"Frankenship and the Twenty Sided Space Dice." Deliverance. Part 4
15 Jul 2016Stryker Aune
<< Deliverance. Part 3Well, hot dog! I spent the morning doing patch work on the canopy. Some Duriplast did the trick and with that I started up the environmental generator… must have worked because I didn’t blow myself up. Not a chemical explosion. A pressure one, obviously. I'm so done hearing that “Your about to die in X minutes” warning.
I also took a few minutes to send a false signal back to the colony to make it seem things are being done on the extractors….Grunt hasn’t bothered to contact me. Good.
So, I took a closer look at the power plant. It’s down too. Looks like it took concentrated thermal damage. Good news, bad news. The good news is, the unit looks good. No major cracks, or damage. The bad news is, the magnetic coil used to create a magnetic field in the torus quenched as a result of the thermal damage. Usually an easy enough fix, if there is a spare. Or even then, it can be reenergized by dropping its temperature down to 77 K and applying low amperage to it. Problem is, I don’t have liquid nitrogen….What I do have, is liquid hydrogen from the fuel reserves and its colder then liquid nitrogen. And this ships fuel reserves are about 50% depleted. I could tap of a line. Figure out how to insulate it….or I can make use of the fuel scoop. Though, I would have to sacrifice it. The impeller is finely balanced. It spins at 28,000 RPM to suck up hydrogen from a stars corona, forces it through a check valve, which then goes into a series of condensers and pressurizes it into a liquid. It’s that check valve that’s the problem. Have to tear it out, which means the impeller has to come out with it, and I have no way of balancing it again. Oh well. Place the coil up near the fuel scoop which is on the dorsal side of the ship, and activate the thing. With no check valve it will spew out hydrogen, and hopefully will be cold enough to do what I need.
I will also need some induction coils to wrap around the magnet to distribute an electrical current. Simple enough. Tear apart some of those mineral extractors, and “borrow” theirs. I would also need to apply about 0.25 amps of current. The SRV’s battery will do the trick, but it kicks out 25 amps. So a step-down circuit would need to be fabricated to dissipate the extra amperage as heat. Easy enough.
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Fuel reserves are now at 30%. No way of knowing if this worked until trying it. I’ve already reassembled the torus, and its back in its place in the generator. Here goes nothing.
I flipped a few switches and waited for the thing to prime. “Priming complete” The computer announced.
Here’s the test. I pressed the energize command.
A click. Then another. Check valves are opening. Then the sound of some pumps going online. I waited a moment. Indicator lights flicked on.
“LIFE! MUHAHAHAHAHA…..I bring you LIFE!” I did the whole evil scientist thing. Hell, it was worth it to celebrate in the moment. Felt good.
This was easier than that damn environmental system. Goes to show…
Main power back on line! Let’s see what else is going on. I went back to the cockpit and ran a number of systems through checks. FSD online and spooled up. Thrusters operational. Seals working. The landing struts were never deployed. I need to get under the thing and patch any other holes in the armor. I’ve moved ships from one landing pad to another. I was confident that I could mover this a few meters away. What I’m not confident about is flying the thing. The closest I’ve come to actually piloting a ship, was in a simulator. And that was just mucking about before getting caught.
I took to the pilots seat, and powered up the main thrusters.
“Alright. Slow and easy” I applied vertical thrust. It was a bit shaky. Probably due to the displacement of all the soil and rocks the belly of the ship was buried in. I took it up 10 meters or so, then applied horizontal thrust, moving it sideways a few meters. I flipped the switch for the landing gear.
“Landing gear deployed.”
More good news. I brought it down slowly. It made contact with the surface once again.
With access to the ventral side I managed to patch up any holes caused by that large caliber weapon used on this thing and from the impact of the crash landing. It actually wasn't to bad considering. However, note to self. Avoid entering planets with atmospheres…
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I’m too excited and have been running on Adrenalin. I’m getting off this rock! It's looks like its going to happen. I took stock of what the previous pilot had in his cargo bay. Some biowaste reclaimers. Some grain. Some fabric. Huh…odd stuff. Nothing of real value though I could try and sell that. Of course I’m taking the extracted minerals from the mineral extractors too. And the dead pilot. Seems fair to take him. I donno where yet.
