Chapter 14 - Need, Part 3
Hully led the way to the USS Apollo's engineering section. It was far more organized relative to the day Spock began his project. The remaining dismantled equipment was neatly on carts. Decorative panels were stacked beside the repaired hole cut in the bulkhead. The hole itself had been modified into a row of neatly trimmed access portals.
Hully said, "The impulse bay isn't evacuated for the install, and the atmosphere is held in by field pressure so we need to be suited up, but not full suits, just the EMEVs. Come on."
Chief Ping was standing at the planning board with his assistant. Spock stopped, let Hully go on toward the lockers.
"Sir," Spock said.
Ping's face crinkled up in what Spock estimated was distaste. "What is it?"
"I expect to complete the high sensitivity position sensor install today. Is it possible, sir, for me to obtain test data from the warm up idle scheduled for forty hours from now? I do not require your time or effort. I can give Crewmember Hully a device to collect the data for me."
"When you are finished today you are finished, Cadet." Ping stared with more than a hint of challenge, almost a hope that Spock might argue.
Spock knew this sort of unyielding attitude well. Overlander had suggested Spock inform the chief that they had discussed the request. But that wasn't a logical way to proceed. If Overlander wished to issue a command to Ping, she would do so directly. For Spock to relay something as soft as an opinion on the reasonableness of an action from both of their superiors he would have to decide the concept of strict hierarchy did not apply.
Spock nodded deeply to the engineering chief, joined Hully in suiting up. Emergency jumpsuits were made of heavier material than the usual suits, and they had awkward hoops at the joints to keep them moveable should they end up under interior pressure.
The engine bay was no longer an abstractly shaped open space surrounded by girders. It was half filled with a complex, bulky, looming machine covered in kilometers of wiring carefully tacked on or running in conduits on the orthogonal, snaking between access panels and boxes. The surface bulged with irregular shapes smoothed over with sprayed on dampening rubber. Spock had expected the unit to be symmetric and on the whole it was, but in the arrangement of its panels and exterior control units, it was haphazard and biased toward the port side.
It also barely fit. It was being swung into the bay, into its place on the framing, in a series of exact maneuvers.
Yellow lights flashed. The glare of them streaked along the metal bulkheads, bouncing off every curved object. A klaxon blared. Hully ignored it, trooped along the fore bay bulkhead, squirming behind girders rather than take the wider route aft, where the engine would eventually be seated. Encroaching on that space would set off an alarm once the klaxons had sounded. In concert with these alarms, their activities would cease and restart throughout their install window.
Spock climbed to the top of the truss, slowing every third step up to hook and unhook his redundant tether lines. He replaced an out of spec unit, a quick unlatch and relatch. When he had finished, the klaxon was sounding. He had to wait for the alarms to go silent before climbing down since he had to do so on the aft side of the truss. From up here he could see along the port side of the open bay and out to the stars. Ships and drones passed by the slotted opening, lit by the space station.
When the all clear sounded, Spock returned with practiced ease to the deck level. Hully was working on the third sensor, a low tolerance install. She had pulled off her suit glove to mount the sensor unit to a laser jig and was adjusting the jig with impatient movements. Spock pulled up the installation diagram on his padd, held it out for her to view it. She explained in a rush how to establish the baseline for the distances. Her voice was low, amplified by the mic inside her hood to an dulled waver.
Once set, the jig burned the mounting holes, but at lower power than the bigger cutters they usually used, so the two of them crouched at the base of the girder, waiting. Hully, despite their stillness was sweating drips onto the faceplate of her suit. Spock considered asking her if something was wrong. Unlike previous install sessions, she did not seem angered by the chief or one of the ensigns who had teased her. She seemed elsewhere, yet oddly focussed and rushed.
They had nine units to install, mostly along the bay's fore deck. While they worked, shouts echoed hollowly in the decreasing space. The klaxons went off for minutes at a time, quieted again, always preceded by flashing warning lights. While the jig was cutting, Spock watched the fore face of the massive engine swinging down atop them centimeters at a time before halting, yawing to the sound of massive servos, translating along tracks, then rotating again, ever closer into place.
