To Hell and Back (Hellworlder pirates)

Ch 70 Into the Frying Pan Pt.III

Into the Frying Pan Pt.III

Astarte was standing over the shoulder of a bridge tech starring at a very confusing breakdown of their onboard electrical grid. It broke down the power demands of all the ship's systems, and for the life of her she couldn't see anything out of place. But that couldn't be right, gravity and life support don't just cut out for no reason. Something had to have been damaged during the brief battle with the Kruhur, that was the only explanation she could think of.

The hatch to the bridge slid open and Astarte turned to see a purple faced and breathless Alwen standing at the door "Bones, what are you doing here?" Astarte asked.

Alwen gathered her wits, stood ramrod straight and performed a perfect salute "Doctor Alwen Djani, permission to enter?"

"Granted, what's going on?" Aster asked. If it had been any other crewmen she would have denied the request during such a tense situation, but she had grown to trust and respect the young doctor, and knew that she wouldn't be pestering her unless it was really important.

"It's the new reactor, some one came aboard and tampered with it." she said with hesitation.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said firmly "I saw a strange looking contractor leaving the ship after the reactor had been installed. He was acting suspiciously, and looked very unwell."

Part of Astarte wanted to disregard her suspicion based on the lack of evidence, but then she thought about the strange readings they had gotten from it just before the ambush, and the lack of inertial dampening. All systems drew from a unified power grid except for a few key systems that were wired directly to the reactors, and the inertial dampeners were tied to reactor three. But if there really was something wrong with reactor three then the ship's automated diagnostics should have alerted them. Unless? "Get me Chief Heizer, now!" she ordered.

Her men were momentarily stunned by her change in attitude, but only for a moment as their training reasserted it. Seconds after she had given the order Heizer had picked up his radio "Heizer here."

"Chief, I need you to manually check the power draw on reactor three, ignore what the computers say, we think someone sabotaged it."

There was a moment of silence before the radio crackled, "on it."

They all waited with stunted breathes as the minutes ticked by. Astarte had never felt so nervous in her life as the tensest five minutes of her life ticked by, she felt like the whole universe had slowed down to a snails pace. Like a single second could last an entire lifetime, and then when she heard the radio crackle once more it felt like the whole thing had passed by in a matter of seconds.

"I don't know how to say this Captain, but your right, someone did mess with it, and now it's going to blow."

"What do you mean?" she asked as her heart dropped.

"Someone plugged a virus and a transmitter into it, that power fluctuation earlier was the reactor as it began to pump all the power its producing back into its core. We're only still alive because we're currently at warp, but that wont last forever. Its slowly creeping towards a meltdown."

Astarte bit her lip and tried to think of a solution, "Can we eject the core?"

"Maybe, but the moment we get it disconnected it's going to start a meltdown, we'll have to drop out of warp and discharge it immediately. And even then we might still be within its blast radius, it might knock us out with an EMP."