CHAPTER 19
August 25, 2089
“The absolute out-the-door time, Captain Jacobs, is August 27 at thirteen thirty-three ship normal time. If you are not undocked and engine engaged at max speed you will not get to the minimum safe distance zone before we have to ignite the Samara Drive at full power.” Captain Crosby led the US Space Force captain down a corridor of the Samaritan. To Jacobs, the ship looked pretty much like any other large ship, just newer. The corridors were mostly spacecraft aluminum-titanium alloys with carbon composites here and there and the occasional dull white multilayer insulation material covering cabling and whatnot.
“Understood, Captain Crosby, but you also need to realize that if we don’t do a sweep of this ship and clear it, the UN Security Council is never going to clear you to depart.” Captain Alan Jacobs of the Northcutt watched the ship’s captain closely for any reaction but got little. Jacobs had been in the Space Force for over twenty years and had sort of wished they’d have picked a military ship to go on the first mission to interstellar space. That was a job he would have certainly signed up for. He made a very subtle glance over his shoulder at the Quick Reaction Force, or QRF, with him as well as a few chief warrant officers who were experts in ship espionage and sabotage. If anybody could find something, then it would be his team.
“Ah, here we are,” Crosby said as he cycled the hatch to the engine room. “We considered adding security to the doors here but we know everyone on board and decided against it.” Captain Crosby told the door to open on his authority and the voice and face recognition system cleared him.
“Hmm, I guess, but do you really know them?” Alan asked. “I can’t imagine what the saboteur’s motive might be, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to make sure he, she, or they didn’t hit you in more than one place.”
“Captain Jacobs, I don’t think there’s anyone on this ship that wants to get lost in space and die. The saboteur must have been a visitor that has long since left us.” Crosby motioned him and his team through the hatch and waited for them to step through. The way he flexed as he pulled the hinged white metal door closed behind them gave Jacobs the impression that the engine room door was pretty hefty. That made sense to Jacobs. He knew there was a fusion reactor somewhere within the room that could potentially spew out fissile materials and the doors were likely lined with heavy metamaterials for shielding. That would certainly help if there were a leak, but not if there were a total containment breach. Not much would help in a case like that.
“Wow! Very nice, Captain.” Jacobs whistled as he took in the view.
“I am glad you approve.”
The room was about fifteen meters on a side—cubic. In the center of the room was a solid-looking metal box about three meters on a side. Large, meter or so in diameter metal tubes entered into the cube on each of its faces with a large flange mooring each tube in place. Those tubes respectively led back through the bulkheads on either side of the room. Around each of the large metal tubes was a cylinder supported by struts between the outside of the main tube and the inside of the outer tube. The outer tubes had hundreds of thousands of turns of copper wiring around them with large high-voltage cables connecting them at each end. The cables snaked away in multiple directions to various control panels about the room. Captain Jacobs had seen Samara Drive engines before. Hell, he had one in his ship, but not like this one. To date, this was the most efficient Samara Drive built, at least until the second interstellar ship being built at the lunar shipyard was completed and came online.
Jacobs looked about the room like a kid in a toy store. He had studied propulsion as his main course of study at the Space Force Academy. During his first tour as a second lieutenant, he was a main propulsion engineer, but back then the engine rooms were mostly either nuclear thermal rockets or some form of electric rockets powered by fission reactors. The Samara Drive was something different entirely. He’d read everything there was to know about them as they were the main types of propulsion on all the Space Force vessels these days. He took a breath and turned back to Crosby, who was motioning toward others in the room.
“This is my chief engineer, Dr. Cindy Mastrano, my XO, Artur Clemons, our political officer, Ambassador Charles Jesus, our head of security, Mike Rialto, and our two ship techs: chief techs Xi Lin and Pankish Patel.”
“It is nice to meet you all,” Jacobs nodded. “I’m Captain Alan Jacobs, of the U.S. Space Force cruiser Northcutt. This is my Quick Response Force and forensics team. We are here to help you go through every millimeter of this ship before you ramp the Samara Drive up for interstellar levels. We hope to be able to give her a clean bill of health within the next ten to twelve hours. But make no mistake, we’re here to make sure we aren’t sending you brave folks off on a suicide mission to be lost in space beyond reach of any help from home.”
“Captain Jacobs, when are you planning to leave?” one of the techs asked.
“Hopefully, by later tonight.” Jacobs turned and nodded to his crew to start looking around. “However, we actually have a window, according to astrogation and Captain Crosby, that will close on us twenty-seven August at thirteen thirty-three ship normal. Either we are gone by then, the mission gets cancelled barring further investigations, or we are stuck along for the ride.”
“Where would you like us to start, Captain Jacobs?” Cindy Mastrano, the CHENG, asked him.
“Why don’t we start with you showing us exactly where the sabotage was.” Jacobs paused and went through the mission objectives in his head. “I am supposed to pick up a Dr. Burbank who was brought here as an expert?”
“Yes,” Crosby acknowledged. “He put in way too many hours without sleep. I ordered him to get some rest. He’s in his guest quarters.”
“Understood. CHENG?” Jacobs nodded to the engineer.
“Very well. This way.” The engineer motioned him toward a hatch on the starboard wall.
“Hold on just a sec, Captain,” the political officer interrupted.
“Ambassador Jesus?”
“Call me Charles,” the man said casually. “I was thinking you might want part of your team to question some of the crew, right?”
“Our first order is to do a technical forensics sweep of the ship. Interrogation really is not why this team is here. I suspect, and I think so does your captain, that whoever did this is already off the ship,” Jacobs replied. “Do you think otherwise, Ambassador?”
“Oh no, not at all. But I was going to offer to take you around and introduce you to the crew if that is what you needed,” Charles explained. “Just to, well, keep the panic and rumor mill to a minimum.”
“Understood. And we anticipated that.” Jacobs reached into a sleeve pocket and pulled out a data card. “I’d like you to contact Mr. Ray Gaines on my ship. He was sent here by the State Department and will discuss any details on the questioning of the crew. Introducing him was next on my agenda. State doesn’t want any international friction from this.”
“Thank you, Captain. I’ll get right to that.” Charles took the data card and looked at it closely.
“Captain Jacobs,” Crosby interrupted.
“Yes?”
“If you have things under control here, I have lots to be doing to keep our mission moving forward. If you need me, Artur can find me.” Crosby turned back toward the exit. “Good hunting.”
“Thank you, Captain.”