Chapter 17: The Aftermath

--March - Week 13 --

The Fortune was fortunate, to still be in one piece.

Three bladders high on the port side on levels two and three and a quarter of the way forward from the stern of the ship and near the dome had ruptured outwards into space. The outer hull plates had split open under pressure of being pulled apart.

Four bladders on the starboard side, about a third of the way back from the bow and down on levels eight and nine had ruptured. The hull had proven to be weakest at these points, and it had compressed when the nose of the ship tried to turn in the clockwise direction.

Fortunately, the bridges and walls between the hulls that divided the bladders into segments were designed to flex as part of the dampening and cooling systems. So, the inner shell didn’t feel the full brunt of the ship bending, as it twisted.

Only three segments, one on level two on the port side and the others on level nine in the Transporter hold and the one above on level eight on the starboard side, ruptured on the inside first. They flooded into the adjoining compartments.

The two bladders on the starboard side, flooded into the adjoining compartments first as the compression caused the water to breach the inner hull by popping plates inwards. Most of the water was then sucked back out as the outer plate crumpled and breached.

Fortunately, the decompression had almost completed. Hence, the contents of the rooms were not forcibly dragged into the outer hull wall when the vacuum of space sucked the water out. The internal bulkhead doors for the bay that held a transporter and the cargo hold on the level above that were breached, held.

The breaches on the top and port side of level two were more devastating as far as Professor William Essco and Dr Tammy Bell were concerned. It was their bedroom, that was flooded. Luckily, for them, the inner hull popped a seam on the top section of the wall.

At a central support and three-quarters of the way up the wall, the top corner of a middle plate let go. Luckily only a third of the water from the bladder emptied into their room. More importantly, the outer hull had held for that bladder. The bladder on the level below had taken the pressure off when it split first.

The couple had been rudely woken when the strap down alarms had sounded through the ship. Tammy started bitching, and Essco told her to, “Shut the fuck up!”

They both went silent as they felt the gravity shift and knew the jump was imminent. They lay side by side as they waited and then felt the change as the ship jumped. Barely three breaths later they felt the gravity change as the ship re-entered normal space.

Essco sighed in relief, but he sighed too soon. Abruptly, he found he was thrown into Tammy and was crushed down on her. Tammy found she was jammed into the net and half off the bed. Essco’s full weight was bearing down on her with such force that she couldn’t draw a breath. Tammy groaned in agony as she felt a rib snap under the enormous pressure.

Then the room shook and shuddered when the bladders burst. Essco was tossed back off Tammy. They both heard the metal wall on Essco’s side of the bed groan and then a popping sound. Freezing water started spraying into the room.

The room and the walls shuddered again. Then the corner of plate ripped like paper away from the wall by at least to least 10mm and more water gush in. Unfortunately, at this time, the sprinkler system also activated and drenched them from above.

As the gravity stabilised, Tammy was able to release the net and fell to the floor with a splash. Tammy, cussing up a storm as she shivered, slopped across the floor in the ankle-deep pool of water to the door.

Tammy slammed her hand onto the sensor plate, but the door wouldn’t open. She screamed for all she was worth and banged on the door and the plate. Tepid water rained down on her, and the freezing water had risen to her mid-calves.

Finally, the sprinklers stopped, but the water kept rising and was now knee-deep. Essco, who was still sitting on the bed, was now cursing, swearing, and calling Ben a bloody idiot as the water lapped the top of the bed.

After pounding on the door for several more minutes, the temperature of the water had Tammy heading to the bathroom. She found a couple of try towels in the top of a cupboard and wrapped them around herself.

The water was still rising and pouring into the room from the gap in the wall platting. Everything was soaked. The highest, driest spot was the desk, so Tammy crawled up on it and wrapped her freezing body in the towels, bitching and swearing about incompetent ship crews.

Essco managed to get his cupboard open. He stripped as he was shivering as hard as Tammy was. He put on a dry shirt and his coat. Carrying his pants, he sloshed over to the desk and sat on it beside Tammy.

He cursed and swore as he tried to get his long pants on without getting them wet. He had to sit on the opposite corner of the desk alcove with his feet up on the desk. He constantly called into the comm to get someone to get them out of the room.

Lee’s voice finally answered. “Professor, are you and Dr Bell, okay?” Lee asked.

“No, we fucking are not. It’s fucking wet and freezing in here. Get us the fuck out of here,” Essco screamed into the comm.

“Professor, do you still have water coming into the room?” Lee asked, calmly.

