Chapter Text
Brennan listened as the airlock cycled and watched out the porthole as Liam walked along the hull toward the cargo hold. Once the captain had disappeared past the edge of his view he rushed to the command module to inform Ueme and Isok what Liam was planning.
“He did what!” Isok hollered when Brennen explained what was going on.
“The Capt’n asked you to get down to medical and gather up all the anti-rad supplies we have in case his shielding fails. Ueme, when I power down the Tyche’s systems and the Capt’n opens that breach, the pressure is going to put us into a spin, and if the system is down we won't have RCS to stabilize us, do you think you can try bypass the computer and wire a controller directly into the RCS module?”
“I can try, but there’s no guarantee it’ll work.”
“Capt’n will most likely go for the starboard hangar door since it’s the closest’ta the drone bay, so I would focus on getting manual control of the port-bow RCS to counteract the spin.”
“I’ll get to work on it then.”
And with that she ran off to grab a toolbelt and began ripping into the wiring harnesses in the cockpit to hopefully stop them spinning into an asteroid and causing more damage. Brennen left her to it and made his way to the computer core to start getting to work in initiating a full system reboot. He’ d managed to manually stop some non-essential processes that were contributing to the error cascade that was still crippling the system when Isok returned from the medical compartment with arms full of pressurized IV injectors, designed for administration in zero G. He let them float where they were and approached his fellow crewmate with a pleading look in his eyes.
“How’s it coming Bren, have we heard anything from Liam since he went out?”
“Thanks for grabbing the med XO and no, the Capt’n is either still radio silent or his radio is disabled.”
“How is going to let us know when he’s ready if his radio isn’t working‽”
“Well, I’m working on getting the system prepped for an emergency shutdown now, so you’ll be able to press a button to initiate it. As for if anything happens to comms, the Capt’n’ll bang on the bulkhead and I’ll holler down to you to press it.”
“Me? W.. w. why are you having me do it? You’re the one who knows what he’s doing, I don’t know the first thing about programming!”
“Someone has to go out and make sure the Capt’n can make it back aboard. Ueme will be busy preventing us from spinning into debris, and no offense XO but you have shaky space legs on a good day, and I’ll need to get to the back of the ship quickly once the Capt’n sends his signal.”
“N.. none taken Bren… And all I’ll have to do is press a button on that terminal.”
“Unless it freezes up again, then you’d have to just flip the main power breaker, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. It could cause some OS corruption, and that would be just one more thing on top of it all, wouldn’t it?”
Brennan finished up at the terminal and showed Isok what to do, and how to manually shut the system down if the program didn’t work. Once he was confident that his terrified friend could manage to shutdown the system no matter what happened, he left to check in with Ueme. She had made good headway with jerryrigging the thrusters to the command chair, but she was trying to be careful enough that it could be put back together properly. Brennan offered to help but given how cramped the cockpit was without panels pulled free and wires unbundled, it was merely a cordial, if empty, gesture. She declined of course and he set back to get ready for a spacewalk.
Brennan had gotten suited up, save for his helmet, and was patiently awaiting any signal from Liam. He checked over the ruck of supplies he was going to bring out with him for the fifth time and confirmed that everything was indeed still there. He hated being sedentary. Standing around and waiting for something, or nothing to happen was what he’d done as a Corp merc before Liam had hired him. The pay was much less than at the Klutotéhknix R&D plant he’d guarded; but in asteroid mining, there was always something going on, especially for someone experienced with both mechanical and electrical systems. He didn’t hold a candle to Ueme in the latter, she had a PHD. in electrical engineering after all, but the knowledge gap between her and him was about as big as the gap between both Liam and Isok and himself, so in their eyes he was also a master technician.
