20. The plan

Sandor Nagy

Published in

giant-of-the-stars

5 min readJun 16, 2024

“And who are you?”
“Captain Vince Pier, first responder to emergency call.”
“We did not declare emergency. In fact we can’t reach anyone, quantum comms modules cut up by shrapnels.”
“I know, Zodiak-12 issued it after they lost contact with you. Not important right now, we need a plan, the people are still in danger on this ship.”
“We can handle.”
“XO, I am under orders, and not even talking about interplanetary conventions… How many injured?” — Vince felt like he wanted to get rid of him. The XO’s eyes stayed on Vince like a vulture measuring up its prey. Not the welcoming he expected.
“A few hundreds only, our hospitals can deal with them.”
“And any dead?”
“None.” — as the XO realized the blatant lie, the denial in his own mind standing next to his deceased captain corrected himself — “Not many.”
“So you actually don’t have the numbers? First steps to establish scale and impact then to devise a plan and execute on it in service of passenger safety.” — he got silence as a response.

Vince got agitated at this point on the total disregard of reality.

“Anything else?” — asked the XO.
“We should have a conference call with the Federal Navy, they are on their way.”

Was that fear on the XO’s face? Vince’s confusion grew with every second he spent with this man.

“Hank, can you establish connection to my ship? They are right next to the main hull.”
“I try.”
“And route it to conference room one. Captain Vince, follow me.”

They stepped into an even darker room beside the bridge. The large oval steel table has seen better days, integrated consoles cracked and broken under the fallen light fixtures. A whole panel leaned over it from the walls. In a few moments one wall lit up brightly and as the focus cleaned up, they could see Greg and Maria on the Perseus Bridge. Some pixels flickering, a few of the panels staying dark on the sides.

“Cap’, how is the situation there?”
“This is XO Talm Shibar, my first mate, Greg Donovan and my wife, Maria. Niceties done, let’s get to it, Greg, can you join in Zodiak station to the call?”
“Yep, let me raise them.”
“This is Admiral Haggardt from Federal Navy Perimeter Command. Where is Josh, I mean Captain Mariner?”
“He is dead.” — the XO’s voice was emotionless.
“I see… My condolences, XO Shibar. Captain Sebes is in the call too, she is on her way with the Irondome to assist.”

And Gopher’s holographic projection appeared next to Vince.

“Seems the projectors still work in this room, heya all!”
“Maria Pier here, this lady is Steelgopher, she guided us so far and we have a few ideas so I thought she is better be here.”
“Quite the circus you collected, Captain Vince. What a drawing has to add here?” — even the admiral pulled up an eyebrow on the XO’s remarks — “Excuse me, I had a rough day.”
“Let’s focus on the issues. Most urgent, the docks are full of damaged ships, and the bow ring has blown outward.”
“I sent out messengers with orders to all engineers to secure the docks. As for the ring, we can’t reach it now, a few of my people working on establishing internal comms. We can take care of these two.” — first time the XO seemed to be on top of something giving Vince a small beam of hope. — “Everyone else, first priority should be the injured.”
“I am afraid we have one more problem.” — Maria intervened — “The Giant has entered the gravity well of a moon. My calculations show that it will fall onto the surface in two months. That ship is not designed to land, a lot of people will die.”
“Either you need to evacuate or stop the fall. As for the evacuation, there is not enough ship nearby and we are a month late even on max speed.” — Victoria chimed in too.
“And here I come!” — Gopher waved with both hands up — “I think, we can buy some time for the evacuation. With Maria we thought to fire up the bow ion thrusters as retrograde, but we don’t know how damaged they are, Perseus Train’s drones are not that fine-tuned.”
“To the point, please.”
“Yeah, sure, sure, okey, we have two options, we fire up the stern ion drives and drives past the moon, or we use the rescue ships, as many as can join, to pull us to higher orbit.”
“The structure may be too damaged to hold out for a tug-party like that, and we would need hundreds of ships to make a difference with this much mass.”
“Friends, we need more ships anyhow, storage and life support systems, the hydroponics, pharmaceutical plants, all damaged, people will need supplies soon.”
“I can get that, Haggardt out.”
“He is about to have an unpleasant call pleading to the colonial forces. Keep us in the loop, unfortunately we can’t do much until we get there. Captain Sebes out.”
“So to be clear, Haggardt gets us more ships from the colonies, Gopher, Maria, you work on the engines, use Hank and the on-board engineers. Greg, we need supplies, I saw hundreds of injured on the way to the bridge, how can we solve that?”
“Cap’, the ports won’t hold under the stress and we can’t use anything on the rings. Get a few dock workers and construct a temporary dock with clamps holding us in place. Then pack as quickly as you can.”

Vince hesitated to answer. He wanted to help these people, not just by the orders and conventions but as a fellow human being. Until this point, the danger to him and his crew was minimal, but docking on a spinning drum without automatics was borderline crazy.

“Greg, if the clamps fail, and nav computer can’t help, can you do it manually?”
“Cap’, I was born with controllers in my hand.”
“I took it as a yes, but, separate the ship, do it with the bow module only and move non-essential crew to the stern, including Eddy and Maria.”
“Understood, cap’. Good luck and god speed!”
“You too, my friend.” — Vince closed the channel shading the room into darkness once again. — “XO, anything we can do to help with the main dock? Maybe we can avoid to risk my shi…”
“This is still my ship. Focus on your things and don’t cross my path. My engineers will handle the main dock.”

And the XO left Vince in the dark room with his thoughts.