Paws and Planets (10 page)

* * * * *

One deck below,
the grim faces of the crew who had been off duty when the storm
struck looked at each other.

Petty Officer
Cranston summed it up.

“It looks bad.
Wonder if any on the officers’ deck made it.”

Rating
McAllister shrugged his shoulders.

Robert
Lutterell looked at him sharp-eyed. McAllister was a bit of a hard
egg, being convinced that the majority of the commissioned ranks
were a complete waste of ship’s air. The rating spent the majority
of his off-duty time in trouble for one reason or another and had
been released from his last spell in the brig only the previous
day. Robert vowed to keep an eye on him. “Crew family quarters
intact?” his voice barked out in its usual authoritative
manner.

“Yes sir,” said
Jim Cranston, “missed by a mile.”

This was the
answer the CPO was looking for. Now the crew would concentrate on
their duty, knowing that their families were not in any immediate
danger.

The men and
women, some one hundred and sixty strong, clustered round him.

“We must get to
the bridge,” said Robert Lutterell, “can’t do anything from here.”
He pointed to his left. “Up that shaft.”

Everyone looked
at the access shaft door, shut fast and the opening mechanism
dead.

“Need a power
wrench,” called someone from the back.

“Go get
one.”

“Aye
Chief.”

“I’ll take ten
up the shaft with me.”

He caught Petty
Officer Cranston’s eye.

“Choose the
team,” he ordered, “Make sure all the bridge functions are
covered.” Then he turned to the rest of the crew, “Get your
equipment together. Expect rescue missions in any of the sections
that have survived. Sick bay attendants prepare a suitable area in
case of wounded. Use the off-duty lounge and the cabins.”

Petty Officer
Cranston chose the rescue team and began to brief them. The rest
peeled off to their duties. There was no panic.

No
substitute for decent training
, thought Robert Lutterell as he
watched.

The power
wrench arrived, carried by a sweating McAllister and the team set
to work on the shaft door.

It took them
over two ship hours to reach the bridge. Two hours of backbreaking
labour as they manhandled the shaft doors open then painstakingly
climbed, using the lift clamps for purchase. Climbing up behind the
heels of his superior, not for the first time Petty Officer Jim
Cranston wished that the ship designers had seen fit to install a
ladder in these shafts. Not five months previously he had been
inside a similar one extricating a gaggle of colonial youngsters
from a stuck lift. It had been hard going then; it was even more so
now.

He grimaced as
he stubbed his toes for the umpteenth time and wondered how these
self-same youngsters were coping with this emergency and for that
matter, if any had survived.

Kath Andrews
was waiting at the shaft door (she was listening out for their
approach) and helped the CPO wedge it open, starting her recitation
of the status report. Robert Lutterell knew that behind him, Jim
Cranston was listening hard as well, although all he could hear
from below was Jim’s heavy breathing caused by the exertion of the
climb on his stocky, and it had to be admitted, overweight
frame.

So when Robert
Lutterell managed, with a grunt of effort, to hoist his leg on to
the bridge floor and pull himself up, the CPO was fully aware of
the situation and able to take charge at once, to young Kath’s
heartfelt relief.

He strode on to
the bridge, eyes taking in everything. Of the eight who had been on
duty, two were dead and four were lying to one side, unconscious
and rough-bandaged, mute evidence of the effect the storm had had
on the bridge crew. Elsewhere on the ship the deck ceilings were
low. On the bridge, bodies had impacted high on the bridge up-deck,
over three metres above the foot-deck. It was no wonder there had
been deaths and broken bones.

Commander
MacIntosh was conscious, but only just. Propped up by Kath in his
command chair, he was doing his best to bring order out of chaos.
It was obvious to Robert that he was not able for the task. Robert
Lutterell put out a large gnarled hand and grasped the Commander’s
shoulder. The officer jumped at the touch then with obvious
difficulty turned his head to see who it was. His eyes tried to
focus on the burly shape in front of him.

“Chief? Is that
you?” his words faltered.

“That’s right
sir. Now you let some of my boys take you over with the others. Lie
down and have a rest. You’ll be much more use once you’ve had a
doss. I’ll take charge here.”

Stuart nodded
slowly, trying to minimise the agony that reverberated in his head
and Robert turned his attention to young Kath who was standing at
his side. She stared at him with an expression that spoke of
checked panic.

“I’m here now,
and it’s going to be okay,” he said to her.

She nodded and
a faint colour returned to her pale cheeks.

She must only
be around seventeen; born on Earth but shipboard since she was five
or thereabouts. Still, she has kept her head remarkably well.

He cleared his
throat.

“Now Rating
Andrews. I have a job for you to do. An important job. You are life
support, aren’t you?”

Kath nodded
again.

“Right. You
must find out if there are any problems with life support. Find out
the areas where the systems are intact, damaged or not working at
all. Think you can do that for me?”

“Yes,” she
answered yet with quiet confidence in her abilities.

He was pleased
to see the girl return to her duty station and begin her task.

As he watched
her settle herself at the life-support console he noticed the way
she was favouring her right arm.

“And see a
medic about a pain-block.”

Kath raised her
good arm in reply. She would do just that when the medic was
finished with the more critically injured.

As the rest of
the team arrived he allocated them to their duty stations. Jim
Cranston he sent to damage control, the next rating to engineering,
thanking whatever stars were lucky that those in the group would be
able to cope with whatever he asked of them.

When the sick
bay attendant arrived he ignored the CPO’s attempts to direct him
towards Kath and went straight to the group of injured figures
lying on the deck. He examined them with much tut-tutting and
exclamation.

Chief Lutterell
bit back a grin as he sat down in the duty bridge officer’s seat
vacated by Commander MacIntosh and looked at the flashing screens
before him. His heart sank into his ship-boots at what he saw.
Things
did
look bad.