Hully locked unit seven into place with a metallic click. The two of them were perched on the corner of the lowest cross beam on the port side, four meters off the deck. Spock took out his padd to register the sensor on it, verify that it was responding properly, collect what data he could. A klaxon sounded with no flashing yellow light preceded it. The world turned ninety degrees with a roar. Spock's padd ripped from his gloved hands and jerked on its tether in sync with Hully's body doing the same beside him.
Spock's suit stiffened, puffed. The air screamed, howled around the corners of the truss and resonated across the fabric of Spock's emergency EV suit. Hully's arm reached up, swept toward the truss. Her suit was not filling properly, was fluttering like a windsock from the sleeve. Spock reached for her tether just as it swung away from him so that he missed it. He leaned far over, took hold of the truss where there was a throughhole his fingers could hold onto. He swung out. His legs caught in the wind like rushing water swaying him violently. He reached her tether, heaved on it, hooked one boot around the truss, one knee. He hauled in hand over hand. The tether was only a meter and a half long, but in the roar, with poor traction between it and his gloves, it might have been ten times that.
He grabbed her suit's hang strap behind the hood, pulled her toward the beam nearly vertical to the deck. Even with Vulcan strength he had to heave twice to get himself and her on the far side of the forces resisting their movement. He wedged himself at a forty-five degree angle between the truss and the bulkhead, fumbled with her suit, finally simply yanked her ungloved sleeve down hard enough he could seal off the sleeve behind the rings at the wrist. Her suit puffed.
Spock breathed heavily into his hood, momentarily fogging the faceshield. For the first time ever he was grateful for earth-normal oxygen. The rush of air in the engine bay fell away, no longer whipped at them. The warning lights still flashed but the klaxons were barely audible, dulled by the lack of air. Spock adjusted the position of his feet on the truss, braced himself more firmly to hold himself and Hully suspended above the deck but wedged so that neither the ship's artificial gravity nor any additional rush of exiting air would yank them from it.
Hully moved an arm, shifted her hooded head on his chest. Spock helped her roll over, to wedge herself, take her own weight. She fumbled at her chest one-handed where she'd hooked her suit's glove through an elastic hoop. The rush of air continued to quiet. She insisted on putting the glove on. Spock held the pinched sleeve up for her, so she could latch the glove onto the wrist hoops. It clicked soundlessly into place. He slowly let go of her suit sleeve to let air in. The glove puffed, held. With a flailing motion, she shoved her hand back down her sleeve and into the glove.
She put the glove to her hooded face, held it there. He could hear her over the mic repeating, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Spock was still partly holding her up. His core muscles were fatiguing from the force necessitated by the awkward angle. He looked up to see if he could reach any support points above them, judged the other distances side to side, then down. His padd was still dangling on its tether. He had never noticed its weight before now.
"I do not know what you are apologizing for," Spock said.
He braced his left foot and used her tether to pull the two of them toward the upright post where they'd been working. There was a wide metal cowl plate at the vertical girder that led to an isolation bumper, then into the bulkhead. He guided her backwards to it. She wedged herself into the small space, leaned forward to rest her hood on the upright, put her hands over her face plate. Over the next minute, she pulled tighter into a ball and began sobbing without reserve.
Spock lowered himself precariously beside her, put a hand on her back but could not put pressure on flesh, just the elastic air inside the suit.
"May I ask what is the matter?"
She didn't reply, or even shake her head. The suits began to shrink. The klaxon's voice trickled through the void as air returned, grew louder.
Spock's hood radio crackled. The status lights shifted on their own to indicate general broadcast. The first officer's voice came across, harried. "Killington, check in."
Another voice. "Present. Uninjured."
Another name, another check in. Hully dropped her hands, let them hang limp. Tears were slipping in flat rivulets on her cheeks. Spock thought he now comprehended the metaphoric comparisons to a dam opening.