As he was getting ready to rummage around in his pack again to pass the time he heard a thunk. Leaping up, he quickly glid over to the vestibule and put his ear to heavy metal door, waiting to hear for a second confirmation that Liam had successfully loosened the contaminated drone. After several moments of silence, he began to think it may have just been his imagination, but then suddenly several more slow and methodical bangs came from the other side. He quickly keyed his mic and tried to call out to get verbal confirmation that his part was finished. When he got no reply, he instead called up to Ueme to make sure she was ready to counteract the spin they would surely be going into at any moment.
“Are you ready with that RCS Patch Ueme?”
“Just about, give me a minute, I need to check something first.”
“And you XO? Are you ready to reset?”
“Ready as I can be Bren.”
“I got it Bren, give Liam the go ahead, I have full thruster control.”
“Aye.”
Brennan banged a heavy wrench against the bulkhead to confirm to Liam they were ready and then jumped into the nearby airlock and started cycling the air so he could leave. Once outside he clipped his tether to one of the safety rails running the length of the Tyche and radioed Isok.
“XO, I’m outside, you need to power down the system now so the Capt’n can open the hangar door.”
After a few moments of silence while he shimmied aftwards Isok replied in a slight panic.
“Brennan! This isn’t working, I’m hitting the sequence you showed me and it’s just stalled on the same screen, nothing is working!”
“XO, Isok. take a deep breath, remember the circuit switch showed you, the one on the bottom half of the mainframe column. You just need to bull that breaker hard until you hear a click and all the lights go out.”
“B.. b. but you said that that could cause serious malfunctions?”
“I know, but we don’t have any other choice. Once you pull that lever though all of the backup systems will be down too, so if I don’t signal back in about ten minutes you and Ueme need to get O2 packs, and if you still don’t hear from me thirty minutes after that, switch everything back on and reactivate the SOS beacon.”
Brennan was about twelve meters from the cargo hangar doors when he felt the hum of the ship beneath his feet die down to nothing. Looking around he could see all of the exterior lights had gone out, and even the drive rings had ceased rotating. He refocused his attention on the large door that lay before him, all of the various machinery on the Tyche had fallen quiet, but he could still feel a vibration in his feet. Taking that as a good sign he braced himself and waited. Once Liam had gotten the hangar doors open, the pressure wave was going to throw the Tyche into a hard spin and if he wasn’t very careful he could get thrown out into space and become just another piece of debris among the belt.
When Liam finally managed to get the release, the Tyche violently shook and Brennan could feel the pull of vacuum trying to fill the large cargo hold in front of him,and he watched as debris, the drone and even some of their equipment sailed off into the far reaches of space. He hadn’t seen Liam in the discharge, but he could have been mixed up in the first few feet of thick dust that went out, Brennan carefully made his way the last few meters to the opening, careful not to lose his footing, knowing that while he couldn’t feel it, they were probably in a slight spin, and since Ueme had only rigged up the port side RCS, she would have to very slowly bring them to a stop, as she had no counter rotational force.
Poking his head over the threshold, he was elated to see Liam strapped to the wall. He carefully switched his tether to the interior railing and slipped inside, finally making his over to his captain. Liam was either unconscious or dead, but it was difficult to tell in the hardsuit with all the electronic systems disabled. Brennan unhooked Liam from the wall harness and attached him to his own safety tether. He attempted to call the others on the comms but only getting static. The Capt’n must have soaked up enough rads to interfere with comms. This isn’t good. He decided to unhook from the wall and use his mag boots to cross the hold. After a bit of hassle he managed to get both Liam and himself into the small airlock that Liam had used to enter the hold.
It didn’t take long for Brennan to lock both doors and manually trigger the oxygenation cycle. Once his suit read they were in breathable atmosphere he carefully removed his helmet and took a breath of the stale air. Deeming it satisfactory to his purposes he got to work on removing Liam’s Rad suit and helmet. Once he’d finally disentangled the now useless nodes of the E.M. generator from his captain’s hardsuit he got to work on checking for a pulse. While it was incredibly shallow Liam did still have a pulse, so Brennan got to work administering the cocktail of antirads along with a myriad other drugs to try and keep Liam's organs from failing. Once he’d gone through the gamut, and exhausted the supply of drugs he’d brought, Brennan resealed Liam in his hardsuit, got his own helmet back on and stowed all of the loose items floating around the cramped room in his ruck before he slowly leaked the air back into the exposed cargo hold.