A metre away
Petty Officer Cranston frowned as he began to hunt out the
information concerning the full extent of the damage to the ship.
As his fingers moved over the keypad, his eyes assessed the screen.
He realised that although the ship was grievously wounded, all was
not lost.

Engineering was
intact, as were all but two of the colonists’ living sections.
These areas were write-offs as far as he could see with little or
no possibility of survivors, both outer and inner hulls having
suffered a major breach. A veteran of space travel, Jim Cranston
knew that anything not bolted down in these areas was now floating
in space, mega-miles from the ship.

One of the
surviving colony sections had suffered damage but rescue teams made
up of crew and colonists from the adjoining section were working on
it.

The separate
hull area that housed the livestock and the fresh agricultural
produce had disappeared completely, attached as it was to the main
hull via two large shafts at the rear of the vessel. Something must
have sheared off these access shafts but he knew not what. He made
a mental note to assign someone to find out what food and water
stocks remained in the main sphere.

As Jim Cranston
ploughed his way through the data recordings he found out what had
caused the disaster.

Although he and
the Chief Petty Officer had been calling the phenomena a space
storm, this description was not scientifically accurate although
Jim believed that the words summed it up pretty well.

A distant star
had gone nova and instead of imploding had exploded. The blast had
spread outwards with immeasurable speed and force, gathering up
whatever space flotsam and jetsam it met in its path. The computers
had recorded the moment of the explosion and indeed the visual
recordings displayed a miniscule pinprick of light, impossible to
see with the naked eye. It was only when the petty officer
magnified the recording over twelve times that he managed to locate
it.

They had been
lucky. If the convoy had been any closer, nothing would have
survived.

The rating
assigned to communications began to speak into his voice-mike, like
Petty Officer Cranston making notes on his keypad. After some time,
he transferred his report over to Chief Lutterell, who read it with
a look of almost magical surprise on his face. Communications were
working between all the surviving sections. He began to feel a
little better. Jim Cranston caught his eye and gave him the thumbs
up, indicating that he was in control of the situation and that the
ship was not in any immediate danger.

Leaning back,
CPO Lutterell surveyed the bridge from the command chair. They
weren’t finished yet. Not by a long shot.

All the
commissioned officers bar Commander MacIntosh and two junior
engineering lieutenants were dead. The officers’ quarters had not
survived a direct impact of a large something, he presumed a chunk
of space rock. Of the ten thousand colonists aboard, at least two
thousand had perished; the inhabitants of sections five and nine.
Section six was in a critical state but the rescue teams were
reporting survivors.

Over two thirds
of the crew had survived. CPO Lutterell was relieved. He would need
them all if they were going to get out of this alive.

The engines
were damaged but reports from engineering were encouraging. The
power-core was undamaged. The WCCS
Argyll
would be able to
move under her own power within twenty-four ship hours. EVA reports
said that the port side of the ship was in good condition. Damage
control parties were busy making the starboard safe. The air locks
continued to hold but food stocks were at a low level, there only
being enough for two weeks and that with strict rationing. Water
was marginally better, there being enough in the ship’s central
vats for approximately four weeks.

They had to
complete the repairs, get the WCCS
Argyll
moving and find a
viable planet on which to land before they died of thirst and
malnutrition.

Robert
Lutterell turned to Rating Rybak who had to his great astonishment,
found himself in complete charge of navigation, having in recent
months received training in this department.

“Any sign of
the other ships?” he asked.

James Rybak
gulped and shook his head.

CPO Lutterell
pursed his lips together and nodded, this news was not unexpected.
He looked the curly-haired Rybak straight in the eye.

“You need to
find us a planet. A viable planet is our only chance.”

The young man
gulped again then raised his hand in a half salute to show that he
understood. Taking a deep breath he pressed the buttons that would
reboot the navigation computers.

* * * * *

In colony
section six, as on the bridge, there was no warning of the
disaster.

One minute Tara
Sullivan and her family were sitting down to their evening meal,
their usual occupation at this time of day, the next there was a
violent shudder and all the lights went out. The ship’s alarm
klaxon blared out.

There was no
time to lose. Tara’s father grabbed her round the waist and thrust
her without ceremony into one of the emergency cabinets before
turning towards her little brother.

As the door
whooshed shut she caught a glimpse of her mother, little Mark in
her arms, dashing towards the cabinet to her right. Mark was
frightened of the cabinets. Last time they’d practised emergency
drill he’d kicked and shouted, refusing to go in.

The perspex
misted over and Tara saw nothing more. It was as if she was in
another world, full of unexplainable noises and movement. Her
cabinet turned upside down, then back again. It continued to do so
again and again.

It was during
one of these upside down periods that Tara passed out.

* * * * *

A ship hour
after the computers rebooted, Tara became aware of her surroundings
once more. She existed in a world of silence. A gregarious
youngster, she found the situation particularly trying. She was not
afraid, at least not yet, knowing as she did that all life support
facilities on the ship, even this small one, held enough air to
keep her alive for twenty-four hours. There was even a small
container of water. Papa would come and let her out soon. She
started to count to pass the time and then recited every line of
poetry she knew.

She took a
small sip of the water. Wise beyond her twelve years, she had no
way of knowing just when her father would come so she thought it
best if she eked it out.

Where is
Papa? How are mother and little Mark? What happened? Why did the
klaxon go off?
There was no one to answer her; alone, she
fretted, counted, recited and worried, then fretted, counted,
recited and worried some more.

It seemed like
a whole ship day but in fact was in reality only half that time
when she became aware of noises outside her cabinet and through the
misty door she spied movement. Screwing up her eyes to see better,
she made out two indistinct figures. She could not hear what they
were saying. The emergency units were not designed for ease of
listening from within.