Timeline Taxi: chapter 7
“Big Bertha, Hyperion-C, seize all powerup activities and hand over remote control to us, you have one minute to comply or we will shoot you down.”
The radio voice makes it pretty clear: when it comes to unauthorized launches, the USN on Mars takes things more seriously than the UN on Earth.
“Powerup 85%”
“Just a couple more minutes.” I mumble.
“Pathing complete”
“Big Bertha, Hyperion-C,” the voice comes in once again, “this is your last warning. You have 30 seconds to comply.”
“Ok doc,” I say, my eyes fixed on the dashboard, “it’s gonna be close. We can take a couple of hits, but I don’t know how long we’ll last.”
“Powerup 90%”
“Big Bertha, 10 seconds.” I ignore them.
It feels longer than ten seconds, but finally the first shot is fired. It misses — that might have been on purpose, or maybe because the ships are still pretty far out.
I open my mic channel, “USN, this is Hyperion-C, beware of full-powerup, clear the engine zone or you will be vaporized!”
Two more shots, one hits us, but there’s no other reply. The dashboard reports no critical damage.
“Powerup 95%”
“Doc, hold on tight! Remember those couple of g’s I told you about? They will be here soon.”
Another two shots, both of them hit. An alarm goes off, the shuttle has been breached. It’s sealed off from the ship so there’s no need to worry. Too bad for the shuttle though.
Another shot. The ship rumbles.
“Engine failure, continue powerup?”
“What is that?” The doctor asks — he’s glancing at the dashboard himself.
“One of the engines has been hit.” I say, not looking up as I’m frantically pressing buttons to reconfigure my engine setup.
“Now what?” He asks with a slight tone of panic in his voice.
“Don’t worry,” I say, “We can still use the other engine.” Meanwhile I’ve made the necessary changes so that we can continue powerup with one engine alone.
“Get ready, doc!”
“Powerup 100%. Initiate acceleration?”
The dashboard reports one more shot approaching, but it never hits. In an instant, I’m pressed into my seat and I find it difficult to move. I usually find the pressure that comes with full-powerup acceleration rather uncomfortable, but now feels like a relief. It’ll take an hour to reach near-lightspeed, but the USN ships are already far behind. Space in front of us is turning more and more blue, the common blueshift at ultra-high speeds. I keep close track of the engine status, if this second one fails, we’re in big trouble.
It doesn’t fail though. An hour later we’ve reached 99.995% c, and we’re back to zero g’s now that the engine has powered down.
“You ok?”, I ask as I turn away from the dashboard to the doctor.
“I think so. That was tense.”
“It’s not done yet, unfortunately,” I sigh. I waited to tell him the news until acceleration was done. We have a damaged engine, but we can accelerate to near-lightspeed and slow back down from it just fine with one. The problem is that our one working engine doesn’t have enough fuel anymore. Usually the load is balanced between two engines, and so also their fuel usage. Now that we’ve accelerated with one engine alone, it has used almost all the fuel it had. A quick checkup on fuel status tells me I need at least three injections from the damaged engine before we can slow down again.
“I hope,” I tell the doctor, “there are still three working injections in the damaged engine. Otherwise…”
“What? Otherwise what?” The doctor asks, the same panic creeping into his voice once again.
“Look, if we don’t have enough fuel, we can’t slow down.” I let those words sink in for a moment before I continue. “If we can’t slow down… Well that's the end of the story for us.” There’s no need to sugarcoat our situation.
“You mean you accelerated to near-lightspeed, without knowing whether we could ever stop again?”
“It was that or being shot by the USN, remember?” The doctor’s panic isn’t helping, it’s not like I’m at fault here. He insisted on powering up, even though I suggested taking another route. Granted, that was before one of my engines was toast, but still. “Besides,” I continue, “let’s not make a big deal out of it before we’re truly in trouble. For all we know, the damaged engine’s injections are fine. I just need to move them to the other side —”
“Hang on,” the doctor interrupts, “are you going on an EVA at near-lightspeed?” The panic in his voice has made room for skepticism.