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Interesting. I did a scan on the computer, and found something. An Encrypted data pack. And it’s destination is to the Amphisatsu system Goldberg Orbital. Seems to be for the Amphisatsu Empire Group. I’m not going to bother with hacking it. But now I have a reasonable suspicion as to why this ship was brought down. Someone might still be looking for this. I need to be careful. But now I have a destination. A place to return the pilot.
I called up the Nav panel, and entered the star. It plotted a route. 1 jump. 12.21 light years away. I only heard about "witch space". I hope I can do this.
Well, no time like the present to kick things off.
I ran through the preflight checks. It’s all good. Again applied vertical thrusters. I felt the ship break contact with the ground. I increased altitude, and slowly tilted back the stick. The nose tipped upwards. I applied forward thrust and retracted the landing struts.
“Whoa!”
I’ve never flown anything more than a few meters for maintenance purposes and here I was, leaving the surface of a planet.
“It’s working!” Overwhelmed. I kicked on the comm, and sent a message to Ostrander Works. To Grunt. “Hey F***’er. Sayonara.”
The mass locked indicator went out.
“Okay….”
I looked at the compass. “Hollow means it’s behind me. Solid is in front…” Up and to the right. I slowly adjusted the course. The holographics showed the star move then center right in front of me. I closed my eyes, took a breath. “Good bye old life.” And activated the FSD.
“Frame Shift Charging” the computer said.
I heard it behind me spool it. Not a new sound. Ran it many times in diagnostics. The difference is, this time it’s not going to out gas the built up energy. It’s going to make a real jump. My heart raced.
“In 4…..3…..2…..1…..Engage.”
For a second I thought it had exploded. A plethora of dis-orchestrated light. Must by why they call this which space. I noticed the velocity indicator was all over the place. The compass the same chaotic output. I had just started getting use to the sight and sound when...
Oh, F*******CK! STAR! Holy shit. I pulled up, and tried to move away from it. I throttled back. Heart pounding.
Wasn’t ready for that…I took a few minutes. It really was a stunning sight, being so close to a star. The nav computer plotted the location to the station. I made my way to that. I was still amazed. I watched the planet approach. So weird how gravity causes supercruise to loose velocity. Guess that has to do with Alcubierre mechanics, and its effects on relative space time… I donno, I’m just glad it’s working.
I watched the station approach as just a bright speck. The indicator on the bottom left showed my distance to it, and speed. There was a brighter region near the lower half and I saw the indicator approach that. My guess is that is where it’s safe to drop out of Super Cruise. I watched it carefully. The HUD indicated safe dropout once I was 1.0 Mm from the target. I hit the FSD...
Look at that. A giant 20 sided dice, floating in space. Seriously? And its rotating. Okay….ummm. I looked at the contacts display. Oh, Goldberg orbital. Hey look at that, request docking. Nice. I did it. The voice on the other end was less the pleasant.
“Please resubmit your docking request when your within 7.5 kilometers.”
“Oops.” Well, let’s find the front of this thing. It’s turning on an axis in a counter clock wise relative to me. So…if it’s anything like torque, the entry point will be located with the direction of the vector of that torque. I used the right hand rule, and curled my fingers along with the rotation of the station. My thumb pointed down. If we take this to be true, then the entry way is down there. I made my way towards that direction.
Must have been right. I some ships were coming and going. Then I got scanned. Uh oh.
A few moments went by. I kept going on slowly then heard “Your free to go commander.”
Commander. I like the sound of that.
I kept crawling towards the opening. What the Eff…..I have to fit through that? While its rotating?”
I gently moved the ship with its thrusters, and out of traffic's way to make a straight shot. I applied spin trying to match it. No forward momentum at this point. Pretty damn tricky. Okay. Just a bit on the stick. I added forward thrust. Slow….keep it slow. Let the other pilots move around me….I got within range and requested docking.
“Docking request granted. Proceed to landing pad one five.”
I kept it slow.
“3000 meters to touch down.”
I was getting closer. The slot thingy becoming larger. A transport ship passed by me heading out into the black. The proximity alarms flashed. My heart raced. I passed through the slot. What a weird noise….Okay where is that landing pad….I looked out the canopy. Strange that they are all located along the interior surface of the station. I guess since there is no, real direction....There it is. I located it as being above me and slightly down along the tube. I slowly turned the ship over, and made my way to the pad. I deployed the landing struts….and touchdown.
I gave a deep sigh. My hands were shaking.
“The Empire welcomes you to Goldberg Orbital…”
Deliverance. Part 5 >>
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