| |
Ariana ran down the corridor. This had not been one of her better weeks. But she really hoped it wouldn’t be her last.
“Vlasa, get back to the engine room. Do whatever you can to speed up the FTL charge. Olivia, calculate us a course out of here. Squee, get those shields back up. Noah, I’m coming to you.” She said.
“Where do you want me to go?” Olivia asked her voice trembling in Ariana’s ear, “I thought any system in the charts was safe.”
“Well, we’re not dead yet, so it’s kind of safe.” Ariana answered as she ran, “Pulsars emit radiation bursts in a regular pattern that’s under a second. So does this one. But, it also has a planetoid that blocks most of the radiation. Unfortunately, there is a bit of a wobble, and sometimes you get a pulse through. Knocks out our shields like an ion discharge. And then when it wobbles again, we all get fried.”
“So why is it on the charts?” Olivia demanded.
“It shouldn’t be.” Vlasa answered, “A certain type of transport captain will use it to save on transit time as it’s very conveniently located.”
“Any other systems that will kill us I should avoid?”
“Not nearby.” Ariana answered, “Take us anywhere but back to that fleet. This one is on me.”
Ariana turned a corner and came into sight of Noah standing before a closed hatch. He had a panel on the wall off and determinedly staring at it. When she stopped beside him, he looked up gratefully.
“Yeah, so I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Despite everything, his sincerity made her chuckle. She leaned in and pulled a few of the levers. “You were right, the manual vent controls are offline. On the plus side, with the environmental systems shut down, the fire will eventually burn itself out when it runs out of oxygen, whether we vent the room or not.”
“Yeah, but wouldn’t that mean we’ll run out of oxygen?”
“Oh, I’d be more concerned with CO2 poisoning.”
“Lovely.” Noah grumbled, “So, how do we fix this?”
“We need to get to the control lines on the other side of the door. Which means we’re then facing death from either fire or suffocation after we purge the room of air.” Ariana said as she continued to make futile attempts to bypass the damaged control line.
“So, my options for death today are air poisoning, suffocation, fire or radiation?”
“I try to ensure you have plenty of choices. You sent death by explosion back.”
Giving up, Ariana pulled her hands out of the panel. She shook her head and pointed to a storage box on the opposite wall, “Get the fire suppression gear. We’re going to have to go in there.”
“We?”
“I can’t do it alone. Someone will have to fight back the fire while I try and trigger the release.”
“I think I’m going to have to renegotiate my contract.”
“Sure, let’s stay alive long enough to have that conversation.”
Moving quickly, the pair of them pulled the fire resistant garments out of the emergency locker. Each included a small air tank and fire extinguisher. Ariana also pulled out a toolkit. When they were sealed up, they turned back to the hatch.
“Seal the hatch. I’m going to start pumping air out of the corridor so we don’t get a backdraft when we open the door.”
Ariana sealed the opposite pressure hatch from Noah and then triggered the vent for the corridor. At least now, if they failed to get the fire under control, it would have no place to go. The sound started receding outside of her fire suit.
Over her ear comm, Squee said, “I have restored one level of shielding. It will not be enough to deflect the full ionization pulse, but radiation damage to us should be minimal. But I fear other systems may be impacted by an ion like effect.”
“Understood.” Ariana replied, “Time to jump?”
“Three minutes,” Vlasa answered.
To herself, Ariana hoped that would be enough time, but decided to keep her concern to herself. “Okay, Noah, let’s go.”
Positioning themselves beside the door to environmental controls, Ariana held up three fingers and started counting down. As she dropped the last finger, she pulled the door release. A sudden rush of superheated wind blew out from the new opening as the air rushed to equalize pressure with the almost vacuum of the corridor.
Once the initial wave passed, Ariana stepped into the room and surveyed the situation. A large fire flared from one of the CO2 scrubbers. She tapped Noah on the shoulder and pointed to the exhaust air line leading off the device.
“Close that off before you try and put out the fire. It’s being fed by the O2 emitted by the scrubber.”
Noah nodded and shambled over to the valve controls. Trusting him to fight it as best he could, Ariana turned to the ventilation controls in the room. Despite the fire suit, she could still sense the heat as she pried the metal plate off the wall.
