The Turnover, Part 9
The Continuing Story of Deep Space 2: Page 60
"Sir, we reached the perimeter of the gravity-well. " Marianne said after tapping her comm-badge. "Except, Sir, there is something wrong, no … mmm…let me refrase that… mmm… there is actually nothing wrong ?!?!" Marianne continued.
Luke, leaning back in his bunk and eating a, just replicated, juicy, greasy hamburger, together with the, finally awaken, Nadine - who was eating some biscuits - wanted to take his first bite but hesitated and looked to the front where Nadine sat. He glanced back at Nadine, then at his hamburger, as if he was trying to decide whether to join Marianne in the co-pilots' seat or to eat this great smelling piece of food first. Nadine stood up, looked down to the chief of communications, turned around and walked the approximately 4 meters to the front-seats.
He reluctantly followed her, with his hamburger in his hand, and took, finally, his first bite, followed with a loud humming of content. "Mmmm...just like 'the real thing'..." He thought.
Nadine stepped aside and let the chief sit down next to Marianne. "What's up, Doc" He asked in a funny way (they didn't see him like that often), impersonating a 20th century cartoon.
"Sir ?" Marianne turned her head to the eating copilot and started smiling "You're dripping. Do you need a napking or does the nurse have to clean you up" And now both women lost their self-control - as if they had something of the sort - and began laughing harder.
Luke - while just taking another bite - looked down to the spots of ketchup on his uniform and on the floor leading up to his chair. With a blush on his face he got up, went to the back, and got back 5 minutes later with a clean uniform and cleaned up his mess.
With a now irritated voice he, again, asked what was wrong. Marianne choked her last laughs and replied in a hastly, nervous way " Well, Sir, the gravity-well is gone. All indicators are in the green. The computer is almost finished with a sensorsweap of the area. But nothing so far, just empty space, dust, a few rogue planets, two beautiful twin-stars, and, most importantly, us." Immediately, as if programmed to do so, a soft alarm went and at the same time the console configuration in front of Luke changed. "Ah, the results of the sensor-sweap. That's strange. Everything seems in order, but, what we experienced earlier, the echo of the gravity-well was real, wasn't it, or were we hallucinating ? Mmm…Marianne, this is just a wild guess, but check the starmaps, will you ? I can't shake this gutt feeling that tells me that something is really wrong here."
"OK admiral, I am requesting the charts right now for comparison with the sensordata. It will take about fifteen minutes for the computer to compile the requested information. I know, I know...It seems a long wait but if something slipped for even a millimeter, he will tell."
"Nice" Luke immediately replied "Just nice. At least now I have the time to quitely finish this excellent piece of junk-food, and perhaps have a second one." While hearing this Nadine, a nurse -and sometimes when she thought fit- a health freak and a vegetarian, shivered and sneaked to the back. She took a small, phaser-looking, tool out of a small box, went another two meters, opened, while constantly observing her colleagues, a door which led to a small, claustrofobic room and swiftly entered the space. She hastly opened a panel, took the eary looking tool and made some fast, elegant moves as if she never did anything else. Three minutes later the nurse calmly sat back in the chair behind Marianne.
Minutes seemed like hours, the waiting, although not long, was tiresome and the tension was heavy. Luke had finished his hamburger and seemed pre-oocupied in the process of deciding whether to have another one or to stop there. Marianne kept nervously looking at the numerous gages and readout screens that where in front of her and on her righthand side. Nervous, not so much for the possible events, but mostly being afraid of failing the vice-admiral seeted next to her. Acting like this, one wouldn't guess that he is a man reknowned for his inability to forgive errors, a man who expects nothing less but excellence, not only from his crew but first of all from himself, and those are the worst kind. Marianne, and the rest of the people who met him, all learned quickly that Luke was a man who was righteous but could break people as easily as he was eating his junk-food right now. But then, there were also people who had nothing but admiration for this man and his abilities, and the mysteries surrounding him; his strange links with the starfleet intelligence and black-ops (that off course 'don't exist'). Men like Arthur, Louis, Wim,...developed a weird sense of feeling like belonging to the same family. The recent changes in Starfleet command, the, although not as eye-catching, transfers of starship-captains, starbase commanders, shifting and reorganising of combat- and stormtroopdivisions... made him uneasy. He hadn't heard a word from many of the people and operatives he knew in San Francisco, Mars, Vulcan, Kronos,...; but he rarely mentioned anything of the sort to anyone on board or on the starbase.
