He Who Dares: Book Two (The Gray Chronicals 2) (30 page)

“We need to speed this up, Adam.  Time's running out.”

“I heard, Skipper.”

“So where do we look next?”  He asked.

“It has to be on the inlet side from here to the reactor.”  Adam swore as he hit his head on a pipe. 

They wiggled their way out, and between the three of them were able to follow the fuel inlet line up to the reactor.  That meant dashing from one compartment to another until they ended back at the outer wall of the giant reactor.  Here they found a mass of piping, but without a schematic, they had no way of telling what their purpose was.

“Har!  I’ve found it!”  Adam yelled, his body half way inside some ductwork.  “Oh shit!  Oh shit!”

“What?”  Mike yelled.

“Some idiot ran the fuel inlet line too close to the reactor.   I can see where part of the reactor magnetic containment field has failed.”  Mike could hear him moving around, as if looking for something.  “Damn!”

“What?”

“For some reason, there are no more valves between here and the fuel tanks.”

“Not good.”

“You can say that again.  There is no way to shut off the flow, or drain the fuel tank, expect to space, and that won’t help.  If they dumped their fuel they’d be dumped out into normal space God knows where, and a million miles from the nearest fuel source.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that due to that flew in the containment field, its managed to bore a pinhole through the reactor wall and this fuel line.”  He wiggled back out of the duct and dropped to the floor.

“I have no idea how they can fix it, but if they don’t that hole is going to get bigger, a lot bigger.”

“And when it does, it’s going to blow.”

“Right, and take this ship with it.”

“So what do we do?”

“We can’t do a damn thing.”  He moaned, rubbing his face in frustration.

“Janice, get one of those alien’s down here, and the whiteboard.”

“On it, Skipper.”

“Any ideas, Adam.”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking…  sorry, Skipper, didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

“Forget it.  Keep thinking.”  He smiled back.

“The only way I can see is to cut the fuel line somewhere above this and shut off the flow.”

“Can they fix it then?”

“With no fuel, the reactor will scram.  It has too, as part of the emergency shutdown procedure.  Once they’ drop back to normal space, they might be able to fix the containment field, and the leak.”

“Yeah, but that would put them years away from where they are going.”

“Might not if they can time it to drop them out near a star.”

“That would give them the ability to jump from there, depending on how long it takes them to reach it.”

“It’s the best I can come up with.”

Just them Janice return, and much to their surprise a figure in a hard suit.  Both blinked for a moment as it dawned on them that this space on the alien ship was a dangerous place to be.  Adam beckoned the being over and pointed up to the leak.  It took a while from the alien to get there, as he had to climb and crawl over, under and around intervening pipes.  At last he reached a place where he could see the problem, but without communication between them, they was no way they could find out what he was thinking.  In the end, they all made their way back to the Bridge and the regal looking being on the throne like chair.  As they came in, Pete tapped him wrist, and Mike looked down at his.  They had to finish this up in less than ten minutes before they dropped out of
n
th
or risk his ship.  He put up his hand, palm out, to tell Pete to hold it and went to the whiteboard Janice was holding.

‘Do you understand the problem?’

‘Yes.  Understand’

‘You need to shut off the fuel line above the leak.’

‘Understand’

‘You need to do it quickly. Hole getting bigger’

‘Understand’

‘Time the shut off to get you close to a star.’

‘Difficult’

‘Not impossible.  To far bad, to close bad’

‘Understand’

‘My ship will drop out of
n
th
in...
’  He looked at his chronometer,
‘three minutes from now’

‘Understand
.
’
For a moment, the regal being said something to the translato
r
,             
 
‘
The Harmony, thanksCaptain Michael Gray of the Royal Navy for his assistance.  We will be eternally grateful for all you have don
e
.’

“No need to thank me. Helping a stranded ship is part of my duties and no thanks are needed.”

“
One minute, Skipper.”  Mike looked over at the main screen, seeing the
n
th
space ‘sails’ start to fluctuate as the Nav computer reduced power in preparation for the transition back to normal space.

“Goodbye and may your gods smooth the path before you.” Mike wasn’t sure why he said it, as he was never particularly religious, but it somehow seemed fitting.

‘
And to you Captain Michael Gray. Go with the blessing of the Harmony upon you and your family forever
’
 
With that, they translated back into the sidereal universe and the Harmony ship vanished.

“That was an odd farewell.”  Pete said.

“Who knows what the Harmony think.”

“Well, that was fun.”  Adam grinned.  “Can’t say I’d like to do it again anytime soon.”

“As if.”  Janice murmured as she took her seat.

“Hopefully something will come out of this event. Who knows, maybe the Harmony will let out ships cross their space in the future.”

