Incoming Tight Beam Transmission. —Decoding complete— Review at your disscression.
07 Jump Ship
Marina didn’t speak to Lev when he came back with the vacuum. She snatched it from his hands and set about purposefully sucking up the debris as the charged wires continued shedding their insulation with every touch. Eventually she got tired of his hovering, and handed him the vacuum.
“If you’re going to linger over me like a bad shadow, might as well be useful. I think I got all the mess cleaned up. You hold the vac, and keep it running while I work, so we don’t get any more airborne particles.” They glared at each other with hard set eyes before he took the hand held vacuum from her and turned it on, reaching over her shoulder into the panel as she set to work on the next set of connections. Twisting her screwdriver, yanking wires free. Lev kept trying to talk, and she kept trying to work.
“Marina, this is really simple, all we have to do is talk about it.”
She didn’t look at him, her hands and her eyes focused on her work as she responded. “No it’s not simple, this is complex task, that without it, would jeopardized the entire colony and I’m trying to fix it. Not only that…” She glanced at him as she fished out the next part she needed from the box of spares. “…But now we’re under a time crunch. We’ve got what, ten hours before the ship’s schedule jump? In that time not only do I have to change out all these parts, but then we have to power down the system, reconnect the power supplies to your fuses you bypassed, power the whole system back up, and test each sub system individually before then. That’s a tall order, assuming it all goes correctly.”
Her voice cracked and she winced at the new pain, and an all to familiar, unnatural wetness in her throat. “Less talking, more working.” She hissed at him through gritted teeth.
Lev drummed his fingers against the plastic housing of the hand held vacuum. “The battery on this thing wont last forever. We have more to get done. You’ll have to let me help too.” He fished another screwdriver out of the tool pouch, and hooking his feet into the loops on the floor, held himself in place, running vacuum in one hand, the screwdriver in the other as he worked on the crumbling wires for a relay on one side of the panel as Marina made progress measuring, bending, cutting and installing new wires into the other relays she’d already replaced.
She made it a point to nudge him with her elbow when she could, not wanting him to get to comfortable, trying to push him away. She wasn’t sure why she did that, but it felt like the right thing to do. He kept shooting her dirty looks. After the fifth time he nudged her back. “Mar there’s no reason to be childish, you just made a big deal about time constraints and getting work done. Here I am trying to help, trying to get things done quickly and you keep jabbing me in the ribs, making this more difficult than it needs too be. You’re being silly.”
“Childish? Silly? Like the school yard crush you admitted to back there?”
He didn’t say anything, not at first, as his hands kept working, the vacuum kept whirring. “Why not?” He grunted eventually. “Why shouldn’t I have a crush as you call it? We’ve known each other, what a year now? Between selection and training before the launch and now that we’re under way. Working together all the time, this close proximity down in the ship, why do you think it’s so unreasonable to develop feelings for someone else after we’ve already known each other for so long?”
She didn’t answer. Throwing caution to the wind he continued. “After all, why shouldn’t we? It’s only natural. We’re all decent people , we were hand selected for this mission, from among some, what was it, ten thousand applicants? We were the best of the best, the cream of the crop. We both know the other is reputable, steadfast, intelligent, educated, We’re the prime candidates of federation society.”
She glanced at him, tools and parts in hand as she kept working steadily, only shaking her head at him. Lev continued. “Being the cream of the crop, why shouldn’t we find each other attractive? You’re a smart woman, an upstanding member of society, and so am I. I’m educated, trained, not in crippling dept, we’re both capable, or else we wouldn’t have been selected for this crew, and I’m not horribly disfigured, why shouldn’t I be attractive to you?”
Marina let the screwdriver float in the air between them As she stared at him incredulous. “Attracted to you? That’s a fuckin’ hell of an assumption.”
“I wasn’t assuming anything, I was trying to ask, trying to have a conversation about it.”
Toya arrived with a second box of parts, but the tension in the room was immediately evident to the new arrival. She drifted forward apprehensive, parts in hand glancing between the other two crew members. “Everything alright?” she asked wearily.
“Yes.” “No.” Replied Marina and Lev at the same time. They exchanged a glance.
Marina capitalized on the stunned hesitation and issued orders to her equals. “Toya, I need you to take Lev with you, and start powering down and isolating systems so we can reconnect this panel before the jump.” Her voice squeaked again, and the sudden, sharp pain made her eyes tear up. She tried to gasp out “I’ve said too much” but she couldn’t her vocal cords were too inflamed for them to do her bidding. She swallowed hard and waved her hand dismissively after snatching the second box of parts from Toya’s hands.