"Here Sir, four gamma-radiation spikes this last minute. They seem to be originating about 1,35 AU counting from our stationary position in the North section of the center of the twin-stars. The surges stopped. It could be nothing, but I thought I should mention it." Marianne remarked. "Well, Miss Loogen, let's focus on that region. Align the other sensors to that direction so that we can make the bandwith somewhat broader. Marianne, can you free up all unnecesary processor-speed not needed for the critical systems ? Take the replicator and the aft-weapons array off-line. Nadine, try to widen the measurabel spectrum as much as possible by using the freed processor speed, look especially for the doppler-effect. This might be our breaktrough." Every fiber in Luke's body was tensed and ready for action.
"There Sir, it suddenly became quite visible" Nadine, standing in the middle of her colleagues, pointed through the large front window to an area between the stars, which became completely black, because of sucking in, and not releasing, the light and everything else. Marianne immediately realigned all the sensors and directed them to the appearing black-hole.
"Sir !! Mass-indicators, graviton-generators, everything just went red!!! Shall I increase the distance ?" Alarms where sounding all around them and know Marianne seemed to be losing it. "Yes, take us 5 AU, Immediately!! Full impulse. Divert the rest of the power to the shields and integrityfields to keep our mass up." Luke stood up and ran to the engineering part to controll the flow of the sewell-fuel. Half-way he began to feel sick to his stomach, and he wasn't alone with that feeling. "Sir, we are losing control over the graviton-generators. They are breaking down because of the increased stress we put on them." Nadine yelled, after taking Luke's place and examining the readings in front of her. Too late, the generators went down, and they all became weightless, which made their task even more difficult. "Sir, it is working. Sewell engines are finally aligned and engaged. We reached, and are sustaining, one-quarter impulse speed. But the engines are acting weird, probably because of the changes in the mass. It will takes us a considerable amount of time to reach our new coordinates." Marianne seemed to regain, bit by bit, her wits.
Nadine began yelling through the comm-system "Sir, our mass has seriously decreased. We are currently at 68% and further decreasing. I am now at maximum output of the integrityfields, but we can't sustain our exterior shields!!! Our left engine is seriously overheating ..."and then Nadine's fear became reality...with a blinding flash the left engine exploded and if it wasn't for the integrityshielding they would have been obliterated. The complete wing was ripped off and left a rectangular breach of the outer-hull of about 2 and a half meters. The power of the blast threw the ship in a wild spinning and off their course, right back too the twin-stars.
"I am shutting down all our engines, just thrusters remain available. Use them to take us out of the spin and stabilise us. I will try to reroute all power still available to the shieldsystems." Luke replied after he finally succeeded floating down from the ceiling. He felt as if he was learning to swim for the very first time, and he was even trying harder to keep his recently eaten hamburger where it belonges.
"Sir, both the suns are closing to each other right towards the singularity, which is becoming larger!!! I calculate that, at this rate, they will be grasped by the singularity within the hour." Nadine stated after extrapolating the sensor-readings.
A loud yelling over-whelmed everyone. The surrounding environment came to rest. The thrusters had fired and did their work as expected, but the heavy pounding the ship went through, destroyed, amongst other things, a lot of the sound insulation.
"Sir, mass decrease has stabilised at 54%. Integrityfields are stable and holding, for the moment. The outer-hull breach is not further increasing." Marianne had to yell even harder than the thrusters, but she managed well. Luke sighted of releive.
"Marianne, get us out of here, even if it's only on thrusters. Nadine, send an emergency-broadcast to any ship in the vicinity and to DS2. I will try to reactivate some of the not yet fried graviton-generators."
The fusion-powered thrusters yelled even louder, but at least, the distance between them and the singularity was increasing again, and that was enough for the time beeing. Now their only hope was that someone, in time, would pick up the transmission, because a 30-year, or so, trip to DS2 was not appealing.
Behind them, a fierce battle raged between the two stars, fighting for survival against a remorseless black-hole, which, in the end, would certainly not yield.
The Vega-sector was bound to become even more empty...or...not ????