Mike watched as the
n
th
sail pylons folded back into their housing in the hull and the armored hatches closed over them.  They all went back to their respective station, back on their mission.  The calculation were perfect, and they dropped out two light minutes from the target star, a binary system, and a perfect place to start a mission, as with so many unmonitored warp points to take it would be impossible to track him.  After the transfer, Mike turned the Bridge over to Pete, and went to his day cabin to unseal his orders.  They puzzled him, as there was nothing was specific, just to go to a certain point in space and wait.  The orders also contained a second section, but time locked so he couldn’t read it for four days, time enough for him to reach his first destination.  There was a message chip from Ann, but he kept that for later when he could relax and enjoy it.  The crew in the meantime began working on opening all the crate, boxes, and finding what was inside, and where it belonged.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN:

With his only two gunners acted as training officers he put the Marines through their paces, and, much to everyone's surprise they took to it like ducks to water.  Gradually the ship settled down into a routine as they sped across the star field at top speed towards towards the next warp point, and the Sirrien/Kanuri border.  Once they unpacked the supplies, and the packaging material vanished into the recycler, it drastically increased the living space inside the ship, much to everyone's relief.  Mike then began the shakedown cruise, testing every system and setting up combat drills.  Mike ordered they do this slowly at first, walking to their assigned duty station so the crew got the hang of reaching their assigned position.  Even at walking pace, there was still mass confusion as too many people tried to use the same passageways at the same time, but they soon learned to find the shortest way to their stations.  The first time he called general quarters, it took the crew almost half an hour to bring the ship to complete combat readiness.  Not that Mike expected much else, but as the days passed, the time got shorter and shorter.  After a week, the crew could run to their stations and have her ready in four minutes flat.  After the last drill, he gave the crew a well done.

“Not bad for a bunch of females, Pete.”

“Whoever thought they couldn’t do as well as men should have his head examined.”  Pete snorted.  “Damn, they’re fast!”

“Now we’ll see if they can do it in the same time when they least expect it.”

“God, I hate that, one time I was in the shower.”  Janice Fletcher muttered.

“Can’t expect the enemy to attack just when you want them to Jan.”

“No, sir, it's just that I had to run through the whole damn ship in my underwear.”  She smiled.  The XO and Mike smiled and raised an eyebrow, but made no further comment.

“If either of you dare say ‘I’d like to have seen that’, I’ll kill you ginning idiots where you stand.”

“Me?  Now would I say something like that?”  Mike asked, sounding wounded, looking at Pete for support of his innocence.

“No, me neither.”  Pete said, shaking his head, looking serious.

“Hummm!  Men!”  She said, tossing her hair over her shoulder in the universal female gesture of dismissal, but her laughter spoiled the effect.  The rest of the Bridge crew joined in with embarrassing tales of surprised combat drills.  To make things a little more interesting, Mike set up a small program to run on the mainframe that would call practice alerts at random times.

Even he wouldn’t know when the alarm would go off. Much to his annoyance, the first one went off at 00.02 hours, just after he’d fallen asleep.  The second time was just as he was taking a shower.  With as much digitally as he could muster, he dashed to the Bridge with soap in his hair, bare foot and zipping his coverall up.  The Bridge staff did restrain themselves from laughing until after he’d call off the drill then went back and waited for the water to come back on.  After the second week, Mike called his first all ship inspection, but added he wanted it to be a working inspection, not a BS inspection to impress the Captain.  With Pete and Conner in tow, he started at the bow and worked his way back.  His first stop was the Forward torpedo room, and other than Conner’s soft spoken, ‘Captain on Deck’, the men carried on with what they were doing.  The division chief came over, saluting smartly and fell in behind his Captain.

“Forward Torpedo room ready for inspection, Skipper.”

“Petty Officer, Dell, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Due to their unusual departure, and the sheer speed that things had happened, Mike hadn’t had a chance to meet each of his crew individually.  He left the running of the ship and crew in the capable hands of his XO and Conner Blake, but hopefully in the next few weeks, he could correct that oversight.

“Anything out of the ordinary to report, chief?”

“No, sir, just the usual glitches in the system, but we have most of those worked out now.”

“How’s your reload time?”

“Dismal at first, Skipper, but we are getting in down to under two minutes to reload all tube.”

“Good, that could mean the difference of winning or losing a battle.”

“I hear you, Skipper.  I’m trying to get it down to one minute flat.  It's just a question of getting the last bugs out of the autoloaders system.”

“Are the tubes loaded, chief?”  Mike asked as he came up behind the fire control seat.

“No, sir.  Standard Navy procedure calls for all tubes to remain unloaded until battle stations, alarm sounds.”  Mike eyed the torpedoes nestled in the holding cradles and nodded.