Chapter Eleven
The Stars
71 DAYS IN
During a post-breakfast lull, a sound similar to the tinkling of glass had Amanda puzzled. She lowered her tea cup, straining for the source. She knew was it was a wrong sound. The cracking. Then the ripping. Sarek's haunted expression confirmed that.
She held her breath as the thick curve of transparent aluminum in front of her frosted over with a blooming web. Then another web joined it. And another.
Sarek and Amanda dropped their tea at the same time. They were not fast enough as the shuttle impacted something on the port side, and the little world they came to know so well lost its familiar physics.
Both Amanda and Sarek flung apart, the pell-mell forces in play making it seem as if an explosion occurred between them.
Alarms in their few working systems sounded, producing a pulsing red light in the cabin. It cast strange shadows of debris against the walls - all of it still shifting, as the shuttle spun with enough strength to drive objects to the bulkheads.
Amanda cried out in exertion as she moved towards the back of the shuttle where there was less to hit her. Sarek was crab-walking to a chair, using his strength to inch along against centripetal forces. His face was glowing with colour from consoles and alarm-light. Amanda watched him for a moment. Terrified. Certain that this would be the last image she would hold in her memory. Her primal instincts had her slip under a bench and put a blanket between her and any flying items.
Fear took over.
God, it felt like an eternity in the dark. Amanda had always considered herself more spiritual than religious, but she said her prayers then to any god that would listen.
More impacts rocked the shuttle, followed by whines and shrieks of twisting metal. She tried to calm. She had accepted death before. Why was now so much more difficult?
One minute passed. The seconds counted through chattering teeth.
Two minutes.
She counted another 60 seconds out in her head where nothing struck them, trying to remember her earthquake drills as a child. Was it similar enough? Should she come out?
Another bump wiped all thought as she curled harder against herself. As if hugging her knees would save her from the vacuum of space, or the engine exploding. She didn't know how long it had been when she finally dug herself out of blankets and replicator trash. Ten minutes? Twenty?
"Sarek?" She called, the red light still pulsing slow and steady - unlike the frenzied cadence of her heart.
Sarek answered with a murmur of her name, and Amanda stumbled closer, bumbling in the intermittent light. He was slumped over the console with his hands over his neck. Several cuts were weeping green. There was a wound on his head; Amanda couldn't see it well enough through his hands, but she knew it was bad enough to matt his hair with his blood.
"Are you all right?" Amanda reached out to touch, but he moved away in a manner that appeared as if it wasn't deliberate. Very diplomatic of him. Sarek had been so careful of her feelings as of late, which was a puzzle for another time.
"Please let me see." She tried again.
"It is superficial, I assure you." He grimaced and dabbed at his injuries with the edges of his robe. "We should not be alive."
"We're still spinning…" Amanda glanced at the cockpit windows, but they were too weathered to see anything but shimmering variations of white. She was unsteady on her feet from the vertigo.
"If anything larger had hit us…" Sarek's words tapered off, as he realised the potential effect on Amanda. Them being alive was statistically startling given their previous ordeal. He did not wish for her to know how startling. "It must have been ice, or dust from a passing object. We are clear of it now."
He stood and tested his legs. Amanda was at his side, ready to help if he needed it.
"Do we have any way of seeing how much damage we took? Does the life support system have its own diagnostic?"
"It does, though I have not found a way to interface with it." Sarek crouched with a groan to open a panel near the replicator. There was no visual damage, but Amanda could smell something burning from within.
Sarek held a hand over the circuitry and concentrated - the sensitive skin of his palm searching for heat. He lowered it, satisfied nothing here was amiss before he pointed out a series of small lights on one of the modules.
Green. Green. Yellow. Green. Green. Red.
"Hmm. There may be a small hull breach."
Amanda put her head next to his to try and confirm what he knew. "Is that an error code?"
Sarek frowned, "Yes. Main power. Auxiliary power. Oxygen. Water. Replicator. Heat." He gestured to the lights in turn. "If the oxygen recycler was damaged, it would be red. It is detecting sub-optimal levels however. My hypothesis is a hull breach."
"The heating system is red… that's a problem too, right?"
"It will not be if we run out of oxygen first."
"Ha ha." Amanda elbowed him gently, appreciating his unique humour as she retreated to stand in the center of the cabin. The spin of the room still affected her balance. She tried not to think of their future months of nausea - if they had a future past today.