She coughed and spluttered, struggling to breath through the new pain. Toya gripped her shoulder pulling herself close with concern. “Are you okay?” Marina nodded through her teary eyes as the coughing subsided. Toya’s eyes flicked sideways, indicating Lev over her shoulder, she asked again, a little more forcefully. “Are you okay?”
She nodded again, and waver her off. Toya grabbed Lev by the cuff of his jumpsuit and tugged, taking him with her as they both departed the compartment back to the control room. Alone at last to collect her thoughts, Marina took a deep breath, feeling the spots in her wind pipe that were hurting again, gauging how much she had over done it.
She stared at the empty hatch way collecting her thoughts. Who does he think he is, just assuming I would be interested in him. Expecting an answer like that. Putting me on the spot. She shook her head turning back to the panel with the new parts. Doesn’t matter. I have more important things to do. I don’t have time to deal with him. I don’t want to deal with him, and that. I’ll just keep working, and keep blowing him off. Volunteer to work extra if someone gets sick, so I wont have to deal with him.
No sooner had she taken up her tools again than her personal computer chirped with a notification sound. Rolling her eyes she fished it out of her jump suit’s thigh pocket and prodded the touch screen. It bore a message from Chief engineer Konstantin.
What is status? Toya found the rest of parts in storage and should be bringing them over soon.
She typed out her reply with her thumbs on the little screen. Have parts from Toya. About 2/3 done.
The little pulsing dots told her Konstantin was replying, she waited, swallowing painfully. We’re going to shut off compartment lighting in your area since that’s what runs through that panel, so you can hook it up while system is cold.
I’ll get a light. Can finish in the dark
Good.
Marina secured the second box with the yet to be installed parts, and the first box with the already removed bad parts, stowed the tools back in the pouch and left the compartment. Eager for a chance to get a drink, while she got a headlamp.
She returned to the compartment, a simple light fastened with an elastic band around her brow, to find the lights already off. She activated the LED and drifted into the darkness, chasing the shadows away with every swing of her head. Her mind wandered as she installed the last of the parts, her hands more confident now that she was sure it was electrically safe.
Wait untilTatianahears about this. She’s going to have a field day with it. Lev of all people!
Silence interrupted her thoughts. It’s not just the lights that are off, it’s everything. No fans or anything, the whole compartment is dead. She pulled out her computer again, typing away another message to the chief engineer.
Not just the lights are off, whole compartment is dead.
Dead? Came the reply after a few seconds.
No fans are running, environmental systems are off, I haven’t checked with a meter, but it looks like everything in the compartment is off.
Hang on. Checking.
She went back to work. Trying to be quick with the other parts. She didn’t want the compartment to develop a carbon dioxide bubble while she worked. Soon her mind wandered away from the monotony of connecting wires over and over again.
I haven’t talked to Tatiana since before the accident. Wonder why it wasn’t her coming to check on me. After all these years we’ve known each other. Wonder what is up with her?
Marina’s thoughts were interrupted as a jolting sensation in the darkness made her stomach do flip-flops. She glanced about wildly. The compartment looked the same in the narrow beam of her headlamp. There had been no noise, but she felt the impact in her guts, what she assumed was a distant but significant explosion. She patted herself down, checking for injuries. Finding none, she stilled, listening to the silence, half expecting a secondary explosion that never came.
She yanked the portable computer from her thigh pocket again and unlocked its screen. She had to turn her headlamp off to not wash it out, soon she was typing out another message to the chief engineer. What the hell was that?
It was a long pause before the little dancing dots indicated a reply was forthcoming. The dots kept bouncing up and down while Konstantin typed. Her gut sank. This is going to be bad if it’s taking him this long to reply. Perhaps we’ll have to start a deceleration burn and take the Mars abort option. When the reply finally did come through, it was only two words.
Jump Complete
Small ret-con not based on editing. A full sized O’Neill cylinder would be too large, too heavy for a single ship to tow like a tug boat. All previous mentions of cylinder, or colony have been changed to space station. And will be reflected as such, when the full manuscript is completed and published. Instead, a smaller space station, with a large spinning ring and a central module would be pushed in front of the ship, with a lattice frame connecting them, so the center of thrust between both objects aligns with the center of mass of both objects. Similar to the below depiction.
Editing work on book III knowledge of Gods continues, it is now over 50% complete with this round of edits, and the new opening has been handed off to a beta reader for feedback since such a large portion of the book was changed so significantly.
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The Descendant Saga 