CHAPTER 18
Aboard the Pioneer
Captain Penelope Mitchison jolted awake in her cryosleep chamber once more. Her head throbbed with each breath and her stomach spasmed as if ready to exfil whatever might be in it. The chamber lid hissed open slowly, and then snapped into the open position as she leaned over the side vomiting. Reflexively, she pulled the tube from her nose, triggering her gag reflex again. After heaving once more, she fell to the cold metal floor beneath the bed and lay there still for a moment as her head spun. She wiped the spittle that was drooling from the corner of her mouth with the back side of her left hand and continued to stare blankly upward, trying to regain her senses. There was something off. She couldn’t seem to focus because of the odd lighting going in and out and there was a blearing pounding in her ears. Or maybe the pounding in her ears was actually a sound.
Penelope forced herself to her feet as she disconnected the cables on her right wrist still connecting her to the cryobed. She tapped at a panel on the side of the bed and a drawer slid out with a swoosh, revealing a vial of a clear blue liquid. She popped the top on it and poured it in her mouth, tasting the sweet liquid antibiotics, stimulants, vitamins, and anti-inflammatories. As the liquid moistened her mouth and rejuvenated her saliva glands, she tried a raspy grunt to clear her throat. She pulled a second bottle of electrolytes from the drawer and drank it as well. Finally, she began coming to her senses. She realized that she had been disoriented by blaring alarms and the flashing crimson emergency lighting. She scrambled up to her feet, supporting herself with her arms like a toddler learning to stand for the first time. She tapped at the ship information panel and screen next to the cryobed and her heart sank when she saw the chaos that seemed to be happening across the ship.
“Orion, report!” she said to the ship’s AI. Her voice was barely more than a dehydrated whisper but was still edged with urgency.
“Critical failure in the propulsion system, Captain,” Orion replied in a deep male voice, sounding somber. “The Samara Drive main power plant is completely offline. We are currently five weeks from Proxima b, and there’s no way to slow down until repairs are implemented. More urgently, we have fires on the aft starboard decks and there is an environmental leak in an adjacent chamber. Power distribution is unstable throughout the ship. Protocols have awakened you, the bridge crew, and the engineering teams.”
“Shit. Seal off the room with the leak for now.” Penelope scanned the cryobed chambers and noticed several other systems hissing open, the crew going through pretty much what she had just gone through. “Are the fire suppression systems not doing their jobs?”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but the fire suppression systems on all aft decks are without power at the moment. Some of the alternate power systems were initiated, but when the power coupling to the Samara Drive blew out, an electromagnetic pulse from the subsequent explosion knocked out most electronic systems on the aft and lower side of the power-plant shielding.”
“Damnit.” Penelope pulled on her form-fitting, light blue uniform pants and long-sleeve blue-and-white synthetic fiber uniform top, followed by her socks and sneakers. She was still parched and felt like death warmed over, but she had to get those fires out. Her eyes were dry as a bone and itched. She pulled her smart-lens container from the drawer beside her bed and quickly placed the contacts into her eyes. The ophthalmic gel soothed her dry eyes almost instantly and her vision became better than perfect. The virtual heads-up display popped up in front of her. She tapped a virtual menu activating personnel tracking, and names and titles started popping up over the cryobeds that were opening. She scanned left, then right, until the name she was looking for appeared. She started walking that way hurriedly, grabbing another bottle of electrolytes along the way. As she walked, Penelope tapped a few icons and brought up a three-dimensional alert map of the ship. There were red and yellow zones all over and in every nook and cranny. Things did not look very good at the moment.
“Wait a minute,” Penelope cautioned as she scanned the ship systems in the virtual map.
“Yes, Captain?”
“If the engine is out and we’re not decelerating, then…” She rolled her eyes and sighed, realizing that no decelerating ship meant no effective gravity on the floor. “Aw shit, no wonder my head is spinning. The artificial gravity ring is spun up, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Protocols started spinning the ring as soon as the engines turned off,” Orion confirmed.
