Jethro Snippet 3

 Sitrep: I received the J7 manuscripts back this afternoon. I will start the final publishing process in the morning. 

Since you have to wait 1 more day, I figured I should give you another taste of what you are up against.

Chapter 3

 

UFN-80P

 

Survival mode meant cutting way back on life support, lighting, and the same. Anyone who didn't have a job to do had to remain in a given location and try not to use up resources. Energy usage was cut. The captain worked up and transmitted a mayday with their logs, but after that everything was shut down except passive sensors.

Meanwhile, the chief and techs did an inventory. The captain had ordered an in-depth inventory down to the last nut and bolt. They took that to heart, hoping to find something, anything that had been overlooked that might come in handy.

They all knew that they were in serious trouble. They were trapped on a ship built for 27 crew and 50 cadre with 266 souls in deep space with little power far from home. Crowded was an understatement; hot bunking was the norm in any and all quarters except the captain's chamber. It became clear within a day that there was no hope of rescue; by the time the signal that had been transmitted got to someone, they would all be long dead.

In other words, they were on their own.

~~~-^-~~~

The captain assembled the officers and engineers. “I want options, folks.”

“The signal we transmitted will get wiped out when it heads across the space where the nova occurred. Don't count on it getting to Finagle, Garth, or anywhere that we know the Federation is at,” the ship's A.I. stated flatly.

“So TFP?”

“TFP is over sixty light years away,” Ensign Kelsi Hatfield said with a shake of her head. She was a bit glum. She had run the numbers over and over and knew them in her sleep. No matter how she tried to twist them they were screwed.

“Obviously, we need to get back into hyperspace,” the captain prompted, looking at the engineers. The chief grimaced.

Chief Yoji Koda, also known as Lieutenant Commander Koda, was her XO and chief engineer. He preferred to go by the title of chief though. He was a pretty good wrench turner; though as an XO, he let the ship's A.I. take on his share of the paperwork a bit too much for her tastes.

“We can get back into hyperspace if we draw every molecule of hydrogen from every resource in the ship including from material and from our own bodies,” the chief said with a frown.

“And that will do what?”

“We'd be in the lowest band and octave of hyperspace for a short time. How long depends on the energy we can collect with the hyperspace collectors. But we won't have much energy to move the ship in hyperspace or to go up or down a band.”

The captain grimaced. Every crew member knew that there was little energy to collect in the low octaves of alpha band. The compression ratio was too low. The higher you went up the octaves and of course bands, the denser the energy and the more likely you can run the ship's systems off of the energy you collected alone.

“Okay, so, that's a problem. How far can we get?”

“Um …,” the ensign ran the numbers and then shook her head.

“That bad?”

“Maybe another two light years.”

“Oh. Yeah, that's bad.”

“It gets worse. There would be nothing left in the ship or even our bodies. That is why I didn't propose it before.”

“Okay, so, that plan is out. Next option?” the captain asked briskly.

“That … we are looking at the space we're in. The nearest star isn't even really a star.” The ensign pulled up a star chart of the region. “We are approximately 4.5 light years from this,” she said, sounding a bit dubious as a star system with a long alpha numeric string came up.

“Brown dwarf. Not good,” the captain said.

“Worse, it is a Y class.”

“Y class?” the chief echoed.

“Devoid of material to be used for anything including fuel. It is a very dim brown dwarf.”

“Oh.”

Brown dwarf stars were known as brown death. They were essentially failed stars, Jethro noted as Bast supplied him with the information. They sometimes had dust clouds since they didn't have enough gravity to get them to form into planetoids. Those that did form were usually dwarf or mercury class planets devoid of usable resources.

No wonder no one had gone there since it had been scouted centuries ago.

“Any port in the storm,” the captain murmured. “Okay, how do we get there?” she asked.

“We've got enough fuel to burp the sublight drives. We can get us up to point 5 C,” the chief said, crunching the numbers.

“Concur. But the burn would have to be short,” the ship's A.I. stated.

“How short is short?” the ensign asked. She blinked when they showed her the numbers. “Oh, that short. Yeah, we'd need everything we could for the shields and for braking,” she said with a nod.

The captain frowned as she stared bleakly at the numbers. At that speed, they would take nearly ten years to get to where they were going. Even when they got there they'd have little left for fuel and energy in a star system devoid of material.

“We'll brake at the start of year six,” the ensign said.

“Are there any other star system candidates?”

“At this point, the nearest habitable world is TFP, Tiny Freakin Planet,” the A.I. said. The star chart came up on their tablets and an icon blinked. “But it is seventy light years away through a minor nebula.”

“Oh.”

Jethro winced. The idea of spending one hundred and twenty years in stasis to get that far? The admiral had done it out of necessity in Senka but …

“To leave our families that long?” the chief asked softly.

The ensign looked wooden. She seemed about ready to cry.

“To get there we'd drain the ship dry. But there is another problem related to both issues; we don't have enough stasis pods for everyone.”

The captain frowned. “Okay, it looks like we're going to have to go with this option. So, list the problems and then break the problems down into solvable chunks. We'll build off of that.”

“First up is the stasis pod issue,” the chief said grimly.

~~~-^-~~~