On his way out of the ship Brennan attempted to close the hangar doors, but found it was too difficult with an unconscious body attached to his back, so he slowly worked his way back forward towards the hab module where he’d left from. He stuffed Liam inside, and got to work on triggering the manual release. He was a bit worried as it had been a bit over forty five minutes and the lights weren't back on, so he desperately hoped that Isok had just misunderstood some part of the startup procedure and Ueme was busy stabilizing the ship to do it correctly, rather than more probable and problematic event of the system just being too corrupt to reboot.
He only bleed off half of the tank of O2 since would have to go back out and close the cargo hangar doors. The airlock depressurized with a pop when he opened the interior door. He quickly checked the sensors on his suit to make sure there was adequate oxygen in the room, and removed his helmet upon seeing lower than regular, but stable O2 readings. He tried his comm again while removing his helmet and was still getting nothing but static. Worried, he hooked a new O2 tank to Liam’s rig, tethered to the wall in case of an emergency and made his way up to command to find the others. He stopped by the computer core to see why it had not been rebooted. The circuit breaker had been switched back on but the mainframe didn’t seem to be receiving power. He hoped it was just a fuse and continued on his way to the front of the ship.
Neither Ueme or Isok were in the command module so Brennan returned to the computer core and tried to diagnose the power issue. He couldn’t find anything wrong with the power supply itself, nor did any of the fuses appear to be blown, but try as he might, he could not get the core to power on. Maybe when Isok tripped the breaker it discharged the supercaps and the battery died recharging them? Whatever the issue he would not be able to figure it out from here, so he returned to Liam and grabbed him along with some supplies from the airlock before making his way down into the lower levels of the hab pod.
Ueme was in the med-bay treating Isok for an electrical burn when she heard Brennan clambering down the ladder and yelled up to him.
“Bren! We're down here in med, is Liam alright?”
“He’s breathing but unconscious, we probably need to get him hooked up to fluids. Is the XO alright?”
“I’m fine Bren, I just got a shock when I tried to reset the breaker.”
“Glad you’re okay XO. Ueme, how’re the power cells looking? I couldn't get any juice to the mainframe, and I didn’t see any bad fuses or burned out parts.”
“I’ll have to go check, but we don’t have much time before the eclipse. If you can’t get the computer up and running I might need you to help me reroute a hard line down here so we can at least run the CO2 filters and heaters.”
“Agreed, once I get the Capt’n situated I’m heading back to the computer core to try and trace the issue.”
Isok agreed to stay and get Liam situated in the med-bay while Ueme and Brennan went off to conduct repairs. As he was hooking his old friend up to the rudimentary medical scanners they had, Isok reminisced about his and Liam’s time in college. They had both gone to the Borzovsky Aerospace Institute in Belarus; Isok had gone to the school for business and economics, hoping to get a job with one of the many companies that boasted alumni from the institute, but Liam had gone there specifically to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to become a pilot and open his own company. They’d been assigned to be roommates in their sophomore year and became fast friends. Liam was charismatic and over their years in school together he had eventually convinced Isok that they should go into business together.
After graduation Liam had taken out a loan and registered his business, and for three years they’d prepped and searched for a suitable starship. Liam had eventually dragged him onto a freighter bound for Ceres to inspect an old Engrstrom Schooner. Isok had wanted to find something less expensive or more reliable for the price like an Ares or a Mara, but Liam had fallen in love with the thing on sight. Isok had even joked they should name the ship the Tyche since their company was already called Fortuna, and they would need all the luck they could get. Liam had loved the idea and registered the ship that day.
