Murphy - The conclusion.
05 May 2017Da5id Weatherwax
The first two hours went pretty well. The engine was in the brackets, they weren't secured fully but I could do that manually without the 'bots making noise and alerting the security patrols. The third hour was spent taking care of that and a few of the connections that didn't need powered assistance, because I couldn't afford some dumb stationer jackboot hearing the 'bots running in a maintenance bay that was supposed to be locked down. I also pulled one of the panels to a service run just aft and to the port of the cockpit. It gave me access to the power and control runs to my number 3 laser. The way this maintenance bay was laid out, Noodle's nose was pointing just to the right of the access hatch. This worked for me pretty well, because from the hatch you couldn't see where the hull plating was stripped off for access to the engine spaces.It also let me set up a very unpleasant greeting for anyone who might wander through that hatch.
I usually run boresighted guns. Fortunately, the bay layout put the hatch just within the minimal gimbal angle of a "fixed" beam laser on my #3 hardpoint. Hooking my datapad into the control wiring I managed to bypass a few safety interlocks and get it to deploy and train out on that vector. Now I needed to set up a timely "malfunction".
The last thing I wanted to was to loose off a fully powered shot in the maintenance bay. I needed an energy surge just enough to make the laser discharge but not enough to blow a hole through the bulkhead. With the safety interlocks bypassed, actually firing the gun would have been child's play, but it would have blown through three decks and would have obviously been no accident. I wanted a power plant glitch to dump an energy surge into the lasers primary firing circuit and get a soft-focus discharge that would do no more damage than I intended. The umbilical power tap from the maintenance bay, even though Noodle didn't need it since she was still on internal power, would give me almost exactly what I needed.
One little twitch on a maintenance 'bot would impact the lockout panel. For about fifty milliseconds, the unbilical would deliver full power, before the safeties shut it down. This shit happened all the time. That's why you didn't park the 'bots that close to live panels. If there wasn't a hardpoint deployed on the ship that umbilical was connected to, or a couple of cutouts hadn't been bypassed in the process of accessing the engine spaces nobody would notice. Of course, when removing those cutouts no competent engineer would leave them in a state where the circuit could be energized so it wouldn't be a problem... I had a pretty unpleasant smile on my face as I worked on them to add a little incompetence to Travis' record, since he was the idiot had done the work in the first place.
Two more hours had the hull buttoned up. Noodle would be on one thruster and barely able to limp into supercruise but at least she was flyable. The next thirty minutes were a symphony of red lights in my preflight checks but at the end of it the plant was hot, my one main engine primed for ignition and all it would take was one button to trigger the interlock to the bay doors and the emergency launch sequence. I had my datapad clipped to the side of my seat with a couple of cables running from it to the hardpoint control run and an interface set up to one of the maintenance 'bots. Once again I killed all the internal lights and waited.
Just as my chrono pinged at me, the hatch opened and there he was. Striding up to the main console as the hatch closed behind him. I had to time this just right so that the video from the security cameras put the blame where it was due... As he reached for the console, I triggered the 'bot.
A fraction of a second later, everything between my hull and that hatch was toast. The low-energy discharge from a class 2 beam laser had neatly welded the hatch to its frame, started a few small fires and completely vaporized Travis, who would be conveniently blamed for it all once anyone looked at the maintenance logs I'd carefully edited. Now it was time to be elsewhere.
"Station control, Commander Weatherwax aboard Python 'Danger Noodle' in maintenance bay three seven declaring an emergency."
"State your emergency, Commander."
"Uncontrolled energy discharge in maintenance bay has resulted in fires and hazard to my ship. I am venting the bay to extinguish them and removing my ship from hazard. Emergency launch in two seconds from.. Mark!"
"Roger, Commander. Understand bay is in emergency vent and you are departing. Records show your ship as non-spaceworthy. Do you require retrieval or other assistance?"
"Negative, Control. We're airtight and can complete repairs at another port. Just glad I was able to vent the bay to prevent the fire spreading."
"Roger that, Commander, and thank you. Your exit lane is clear."
Soon as that single engine could push me out beyond the stations mass, I was gone.
A quick drop into an asteroid belt later, I spent a while bringing my second engine online and restoring all the proper safeties. Thankfully none of it required any EVA and could all be done from within the hull. Fully powered again and with an empty cargo bay I was in pretty good shape to be somewhere else, somewhere a long way away. I'd picked up rumors about an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of Orrerian Flu about a hundred light years away, and as luck would have it there was a place between there and here where I could pick up a hold full of medical gear pretty cheap...
In yer face, Murphy!