Shackleton - Operation Have Sea

[Shulsky]

Guerrero Asteroid Cloud, Vespucci System
19 DEC 834 AS

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Stark shadows cut down the way of the corridor as they drifted along, helmet lights shining the way. Slivers of shrapnel spun lazily in the distance, reflecting light while clouds of metal obscured his view amid the gaseous clouds that had formed there. Booth kept his breathing calm, measured. It’d do no good for him to start becoming all excited like some first-run rookie might do. It’d do no good at all. He sucked in, heads-up display taking in all that there was in front of his view as the two shapes in front of him moved off to the side just a frame.

Bodies floated there, puppets hanging limp from wires above, below, to the side. Their uniforms hung limply from desiccated forms, thin strands of flesh and fabric like miniature flowers blossoming along the silhouette into frozen motion. Red globules, long since frozen, hung alongside the forms. He could see the toxic gasses ahead, though, broken in place by the thinnest chemical bonds in the absence of oxygen. Booth stared at the gasses, green-yellow clouds, his eyes tracing where they came from…broken fire suppression systems.

He sighed as the first man reached out with one arm, the other still grasping his sidearm to point ahead. With the gingerest of motions, careful to not start some rapid motion, Kember moved one of the forms off to the side. It rotated, the corpse’s blank gaze gliding along the column of invaders with a frozen emotion Booth couldn’t help but glare at. He wasn’t a religious man, not by many a means, but even Zoners from the Omegas could be allowed their moments and he had been long, long displaced from that kin. There was something off to that stare, that motion, those eyes…but of course, that stare, that motion, and those eyes were very, very dead. They were supposed to be off, he told himself, working out a shiver up the spine from his mind.

A click informed him that the channel opened. “Goddess, guard us from demons.” Aisa. Booth glared ahead at the back of their head, biting his tongue from the desire to declare the channel only for official measures. Let them have that little piece of mysticism, he was certain the vessel could be made ready and willing with enough willpower on their end, enough work, enough time. The cruiser wouldn’t be the first to find itself in new hands after the last had died clutching the wheel, and even the Powhatan herself wasn’t free of blood. There was a cycle to such things, Booth was certain of it, and that cycle allowed such things to come to pass. It just would take time, effort.

He could see that right arm performing a motion, sanctifying in intent and nature if it wasn’t for how cumbersome the suit was, before Aisa turned off to the side. A hand to the belt, drawing out another fist-sized shape before holding it against the bulkhead. Tap, tap, and the magnetic plate on the bottom activated along with the light. They let go, the lantern dully fixing to the metal while a shallow halo of wires adorned the base. Just another communications buoy out to the open, real world. Just another breadcrumb, Booth ruefully thought. They lit the way back to the cut-open airlock.

They kept going, drifting limply down the passageway. Shrapnel shards tumbled away with their motions, spinning rapidly to dance off the corridor walls before coming to rest in a corner here, a corner there. Light reflected from the pieces, weak beams illuminating those same corners for a breath’s moment before they lost themselves. Through the green-yellow cloud, they drifted as well, slow and steady, careful and measured. Minutes passed on by and more drifting corpses were found, shifted aside just enough to pass on by. As the distant light dulled behind, another lantern was attached above. As they kept on into the bowels of the ship, there was less shrapnel and more gas clouds. Doors were roughly pulled open before them, the locks long since failed. Booth kept his eyes dancing from what was before him to the heads-up clock, all the while the click-click of oxygen respiration filled his helmet.

There was somewhere to be, sure, and Booth’s eyes glanced down at the time. They were right on target. The plaque above the heavy door before them proclaimed that destination. Main Reactor Room.

Kember paused aside the door, retrieving a thick tablet from his belt. A wire snaked out in his hand, plugging into one of the data sockets. They couldn’t risk the laser cutter, not on this door, and Booth waited patiently as their conga line came to a glacial stop. One hand reached out, grasping a handhold above that one day would’ve been beside.
.

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27 DEC 834 AS

“What the good fuck.”

The reactor control room, despite that grandiose name, was not an immense one. A console dominated one side, readouts in dull light shifting on by the gaze of five suited figures as they monitored the various efforts of repair teams. A maintenance plaque was open on one wall, various pipes and systems and tanks highlighted throughout with red x's here, there, one man beside it with the almighty red marker.

Booth watched from the back of the room, watched and listened as Powhatan's CHENG worked through the various problems in getting the reactor started up. He'd come in with the second team, a bulky little suit that was statue still with a pose the Zoner could only describe as authority incarnate. Hands clasped before him, comms always open, every now and again shifting to look over the maintenance plaque for confirmation that what he thought was actually was, Booth couldn’t help but bemusedly smile. Of course, the exclamation hadn't come from him but one of the technicians.

“OK, Team 4 reports…oh nine tac one five four tac…two five tac five is ‘evaporated’. Stuck open.”

“Oh nine tac one five four tac two five tac five stuck open, aye…where is that little guy…where is…” The figure at the plaque was leaning over now, looking through the various systems and pipeworks. Someone before had carved little lines into the plaque for different spaces but it was still a pain. There was deck oh nine…back to that frame…where was it? He paused, deciding to heck with that and doing another route. The tip of his marker hovered, tracing along the proposed transfer line before finally finding what he was looking for. An exhale, then, as they marked it off. “There you are, you twit.”

CHENG shifted again to look over at the plaque, grunted after a few seconds of internal deliberation. “Tell Team 4 to check one oh tac one six three tac three tac one next. Space one oh tac one five oh tac three romeo. Got that?”