“Then there’s no gravity in the aft sections,” she acknowledged to herself. God, she hated microgravity. She didn’t enjoy the centrifugal force artificial gravity much either. It had a very similar effect as gravity, but only in giant stations where the ring diameter was huge did the effect really seem indistinguishable from gravity. But on the Pioneer, the ring was barely big enough to fit the cryobeds, a few critical consoles and stations, a small medical bay, and a small makeshift backup command bridge. Since the radius of the spinning ring was small, the effect varied greatly with radius from the center much like a carnival ride just not quite that badly. The force on one’s feet was much larger than that on one’s head. Moving around in such a field, especially up or down, made the inner ear go nuts. The drunk spins of artificial gravity were almost as bad as those of microgravity.
“Yes, that is correct, Captain.”
“Well, damn it all to Hell, that doesn’t make anything any easier right now.” She grunted through clenched teeth, all the while shaking her head to reset her inner ear.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Orion replied, sounding sincere. “I suspect it does not.”
Penelope’s heart hammered in her chest as she made her way to the chief engineer, who was beginning to pull herself up off the floor. She held out a hand to help her up.
“Evonne, here drink this. It helps,” Penelope said, handing the electrolyte bottle to the ship’s CHENG, Dr. Evonne Mia. “Well, at least it will help get that shit cryosleep taste out of your mouth.”
“Thanks, Captain.” Evonne straightened up and accepted the bottle. The slightly taller and more muscular than average woman in her late twenties chugged the liquid in two big gulps, and wiped her mouth on her wrist. She then tried to tie her long brown hair up in a ponytail, only to be annoyed by the connections to the cryobed at her right wrist. She quickly yanked those free and finished the ponytail. The CHENG then turned to the drawer on her cryobed and instantly placed her smart lenses in her eyes. She sighed at whatever she was looking at in her virtual screens as she pulled the post-sleep blue liquid tube from the drawer and drank it.
“What a damned mess!” Evonne exclaimed. Her sleep gown dropped to the floor. Three naked steps to her right and she was sliding on a pair of blue-and-white stretch coveralls with a patch across the chest reading in capital letters cheng. There were added pads at the elbows and knees that were a slightly darker blue with black outlines as well as multiple pockets on the sleeves and legs. The uniform looked like something a hands-on engineer or technician would wear. The only things missing were smudges and grease marks.
“My sentiments exactly,” Penelope agreed.
“Whoa, shit!” Evonne shook her head violently and grabbed a handhold to steady herself. She sat on the floor and took a deep breath before slipping on her shoes. “Goddamned artificial gravity is not any better than microgravity.”
“Again, my sentiments exactly.” Penelope would have laughed if they weren’t in such deep trouble. “So, what do you think, Evonne?”
“Fires. Gotta get them out first. That section right there…” She pointed and swiped her VR screen over to the captain’s so they both could see the same virtual screen. “The section is immediately below the liquid oxygen storage. If that starts boiling, we’re done for. After getting the fires out, well, then, we gotta get Jones up on Nav, ’cause who the Hell actually knows how long we’ve been drifting, not decelerating, and not making course corrections?”
“Jesus H. Christ.” Penelope knew what that meant: The ship’s engine had failed catastrophically, leaving them hurtling through space at a breakneck speed they couldn’t control. And even worse, there was no telling how long they had been drifting in an uncontrolled trajectory. They could be way off course. The crew would be stranded, unable to reach their destination, and facing an uncertain fate. “Okay, I’ll get the XO on that. He’s almost awake. Orion will hopefully have enough sensor data to tell us when things went to Hell.”
“I’ll need a fire team,” the CHENG said.
“Take who you need. Get down there, put out the fires. Then get to Engineering and assess the damage as soon as you can!” she ordered, her voice trembling with the weight of the situation. She realized she had been almost screaming even though her voice was still not a hundred percent. “Damn alarms. Orion!”
“Yes Captain?” Orion responded.
“Turn off the damned alarms!” she shouted, and no sooner had the words gotten out of her mouth than the ship suddenly became very quiet. Other than the hissing of cryobeds opening and people rustling out of them and vomiting, and the occasional creaking or whirring of systems on the ship, there was no noise.
“Done,” Orion said.
“Jenna, you and Mario take the port corridor around and over the cryo room. This conduit here appears to be the one that is out. We’ll have to replace that before we get power back to the main ship systems in that part of the ship.” The CHENG floated through the central shaft corridor of the Pioneer with her two fire teams. Group A consisted of herself, Dr. Amy Crane, a computer systems engineer, and Dr. Connie Browning, a mathematician who was also designated as the ship’s hands-on power systems technician. Group B was Dr. Jenna Rees, an electrical engineer and mechanical engineer, and Dr. Mario Rivers, an aerospace engineer, material printing expert, and machine tool maker.
