Quit blowing Holes in the ship!

Posted on Sat Jul 12th, 2014 @ 6:51am by Jan Valentine & Walter Jones

805 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Session 7: Changes
Location: starboard access crawlspace
Timeline: enroute

=Starboard Access Crawlspace=
With the Warden safely cruising along at Warp speed, Jan found time to repair some of the damage from the unscheduled departure. The Overheat warning in Impulse engine no. 2 had indeed been a false alarm, the sensor that monitored temperature had shaken loose and had cracked when it fell, a simple matter of cut and splicing in a refurbished unit fixed the problem.

A cargo Module on the ventral side had been lightly punctured by flying debris, a quick patch with scrap metal and a splash of something that was either brown paint or extremely dirty conduit grease and no one would be the wiser about the repair.

As Jan approached his final repair job of the night, the starboard RCS thruster Bruce had shutdown due to overheating, he noticed that the crawlspace was getting increasingly chilly and was shaking a bit. Reaching the last hatch between him and the thruster, Jan saw that it was completely iced over, and red lights were flashing on a panel next to it.

"Great, Depressurization alarm. Good thing I closed the hatch at the other end of this section." Jan said to himself.

He keyed in his Comm unit, "Bridge, this is Jan.Think a section of crawl space near the damaged starboard thruster is depressurized. Gonna need someone to keep a transporter lock on me in case something goes wrong."

Walt was sitting on the bridge, eating some noodles that he had brought aboard with him when he heard the call and before responding locked on to him. "Gotcha, just keep in mind if you something does happen to go wrong and you are in the cold reaches of space I won't be able to hear your calls for help!" Walt slurped down a noodle. "What the hell are you doing down there anyways?"

"Lottie blew a damn hole in the ship and shot a thruster to pieces, been patching holes all night." Jan said, slipping on a pair of gloves and a simple rebreather helmet.

"Shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to patch up, I just want someone to know where I am in case I get blown out into space. Just so you guys don't wonder where I went." Jan said.

"I appreciate that heads up. Other than making sure you don't get sucked out into space, is there anything I can do to help?"

Jan scraped off the ice on the hatch, and using an emergency tool, pried it open. A huge rush of air escaped all around him, and he could feel the cold biting at him through his hastily sealed up coat.

Walt pulled up the ships internal sensors and watched Jan's progress. "Looking good."

"Hmm, not as bad as I thought. There's a grapefruit sized hole in the ship, and the thruster's power conduit is kind of just dangling." Jan said, peering out of the hole at the stars whizzing past.

"I'm sure that isn't too much of a problem." Walt started flipping through some diagnostics while setting his lunch down. "See aren't you glad you cam back? This is exciting isn't it?"

"Gonna get to work, I'll let you know when I'm done." Jan said, breaking out the laser welder.

"You sure you don't need a hand down there?" Walt tried to pull up an internal sensor feed for the conduit but nothing was showing. "I'm just glad to have you back buddy, and wouldn't want you to get sucked out into space."

"I will admit I was starting to miss this bucket of bolts. I've sealed the breach, just another few minutes to repair the thruster and we're back in business. "Jan said.

"Great work! Had full faith and confidence in your abilities down there." Jones attention turned to a warning light that started to blink intermittently and then quickly, with as much urgency as a button can blink. "Jan I'm reading some destabilization in the integrity field down there, are you reading that?"

"Yeah, picking it up on scan, looks like a field modulator is malfunctioning. I'm re-pressurizing the crawl space, I'll see what I can do with it. Thanks for monitoring, I got it from here." Jan said.

"How much more work you got to do?" Walt killed the alarm.

"Well, I've still got about 5-6 hours of repairs to go, hope there's a decent breakfast." Jan said, packing his tools up for what felt like the 20th time.

"Alright, well, be careful and make sure that you get some sleep at some point. I can take over some of the repairs for you."

"I appreciate that, but it's no trouble." Jan said, closing the channel.

He looked at his datapad and crossed off he repair he completed. "Right, what's next..." He said, as he started crawling down the access tube, towards the next job.

 

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