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Chapter 4 Chapter6

A Moment's Inattention - Chapter 5

"Welcome aboard the Victorious," said Beka as her feet touched down on the crippled ship's hull near the main airlock. "Do we try the airlock first or go in through one of the holes in her hull? Anyone want to bet if the airlock's operational?" When there were no takers Beka continued, "Covas, whats the command code to open the airlock?"

"Alpha Four Seven Delta Nine Romeo," responded Covas. "It's standard for all our ships."

Beka tapped the activation button for the data entry keypad by the door. To her disappointment but not her surprise the keypad didn't activate. "There's no power to the keypad," she said. "We could do a manual override of the lock but it will be quicker to enter through one of the holes. Let's go. The nearest one's over that way." She pointed to her left. "Rev, I'm anchored here. Head out to the next anchor point, once you're anchored I'll release my end."

Fifteen minutes later they were inside the Victorious. They emerged into a darkened compartment, which according to the schematics of the Victorious loaded into Beka's flexie was the Victorious' ventral engineering space, or what had been the ventral engineering space. The beams from their helmet lights illuminated a jumble of torn and twisted machinery that once had been one of the Victorious' engines, but which to Beka's practiced eye would now probably fetch more if sold as scrap metal than as components to a starship.

"This doesn't look very promising, Boss." said Harper surveying the wrecked equipment. He had a hand held light out and was using it to supplement the illumination from his helmet light.

"This is the ventral engine room," said Beka. "Our initial inspection from the Maru didn't reveal any damage to the dorsal engine compartment. And we'll only need one operating engine to get her to follow us home."

"I know that," retorted Harper. The tone in his voice indicating that he thought Beka was stating the obvious. He clicked off his light and placed it back on his suit's equipment belt. " What's bothering me is that even the emergency lighting is off. The lights automatically switch to battery power when the main power system goes down. The thing is is that when the batteries reach a critical threshold and can no longer power the anti matter containment fields the AM storage units are automatically ejected from the ship. I expect that this baby is stone cold dead and we'll have to tow her back to New Caledonia"

"Just as long as the slipstream generator is salvageable," said Covas obviously happy to be within the relative safety of the interior of the Victorious. She had drifted free of the Victorious' hull while on en route to the gap in the hull the salvage crew had entered. She hadn't been in any danger since she was attached to both Harper and Vexpeg by her safety lines but the experience had clearly disturbed her. "We can repair or even rebuild the hull and engines but the slipstream generator's irreplaceable."

"The generator's on the main deck," said Beka pointing to the lower decks. "We'll pass through there on our way to the command deck."

"Before we continue with our salvage operation, Beka," said Rev, "shouldn't we recover the bodies of the crew members who were left behind?"

" Yeah, you're right, Rev," agreed Beka. "We probably should. The starboard missile battery control station is on the main deck and forward so we'll be able to check out most of the rest of the ship as we head up that way. According to reports of the survivors when the missiles started running hot the radiation level indicators went off the scale. None of the crew in the missile battery control station made it out of the compartment. They must have been fried by the radiation from the hot runners before they could escape the compartment, or else killed when the Victorious' CO ordered the emergency jettisoning of all the missiles in the battery. The jettisoning charges not only blew the missiles out of the tubes they blew most of the control station's bulkhead out as well."

"Flash fried and freeze dried, spacer" said Harper. "Sounds like a Magog version of junk food."

"Actually, my people prefer our meals to be still alive when we eat them," said Rev.

It was hard to tell in the darkness, but Beka could have sworn that Covas turned pale following Rev's description of how he preferred his meals.

"Let's get the bodies," said Beka. "In addition to those in the control station there should be two on med deck. Casualties from the initial battle with the Kolks. "

She entered some commands into her flexie. "You should all have the location of the starboard battery control station and med deck on your flexies. Rev, you and I will go to the med deck and bring the bodies there back here.

"Harper, you, Covas and Vex go to the control station and bring the bodies out to the main corridor. When Rev and I are done we'll meet you and we'll take all the bodies back to the Maru.
Stay together. Make sure you can see at least one of your teammates at all times. Be careful if you start moving things to recover the bodies. You may weigh next to nothing but your mass is still the same, and so is the mass of everything else aboard. Weight is what you lift, mass is what kills you. You can be crushed just as dead here as you can in normal gravity.. And watch your oxygen consumption. I can monitor your tank levels on my flexie but you don't want me to be the one ensuring you have enough O2 to get back to the Maru."

Chapter 4 Chapter 6