Palimpsest, Thunderfield [red queen ebook TXT] 📗

you. Three will stay here, Jess and Phil’ he then nodded to a third, the mature student, and emphasized who was to be in charge, ‘and Isaac, the rest will search AccomDecks 10, 11 and 12, this deck and TopDeck’
‘We just came from 11,’ an irritated voice from the back interrupted him.
‘I know but I wanted us all together here first to take stock of ourselves and our situation. Anyone know where else Ronan could be?’
Asif answered ‘He was mates with a crewman, could be in their quarters.’
‘First we cover the passenger areas, Jess, keep calling his numbers, Phil use the ships-net. After that we should hear from the bridge about what is happening.’ Max glanced around at young worried faces, ‘about what just happened, I have not felt any more – um, shocks.’
‘Space-quakes’ said Turner, which brought a few laughs.
‘I need the cleaner-utes in here,’ more tidying he thought, ‘and get the med box from the back please Enrique, I need to check Turner’s fingers, and we need to dress any cuts.’

* * *

Captain Pierce had broken his nose in the chart room when he was thrown forward from his chair onto a rail, at the impact he heard the bone crack, and pain lasered into the middle of his face. Momentarily stunned he lost his footing and fell to the deck, his hands splayed out ahead of him as he hit the floor, the full weight of his stocky frame followed and the index and middle fingers of his right hand took most of the force of the fall, they broke as he rolled under the briefing table. He was saved from further injury because all the furniture in the room was bolted to the floor. Through watery eyes he saw his crewmen tossed like flotsam across his field of view, and then heard Tarek call for him.
His eyes hurt, his nose was swollen and painful, there were drops of blood on the starched white uniform, and felt it run down the side of a once proud Roman nose, he tasted it. Everything above the trim bloodstained grey moustache was tender. His hand throbbed, his fingers screamed. Tarek came into view, bleeding from a gash above his left eye. Pierce tried to look unperturbed by his own injury as his secretary helped him stand.
‘I need to get to the bridge, now.’ in a slow nasal voice.
He left the chart room, where he had reviewed the planned docking manoeuvres. Tarek followed as he stepped over a toppled maintenance-ute and walked as steadily as could be mustered the thirty meters to the bridge. Other wheeled utility robots that still functioned manoeuvred around debris, crew ran towards the bridge whilst others walked or limped back, all acknowledged Captain Pierce. The bridge was the largest room on the AdminDeck and it was crowded with additional crewmen summoned by the second officer to clear up the mess and get systems and operators fully functional. Perplexed faces turned to the Captain as he entered the bridge. He knew what was expected of him.
Cartwright approached, his blue eyes blazed with intensity. ‘Captain we are a…’
‘Mr Cartwright please wait, are all stations manned?’
‘Yes Captain, four injuries requiring treatment, replacements are at their stations.’
At that point Peirce heard a raised voice from the far side of the bridge, a deeply tanned bald man demanded attention from the crew, he was one of a dozen passengers who had been on a tour of the bridge. To Tarek he said quietly. ‘Get those passengers off the AdminDeck as soon as possible.’
He then raised his voice to address the wider audience. ‘Get back to your consoles everyone, check and cross check everything you are responsible for and report your status to your duty officer as quick as you can.’
His head throbbed, he turned again to his secretary, ‘Call the heads to the senior team room in ten minutes.’
‘Captain…’
‘Not now Mr Cartwright, we do this in the correct way.’ He knew his image, and needed the stereotype right now to maintain normality, keep the crew on the level. Inside he peddled madly, he knew something was really going to test him, ‘and Tarek, get me some painkillers please.’
The six senior officers joined Tarek and the Captain in the senior team room, just twenty meters behind the bridge. Several had already placed their comtubes in front of them, both holograph slots activated, the angled translucent display screens emitted from the upper slot and red or green outlined keyboards from the base slot that faced the user and superimposed on the top of the dark highly polished Plas-Teak surface.
He nodded to his officers, a temporary splint had been applied to his two broken fingers and with that hand he instinctively motioned them and to be seated.’ He turned to an unfamiliar female in a medics uniform, ‘and who are you?’
‘Dr Morgan, Captain, The Passenger Services director could not be found, his office had requested Doctor Derrycke deputise, but he is busy, we have so many casualties.’
‘Thank you Dr Morgan, and welcome to an unusual meeting of the senior team.’ Then nodded again to the remaining officers, ‘Mr Bilderberg, Mr Lim,’
‘We will do this in due order, engineering first, Mr Redfern please report.’
‘All major systems are functioning sir, hundreds of utes of all types were damaged, the AMN’, he looked to Dr Morgan ‘ The Auto Maintenance Network’ then refocused towards the Captain, ‘is identifying dozens of non catastrophic failures in subsystems and will draw up a repair schedule by shift end. The nuclear engines are operational, we are checking their UDL shields, and local power batteries are being checked too, and we are reviewing the Scoop petals. Many of my crew have sustained injuries, some serious and two crewmen are unaccounted for....’ His voice trailed off eyes looked down, ‘That’s the status for Engineering Sir’.
‘Thank you Mr Redfern, please keep me informed,’ Peirce looked along the table, and said ‘Life systems.’
The Life Support Systems Chief replied ‘All systems are in good shape, our air and water were unaffected but we did experience a brief failure of the Podborsky Torus gravity field generator. All systems and backups are either functioning normally or under repair as we speak, Sir.’
‘And the power feeds from the Podgrav to the shuttles are still in place?’
‘No problems detected sir.’
Sue Morgan interrupted. ‘Excuse my ignorance but why do you feed power from the gravity generators to the shuttles?’
Captain Pierce was measured and serious. ‘In the worst case we can abandon ship, but only if we are within range of rescue or a habitable planet. The shuttles double as lifeboats, and in a catastrophic failure we reverse the Podgrav power and fire an anti gravity surge to the shuttle launches, initiated from either my back office, or a couple of other locations.’
‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ she asked.
Redfern reassured her, ‘with everyone on board the sixteen shuttles the surges are kick starts that fire each shuttle every few minutes many klicks from the ship. The ventral shuttles launch first, then the starboards, the dorsals and finally those on the port side.’
‘Out here?’ she was incredulous.
‘It won’t have to happen, the ship is secure,’ said the Captain. His licked his lips and took a sip of water with the dissolved painkiller from his glass, cleared his throat and said, ‘public decks Mr Bilderberg.’
‘A lot of chaos sir, but only one serious incident which occurred on the Business Deck. People were trapped in the Americas room when a steel beam came through the roof. Crew and medics are assisting other pax with the rescue. There were perhaps two dozen people inside at the time, Sir.’
‘Passenger Services now please Dr Morgan’
She looked up from her comtube display, swept a long strand of brown hair from her face and spoke quickly ‘Deck managers and their teams are attending to the passengers in their areas. In the Medical centre we have received over two hundred walking wounded, forty brought in with more serious injuries, and triage is underway. We have six emergency cases and six fatalities sir, but we do not have any in from the BizDeck accident or from the lower decks yet.’ Dr Morgan paused, the hair fell over her face again. ‘We have limited facilities, medics, medicines and other consumables to cope with the scale of what just happened sir.’
‘It will get worse I fear, you will need extra resources, Mr Lim will see to that.’ Pierce thought it would be two weeks before the ship terminated at the high orbit docking station above New Albion. He would request help to meet them as soon as possible after egress.
‘First Officer Lim’
The tall Chinese spoke, ‘I have re-assigned rosters to cope with crew casualties, will prioritise repairs and pax management Sir, and send a team to support the medics.’
‘Mr Cartwright, the bridge?’
The second officer took a slow breath and spoke. ‘We are no longer in the Perryman, Sir’
The simple statement provoked everyone’s maximum attention.
‘We’re in 3D,’ he said flatly.
Around the table they all stared at Cartwright. Dr Morgan was open mouthed, and stammered out ‘but it’s nearly two days early, how long will it take now to get to New Albion?’
‘Enough please Doctor,’ Pierce raised his left index finger and prodding motioned the doctor to quieten.
‘But we have casualties, we need to know how long….’
‘Enough.’ Pierce jabbed the finger towards the doctor. ‘Mr Cartwright, please continue.’
‘Whatever just happened,’ he looked around the table, ‘it took us out of the wormhole into 3D space, and we cannot detect where we emerged from the wormhole.’
‘Bubble communications?’ asked the Chief Engineer Redfern.
‘There are none,’ he paused, ‘none at all.’
All were quiet, all focused on the implications. After some seconds Captain Pierce pre empted Doctor Morgan, asked the obvious on behalf of them all. ‘So where are we, Mr Cartwright?’
‘I don’t know sir,’ and after another slow breath added,
‘We are adrift, Sir.’

