn’t tell.
“Violet if you can’t get that fuse out of there and restart the relay station control panel everyone you know is dead. Including you. And don’t break it, either!”
“Gee, thanks for the encouragement, Hector. I hadn’t thought of what’s at stake for a whole ten seconds.” Violet muttered a string of curse words underneath her breath.
“What was that?” Hector asked.
“Nothing,” Violet replied. She re-gripped the red breaker between her thumb and forefinger and wiggled it back and forth, taking care not to snap it off in the slot. She didn’t want to be responsible for the death of everyone because she was a newly mutated freak who was too strong for her own good.
At last, the breaker released from its receptacle. Violet inserted it into the slot three places down and she heard something electronic hum to life.
“Got it!” Violet beamed with self-satisfaction.
“That’s great, Violet! The relay station control panel should be booting up now do you see it?” Hector asked.
It was hard to miss. In the red lights of the relay station the control panel was the only thing that wasn’t glowing scarlet.
The control panel screen lit up, and Violet squinted until her eyes adjusted to the contrast. “How much time do we have left, Hector?”
“Don’t worry about that, okay? Just stay focused and tell me when the system is ready to proceed.”
“Okay,” Violet replied. She felt like he wasn’t telling her something, but he was probably right. There wasn’t time to worry about the time right now. “How will I know when it’s ready to—? Uh, never mind.”
Violet saw the screen change and a prompt from the system came up that read: READY TO CONTINUE? Y/N?
Violet selected yes, and the system menu came up.
“You should see the option to restart back-up systems on the right hand column of the system menu. Tell me when you’ve found it.”
It took Violet a moment, but she located it. Sweat pooled around her eyebrow as she felt the pressure of the invisible clock weighing on her. She told Hector she had it.
“Great. Go into the sub menu and select the option for the backup system start-up.”
Violet complied. “Okay, now what?”
She heard loud shouting in the background and what appeared to be congratulations. “Nothing, Violet! You did it! And with twenty-five seconds left to spare!”
Violet felt short of breath. It was over? Just like that?
She listened to the sounds of celebration from Hector’s side and wished she had someone to rejoice with right now.
The station’s backup engines should be starting a hard burn to adjust their position at any second. Violet braced herself for some violent shaking and waited.
Nothing came. No engine rumble, no change of direction. Just nothing.
Something wasn’t right. She called out, “Hector? Are you still there?”
No response.
Shit.
He was probably halfway through a bottle of champagne with the rest of the security crew at this point. She yelled louder. “Hector! Come in! Anyone from Security Services?”
A muffled sound came over the intercom like the microphone was being ruffled against clothing or across a stack of papers on a desk.
Violet tried again.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Finally she heard a reply. “What? Huh? Violet did you say something?” It was Hector. His headset must have fallen off during the celebration.
“Something’s not right,” Violet said. “The engines should have kicked on by now, shouldn’t they?”
She waited while Hector checked. There followed a string of curses, some of which were even new to Violet. “You’re right. They’re not firing up.”
“Any clue what the issue is?”
The longest moments of Violet’s life ticked by as she waited for a response. The station would cross the point of no return at any second.
She heard a loud smack over the intercom and then Hector’s voice. “I’m such an idiot! The backup engines need to be primed after a system shut down. They vent any fuel to prevent an accidental explosion. After the system restarts, we need to prime the ignition system again.”
“And how do we do that? Is that something that you can take care of from there? Or do I—”
“The only way to prime them is manually.” She heard the shuffling of papers as he flipped through the emergency protocols. “There should be an access on the far side of the relay, just behind the wire conduits.”
Violet squinted as she scanned the room trying to find what he was talking about. She spotted it. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Do you see it?”
Violet frowned. “It’s barely big enough to get my head through.”
“That sounds about right. Listen, this next part’s not gonna be easy. There are specialty tools designed for the pumping levers, but we don’t have time to walk you through the assembly. You’re going to have to pull them manually.”
Violet flexed her fingers and then closed her fist, cracking her knuckles. “That shouldn’t be a problem,” she responded. At least her new freakish strength would come in handy.
Hector enunciated the instructions as quickly as he dared, and Violet sprang into action.
The plan seemed straightforward enough. She ripped off the grate panel, not caring whether she damaged the catch tabs or not, and stuck her arm and then her head through the opening until her far shoulder stopped her. The position compressed her near shoulder into her neck, making it difficult to breathe.
The priming levers attached to a long length of pipe about three feet in front of her. She couldn’t see where the pipe led, but she guessed it went out to the engine’s ignition system.
