Alarms rang out over the ship as smoke hung in the air and lights flickered as the emergency batteries took over from the now offline main reactor. Lieutenant Commander Bernard Bannon was walking quickly through the smoke-filled hallways barking orders at people as he adjusted his emergency air tanks.
While every person should have had their tanks on the second the battle started, he was seeing far too many people simply wearing the tanks and not having the masks secured to their faces properly. Apparently, he had been far too lenient with crew lately and had not been instilling proper discipline.
“Well there was always time to gently correct the crew.” He thought to himself
“Gordons! Get your god damned mask on or I will jam an ore up your asshole and use you to paddle across the pacific when we get home!” Walking past the gently chastised man he continued towards the slinger bay shouting encouragement and more gentle chastisement as he went.
As he approached the bay he saw Chief Hanlan standing outside the door waving a Geiger counter in front of him. “What’s the situation Chief?”
“Not as bad as it could be Sir. No radiation leaking means none of the mines were damaged, if they were we’d probably be glowing by now. There’s also no atmosphere in the room so we don’t have to worry about fires destroying or damaging the mines. Internal sensors in the room are down though so I’m not too sure about what things look like in there.”
“If internal sensors are down how do you know there’s no fire or oxygen?”
The Chief answered the question by moving a step to his left showing Pounds the white emergency foam in the middle of the door. “Fitzpatrick sealed the leak himself, despite having 2nd degree burns on his arms and body. It looks like they got a lucky hit in and it managed to go straight in the slinger bay doors. It completely bypassed our armor, the doors are stuck open so the atmosphere will be long gone, but that did manage to stop any fires before they could get started.”
“Shitty luck.”
“Fantastic luck Sir. It missed everything, and I mean everything that was important. A few degrees to the starboard and it would have hit the mine magazines and we’d be done, a few degrees to the port and it would have hit the nuclear missiles and we’d be done. A few degrees down and it would have gone straight through the CIC, the crew be fine but the command staff would be a few people short. As it stands the beam went through Ensign Charles Smith killing him instantly, it also caused 2nd and 3rd degree burns on 7 more people, and that is about it. Aside from the crew the only other thing it hit was a cooling pipe on the reactor. That’s what caused the reactor shut down, we should have that fixed and power restored in a few hours barring any other problems.”
“How about the fires on decks 3 and 4? I also heard reports of smoke on deck 2.”
“I’ve got people fighting the fires on decks 3 and 4 now, and Ensign Jenkins is trying to track down the source of that smoke on deck 2. I really recommend the Commander vent at least decks 2 through 4….” Chief Hanlan tried to say but was cut off when Commander Frazers voice came on over the ships intercom.
“All crew on decks 1 through 5 prepare for an emergency venting of atmosphere in 10 seconds, if you do not have your emergency air tanks on, do so now. I repeat you have 10 seconds.”
“If you don’t mind my saying Sir, that’s 10 second too many, the crew know what their doing.”
Thinking back to Gordons Pounds responded. “I’m not so sure about that Chief.”
True to his word exactly 10 seconds after the Commanders message the atmosphere began venting from almost half of the ship as the crew triple checked the seals on their masks and their air flows. On the effected decks the smoke cleared immediately, and the flames died. The crew who had been battling the fires with handheld fire extinguishers sighed in relief but didn’t let up. Using the opportunity to get closer to the sources of the fire they continued to spray the exposed wiring and red hot metals hoping to prevent the fires from starting again once the atmosphere was restored.
Chief Hanlan and the Lieutenant Commander approached the damage control teams and looked over their work. As Chief Hanlan approached the group he directed people on where they should focus their attention and shouted encouragement. When the smouldering ruins of computers were finally covered in enough foam for his liking he pulled two of the people who were furthest back away and said “Maccio, I want you and Saskowski to put on space suits and go over the outside of the hull. Check for leaks, hull breaches and anything you think could be structural damage.”