“Copy that,” Mario replied. “There’s bound to be a conduit on a noncritical system we can repurpose.”
“Looking at that now,” Jenna added. “There are a few spares stored throughout the ship. There might be one close enough as to not have to salvage one.”
“Good,” Evonne said. “Your focus is to get that power back on. And in case you don’t get it going in time, Group A, you two are with me. We’re going to open a sequence of doors manually while fighting through the fires. Remember, microgravity fires are different. They ball up, float about sometimes, but mostly attach to something—including you. And sometimes the fires burn too cold or too hot and you can’t see them. Everyone keep open comms and be careful.”
“Roger that,” they all responded.
“Okay, keep a fire extinguisher pack at the ready, and breathing gear on,” Evonne told them as she slid her facemask into place and checked the oxygen flow. The rest of the team followed suit. “Alright. Let’s get it done.”
* * *
“Remember, we need to get to that airlock along the path highlighted in your VR maps. We open them in any order we get to them and vent the oxygen,” Evonne reminded her team as they moved through the corridor by kicking off the walls and grabbing at any handholds they could. The ship had been designed for microgravity movement so there were rails and holds on every wall and bulkhead. “That should smother the fires.”
Amy Crane and Connie Browning nodded, their expressions determined beneath their emergency breathing gear. Evonne was confident that they knew the importance of their mission. Every crew person of the Pioneer had been chosen through a stiff competition of mental and physical fitness, an expertise for mission needs, and a willingness to become part of the Fintidierian culture. There was no one onboard who wasn’t great at what they did, extremely capable, and dedicated. As they moved through the central corridor and approached the engine room, it was clear they weren’t going in there. The door was hot to the touch and the radiation monitors at the entrance were through the roof.
“Well, shit, going through this way is not an option,” Connie said as she turned to Evonne after reading the panel to the right of the door. She had a very nervous and uneasy look that Evonne could detect even through the facemask. “We’ll have to get that under control soon!”
“Alright, we gotta go around,” she said. “Jenna, Mario, Engineering is off-limits. Until we get power back and rad gear down here, we’re not going in there. Copy?”
“Understood, Evonne. We’re going over it anyway,” Jenna replied.
“Okay, Amy, lead the way,” Evonne admonished the woman who was already several meters ahead, pulling open a hatch leading into the exterior passageway and the engineering ducts that ran the periphery of the ship.
“Holy shit!” Amy shouted, pushing back and spraying her extinguisher as a gush of heat washed over her. The extinguisher jetted foam in front of her, rocketing her backward out of the exterior passage hatchway. As she was flung backward, both Connie and Evonne grabbed at her. Evonne managed to get a handhold on her extinguisher backpack harness with her left hand while grasping the rail on the bulkhead with her right. As the two of them wrestled Amy to a stop, they could see her jumpsuit was burning.
Connie slapped at the flames that were crawling over Amy’s body now, consuming her uniform coveralls as fuel. Amy screamed in terror once she realized what was happening. She was being engulfed in fire. With each scream more oxygen leaked out around her face mask, causing the flame to flare. Orange flames expanded like a breathing hemisphere, engulfing her face. As Connie swatted at her, the fire began to cling to her own gloves as well.
“Not good!” Connie started slapping at her gloves, but then flinched as she was hit by a spray of foam.
“Try to hold still!” Evonne shouted as she continued to spray the two of them. She was using a foot wedged between the handrail and the wall to steady her while pressing her other foot against the wall to oppose the force of the fire extinguisher spray.
“Here!” Amy pointed as she twisted and contorted, looking for the flames. Her shoulder-length black hair had been singed up almost to the scalp on one side before they had managed to get the flames extinguished. Her mask showed little damage, if any, and as far as they could tell Amy’s face wasn’t injured.
Connie rolled her around in front of them and then Amy repeated the process for Connie. The flames were out. Needless to say, the two of them were shaken. The three looked at each other, tight lipped and forcing themselves to choke down bile and fear.
“Are you two good?” Evonne asked, looking them over carefully.
“I’m okay.” Connie nodded.
