|
|
Greg sighed,
sat back and glanced at all his screens, making sure all was in order.
Everything was, as usual. Boring as hell, really. Not even some floating
chunk of space garbage to take a pot shot at with the Point Defense Lasers.
What he wouldn’t
give for even the minutest problem to divert his attention. Instead he
had a slight positive Z axis pitch. Wonderful. Whatever’d happened to the
old days, like in the stories he’d read when he was younger? About travel
lanes choked with asteroids, pirates, and strange viruses? Navigators
were heroes back then. He’d almost prefer it if things did go wrong for
once, if only to relieve the monotony.
Actually, once
he thought about it, this eight hour shift would be more interesting than
most. He’d be at the con during the Midpoint reversal.
Hell, after six months of sustained 1.25 g’s of gravity, a few seconds
of weightlessness might just be fun.
Gregory killed the few remaining minutes before Midpoint, whistling a little ditty he had composed over his long sit-ins as Nav. As the numbers ticked down to the last 30 seconds, he sat up in his chair, checking all his instruments again. With his right hand he flicked a comm channel open, speaking into his headset mike.
“Captain, we’ll
be arriving at Midpoint in T-minus 25. Are you coming to the bridge?”
There was a slight pause before
the weathered voice of Captain Evharson filtered through his headset.
“No, I’ll watch from down here, thank you. Keep up the good work. ” The
line went dead.
Greg snorted. Typical. The Old coot sure was polite, but antisocial as hell. He would be surprised if he’d seen the captain outside his compartment more than five times in the entire trip.
As the count
dwindled into the teens, Greg slumped into his chair again. There really
wasn’t anything to do but watch, the computer was in charge of the whole
operation. As the countdown hit ten, there was a crackle through the shipwide
speakers as the computer opened a line and “spoke” to the crew in a pleasant
feminine voice.
“180 degree turnover maneuver to begin shortly. Please prepare for zero
gravity.”
Gregory saluted the nearest speaker with his middle finger and growled.
“Aye aye, cap’n.”
The ETA counter
struck zero.
The deep rumble
of the Walterium reactor, so omnipresent over the last six months that
the crew had ceased to notice it, suddenly lapsed into silence. Greg glanced
around the empty bridge with a sudden feeling of insecurity as the interior
of the ship was truly quiet for the first time in half a year.
Greg felt the familiar tingling,
stomach-rising queasiness of zero gravity set in, as the ship ceased it’s
forward thrust. He let his hand drift upwards on it’s own. How long had
it been since he’d been in zero G?
On the control displays, numbers were changing rapidly, and he turned his attention to them. Though he was too far away to feel it, Greg knew that powerful conventional thrusters on the bow and stern were firing, pushing the back up and the front down, causing the more than quarter mile long ship to pinwheel slowly through space.
On the Attitude displays he watched a graphic representation of the ship rotate cleanly on it’s Z axis. Due to the size of the ship, the maneuver would take a full 3 minutes to complete. Once the stern was pointed in the same direction that the bow had been, the reactor would kick back in at 1.25 G’s of thrust, and the ship would begin it’s long deceleration to it’s final destination.
Greg eyed the
displays as the ship came around, counting the seconds till the main engine
would kick in. As his own count reached zero, Greg heard and felt
the giant Walterium reaction engine engage again.
His hand, still
floating in midair, dropped back to the armrest. He glanced at the displays
again, double checking the new course. Right on target. He felt a
slight twinge of resentment, he’d never have been able to nail the new
course like that. Damn computers. Always so perfect. Sometimes he wondered
why he or the other navigators was needed on this ship at all.
He was about
to call Captain Evharson and tell him that the Turnaround had been managed
successfully, when he caught something unusual in the corner of his vision.
He glanced back at it. With a shock that sent his heart skipping, he realized
that it was the Attitude indicator readout, slowly ticking off numbers.
The ship hadn’t stopped it’s Rotation.
“What the-?“
He stared at the display in disbelief. The numbers kept changing, indicating that the nose of the vessel was still moving down. His eyes widened as the numbers started changing faster. What the hell was happening? He waited for the computer to correct itself, but nothing happened. The ship began to tilt faster.
Computer error?
What was going on? Then suddenly, with the numbers on the display changing
faster than the eye could follow, the rotation increased speed dramatically.
Richard quickly
realized what was about to happen. The ship was somehow turning,
and doing it with the main engine engaged. The maneuver would cause a tremendous
amount of stress to the hull. While a combat vessel could handle this with
ease, the unreinforced length of Gravlaw would be snapped like a pencil.
Even as he thought
this, Gregory felt the pull of newly created, centrifugal forces on his
body as the momentum of the turn increased. Realizing the computer either
wouldn’t or couldn’t correct the spin, Gregory reached out and seized the
control grips, determined to get the ship back under control.
Hurriedly, he
ran his eyes over the thruster readout. The display showed no Maneuvering
thrusters operating, which meant that whatever the problem was, it had
to do with main propulsion. He dialed the reactor down to neutral,
watching the attitude readout with steely eyes.
| The rumble
of the engines could still be heard. A sudden shuddering cavitation rattled
the ship, accompanied by the unearthly, terrifying popping groan of overstressed
metal. Gregory’s mind raced. The main engine wasn’t responding, at least
not to bridge control.
If he tried to
counterthrust with the maneuvering engines, it would only increase the
strain on the strain on the hull. If he used the thrusters to increase
the spin, it would ease the stress a bit, but the centrifugal forces would
increase, which was extremely dangerous for any unsecured crewmembers.
There wasn’t anything he could do. At least not from Nav.
It was Elle.
Greg glanced over his shoulder to see her struggling toward him, fighting
against the warped gravity. He frantically called back.
She reached the
Nav chair, clinging to the back to keep from sliding to the back of the
bridge. There was another, more violent shudder, and the displays
began to flash overstress warnings.
|
The interior
of the ship was again at zero G.
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