“Yes Chief!” the two said almost in unison. They handed off their fire extinguishers and headed towards one of the air locks on the belly of the Cherry Barb.
“As soon as they’ve finished their inspection I should have a better idea of how the Cherry is doing but for now Sir things are actually looking pretty good. I recommend we keep decks 2,3, and 4 vented while we make sure those fires are out for good and we replace any damaged electronic components. I also want to do a more in-depth check of the reactor before we turn it back on, but I think if something critical were going to go wrong it would have by now.”
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“How about the air scrubbers and water purifiers?”
“I’ve already had people check the extra air scrubbers and spare parts that we have in storage, a few things were damaged but even if every scrubber on the ship was damaged in the fight we have enough spares to be fine. As for the water purifier we should have enough extra parts to replace any that we need to and if not we do have the ability to machine some components. It may take some time though.”
“For right now focus on the fires and the structural integrity of the ship, after that check the air scrubbers, water filtration and reactor. I know the Commander is going to ask about the stealth plating as well. Can you make sure that Maccio and Saskowski put that in their report?”
“No problem Sir, keep in mind that even if we replace the damaged plates now, the engines will still be hot enough to show up on every heat sensor near Jupiter. Even after we get the heat sinks on the engines it will take a few hours for them to cool.”
“Understood Chief. Keep us informed when you have an ETA on repairs.”
“Yes Sir, I’ll head down to the CIC when I have more to report.”
With that the two parted ways and the Lieutenant Commander headed back to the CIC. Walking through the hallways the signs of damage were intermittent. The halls were pristine in most sections but a few meters down the hallways there were scorch marks and blast damage.
Stopping at a junction in the hall Pounds looked at a small hole in the wall from where the Guppies laser must have passed through. It really was lucky the ship survived at all. By bypassing all of their armor the laser should have cut straight through them, the damage the Guppy had suffered had likely lowered the output of its weapons enough to make it survivable, but it had been a close thing.
Entering the CIC he looked over his old friend. The way he held himself too straight, the false bravado in his voice as he gave orders. Pounds could tell he blamed himself for the injuries of the crew and was already going over the battle in his head wondering what he could have done differently.
“Yes Sir, broadcasting distress signal now. Most of our transmitters were damaged in the battle so we won’t be able to get a message back to Earth but if the fleet comes to this side of Europa they should be able to find us.” Lieutenant Green said as she poured over her workstation.
Not a good sign, stealth ships never broke stealth willingly. Even to ask for help, if the Commander was sending a distress signal either things were worse than he thought, or the Commander was rattled.
Commander Frazer looked up at Pounds as he entered the bridge and said, “Pounds how’s my ship?”
“Not too bad, by all rights it should be worse. The fires are out but the Chief would like decks 2,3, and 4 clear of atmosphere for now while they make sure the fires will stay out. There seems to be no major internal damage and crew members are checking the outside of the ship for structural damage as well to take stock of the stealth plating. Once he is sure there is no structural damage the Chief will check the air and water purifiers and after that he will deploy the cooling sinks on the engines see if we can’t cool them down a bit, while that’s happening we can start to replace damaged stealth plating. All told Commander the situation is pretty good.”
At the Commanders beckoning the two left the CIC to the Commanders small office just off the CIC leaving the CIC in the hands of the weapons officer Duncan Marshal.
Entering the Commanders office and quarters the two sat down. “Alright James what’s with this self flagellation bullshit? Are you blaming yourself for something?”
“2 dead and 7 in the med bay, 3 of those are in critical condition. Your damn right I’m blaming myself.”
“And the entire fleet still alive because of you. You saw the trap when no one else did, and you took down a ship almost three times our size, that shouldn’t have even been possible.”
“The crew…”
“All chose to serve on a stealth ship, they know the risks better than anyone. Now if you don’t pull your head out of your ass and start acting like the decorated war hero your going to be when we get back to Earth I’ll have to give you a motivational speech.”