Essco looked at the wall. The water was now a slow trickle. “Yes, but it’s not pouring in like it was. The bloody bed is swimming in it. We are stuck on the fucking desk. Get us the hell out of here, you stupid bitch,” he said venomously.

“Professor, the hull has been breached in several places near you. We can’t open your door until the hull is resealed and we can drain your room. You are just going to have to sit tight and try to stay warm.”

“It could be several hours before we can get to you. There is a lot of damage to the ship. But you are high on our priority list. I have at least been able to turn the air valves back on to your room. I’ll get back to you when I know more, Lee out.”

Essco kept bitching into the comm, but he soon realised Lee had shut him down. He’d not seen Tammy blanch when Lee explained about the air being turned back on. Tammy had thought it was getting stuffy and she realised that if it had been off much longer, she would have died of asphyxiation.

The couple had to sit tight and wait four very long, wet and cold hours. Lee checked in with them every half hour, put up with the first part of the tirade she received from Essco for her trouble and then shut the comm down.

It wasn’t her favourite call to make.

The engineering crews were working hard.

As Lee had said, getting to Tammy and Essco was a priority, and the crew was working hard at getting the recirculation system fixed so they could pump the water out the room and let the couple out.

Fixing the water bulkhead compartments was not an easy job. They had to empty the bladder below or above the one, they wanted to fix. The recirculation system was designed to continually circulate the water. Each compartment was pumped into the next. Then the next one was emptied and so on.

This meant that if a compartment developed a leak or the water tested badly, then the water could be moved. The water went to the next bladder or back to the recycler, so that section was bypassed until fixed.

Four compartments on each of the levels could be emptied so the work crew could enter into the system. They had to suit up into pressurised suites, the same suits they wore if they ever had to go outside of the ship. This allowed them to swim through the compartments if they had to, to get to the damaged one.

In one way, their luck had held, as one of the compartments breached on Essco’s side was the one that had the access door. Bones, Ryan and Anita, were suited up and entered the cell after cycling through the entrance chamber.

They found no actual structural damage. The flexible struts and side walls had done their job. However, the seams in the hull plates had popped a section of the plate out. They could replace this plate from this side, but they would need to go outside later and replace the ceramic coating and add extra welds. They couldn’t do that until the ship was stopped or at least slowed.

Bones and Ryan cleaned up the hole and using magnetic clamps, they seated the new Ozlium sheet and welded it into place. Because of the nature of Ozlium, you can’t use a standard welder. A unique high frequency, plasma welder, was required.

It was a slow job welding in the thicker sheets, used for the outer hull. If the required thickness in the plates weren’t maintained, then the plate could fail. While Bones welded in the new plate, Ryan ran the scanner over all the seams and wasn’t happy with a couple of them, so he patched them up as well.

Anita scanned all the bolts and seals around the valves and pipes between the segments to check their integrity. She had to break one pipe and fit a new seal. She also replaced a stressed pipe where the flexible coupling had been damaged when the water blew out before she was happy.

They wiped down the segment to remove contaminates while they drained the compartment either above them or beside them into another cell. They then opened the personal hatch and dragged all their equipment through it, into the next cell, either above them or beside them. Then they started all over again.

The fatigued team finely got to the compartment outside Essco room three hours later. Anita had opened the valves to drain the tank back to the recycler. They had worked their way up so that when they got to the half-filled segment, she could drain it, so they could enter.

When the occupants of the room heard them moving around in the bladder, they yelled at them, “Get us the fuck out of the room.” Essco included plenty of nasty threats if the team didn’t move their arses to do it. Tammy mostly pleaded them to hurry.

Anita and the guys ignored them and got on with the job. They very much would have liked to leave them there by the time they finished.

The team checked that the outer plates were structurally sound. Once happy, Bones drilled a hole in the bottom of the inner hull plate, and Anita hooked up a hose and pump to the hole, so they could drain the room into the recycling system faster.

Bones and Ryan started fixing the plate. The magnetic clamps were able to pull the sheet back into position so they could weld it. They would have to check it from the room’s side as well before the bladder was refilled.

Essco and Tammy were constantly bitching about the smells and smoke the boys were creating in the room. Then the pump began making an unhappy noise, so Anita turned it off. She checked the hole to find it was blocked on the other side. She yelled at Essco to unblock the hole from his side.

To which he told her, “Unblock the fucking hole yourself. And get me the fuck out of here.” He wasn’t going to get into the freezing water.

Anita stuck the plasma drill back in the hole and drilled until it was clear. She then hooked the pump up again. Essco was not happy later when he found out she had drilled through his favourite Italian Leather briefcase, which had been sucked over the hole. Being immersed in the water hadn’t done it much good either.