Hully's name crackled over the mic. She replied in a thick voice that she was present and unharmed. She fumbled with the switch at the base of her hood, pushed the radio to local, sniffled hard.
Two other names, then Spock's. In order of rank, apparently. The radio cut out. The klaxons shut down, although the lights still flashed. It fell quiet in the impulse engine bay aside from the blowers bringing the pressure back to a full one atmosphere. Hully rested her head on the vertical girder again. The electrical activity of her muscles spoke of hopeless aching frustration.
Spock also set his mic to local. "Can I assist you?"
"I didn't react like this after it happened. It's been months." This brought a new flood of tears. "I thought I was okay."
Spock sat down on the L beam rather than crouch. Hully was still wedged into the inside the larger fold of the upright and the isolation bumper, seemed to be bracing herself as thoroughly as possible without regard to comfort, or perhaps bracing was the comfort.
Commander Overlander strode into engineering. The senior engineering officers were standing before the large control board showing scans of the impulse engine bay and exterior shots along with raw numbers from monitors and sensors that were temporary for the install process.
"Chief, what the hell's going on?"
Ping's assistant, Levandre, replied, "Crane appears to have struck the field emitter and the redundant one at the hull wasn't beefy enough to handle full pressure with the abstract shape of the opening it had to deal wtih."
She looked over the displays. "Pressure's rising."
Levandre glanced at the chief. "Station did that. Slapped a set of fields on us as soon as their leak detectors went off. They also asked if we needed an air pump, but we're coming back up fast enough." He flipped through the scans of the bay, port side, starboard, fore at deck level. Figures stood on gantries, waiting with heads down for the signal to resume work.
Levandre added, "No reports of injuries."
Overlander snapped straighter, glanced at the interior scans across the bottom of the display. "Our cadet is in there."
Levandre switched views on the corner display. Two figures in EMEV suits were perched on the forward engine mount on the port side. One of them appeared to be comforting the other, leaning close, arm around the other. Overlander couldn't tell them apart in the hooded suits. The Vulcan was nearly as slight as the lithe Hully and with one of them bunched up and wedged into the L beam, she couldn't compare their sizes.
Comm cut in, "Station wants to know if we're keeping their field emitters for the time being."
"If they'll let us, we will. Ask them how old the case of scotch needs to be. It's coming out of our chief's budget."
The assistants gave each other pained glances, shifted their feet.
Overlander said, "Chief, reset track and crane parameters from current positioning and do a dry run on the model for getting that beast in place, make sure we can still get it in from where it is now."
"Yes, Commander." He stepped left to the control panel, reconfigured it.
Overlander returned her attention to the figures on the cross truss. She spoke quietly. "Get me a pickup on that."
Levandre touched a few switches, checked another display, touched another. The sound switched to the distinct breathiness of a hood mic.
"… I don't know," Hully said. "I couldn't do anything. I couldn't reach anybody. There's nothing you can do. It's your friends but you are helpless." She sniffled, straightened to stretch out one leg to let it dangle. The suits were almost back to normal, loose at the joints. "I don't know how to stop crying. I don't know what's wrong with me."
"Want a mic in?" Levandre asked.
"Looks like Hully's broken down. She was on Ranger during the hull breech." Overlander shook her head. "We don't even have pysch on board right now. Have comm request someone from the station when they're through with the emergency response team coordination."
Spock's voice, "I do not think there is anything wrong. This seems a perfectly normal response of a feeling being." He took hold of her arm and held it. "One gets too busy to attend to attend to the response, and it appears to wait for its turn. With great patience, it waits."
Hully's hood nodded. Her voice sounded almost laughing. "Yeah."
"Switch off the audio," Overlander said. "Hully seems to be in good hands for the moment. Someone start a computer-run inspection of the engine cladding comparing now to before the breech. Make sure nothing broke loose and did any damage."