At this the Commander smiled. “Fuck off Pounds, but you are right. This isn’t my first time losing someone, I’ve just never lost so many people on a single mission. How are the crew holding up?”
“Pretty good, too many people were sloppy with their masks though, the 10 second warning was a good idea. When we get up and running again I think we need to run some more emergency preparedness drills. Moral is good, but people are getting tired. We’ve been running double shifts for weeks now and it’s starting to catch up to the crew.”
“I’ll talk to the galley once we’re out of the woods, I’ll have them break out the rest of the ice cream.”
“You’ve been hoarding ice cream this entire time?”
“Of course, you think I’d let us run out of something so important?”
“What’s our current course?”
“With the reactor offline Lieutenant Brown managed to make sure we wouldn’t run into anything using the emergency thrusters but aside from that we’re drifting. Hopefully we’ll look just like any other piece of debris out there, enough of them have thermal signatures that we should blend in well enough.”
A knock on the door announced the arrival of Chief Hanlan. “Sirs may I come in?”
“Of course Chief,” Commander Frazer said as the two of them shifted to try and find room for all three of them in the small office. “How’s my ship?”
“It’s a miracle she’s as good as she is Sir. The repairs to the reactors coolant system are complete and the crew are doing a final check before starting the reactor back up. The fires have been stopped and I feel comfortable they won’t start again so we can pump atmosphere back into the ship. Unfortunately, it looks like the fires started in the main fire control computer on deck 4, the navigation computer on deck 3 and the smoke we had on deck 2 was coming from the backup fire control computer. Every one of those computers are fried Sir and we don’t have any more backups for them. We still the have our backup navigation computer so that should be fine, but any aiming of the guns will have to be done manually.”
“Half of our guns were melted off, and we’re out of nuclear rounds Chief so no huge loss there. Can we still use our last two missiles?”
“Yes Sir, the missiles have their own targeting computer so if we need to we can still launch those, we wont be able to update their targeting info mid-flight though. You’ll be happy to know that the Guppies are fantastic shots and their grouping of their lasers was frankly amazing. Almost every shot managed to land near or on top of another shot, if this were human ships firing that they damage would be spread across half the ship.”
“And how does this make me happy Chief?”
“Less plates for the crew to fix Sir, if half the ship had been shot up we wouldn’t have enough replacement plates but we should be fine with what we have in storage.”
“Will replacing the plates take a long time?”
“We’re not really replacing the plates, just attaching the new plates over top the damaged sections, saves time and their easier to install. It should take us a few hours but if you can get me more hands we can hurry it up a bit. I’ve had the radiators placed on the engines so they should be cooled down to ambient temperatures in a few hours as well.”
“That could make hiding tough if we need to before then.” Pounds said.
“Once we get main power back online we’ll stick close to the Behemoth, it’s giving off heat signatures and there have been secondary explosions from the wreckage, should be enough to confuse whatever they use to see. How’s the slinger?”
“Scrap metal. The final shot from the Guppy entered straight through the doors when they were open. The slinger got hit with a direct shot and was melted into slag. I think that absorbed enough of the lasers energy that the ship wasn’t lost right then, the mines are all fine in their magazines thank god. As it stands the laser still penetrated through several bulkheads, crew members and the cooling system for the reactor. We should be able to force the outer bay doors closed if we need to, but as the slinger bay is coated in stealth material I’m not sure if we need to bother, it won’t effect our stealth profile, or slow us down.”
“Put that as the lowest priority for now, but I’d still like the doors closed.”
“Yes Sir, the final item I have is that our probe launcher is also out of action, any probes we have are fine, but without the fire control computers we can’t really launch them.”
“Don’t worry about the probes, you’ve got whoever you need for everything else. Co-ordinate with Pounds try to make sure people can take breaks and get something to eat. We’re still not out of this but we can’t have the crew breaking down.”
Before they could respond Alyx Greens voice came on over the coms channel. “Sir, we need you on the bridge. We’ve just spotted the Chinese fleet heading right for us.”