In the flickering light of the flames, Ariana strained to see the proper control lines she needed to find. She forced her right hand as far into the panel as it would fit. Her thick glove made everything more difficult to manipulate.
With her hand shoved in the panel, she could more acutely feel the heat from the surrounding metal. The glove became uncomfortably hot. Ariana grunted as she wiggled her fingers through the pain, just managing to grab hold of the control wires. When she pulled her hand holding the wires out from inside the panel, a warning sound went off in her suit, and she heard the sound of rushing air.
Quickly, Ariana grabbed the control wires with her left hand and held up her right. A steady stream of air jetted out into the low-pressure environment. As the oxygen hit a patch of superheated insulation nearby, it suddenly combusted, sending a belch of flame rolling back to her hand.
The fire devoured the oxygen from the tear in her suit creating a miniature jet of flame on her glove. With a sharp curse, Ariana dropped the control wires from her left hand and smothered the flame before it could set fire to her suit or injure her hand. With the pressure from her left hand the leak stopped, and the flame went out.
Ariana let out a relieved breath, and then noticed that the hard-fought control wires had snapped back into the wall panel.
“We have been hit by another ion pulse. Shields are down.” Squee reported.
“FTL has been disabled by the ion pulse as well. Attempting to bypass.” Vlasa said.
“When it rains...” Ariana mumbled to herself. Not wanting to risk waiting while she patched her glove, she shoved her right hand under her armpit and stuck her left into the panel.
The control wires had not retreated all the way back into the panel, and they proved easier to grasp this time. Being careful, she pulled her hand out more slowly so as not to rip her other glove. She pulled her right hand out from under her arm, and the newly released jet of oxygen immediately flared the nearby smoldering insulation.
Just as the flames started to flare back toward her, white foam smothered them and covered her hand. Ariana turned to find Noah waving the nozzle of the fire hose over her entire area. He gave her an exaggerated nod with his helmeted head and turned the hose back to the larger fire.
Hurriedly, Ariana stripped the wires from their control box and rearranged the connection. A wind immediately jolted her as the release vents opened and the rooms remaining air supply got sucked out into the vacuum of space. The remaining flames that Noah had not managed to put out quickly, extinguished themselves without a fuel source.
The leak from her hand accelerated as the pressure outside the suit dropped. Clumsily Ariana took out an emergency kit from her belt and sprayed the quick sealing foam onto the tear. The alarm in her suit stopped as the pressure stabilized.
“How long until we can repressurize?” Noah asked.
Ariana surveyed the room. One of the environmental processors looked charred and black. Several other small patches of soot scarred the room. But despite the intense heat, she had been feeling from the fire the room looked surprisingly intact.
“I’ll pump in some nitrogen in a minute. That will help the heat dissipate. But we’ll wait on the O2 until everything has cooled off. Assuming any of this still works.”
Noah started to gyrate his hips, “Well, you know what you get when you assume. You, me some nice as...”
The rest of his innuendo cut off as the room suddenly twisted and stretched with the familiar sensation of an FTL jump. Ariana stood motionless as the nature of reality shifted around her. Apparently, unable to cope with the unexpected change, Noah wobbled in mid gyration. When physics reasserted their dominion, he collapsed to the deck.
“Ass to floor action?” Ariana said with a smirk before extending her hand to Noah.
Noah grabbed her hand and hauled himself up, “Whatever works for you, Cap.”
Into the comm network she said, “Nice work, Vlasa. That jump was well timed. Olivia, what’s our status?”
“Area around us looks clear. I’ve completed a roll, and no ships detected. Just a regular old star emitting the normal amount of lethal radiation.”
“Good. Go ahead and plot another jump just to be safe, in case we need to get out of here fast. That seems to becoming the new normal.”
“To where?”
“Right now, just away. But once we’ve repaired the environmental system, I’m going to have a nice long chat with Javi and figure out an answer to that.” Ariana said, “Okay, Vlasa, I’m going to start repressurizing. Get down here so we can access the damage.”
Ariana went over to one of the undamaged control stations and opened the valves on the nitrogen tanks. By the time she could sense an element of air pressure around her, she had still not gotten a response from Vlasa.
“Vlasa, respond please.”
Silence was her only answer.