"Okay… I'm not seeing any obvious leak in here." Amanda opened the cargo hatch below and stuck her head down. Everything was a giant mess, but there was no hissing or movement. A waft of venting smoke settled to the floor, which gave Amanda an idea. She went to the replicator.
"Computer, one bag of flour please."
"That recipe is not available."
"Oh… right." That was dumb. They had been 'cooking' with the most basic recipes. Ordering items like baked potatoes, nachos, and veggie platters for close to raw ingredients. She hadn't found a source of flour yet. Stumped, she thought hard for an alternative.
"Powdered donuts! Computer, six powdered donuts please." Sometimes it was good to have unhealthy comfort foods.
At the sight of the powdered sugar, Sarek understood Amanda's strange behaviour. She began to smack two of the pastries together to create a cloud of white. Like a wraith, the sugar spray twisted in the air current, drifted to the cockpit window and disappeared. Sarek followed it, listening intently, though it was difficult because the alarm was still wailing in ten second intervals.
"It is the windows." He crept his hands methodically over where the sugar had last been seen. When he found a small breech he stuck paper debris against it to confirm. "If you could patch these. I will see to the heating system."
Amanda nodded, already digging through an emergency kit that they had explored weeks ago.
Repairs did not take long. The lights and sounds of their emergency subsided once they reset the system. The little shuttle was robust. The engines had taken the brunt of the damage, though they had not been using them - having been flung at their current speed. The heating system was offline due to their usual power source being a solar grid on the outside of the vessel - which was now probably as smashed as their windows. The back-up for that system was the fusion reactor, but due to the engine damage… well they were double trouble on that issue.
Amanda and Sarek bulked up their clothing for warmth and sat back down at their makeshift table to plan on how to fix the situation. This mostly consisted of Sarek staring intensely at the table while Amanda threw out ideas that she thought might work; such as melting the cockpit windows back to a transparent state with a solvent, like she had seen done on her old Jupiter 8's headlamps. They could then replicate some solar panels and place them against the glass.
Sarek waved the idea off. Most of the power from the hull panels were converted from solar radiation, not light. Therefore the panels would be shielded inside the cabin. This prompted a discussion on that topic for Amanda's education.
After several tangents, Sarek finally sighed and stood from the table. "There is no way forward that does not involve exiting the shuttle and enacting repairs on the hull. We will mount new paneling, and attempt to fix our spin. I will also need a visual on nearby star systems."
Amanda paled. "We're going out there…? Can't we make a drone to do the work for us?"
Sarek shook his head. "I do not have the engineering skills to design a drone that can do what needs to be done. We must work with what we have. Which is an emergency airlock and the couriers' suits. It is the fastest solution to our problem." He had the decency to look as if he hated the plan just as much as she did. "We need to check if the suits are in working order."
They were not.
Amanda and Sarek pulled the rolled suits out of the compartment below the staff lockers. Despite neither of them having much in the way of spacefaring knowledge, they knew the suits were not in good condition, nor stored properly. Tubing on one had suffered from compression and the other was so old that the connective pieces would shatter if they tried using it.
"Is this… plastic?" Amanda twisted a nozzle to see parts of it fracture. "I haven't seen this since I was a child. Did this guy get a loaner suit from his Grandpa?"
"This will not do." Sarek ran a careful eye over both suits. His voice was almost frustrated, so Amanda knew that things were dire.
"Well… it's not so bad really. We could replicate some of these parts, can we not?"
"It is a food replicator. There are basic components programmed in for emergencies, but I cannot make custom pieces. There is no interface."
"Well… I can do some repairs with the rest of the patch kit I used for the window. The adhesive is very good." She spread out the suits on the shelving now that most of the contents were strewn all over their shuttle. "Honestly, it's not that bad. I can get Gerry's suit operational. Leonard's… I wouldn't trust it out there."
"Mr. Broadstock was 160 centimetres tall." Sarek said robotically, as the full length of his suit was apparent on the table.
Amanda was going to ask what did that have to do with anything, until she was reminded of Sarek's height as she looked up at him for the rebuttal.
"That's not going to fit you. Not even close." The words were heavy with the realisation of what that meant.
"If we are to have any chance at survival, those panels need to be installed."
The reminder was as delicate as he could make it.
