Eyes closed, though not asleep, Ensign Westbridge contemplated the artificial clouds floating around the horizon of his mind. Sometimes it can be hard to tell if you're dreaming or not when you're a pilot for Blue Star starliners. Required equipment includes cornea implants, cortex monitors, spinal adjusters, and various nanobots just for a level one apprentice. Blue Star is one of only a handful of conglomerates in space that still allows people to work their way up. He shifts his left boot to scratch, knocking a can of fermented yam soda off the console, and accidentally triggers a security sweep of the port engine by knocking the bypasses offline. Fortunately the backup systems would never allow such trivial errors to damage the ship such as powering down the drives while in a gravity well for an inspection. He reflects on his assignment as he fishes for the can, finally and grudgingly opening his eyes to find it. In seconds his hands are playing across the navigation console, and the spill is forgotten.
Although there is nothing visible in the viewport, mass detectors are reading into the red. They've flown right into a star system. A quick check reveals that they are slightly early, and a lot off course, but it's rectifiable. Logs reveal that the system powered down for an automated damage check and repaired a trivial sensor, but while doing so the spectrometer bank malfunctioned briefly. This caused a ripple effect of systems checking, taking tools and sensors offline as they're checked and then brought back up. Even as he clears the boards of yellow and pale orange lights, the alarm sounds. 'Gravity Well,' the computer intones.
I replaced that bank to save power, not to fly cheaply, he reflects inwardly, still busily overriding and clearing systems boards in a practiced manner usually reserved for in-dock preflight operations. Now it's ready, he thinks, and patches the auxiliary battle board online. This will take all rerouted critical sensors through a duplicate path and give him fresh readings that will not require calibration. It will be like they never went offline. Sure enough, it's worse. He's going to lose months by dumping velocity to slingshot around this star and continue on the correct course. The alternatives are worse.
"Damn," he says to himself, breaking his own rule about not talking to himself while on a mission. The planning is no big thing, that's what the ultrapowerful computers are on board for. Rerouting takes only a few minutes. The new data is on his navigation helm in five minutes. A single red light causes him to twitch. The engines are going to have trouble with this maneuver. He starts punching in alternatives, and slowly, over an hour, the entire navigation console is splattered with red beacons indicating problems. Great, he thinks, a virtual minefield. It might be better to angle off and try to escape the well before he gets too deep. A quick check reveals that it's still possible.
"Red Alert," he states, giving the requisite warning to his 'frozen' crew, all of whom are under induced long term sleep. They'll age only 1/10th of the normal amount during the journey. As the Pilot and Captain, the Ensign is required to age along with the ship. Normally these jobs are split, and each takes half aging during a mission, and on big ships there are shifts so that they only work sixteen hours each per shift. On evacuation and rescue vessels, such as those assigned to low ranking officers like himself, there's one person during flight, and that's him. He has forty thousand evacuees destined for the colony of TO7, a nearly barren rock with Earthlike environment.
Laying hands on the console first, almost out of respect for the ship, he then grasps the flight wheel and turns the ship. This does not change the course, the ship is just pointed in a different direction while still sailing at .8 lights in the same course slotted to impact the star 22-09R4 in fifty hours. He sets the bow for ten degrees above plane, and punches the emergency thrust override. There will be no noticable change for at least an hour, and in that time he sweats, carefully paying attention to all his instruments. Without thinking, he scoops up the can as it rolls by his foot, crushes it with his hand and drops it in the recycle chute. If they don't gain enough velocity change, they'll come too close to the star, and the fluctuations in the gravity fields between planets are not easily mapped accurately in such an emergency. The computer is forced to use estimations. Ensign Yim Westbridge picked the angle of departure on a guess as to the cumulative effects of gravity while passing through the orbits of this system. They won't get a second chance to alter course in time.
At plus thirty two minutes, he notes a planet growing in size, and they're heading awfully close as they approach this fourth planet out. Here is a window, possible, for faster course correction, and he doesn't fail to engage the computers in a quick replot. It's on the helm and approved as soon as he runs his enhanced eyes down the list. Yim twists the wheel a bit to only eight degrees above plane. Now the planet will grow faster until it blots out the star beyond. They'll pass within fifty thousand kilometers of atmosphere, and slingshot about twelve degrees above plane, enough that a normal course correction will put them back on track.
