"I
know that, El, it's not like I haven't been pushing this damn crate
for six months already."
Greg sighed,
sat back and glanced at all his screens, making sure all was in
order. Everything was, as usual. Boring as hell, really. Not even
some floating chunk of space garbage to take a pot shot at with the
Point Defense Lasers.
What he wouldn't
give for even the minutest problem to divert his attention. Instead
he had a slight positive Z axis pitch. Wonderful. Whatever'd happened
to the old days, like in the stories he'd read when he was younger?
About travel lanes choked with asteroids, pirates, and strange
viruses?
Navigators were heroes back
then. He'd almost prefer it if things did go wrong for once, if only
to relieve the monotony.
Actually, once he thought about it, this eight hour shift would be more interesting than most. He'd be at the con during the Midpoint reversal. Hell, after six months of sustained 1.25 g's of gravity, a few seconds of weightlessness might just be fun.
Gregory killed the few remaining minutes before Midpoint, whistling a little ditty he had composed over his long sit-ins as Nav. As the numbers ticked down to the last 30 seconds, he sat up in his chair, checking all his instruments again. With his right hand he flicked a comm channel open, speaking into his headset mike.
"Captain, we'll
be arriving at Midpoint in T-minus 25. Are you coming to the
bridge?"
There was a slight pause before the
weathered voice of Captain Evharson filtered through his
headset.
"No, I'll watch from down here, thank you. Keep up the good work. "
The line went dead.
Greg snorted. Typical. The Old coot sure was polite, but antisocial as hell. He would be surprised if he'd seen the captain outside his compartment more than five times in the entire trip.
As the count
dwindled into the teens, Greg slumped into his chair again. There
really wasn't anything to do but watch, the computer was in charge of
the whole operation. As the countdown hit ten, there was a crackle
through the shipwide speakers as the computer opened a line and
"spoke" to the crew in a pleasant feminine voice.
"180 degree turnover maneuver to begin shortly. Please prepare for
zero gravity."
Gregory saluted the nearest speaker with his middle finger and growled.
"Aye aye,
cap'n."
The ETA counter
struck zero.
The deep rumble
of the Walterium reactor, so omnipresent over the last six months
that the crew had ceased to notice it, suddenly lapsed into silence.
Greg glanced around the empty bridge with a sudden feeling of
insecurity as the interior of the ship was truly quiet for the first
time in half a year.
Greg felt the familiar tingling,
stomach-rising queasiness of zero gravity set in, as the ship ceased
it's forward thrust. He let his hand drift upwards on it's own. How
long had it been since he'd been in zero G?
On the control displays, numbers were changing rapidly, and he turned his attention to them. Though he was too far away to feel it, Greg knew that powerful conventional thrusters on the bow and stern were firing, pushing the back up and the front down, causing the more than quarter mile long ship to pinwheel slowly through space.
On the Attitude displays he watched a graphic representation of the ship rotate cleanly on it's Z axis. Due to the size of the ship, the maneuver would take a full 3 minutes to complete. Once the stern was pointed in the same direction that the bow had been, the reactor would kick back in at 1.25 G's of thrust, and the ship would begin it's long deceleration to it's final destination.
Greg eyed the
displays as the ship came around, counting the seconds till the main
engine would kick in. As his own count reached zero, Greg heard
and felt the giant Walterium reaction engine engage again.
His hand, still
floating in midair, dropped back to the armrest. He glanced at the
displays again, double checking the new course. Right on
target. He felt a slight twinge of resentment, he'd never have been
able to nail the new course like that. Damn computers. Always so
perfect. Sometimes he wondered why he or the other navigators was
needed on this ship at all.
He was about to
call Captain Evharson and tell him that the Turnaround had been
managed successfully, when he caught something unusual in the corner
of his vision. He glanced back at it. With a shock that sent his
heart skipping, he realized that it was the Attitude indicator
readout, slowly ticking off numbers. The ship hadn't stopped it's
Rotation.
"What
the-?"
He stared at the display in disbelief. The numbers kept changing, indicating that the nose of the vessel was still moving down. His eyes widened as the numbers started changing faster. What the hell was happening? He waited for the computer to correct itself, but nothing happened. The ship began to tilt faster.
Computer error?
What was going on? Then suddenly, with the numbers on the display
changing faster than the eye could follow, the rotation increased
speed dramatically.
Richard quickly
realized what was about to happen. The ship was somehow
turning, and doing it with the main engine engaged. The maneuver
would cause a tremendous amount of stress to the hull. While a combat
vessel could handle this with ease, the unreinforced length of
Gravlaw would be snapped like a pencil.
Even as he thought
this, Gregory felt the pull of newly created, centrifugal forces on
his body as the momentum of the turn increased. Realizing the
computer either wouldn't or couldn't correct the spin, Gregory
reached out and seized the control grips, determined to get the ship
back under control.
Hurriedly, he ran
his eyes over the thruster readout. The display showed no Maneuvering
thrusters operating, which meant that whatever the problem was, it
had to do with main propulsion. He dialed the reactor down to
neutral, watching the attitude readout with steely eyes.
The rumble of the engines could still be heard. A sudden shuddering cavitation rattled the ship, accompanied by the unearthly, terrifying popping groan of overstressed metal. Gregory's mind raced. The main engine wasn't responding, at least not to bridge control. If he
tried to counterthrust with the maneuvering engines, it
would only increase the strain on the strain on the hull. If
he used the thrusters to increase the spin, it would ease
the stress a bit, but the centrifugal forces would increase,
which was extremely dangerous for any unsecured crewmembers.
There wasn't anything he could do. At least not from
Nav. It was
Elle. Greg glanced over his shoulder to see her struggling
toward him, fighting against the warped gravity. He
frantically called
back. She
reached the Nav chair, clinging to the back to keep from
sliding to the back of the bridge. There was another,
more violent shudder, and the displays began to flash
overstress
warnings. |
The interior of
the ship was again at zero G.
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