“Yeah. Well. It’s not impossible,” I snap. “I’ve got an EVA suit made especially for it. Ok… I’ve never done it before. If I fall off… Well, I don’t need to explain to you how the ship works, because you’ll be screwed anyway if I don’t manage to transfer those injections. Maybe I should explain how deep sleep works and how to rig the system so that you could die a painless death if something were to happen.”
But the doctor shoves it aside. “Just… Fix it,” he says. The mood now definitely changed for the worse. Maybe it’ll be good not to be in each other's hair for a moment. So I sigh without saying anything else, and head downstairs.
Half an hour later I’m in my EVA suit in the frontal airlock. I know this won’t be easy. The most difficult part about doing an EVA at near-lightspeed is that space is almost empty — almost. At this speed, miniscule dust and radiation particles accumulate into what would feel like a sand storm on Earth. My suit only guarantees protection for up to 15 consecutive minutes, so as soon as the airlock door opens, I’m on the clock to inspect the damaged engine, find and detach three working injections, move them to the left outrigger of the ship, into the engine, and get back to the airlock.
I press the button. The airlock opens.
I’m immediately pushed backwards, but my boots are magnetically attached to the floor and it only takes a couple of seconds to regain my balance. I gasp when I look up and see the sparkling stripes and flashes of light. These are miniscule dust particles flying by at nearly the speed of light. Each of them leaves a light trail as thin as a hair. They aren’t visible from within the cockpit with its filtered glass, but from outside, they resemble an infinite sea of fireflies in space.
I stand in awe, but I know I’m on the clock, so I force myself forward, turn, and grab the handle on the right side of the airlock. My muscles ache pretty quickly as I pull myself forward while I’m fighting the invisible storm around me, but I manage to hold on tight and crawl towards the right outrigger. I hoist myself on top of it, turn backwards, and once again I’m stunned by an amazing view: the redshifted space behind us glows like the most magnificent sunset without any visible horizon.
I reach the broken engine and see how the injectors are directly exposed, the cover plate nowhere to be found. Most likely it ripped off after our somewhat hasty departure from Mars.Luckily all injections seem fine, it’s only the engine that was damaged, not the injectors in front of it. I sigh. We’re in luck. Granted, my ship is in bad condition with a missing cover plate and a damaged shuttle, but none of those issues are life-threatening. I grab the first injection rod, turn it clockwise and lift it out of the injector. It instantly slips out of my fingers and flies off into infinity. Ok so, just holding it doesn’t work. I only now think of magnetizing my glove. I’m lucky that that injection didn’t hit the ship. I lift up the second one, and this one holds. I magnetically attach it to my leg. Now the third, and the fourth. I’ve got three full injections and ten more minutes. Let’s go.
The magnificent light spectacle around me reflects faint stripes of light on the hull as I crawl my way onto the left outrigger. I’m sweating, my muscles burn, but we’re on the right track. This engine’s injectors are exposed as well, their cover plate ripped off. I immediately spot the ones that need to be replaced: full injection rods emit a soft dark glow, empty ones don’t. I pull out five depleted ones in total, that leaves 2 full ones. If I add the three I have with me, we’ll have just enough fuel for slowdown on one engine. One by one, I strap the empty ones to my leg and back, and replace them with new rods. I do a final check, all are firm in place. Four more minutes, time to get back.
Once again awestruck, I take a minute to stare into space when I’m back into the airlock — I did have a minute to spare after all. I should probably be happy about the successful repair, but the only thing I think of is the magnificent view I’m witnessing. I don’t want this moment to end.
Full of sweat, I strap into my seat half an hour later. “Ok doc, we’re good,” I say when I see the dashboard reporting 5 full injections in the left engine. “Maybe we should have a proper talk?”