She pulled the first lever down. It was hard, but not as hard as she’d expected it to be. It clicked into place as it hit a ninety-degree angle parallel to the floor.
“First lever is down, moving to the second one now,” she relayed.
Her arms shook as she struggled to pull down the second lever.
“Second one is significantly harder,” she said through gritted teeth.
“That would be the gas flooding the pipes,” Hector explained. “With each lever, more gas floods the pipe, raising the pressure within the closed system, and making each lever significantly harder to pull down.”
“Might have mentioned that!” Finally, with sweat rolling down her face, the second lever clicked into place.
Panting from the effort, she grabbed the third level and pulled. The veins in her forehead felt like they might burst as she strained with everything that she had, but the lever didn’t budge.
She cursed loudly.
“What’s wrong?” Hector called out over the intercom. With her head stuck in the access panel, his voice sounded far away.
Violet ignored him and gathered her feet underneath her. She needed more leverage.
She pressed off the floor, driving her head and arm further inside the narrow access panel.
The sharp metal frame sliced into her far shoulder, and she felt a trickle of blood run down over her collarbone. Searing pain came next, but she still wasn’t deep enough for her liking.
She pushed harder and felt the skin and muscle begin to shear away as the metal cut into her flesh. The blood trickle turned into a stream. She ground her teeth together and kept forcing her body through the panel opening until she heard the metal hit bone.
The pain clouded her mind and she fought to focus through it. She still had one more priming lever to set.
“Violet, you need to hurry.”
She grasped the lever and wrenched down, finding the few extra painful inches helpful. Her entire arm vibrated as she warred with the stubborn lever. It groaned and creaked but finally relented and lowered down slowly.
With one last scream of effort, Violet slammed it home into its locked position. Her labored breathing filled the narrow space.
“Hector?”
Hector’s defeated voice responded over the intercom. “It’s too late. We’re out of time.”
Violet bit down, unwilling to accept the situation. One by one, she pushed the starter buttons on the end of the levers. The mechanical starter sparked and the engines roared to life.
Violet instantly felt them struggle against the mass of the station. Everything shuttered around her.
“Take that!” Violet slapped the walls of the tiny access corridor.
Violet backed out, wincing as her open flesh made contact with the access opening. “Don’t quit on me now, Hector. Give her all you got!”
She heard confusion and shouting on the other end of the intercom as station personnel scrambled to maximize the thrust of the back-up engines. The floor beneath her rumbled with the power increase.
She limped over to the intercom. Her blood-soaked arm hung listless at her side. She couldn’t feel it. “Someone talk to me! Did we do it? Are we all going to die?” She closed her eyes and waited for the response.
The only sound she heard was the pitter-patter of blood striking the floor. It formed a puddle underneath her arm.
At last, Hector’s voice broke the silence. “Too soon to tell.”
“How long until we know? The suspense is killing me.”
“As long as it’s the suspense that gets you and not a collision with a giant asteroid.”
Violet couldn’t help but laugh.
The station’s emergency broadcast warning blared from the intercom. “Proximity alert! Proximity alert! Approximately thirty seconds to estimated impact.”
Violet crouched down, bracing for impact. She counted off the longest thirty seconds of her life.
She reached thirty and kept counting. At forty-one, the most god-awful sound she’d ever heard assaulted her ears. That of a giant god-sized fingernail scraping against a space station-sized chalkboard. Or maybe it was just the everyday sound a space station makes as it grinds against an asteroid.
The awful noise continued for almost five seconds and then was replaced by the sound of human screams. Violet shivered as she pictured what horrifying things must be happening to the voices on the other end of the intercom.
Wait, not screams, celebrations! They’d done it! They’d cleared the asteroid!
Violet jumped up and down and added her own voice to the celebration. The physical expenditure and the loss of blood made Violet light-headed.
After the cheers died down, Hector’s voice came back over the intercom. “You did it, Violet. You saved us.”
Violet smiled, overcome with a sudden exhaustion. It had been a long twenty-four hours. “Any chance you can get me out of this sector now?”
“For the hero of Tryptek Station? I don’t think that will be a problem. Hang tight.”
Hector’s voice came back a moment later. “They’ve managed to override the administrator’s access codes and regain control of the station. The quarantine should be lifted within the hour.”
Violet’s eyes widened. “Wait! You can’t lift the quarantine yet. I trapped Zane Anderson in an airlock. Before you open the sector to the public you need to send a security team to meet me at the airlock.” She gave him the exact location and then added, “Hector, send twice as many men as you normally would”
“They’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Violet wanted to relax, but she knew she couldn’t. Not yet. Not until that thing was locked away tight in a deep dark hole.