* * *

P3 on BizDeck was crowded, even though it was three times the width of P3’s on cabin decks. Dozens of frenzied people were massed at the entrance to the Americas meeting room. The double doorway was blocked with smashed panelling where a large man in his late fifties grappled with fallen thick plastic panels.
‘Quiet back there,’ he yelled to the crowd behind him, ‘we have to hear the people inside.’ The doors had collapsed under a lintel split apart from a fallen H section heavy steel beam. With strong calloused hands he pulled aside a panel, coughed, rubbed at his eyes, and said ‘pull this out the way.’
Two men were near, one in a green passenger services uniform with ‘O’Boyle’ written above his breast pocket. The big man said, ‘hi there O’Boyle, I’m Rocky, help me shift this lot,’ and then to himself added ‘wish I had my lads here right now.’
Together they forced apart several panels and cleared a way through into the Americas room. They stepped in, and then to the left of the girder. Little light entered from the passage but enough to reveal a collapsed ceiling that covered the floor, tables and chairs and they could hear groans and coughs. The spray of a single functioning sprinkler could be heard too from the other side of the girder. There was a short but loud sliding sound above their heads and then more material fell, which lifted and swirled dust in front of them.
‘Jesus, can’t see anytink’ the crewman said in an Irish accent, dust polluted most of a very limited field of vision, eyes reddened and noses itched with dirty black crud. A dozen rescuers entered