Hully was sitting hunched, feet out, gloved hands upright in her lap, fingers curled. Spock checked his tether lines, found his padd still swinging. He hooked it back on his belt. He should not have carried the large one, wondered now why it had seemed like a good idea. He leaned down to locate a lower hitch point for his second tether in preparation for departing.
"We're still on a stoppage," Hully said.
"That precludes climbing down to the deck?" Spock was thinking it best to get Hully to someone who could aid her professionally, but did not want to say that.
"Unless you need medical, yes. They need to know where everyone is while things get sorted out."
The side of Spock's leg, specifically the vastus lateralis muscle of his quadriceps, had gotten bruised but he did not consider it worthy of emergency attention. He considered exaggerating it in the interest of getting Hully to sickbay. But she had calmed considerably once he made her understand that he did not think poorly of her reaction.
They sat side by side. A servo started up somewhere aft-top of the engine, then cut out again, a sound that would have been lost in the earlier general noise.
Dangling the weight of his leg over the edge of the truss prodded at Spock's injury. He touched the area, bent his leg up to take the strain off it.
She watched him do this, looked away again.
The forward center hatch swished open and a suited pair appeared. The medical bands on their upper arms reflected the work lights almost blindingly. With intentional motions, they tethered themselves to the deck rail. Hully straightened from leaning over to look at them. Her body tensed with nerves, then as the pair approached their location, with anger.
The hooded faces stopped, looked up at the two of them there on the truss. One of them said, "Hey, Hully." His voice was audible both over the local radio and through his hood.
Spock swung out to the side and switched his tether to the vertical rail to climb down to the deck, found the solidity of it to be more of a relief than expected. He waited there for Hully to follow. She hesitated, frowning in a way that threatened to become despair again, then pushed forward off the truss and made her way down.
"I'm messing up your install," she muttered.
"I will remain here in the engine bay and see if I will be allowed to complete it."
Hully nodded, daisy chained herself to one of the med team's tethers, and ambled out with them.
Spock stood alone on the deck looking up at the leading surface of the engine. He already had every tracing on the surface memorized, but could not seem to commit to memory the sheer presence of it hanging over him.
It was sixteen minutes before a voice sounded on Spock's radio. It was Lavendre, Ping's assistant. "What's your status, Cadet?"
"I require eleven minutes and five seconds to complete the last two sensor installations. They are all at deck level."
There was a pause. "I'll give you an override on the stoppage. You are less in the way with things stopped than you will be when we restart."
"Thank you, sir."
Spock made his way to the first location, taking more care with the positioning of the tethers than before when they had been perfunctory and theoretical. Crouching made his leg hurt, which had the benefit of forcing his mind into clarity without additional logical discipline. He worked with calm efficiency as if being tested and observed.
Spock finished seven seconds ahead of his estimate. On other shifts, Hully had done a verbal check out before departing the bay. Spock keyed his mic and made the request. A voice he didn't recognize told him it was logged and he could exit.
Engineering Main was busy and stressed. Spock slipped into the locker area and de-suited, put his files in order.
The task board was surrounded by engineering officers working out new timelines, arguing, making verbal gibes at each other. Spock did not wish to interrupt to log his task completed, so he waited a meter back.
Someone looked up, a female Ensign. "Sensors completed?"
"Yes, sir." Spock held out a tape. "The unit mesh ids and tolerance tests."
The woman took the tape, looked at him longer than necessary, then looked away at the board and marked his task completed for him.
Spock stepped out into the corridor. He had lost his required escort and wondered if he should have mentioned that to the ensign while he had her attention. Their overlooking of the problem did not excuse his own omission. On the other hand, it might justify him locating his escort. Given Hully's emotional state, he did not wish to depart this final time without a last word. He was not competent with human emotion, but this decision he felt relatively confident about.
In sickbay there was an engineering crewmember being treated for a crushed hand, but no visible Hully. The CMO looked up at Spock. He was dark skinned with tightly curled short hair that stood out longer in the front.
"Come on in, have a seat on the bed there. I'll be just a moment."