The monitor began to beep and read out Liam’s vitals, Isok grimaced, recalling why this had reminded him of college in the first place. During their senior year Liam had gotten a huge dose of radiation while doing an engineering assignment and Isok had visited him in the infirmary. He had looked just like this, albeit before they’d gotten the biomorph procedure it was easier to see the burns and discoloration on his skin. After about ten minutes had gone by Liam slowly regained consciousness and looked around confused before noticing his friend going through a cabinet on the other side of the room. He spoke with a labored breath, only getting out one or two words between breaths.
“Well, I’m pretty sure.. it was Gamma radiation.
“Liam! When did you wake up?”
“Jus now. I think, if we make it outta here.. I’m gonna have to get my genes reinforced, so this shit.. doesn’t happen again. Heh. How did I get back in the ship? Last thing I remember.. was ventin cargo.”
“Brennan left right after you sent the signal for us to power down. He showed me how to restart it but it uh..” he gestured to his bandaged hand “didn’t really work. He’s up there no trying to get us back online.”
“I’m gonna have’ta.. kick his ass.. once I’m not dying, I specifically told him.. not to come out for me. How’s he doing?”
“His comms stopped working once he got close to you, but otherwise I think he’s fine. He ran a full decontamination before bringing you down.”
“Well that’s good at least, Ueme and yourself, besides the hand of course?”
“Good, she’s good. I’m… fine, it’s just an electrical burn. What happened back there?”
“Well, the E.M. shield.. on the rad suit did nič as far as I can tell, but I don’t think.. I’m having seizures, so hopefully.. it wasn’t an.. incredibly lethal dose.”
“And the drone is gone?”
“Blew the fucker.. out the hatch, will all the dust.. it kicked up.”
“Well that’s one small relief. I’ll have to make sure to tell Bren to drop that drone from the cluster when he gets the system back online so it doesn’t come back.”
“I’m.. fine fer now, you should go.. help the others.”
“Are you Li? I’m not a technician, I’ll probably just get in their way.”
“Just give me.. a new comm, and go offer.. them a hand. I’ll call if.. I start getting.. worse.”
Isok handed him a new comm, and after a mic test to confirm it was working he left Liam in the med-bay, and made his way back up the ladder and out of the hab module. He looked around and found Ueme back in the computer core. He ducked in and shivered, wrapping his arms around himself for warmth.
“Hey Nals, Bren went back out to close the cargo hangar doors and assess damages. How’s Li doin?”
“Liam woke up and seems in good spirits, all things considered. I gave him a working comm so you should be able to call if you need to. Have we managed to find the short in that thing that zapped me?” he gestured to the computer's main column.
“So my theory is, once that radioactive dust got inside our shielding it started ionizing the components in cargo, and super charged the RTGs. When you killed the computer all the systems that were draining power shutdown, but the batteries and supercaps kept getting a charge from the dust, so when you flipped that switch and completed the circuit it discharged one of the capacitors and fried the system.”
“That sounds like… worst case scenario Ueme…”
“It’s not good, and I need to wait for Bren to check the RTG compartment before I know how bad the damage is, but there’s a chance that only the capacitors are blown and the batteries are just drained. If that’s the case, we’ll just have to wait out the rest of this eclipse, try to recharge them, and limp to Interamnia.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Command is on an isolated power loop, you could try connecting the comm system to the power bypass I set up to run the thrusters and see if you can send out a distress call. Everything in there is labeled so it shouldn’t be a problem, just find the splice I made, pull it, and splice in the comms cables.”
“Sure, I’ll get right on it. Let me know what Brennan finds so I can send an accurate distress call when I get it set up.”
With that Isok pushed out of the room and headed for the front of the ship leaving Ueme alone in the cold dark room full of dead machinery. He’s either doing much better, or he’s lost all hope of getting out of this. She turned her attention back to the illuminated datapad in hand and continued testing parts to find the fault, praying that she was right and none of the new batteries she’d just installed had already failed.