Before my eyes, the shuttle came apart and exploded in a ball of plasma.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The UNPF’s problem — one of its many problems — is that it is unable to guarantee a suitable supply of components for its starships. Each manufactory is given quite unreasonable quotas for production and, if it fails to meet them, is penalised heavily. The net result is that corners are cut everywhere and defective components are very common. Sometimes, when not discovered in time, the results are lethal.
“Scan for life signs,” I snapped, against all logic. He couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t be dead. “What happened?”
“No life signs detected,” Yianni said. She sounded as shaken as I was. “The shuttle has been completely destroyed.”
I keyed my console. “Engineer, Pilot, I want you to find out what happened to the shuttle,” I ordered. The Captain was dead and that made me Captain, but I couldn’t assume command just yet. I should declare myself Captain at once, according to regulations, yet it would have felt like a betrayal. How could I usurp Captain Harriman? “Yianni, did the station open fire?”
“Negative,” Yianni said, firmly. I checked my console and she was correct. There was no trace of a missile or a laser cannon being fired. “They’re asking us what happened!”
“Tell them that there was an accident on the shuttle and that we’ll talk to them as soon as possible,” I ordered, rising from my chair. “Launch the second shuttle…no, belay that order. Have the Engineer check out a work party and send them EVA to recover anything they can.”
“Aye, sir,” Yianni said.
The hatch opened and Jason Montgomerie came onto the bridge. “I just heard,” he said. “Can we talk in your cabin?”
He tried to lead me into the Captain’s cabin, but I refused. The Captain’s cabin was mine now, but I couldn’t go inside. It felt as if I would be violating his privacy. I couldn’t bear to do that. It would have been cutting the last link with the man I had admired and sought to emulate.
“You have to assume command,” he said, as soon as the hatch hissed closed. “You’re the First Lieutenant and you have to declare yourself Captain, now, to continue the line of authority. The ship needs a Captain.”
“I can’t,” I protested, grimly. It dawned on me that he, or the Senior Chief, might think that I had sabotaged the shuttle personally, just to get rid of the Captain. I hadn’t, but how were they to know that? “Sir, I…”
“You’re the Captain,” he said. There was no give in his tone at all. “You get to call me Jason.”
He held up a hand before I could continue. “Captain Harriman accepted your transfer request knowing that you would be First Lieutenant and his direct successor if anything happened to him,” he continued. “I approved your transfer with the same understanding. You are the senior officer of this ship and therefore command devolves upon you.”
I wanted to argue, but how could I? “The Captain won’t think any less of you for acting according to regulations and declaring yourself Captain,” he concluded. “You don’t have any real choice and you know it. Please, John, don’t make this any harder than it already is.”
“I understand,” I said. I hadn’t realised that Jason, sot that he was, had cared deeply for the Captain. They’d been friends, despite their different positions, something that would have horrified their superiors back home if they’d realised the truth. He might have seemed a drunkard, but I suspected that that hadn’t hampered his position. “Please give me some time…”
“There isn’t much time,” Jason said, standing up. “You know the regulations as well as I do.”
“Yes,” I said. The UNPF had so many regulations that no one could memorise them all, but that particular section was studied thoroughly at the Academy. In the event of the Captain being killed in the line of duty, or being relived of duty according to regulations, command will devolve upon the senior officer in the chain of command. That officer will assume the rank of Captain and return the starship to the nearest fleet base, where a full inquiry will be held. “I understand.”
The hatch hissed closed behind him and I swore, inwardly. There would have to be an inquiry when we returned to Earth and that might expose my own plans. I didn’t even know what had happened back on Earth. It was quite possible that the security forces had uncovered one of my friends and were working to round up everyone involved with my conspiracy. I could take the ship renegade, but what would that gain me, but a lifetime on the run? It would just turn me into another pirate. I say there for an hour before the hatch chimed again.
“Come,” I called. The hatch hissed open, revealing the Engineer and the Senior Chief. The Engineer was holding a blackened component in his hand. I stared at it, puzzled. It might have been something at one time, but now it was just a melted mass. “What’s that?”
“The thing that killed the Captain,” the Engineer said, grimly. His voice was very bitter. “This is a standard-issue fuel injector system for the shuttle. I studied the telemetry from the shuttle just before it exploded and deduced that one of these components must have failed.”
He put it down on my table and I examined it. It meant nothing to me. “I see,” I said, remembering the extensive checks that the Captain had ordered. “Why wasn’t the damaged component located before we installed it onto the shuttle?”
“They’re sealed components,” the Engineer explained. He nodded towards the burned-out unit. “I opened two other components and inspected them carefully. They were both flawed — I suspect that someone designed it that way deliberately — and when the shuttle ramped up to full power…well, there was an overload reaction and the fuel tank eventually exploded.”
“Shit,” I said, bitterly. “Are they all flawed?”
“The case of components came to us from Ceres, sealed,” the Engineer said. I didn’t miss the implications. Ceres had a bad reputation even among the UNPF. It was the home of hundreds of conscripted workers, among other things, and produced far too many vital components. Something that would damage a starship might well destroy a shuttle, if it were loaded onboard and used in innocence. “The ones I checked are badly flawed.”
He pointed a stubby finger at the unit he’d brought. “I took that one down to the machine shop and simulated a shuttle drive being activated,” he added. “The result was what you see before you. I have no doubt that that would destroy an active shuttle.”
I swore. “What about the other shuttle?” I asked. “Can we be sure that it’s safe?”
“We can’t,” the Senior Chief said. He scowled. “I’ve ordered the components pulled out and replaced by our final components from the previous shipping, but we’d still be taking a chance. What happens if there are other sabotaged components?”
“It would depend on where they are,” the Engineer said, slowly. “The worst that could happen to the starship itself would be a runaway fusion reaction, which would burn out one of the fusion reactors, but if we lost even two of them.”
“We’d lose our ability to go FTL,” I concluded. There were three fusion reactors on the Jacques Delors and we needed at least two of them to power up the Jump Drive and open a wormhole. Even having main power to the remainder of the ship wouldn’t help us if we had to crawl back to Earth at STL speeds.