The doctor held the crewmember's arm steady on a movable tray while the nurse sprayed it with thin layers of hardening foam. Spock looked at the nearby bed, and having been ordered to, lowered it enough to sit on the edge of it.
The nurse wrapped the crewmember's hand in gauze tape which sank into the foam and hardened.
The doctor's dark brown eyes found Spock again. Unlike most everyone else, he fixed on Spock's face and didn't obviously take in Spock's cadet uniform.
"I was looking for crewmember Hully, sir," Spock said.
"She's in private conference."
"Do you have an estimate for how long that will take?"
The man shook his head. "No."
"May I wait for a time?" Spock had skipped his morning Basic Federation Languages class to perform this last install shift, but he didn't want to skip Propulsion which began in seventy two minutes. He could review the day's extra readings while he waited and if Hully did not appear, it would be the same as if he had returned to the Academy to do the readings of the extra materials.
The CMO glanced at the bed monitor behind Spock, pulled a Feinberger off his belt and approached with it.
"I do not require attention, sir," Spock said, hearing himself sounding peeved and isolating the emotion right after. Something about this human's attitude reminded Spock of Oplack in Starfleet Intel. He sensed the same unusually strong assumption of physical authority over others.
The CMO waved the Feinberger before Spock's chest, smiled. "There is that about Vulcans. How much they hate being scanned." He looked at the display on the end of the device for many seconds.
"I simply wish to speak to crewmember Hully before departing the Apollo for the last time, sir."
The CMO continued to look at the readings, brow lowering. "Get up on the table."
Spock suppressed his reaction before speaking this time. "I do not require treatment, sir."
"I didn't ask for you input. I want more readings."
"I am not test subject, sir."
The two nurses and the engineering crewman were all watching them now.
"You have a bit of a chip on your shoulder there, Cadet. And you are injured. And that's an order."
Spock bottled his anger up rather than put it aside and out of mind. He felt it hardening him, stiffening his movements, his face. He turned, lay back, stared unmoving at the overhead. Another scanner was brought out and used on his leg.
"Bone's bruised, you know," the CMO cheerfully said.
"I am aware, sir."
"Must smart." He reached over Spock's head to adjust the monitor, stood back to watch the dials.
The doctor asked for a kit and one of the nurses brought a tray. The CMO put on gloves, unsealed Spock's pant leg from the cuff.
"Get a gel pac, cool only, not cold, see if we can limit the remaining damage."
A pack was pressed to Spock's leg bringing body shuddering relief despite Spock's already blocking the pain, or believing he did.
"What's your name, Cadet?"
"Spock, sir."
"I'm Doctor M'Benga. You have some rather odd readings."
"I am sure I do, sir."
M'Benga crossed his arms. "The question is, are you in very bad shape and masking it, or are you that unusual."
"I am that unusual, sir."
M'Benga stepped closer. "Maybe I should surgically remove that chip from your shoulder. Do you a favor."
Spock didn't reply and was rewarded after thirty seconds with the doctor stepping away to check on his other patient.
Spock remained as he was for eighteen minutes. He was allowed his padd to do his readings as long as he promised not to move.
M'Benga returned, held out his hand. "Give me that." He set the padd aside. "Looks like two hours of healing trance will clear this up."
"I have class in fifty one minutes, sir. I cannot be absent."
"I'll log you as under treatment. It will be fine. You can watch the recording later, in 3D even. You won't miss a thing."
Spock sat up on his elbows. "You are ordering me to remain, sir?"
M'Benga seemed amused. "Yes, I am. There is no logical reason for you to go around injured." He requested a neuro stim from the nurse, held it up. "See? I'm ready when you come out of it. Trance, Cadet. You seem strangely unfamiliar with the concept of orders."
Spock rested back on the examination table. "I have never missed Propulsion. Commander Absom is brutally critical when anyone does. I am trying to follow orders."
"I have priority, Cadet, over all other command lines. When I want it, that is. It will be fine." He checked the dials again, brows lowering. He sounded lost in the readings when he said, "Initiate a trance. I'll be here."