They finally got the room down to soggy carpet so the door could be opened once the wall was sealed from their side.

Lee commed Essco and told him to try the door. Essco and Tammy were relieved to see the medical staff waiting for them to escort them to sickbay.

Kim Mc Nee, the afternoonshift welder, entered the room as soon as the couple were gone. She checked and patched the inside wall of the room. Her fix didn’t do a lot for the paint job, but the whole room was going to have to be stripped anyways so Kim wasn’t too concerned.

Anita’s team took another hour to get the other repairs completed on this side of the ship and were finally able to vacate the bladders. They were all glad that they were fit and healthy as it had been a mammoth task.

They finally headed off for some food, caught up on the gossip and then headed for their beds.

Tammy ended up in sickbay with hypothermia.

Due to her low body weight and the immersion, she ended up developing pneumonia. She was very sick for several weeks.

Once Essco was confirmed well, and he had eaten, he was moved to one of the bunkrooms that had a spare bed. The occupant, after ten minutes of Essco’s company, promptly moved in with one of the other men, who had an unoccupied bunk.

The crew on the other side of the ship found more problems caused by the compression of the vessel, and it took them an extra two hours to get their necessary repairs completed. They had more work to do later due to the compartments being flooded.

Seven hours after the jump, they finally had the water and sewerage systems back online to a much-relieved crew’s relief. Unflushed toilets can be very unpleasant after nearly nine hours of not working.

A big problem they couldn’t fix immediately was the Dome. The outer segment on Essco’s side was breached when the seal with the hull split. Because of the thickness of the dome, it didn’t stretch so well, so the hull had to give.

Plants don’t survive any better than humans in the vacuum of outer space. The crew’s problem was, they couldn’t enter the section to even put in a temporary patch on the inside unless they emptied the inner section first.

For some reason, the designers hadn’t put a double airlock between the outer and middle dome sections. The crew would have to fix the seal and the hull section from the outside, once they had the ship stopped. So, for now, that segment of the dome had to remain sealed.

Kyle, Brendan and Sung had spent five very tiring hours getting the ship out of the spin. The hull breaches and the sheer size of the ship meant they had to slow the vessel gradually, so it wasn’t flexed any more than necessary. It was a team effort to finally have the craft going in one direction again.

Trying to drive a ship of this size manually was not fun. They constantly had to alter the speeds and positions of the eight Ionic Drives to get the ship, so that it was rolling in one plane and not wobbling as it had been. Then they had to stop the ship from spinning from starboard to stern.

The strange motions added to the new gravitational effects by Futura played hell with the compensators as well as making it difficult for the repair crews as the ship shifted around them and the gravity fluctuated. The poor robotic cleaners and the human ones ended up cleaning up a lot of vomit.

During this mammoth effort, Eze and Alison Burt, one of the other navigators had finally worked out where they were. As they hadn’t totally mapped all the system, it had taken some time. They used the feeds from the three probes that triangulated Futura and Tychy to achieve this feat.

Due to the accident, the crew leaders of the staff, Sean, Lee and the Captain had a meeting at 15:00 hours, twelve hours after the disaster. They had the most critical systems repaired, and the crew members who could were having a much-needed rest.

Eze reported that they had worked out that if the Helm got the ship stopped in the next couple of days, they could do the repairs to the hull. It would then take them another four days or so and a few course alterations to get into orbit around Futura.

This, of course, caused a buzz around the table. They were not supposed to be here. The ship was supposed to be at Tyche, two-AU in the opposite direction.

The Captain didn’t really give a shit about being at the wrong planet. What he cared about was that for them to be where they were someone had tampered with his ship. He was a very pissed-off man. Someone was going to have to pay.

Doc Von had informed the meeting that they had one dead man, two critically injured, one with hypothermia and one in a comma. Five other people had broken bones, and another three had concussions but would be fine in a couple of days.

A dozen or more of the crew were generally bashed up with cuts, strains and bruises, but they were mobile. The most worrying was the missing man, as no one had been able to locate Rodger Bartlett.

The report from Robby wasn’t good either. The Vets had to put down two goats. One was pregnant with twins and the other their best milker.

The boar had also died. He had broken ribs, which had pierced his lung and damaged his heart. The next oldest hog wouldn’t be ready for service for at least two months, and this will put Robby’s breeding schedule way behind.

They had also lost five laying hens and the day’s eggs. All of the tossing about would most likely upset the rest of the hens, and they would probably stop laying. The current batch of eggs that were due to hatch had also died when the incubator failed.