He is breathing a sigh of relief, when an asteroid impacts on the starboard engine. He picks himself up off the deck plates and re-examines his boards. Most everything is okay, except now the starboard engine is working at half power, and they're spiraling into the planet. Unless he can alter the thrust vectors, they'll impact the planet within hours, slowed by atmospheric drag at first, then be caught in its massive gravity to loop back around and fall into the planet like a ball into a cup. He tries everything he can think of, and to no avail. They have three hours until they reach the peak of orbit, and begin to fall back in. This is a gas giant, over a thousand Earths in size, and they will not survive any sort of a landing here.
"Squawk, on thirteen thirteen, S.O.S." He orders the computer to broadcast for help. He scans the planet and orbital area for any chance ships that could possibly help them in time. Nothing. This is a classic case of totally screwed. He stands up straight, and grunts. "Code Three," he informs the computer. They only have one good engine, and too much mass to break orbit, but they might be able to hold it if he can get the starboard engine to obey orders. He has ordered a life-threatening override. Now the ship will do what he says, up to self destructing or flying into a star.
Passengers are never told this, but liners do board people in containment units by likelihood for survival. The elderly, infirm, and inable get put into different passenger units than healthy adults, or children. It doesn't matter since they're all asleep anyway, they'd never notice if they're sleeping next to a wife or a stranger, and the sleep-boarding takes place while in orbit. Filled passenger units are loaded onto the ship and arranged as the captain sees fit. Like most experienced captains, Yim placed his two units of elderly and hospital passengers into the outer ring. In an emergency such as this, their lives can buy the lives of others, by doing what Yim is about to do.
With both eyes locked onto his paired communications displays, and switching focus between the data on his cornea and the data on his screens, Yim feverishly monitors the orbit as he struggles to get the engine to respond. Finally, a red light begins to glow dimly. This one will get brighter as the event passes, and fade to black when it's too late. He checks a thrust meter, and sighs. Not making it.
"Jettison order, live cargo, human passengers, emergency evacuation order RA77. Fire unit 31 on course upon mark," he speaks aloud, although the computer is already programmed with this action. He speaks for the recorders in case anyone ever hears this. After a few seconds, he presses a red release key, and closes his eyes. Dragging his eyes to the meter, he confirms sufficient mass dropped and additional accelleration gained from dumping cargo rearward. They'll be sucked into the atmosphere, and never feel the implosion. Angry now, he begins abusive commands of the starboard engine.
"Fucker, wake up. I'm not dropping another one," Yim swears. He holds down two nuclear override keys with both hands, and uses his nose to press primary ignition sequencing keys in order. One thing they tell you in pilot school is to never, ever do a cold restart on a damaged drive. At this point, he might as well risk a meltdown. They made the stable orbit vector at a cost of over 500 lives. When it fails to reboot, he grabs the keyboard and drops into his plush leather command seat. Ensign Yim had a career before becoming a pilot, he hacked starports for money, at least until he got caught. Two tours of Venus in military service changed his attitude.
"You are going to fire up, right now," Yim grunts, bleeping his own swearing, He's sent two command strings into the safety override network of the two kilometer long starboard drive. One purges the system, while the other walks through behind it kicking things back online. If they were not in such danger of further asteroid collisions in an unknown system, he'd be shot for hacking the drive. When two green indicators glow brightly over on the drive monitors, Yim executes an emergency power pulse. The reactor is sent into a full-tilt overdrive situation, destined for meltdown if it's not brought back to safe measure within a short time. His million terrawatt engine will give him almost double the power, but not for long. Perhaps only seconds.
Slowly, the planet pulls away. He watches, rigid, holding his breathing down to short slow sighs, as the meters crawl upwards. At last, they have escape velocity again. Not knowing how long the engine will bear up, he performs an immediate course correction to TO7 as soon as they're safely above the solar plane. He watches the heat ratings and radiation from the engine for six hours, gently tweaking the power downwards each time there's a spike, but not willing to turn it all the way down to green zones just yet. At long last, the star is behind him, and he dials the starboard drive down to only 80%. So long as it's working at all now, they'll be fine.
He almost faints, and falls over himself reaching for the power override controls. He's still got the entire ship on emergency override, and the port engine is showing signs of overheating. He releases the Red Alert, fixes Yellow Alert status, and dials the port engine down to 80% as well. Better that they be a few days late coming in than come in hot. As it is now, he'll probably be forced to dump the starboard drive before he can approach TO7. The company won't be happy, and he'll get some time off while they go over the ship. Yim doesn't want to think about having to answer to the survivors of those five hundred.
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