CHAPTER SIX
Commander Forte stood in the center the helm with Captain Cordatus and Captain Pilosus. There were a dozen officers and crewmen at the helm, all at their stations processing data and working together for the final minutes before arriving. The plan was to bring the Impegi into a geosynchronous orbit with Earth and then allow smaller ships to dock and offload the cargo. After all the cargo was offloaded, then the Impegi would land on the dark side of the moon, where it would be repurposed as a Moon Base.
Commander Forte and the others stared out of the helm’s panoramic window; they were approaching Earth at 400,000 miles-per-hour.
Captain Pilosus said, “Look, there is Earth’s moon,” as he pointed at the window. Captain Pilosus was the oldest officer at the helm. With over 200 years under his belt, he could have easily served as the commanding officer. Pilosus stood six feet nine, and the only hint of his age was a few specs of gray hair and crow’s feet creeping up in the corners of his eyes.
Commander Forte nodded and replied, “Yes. For many of us, that will be our new home.”
Captain Cordatus said, “We should slow down. We are on a direct intercept course with Earth.”
Commander Forte called out, “Reduce speed to 40,000 miles per hour, relative to Earth’s speed.”
“Yes Sir!” Forte heard the eager reply of the young officer he’d met earlier. The lad was clearly motivated to do good work and wanted to make a positive impression on the more experienced officers. It was too early to tell whether he would be successful.
“Bring us into a geosynchronous low Earth orbit,” instructed Forte.
A few minutes later, Captain Stella, having returned to her post as chief navigational officer, announced, “We are approaching a geosynchronous orbit.”
Suddenly, a deafening explosion rocked the Impegi throwing everyone to the deck. Forte’s ears were ringing as his eyes darted around the helm. Crewmen were sprawled all over the large command center as if they had been tossed about like rag dolls.
Forte yelled out, “Report, report! What just happened?”
Officer Caelum was crawling back up to his station and frantically operating the display monitor. “It appears that one of the antimatter reactors failed!”
“How is that possible? If an antimatter reactor failed it should have vaporized the entire ship,” Forte questioned.
Pilosus was just standing to his feet as he responded, “No, this was a one-way mission. There was only enough antimatter to get to Earth. We had nearly depleted out antimatter reserves.”
Forte yelled out, “I need a damage report now.”
Lieutenant Mare, who had a bloody gash on the right side of his forehead, said, “It looks like we are venting atmosphere from fifteen decks.”
Captain Stella interrupted, “We have a 275-foot-long breach on the starboard side.”
At that moment, the ship shuttered, violently thrusting half the crew back to the floor.
Cordatus said with confidence, “That was the remaining antimatter reactors being jettisoned from the ship.” Forte knew that in the event one antimatter reactor had a catastrophic failure, the others would be expelled from the ship. He had never heard of it happening, though. He guessed no one had ever survived the first reactor exploding. The theory was, if one reactor explodes, jettison the others so you don’t have a chain reaction and can possibly save the vessel.
“Commander, without the antimatter reactors we have no propulsion, no thrust,” shouted Captain Stella over the rising noise of frantic crewmen.
“It gets worse, we were approaching a low Earth orbit when the reactor blew. The explosion pushed us out of orbit, and we are losing altitude,” insisted Lieutenant Mare. “At our present trajectory, we will crash in eight minutes.”
“Eight minutes?” Asked Forte. “Is that right?”
“Eight, maybe nine,” answered Captain Stella. “But, we don’t even have that much time. Once our orbit deteriorates to the point that we are in free fall, we will no longer be able to launch the jump shuttles.”
Officer Caelum, who was now wiping blood from his eyes, said, “We have three minutes of power left in the reserve batteries.”
Captain Stella objected, “True, but without the reactors we have no propulsion; we cannot steer the ship.”
“But, we could use the three minutes of reserve power to activate the antigravity field,” Forte suggested.
“What? Who cares? We have an eight-minute fall. What good is three minutes of antigravity going to do?” Shouted a panicked Stella.
Ignoring her, Caelum added, “We can also use the three minutes to power the plasma shield. It won’t save us, but it will greatly lessen the impact so that some of the cargo could be recovered by the humans.”
Forte was reminded that he was lucky to have a team of such clever officers. Now all he had to do was make a decision, for better or worse, he started barking orders over the chaos, “Commander Furier, send a message to the Moon Base advising them of the situation; then, get to the shuttle bay. Stella, divert all helm’s command and control to Jump Shuttle 135, where all commanding officers will gather. Captain Cordatus, make an announcement to the crew that we are abandoning ship and to rush to the shuttle bay. Everyone else evacuate, leave now!”
Just as he finished shouting orders, a warning light materialized on his display: Optical Stealth mode had failed, they were now visible to anyone on Earth that wanted to look up into the sky.
“Life support and ship functions are still online. Everyone board the elevator to the shuttle bay,” Cordatus commanded, stepping up to lead the evocation efforts.
Forte knew that life support, lights, ships artificial gravity, communications, radar, LTS chambers, hanger bay doors, and the Jump Shuttles all ran off a different power source and would continue to function for hours after loss of the reactors. Still, it did not seem prudent to take the elevator. “Are you sure about the elevators?”
Cordatus replied, “We don’t have time to run down twelve flights of stairs and launch the shuttles. We have to risk it.”
Forte knew he was right. They had to risk it. As the elevator whizzed down twelve levels to the hanger bay, Forte thought to himself, “Well, this really changes my plans - for the rest of my life.”
No time for mourning the death of his future dreams of constructing an annex Moon Base, work had to be done. As he entered the hanger bay, it was complete pandemonium. Crewmen were rushing back and forth between the jump shuttles making sure they were all ready for launch. Others were running around trying to load up equipment and boarding shuttles. Commander Furier was directing her crew to load important cargo onto the jump shuttle’s small cargo holds.
“All command officers on jump shuttle 135, we are two minutes to launch,” yelled Forte into the crowd of crew frantically running from place-to-place. “Everyone else, get into a jump shuttle now. Now, now!”
Forte ran up to quartermaster Furier and shouted above the deafening sound of the ship tearing through Earth’s atmosphere, “What are you doing?”
“I’m the quartermaster, and the ship is going to be obliterated! I’m trying to salvage as much of the cargo as possible!”
“You have forty seconds to secure your cargo on the jump shuttles; then they all launch!” Forte screamed over the roaring noise ripping through the ship.
Forte ran through the center aisle, shouting the count down and telling people to secure themselves in the jump shuttles. As he reached shuttle 135, he climbed aboard from the rear, all command officers were present except Furier. “Everyone buckle up, this is going to be a bumpy ride. Transfer control of the helm to me, Pilosus.”