“I’m, uh, I’m okay, Evonne. That was freakin’ stupid. We’re lucky that didn’t go as badly as it could have. Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, trying to stop her hands from shaking. “That corridor is hot. I don’t know how we’re going to get through there.”
Evonne pushed to the door and fired her extinguisher a few bursts there. As she approached, she didn’t feel any heat—a good sign. She caught a handhold a half meter from the hatch and held her hand forward.
“I feel some heat, but not enough to have done what happened to you,” Evonne observed, confused. She eased closer to the hatch.
“Careful.” Amy raised her extinguisher and pointed it at Evonne. Connie did the same.
Evonne pushed herself through the hatchway and into the corridor. There were flames building on the far wall and there was fire extinguisher foam all around. Amy’s first sprays must have killed the flames immediately at the doorway. Looking more closely, Evonne wasn’t even sure if the fire had been on the walls nearby. All of the fire was farther aft along the surfaces but a good seven meters away.
“Clear to enter,” she announced.
“What?” Amy looked confused as she floated in nervously. “I don’t…”
“Backdraft,” Connie said. “This corridor had been depleted of oxygen. When you opened that door, it sucked fresh air in with you and the fire had a quick burst of oxidizer. You were new fuel. God, you are lucky you didn’t get hit worse.”
“Right.” Amy nodded in understanding. “Lucky.”
“That’s a good sign,” Evonne agreed. “It means the fire is small enough to manage. On three, two, one…”
She kicked off the wall toward the flame and sprayed. The bursts from the extinguisher stopped her forward momentum and slowly pushed her back. She let off the handle and her spray stopped. Then Connie leapfrogged past her and waited until she got another four meters aft ward and let loose with her spray. The off-white foam splattered into the orange flickering ball at the end of the corridor and engulfed it. As she started moving backward, she let off her handle as Amy floated past, raising her own extinguisher to the ready.
“There!” Amy sprayed liberally around the hatch. “It’s out.”
As the three women came to a stop at the corridor hatch, they paused, and this time were more cautious. Connie released the latch and motioned everyone to the side.
“Hug the walls,” Connie urged. Evonne and Amy nodded.
“Do it,” Evonne said.
Connie opened the hatch. As soon as it was released, it sucked open, and a burst of flame shot through the door and then was sucked back inward.
“Now we see what happened to you, Amy,” Evonne said. “Now, two more of these corridors and we’re to the aft airlock. Same way as before. Let’s go.”
* * *
Once they had reached the doors leading to the airlock, it was absolutely clear that the electronic controls were unresponsive due to the power failure. There was no way to open them simultaneously until the power was back on. And the middle door was between two raging fires. Evonne looked at the ship’s floor map in her virtual view, hoping to come up with a plan. She didn’t think they had enough fluid in the extinguishers to fight through all three rooms. They had put out the fires in the exterior corridor, but the fires through the middle three aft chambers of the ship were raging. Floating with their backs to the aft airlock that opened out into space on the starboard side of the ship, the only two doors nearby were the one they had come through at the exterior corridor and one in front of them that was extremely hot. Looking through the window, there was a complete haze of smoke and flickering orange and red balls of fire engulfing the room.
“There’s no way to get to that middle door on the other side of that. And we’ll have to do this manually,” Evonne said. “Connie, help me with these inner airlock doors. Amy, keep an eye on our oxygen levels and the fire behind us.”
Evonne released the manual latch pin on the airlock. Then the two engineers exerted their strength, struggling to turn the large manual wheel that controlled the door’s locking mechanism.
“Goddamned microgravity,” Connie cursed, losing her foothold on the wall.
“I know. Can’t get a grip anywhere useful,” Evonne agreed while doing her best to lock her feet into the handrails to push and pull against. Slowly, with grunts of effort, they managed to open the first door. “Shit design. If we ever design a starship, remind me to use latches you can operate in microgravity.”
“Hell yeah, I will.” Connie smiled at her through grunts.
“What’s the plan, Evonne? We can’t get in there. No way.” Amy pointed at the chamber on the other side of the doorway.
As the airlock doors opened, revealing the EVA—extravehicular activity—suit locker and more than a dozen suits hanging on the wall, Evonne smiled. She looked at the suits, then the back door of the airlock that opened into space, and then back at her team.
“Suit up,” Evonne said. “We’ll open one door at a time. Starting with that one!”
She pointed at the airlock, then grinned at Amy and Connie.