Fatal Containment

Fatal Containment - Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Cheryl walked out of the brig compartment and ran right into Trevor Hanson who was taking a brisk morning jog down the circumference of the ships passage way. He looked very trim in his grey and black sweats with the navy emblem on the right breast. Nonetheless, he still smelled of sweat and musky cologne.

"Hey lieutenant, why the long face?" he asked with his usual lopsided smile.

"Just checking on the prisoner," she said.

"Uh Oh, you're going to be in trouble when Connor finds you. I understand you're supposed to be on the bridge sniffing out the anomaly Larson found. And you were ordered to drop the investigation." He said, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

"The commander never ordered me not to talk to Dr. Sanders," she said defensively. "I'm still the science liaison to the project team."

"Well, I suppose that could be true, if you weren't late for your shift on the bridge," he said pointing to the wall chrono.

Cheryl swore under her breath. She had only intended to stop in for a few minutes, but she was already very late getting back to the bridge. She started to take off for the bridge on a run, but Trevor caught her by the arm.

"Hey, relax," he said. "I'll cover for you. But you need to do me a favor. There's a compression jacket that's leaking down in fusion room three. If you'll help me with some of the refit mathematics, I'll tell Connor that I called you down for a look. It'll only take a few minutes..."

Cheryl knew she needed to be on the bridge, but an alibi would be useful. "Alright," she said. "But only for a few minutes."

"Great!" he said, checking his pulse and already starting to jog backwards down the hall. "I'll get changed and meet you there in fifteen?"

"Okay, but hurry. I'm going to be in Dutch as it is."

"Hey, relax. I'll handle Connor," was all he said as he turned the corner and jogged out of sight.

* * *

Cheryl came into fusion room three and saw an area around the fusion reactor marked off with caution tape. The replacement compression jacket had been taken out of its crate and was already assembled and waiting nearby. In order to replace it while the reactor was running, precise mathematical calculations were needed. The engineering team certainly had the equipment to do this, but Cheryl had always wanted to see one performed as it would mean keeping the plasma flow constant into the fusion chamber using a magnetic accelerator instead of the compression jacket.

According to regulations, the proper way to make the repair was to shut down the containment unit and power down the reactor, but this would have required the ship to slow to a much lower speed, which was problematic given the nature of the medical mission and the ship that was trailing behind them. Engineers had been learning how to make things work under tight schedules and difficult conditions since the Navy had begun launching ships. Some clever ship's engineer had figured out how to do this (although Cheryl was sure they had been reprimanded for it), and it had somehow become an acceptable practice, in spite of not following what the regulations called for.

Officially, this procedure she was about to learn came with considerable risk, but everyone knew that the captain wasn't going to order the ship stopped simply to replace a fusion compression jacket. Besides, if the plasma flow got out of control, the engineer could order an emergency shut down and replace it then, taking heat from the captain in the process. Of course, failure was a matter of pride, and any engineer in the imperial service would rather risk the captain's displeasure rather than fail to do the procedure successfully.

Cheryl walked over the plasma flow control panel and called up the mathematics routines. She had heard that the procedure involved calculating the flow rate through the plasma emission coils and then ramping in enough magnetic flux to keep the flow constant while the resonator (also called a jacket, since it wrapped around the plasma intake valve) was slowly ramped down. Then, the new jacket would be bolted and sealed in place while the procedure was reversed.

The mathematics to perform this little trick weren't trivial. It was a three-dimensional problem involving a proportional, an integral, and a derivative value based on the amount of flow needed to maintain a constant surge of energy into the reactor. Slight miscalculations in any of the values would cause an uncontrolled oscillation and result in reactor runaway—a potentially disastrous condition that would cause the reactor to be shut down. That was why very sophisticated calculations were needed to make sure the flow remained precisely constant. As the head of the science team, this could fall under her prevue, although it was something that she should have gotten clearance from the bridge to participate in. She hoped Trevor was correct about fixing this with the commander. Otherwise, she was going to be in very hot water.

While she waited, she keyed in her access code to the security subsystem and played back some of the video footage from the science team labs. Then she switched back to the video feed for engineering bay three, where she was now. Rewinding, she saw several workers near the plasma intake value, uncrating and preparing the new jacket for insertion. She panned and scrolled the viewer to display the room from several angles at once, and with different time signatures.

She couldn't help but wonder who could have disabled the security camera system in the high vacuum lab. She didn't have the clearance to do it and only Commander Leary, Trevor, and Captain Cantrell would have.

But what about the security control circuits. She looked down at the locked panel. It would require a special key, also controlled by engineering, to access the panel. She looked at the adjacent panel.

I wonder if you can access the cabling from another panel compartment. Maybe cut the adjoining frame out of the way to do it.

As soon as she considered the idea, she dismissed it. It would take time to do and would require a cutting torch which would leave a huge mess. Besides, the only cutting device that could neatly cut through a panel were only used in emergency damage control repairs, controlled by Trevor.

She returned her attention to the security feed and started to switch it off. That's when she noticed that there was no one else in the compartment with her. That was a little strange, since there should be at least one reactor technician monitoring the open fusion reactor port, even if it was one of the lower ranked personnel. Well, she reminded herself, she was here. She called up the log to see who was on reactor checks, when she noticed the surveillance system had begun an automatic diagnostic. She keyed in several commands which should have brought it back online, but it refused to respond until the diagnostic was finished. She realized that this automated testing mode could have had the same effect as shutting it down momentarily—

She felt the hair on the back of her neck beginning to stand and her gut told her that this was not a coincidence. Panic threatened to set in and she knew she shouldn't be alone in here. She picked up a scrap piece of pipe and edged toward the door.

"Is someone there? Trevor?" she called out, gripping the pipe tightly in her left hand.

And then she saw someone move, near the open crate. She walked over to the crate but saw no one. Alarms began to go off in her mind.

Get out of here, Cheryl! Run!

She turned and started to run from the compartment when a fist like an iron kettle clocked her right in the face.

"What in the seven halls?" she exclaimed as stars swam in her vision. In retrospect, she should have saved her breath for running as that was also the last thing she said before everything went dark.