The tech was scribbling it down furiously, fighting against the cumbersome fingers for that speed, pausing to look over the numbers and mentally recite back what'd been said. He repeated it aloud, though, after a few seconds pause when all the numbers finally made indecision turn to caution.

“Send em. Should be the final valve needed to get this show on the road.”

“Hans, give the valve a prayer.”

“I can't pray over a valve I'm not at, Kember. It doesn't work like that.” A pause. “Besides, I was kicked out of the Seminary School.”

“I didn't realize it had limits like that.”

Another pause and a sigh. He clicked the channel to local. A chain of thick Frankfurt Rheinlander came before accented speech came, smooth and confident in the sheer absurdity of it. “Well, screw you too. Dear Father, may the valve…” The center figure shifted, leaning over to the technician beside him to get a better look at the scribbled notes, “One oh tac one six three tac three tac one know your holy embrace and love. May it know your eternal hand, without degradation or fault, as we know your eternal hand. May your will act through that valve, and in doing so act out your holy will in the destination of this vessel. In Your name we pray, amen.”

“Amen, Brother Hans.”

“Your handwriting is horrible by the way.”

Kember snorted, a truly undignified sound over the local comms. Booth could only shake his head a little at the whole exchange as one of the technicians went still. They started nodding to themselves before giving a slowed little slap against the leg. The others looked over, staring, waiting for the news and how good it was - they didn’t dare hope for absolute victory, despite the immediate shift in posture the man took as he listened.

“Hans you hero, the valve works.”

“Bingo!”

“Told you it worked like that.”

“What the…”

Allowing them a moment in glorious wonder, letting it die down naturally, CHENG meanwhile radiated satisfaction with the sense dripping from his words like honey. “Order Team 4 to open that valve and stand by. Team 1 to…”

A number of orders came and went as the teams shifted to various positions throughout the aft ends of the ship. It didn’t take all that long for the orders to be relayed and the personnel to get moving, though there’d be a good wait before they all got to where they needed to be in order to properly start up the reactor. Inspecting that alone had taken several days, Booth knew, and actually getting the whole system online would be a feat. They’d strung a refueling line into one of the tanks still maintaining pressure, pumped in fuel as well as power lines to allow the control systems power to work. Sure, it’d be a bare minimum amount of power, but Booth expected that much. Heck, he didn’t want full power anyways. That sort of thing was dangerous.

“You know, I think this will be the biggest reactor I’ve brought online in…pffffft, too long.”

Booth looked over at CHENG, eyebrows raised just a tad behind his visor. “Oh yeah?”

“Maybe a station reactor trumps it.” A pause. “Board’s tracking this, sir?”

He swallowed, glad that visor was in place. The XO wasn’t too happy about the endeavor, either, but then of course he didn’t quite agree with the whole concept that Bristol needed to arm itself for the future. He thought that Liberty would actually protect things, look after things. It was a minor failing of Keen’s. Turning a little, Booth replied, “As much as they need to be.”

“That’s a cagey fuckin’ answer.”

“As much as it needs to be, too. Shackleton’s a minor company in their listing, all things considered. If it goes well, they get credit. If it doesn’t, I expect they’ll cut us loose. Bristol stands behind individual employees, not necessarily behind the whole actions of its constituent corps.”

“An optimist after my own heart. Hangar system will be able to take up to a freighter, though, so at least there’s that. Useful for the future if things go to hell. We’ll have to rethread the fuel lines there, though, I don’t trust any of those hoses.”

“We can work that problem later. I just want to get her moving.”

A pause. “Thought of a name?”

“Need to work that problem, too. With the group.”

“Thought of where we’re moving her to?”

“Also something for the group. I have a few locations in mind.” A few locations. Booth had been combing through shipyard info dockets for at least a few hours over the last week, working through which ones would be within range, which would be willing to take them in to begin with, which of those had empty yards within the estimated time period, and which of those they could actually afford. The list was, in all reality, not exceptionally long but that’s what one could expect when in such a system as Vespucci. Booth had crossed off Gallia and Kusari by distance, Bretonia by how busy they were, Liberty by how they felt about such ships. All that was really left were the independent shipyards, considering Bristol Bay didn’t really have the infrastructure to service such a ship as well as being all too busy with the Bulwark construction to consider pausing with that kind of project.

A chuckle, as CHENG sardonically commented, “How democratic of you, Cap’n.”

They passed the rest of the time in silence, waiting for teams to move to their places. There was nothing to hope would work that was actively being repaired, nothing to try to fix, nothing but waiting for all the pieces to fall into place, for all the people to get ready with their respective jobs here and there. There was just that pause. Booth hadn’t really thought of a name, come to think on it. He’d just assumed something would eventually come to him, that something would naturally occur. Maybe they’d actually have to come up with something. Maybe. Nothing struck the Zoner quite like a fitting name for the ship. He mused and thought on it a little. Still, nothing came up and Booth ended that own little internal inquiry with a sigh. Eventually, one of the technicians half-turned to the pair standing.

“All teams in place, sir.”

Next few seconds would either going to be really good or really, really bad, Booth thought ruefully. He exhaled in his helmet, swallowing down that sort of fear. Click-click-click. If it went bad, it wasn’t going to be his problem for long Booth supposed. “Alright. Bring her online, Chief.”

“Start primary coolant pumps.”

“Primary coolant pump…online. Feeding now.”

“Start primary feed pumps.”

“Primary feed…online.”

“Order Team 1 to open, Team 2 close, Team 3 open, Team 4 open.”

And so on, and so on, and so on. Slowly, carefully, the reactor started to burn inside the cruiser. A smile grew on Booth’s face at it. It was working. It would work.

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Operation Have Sea