Amanda felt faint, but she wouldn't let the panic hit. She set her feelings aside and began to remove the components of the suit that would kill her as they were. "I can do it. You'll just have to tell me how to do it."
Amanda couldn't look him in the eye. She was scared that if she saw uncertainty there it would catch and she would succumb to fear.
Sarek said nothing and did what he could to assist her by starting the process of replicating the solar panels - the code for which was buried deep in the replicators base programming, requiring Sarek to look up it's BIOS.
Hours later Amanda stood below the shuttle hatch. An emergency airlock was erected around her, tethered to rings in the bulkheads of the galley. She could barely see Sarek through her visor and the synthetic mesh. She felt empty. Cold. As if everything was happening to someone else.
"Be attached to the shuttle at all times. Point your camera to the stars whenever possible." Sarek's voice was confident in her ear.
"Yes, yes." Amanda said robotically, shaking out her fingers in the ill-fitting suit. "Start the sequence."
Sarek must have recognized the wait was more torture than just getting on with it. He wasted no time starting the vacuum process. The loose walls of the emergency airlock pulled towards her as if to smother, but the anchors held, resulting in a many sided column.
Amanda's breath sounded loud against her comm system. This was the first test of her cobbled together suit. If it failed here, they would have a serious problem. She would be dead, and Sarek would freeze to death soon afterwards.
"4.9 psi and holding. Excellent work. You are clear to exit."
"Is it odd that i wished it leaked so I wouldn't have to do the next part?" Amanda battled her mounting hysteria as she stepped up and released the inner locks of the hatch.
"It is." Came the collected reply, calming her with its familiar rhythm. "You are a person that would appreciate a death in the act of saving our lives rather than a death because you do not know how to tailor a suit.
"That… is quite sweet of you to say…" Amanda managed as she fought to open the hatch. The mechanism that assisted in opening the outer portion seemed to be jammed. She had to brute force it, and it gave way with a groan and a hiss. A swirling soup of stars welcomed her on the other side.
Sarek gasped, barely audible. Amanda panicked, lingering at the door, trying to see him through the airlock. "What- what is it? Am I leaking?"
"Move. Quickly. Close the hatch behind you."
Amanda followed orders with little thought. Surprised at herself for how scared she had been. Resealing the hatch was difficult with how damaged the outer hull was. But after clearing some debris with a tug, she managed it.
"What happened?"
"The artificial gravity automatically shut off when you exited. It has resumed. Are you secure?" Sarek was back to emotionless calm.
She wasn't secure, and the fact froze her to her hand hold. She felt as if she were on a tightrope, only there would be no quick relief from hitting ground should she "fall". She would float forever. A shortened rest of her life with Sarek in her ear.
"Are you secure?" He repeated, stronger. Commanding her attention.
Shakily Amanda pulled a magnetic anchor from her kit and stuck it to the hull. She felt the vibration of the heavy thud, then clipped herself to it.
"S-secure…"
"Good. Mount the solar panels."
Amanda nodded dumbly, forgetting that Sarek could not see her. The light of far off suns streaked in a whirl around her as everything spun. The dizziness was far greater with visuals and Amanda's stomach did flips. Combined with her anxiety it was almost too much.
"Amanda. Mount the panels."
With her eyes pinched closed she drew the panels from her bag. "First panel." She pressed the metal backing to a flat stretch of hull and counted down thirty seconds. It felt like forever. She moved her hands away, glad that the panel stayed put. She tested the cold weld with a nudge before she moved onto the next panel with more confidence.
After she stuck six panels on she tested the efficiency of the energy generated, and Sarek compared his findings internally. 18% loss. Not bad. More than enough for their daily usage.
"Are you ready to correct the spin?"
Amanda did some breathing exercises, which sounded very strange over the comms. Sarek gave her time before checking in again, and this time Amanda angled herself carefully against the ship - a starting position that had a chance to kill her. "Ready. In position."
"Mag-anchor in hand?"
"Yes."
"Three. Two. One." He counted down for her benefit.
Amanda kicked off the hull, helplessly flailing backwards until her tether became taut and the angle she pushed at nudged her into an arc that wrapped around the vessel. She slapped the anchor onto the first place she contacted, and clung there while she connected a second tether to it.
Sarek heard the sound of her impact. "Where did you anchor?"
"Same spot on starboard… good I think. Might be half a meter off?"
"Excellent. Prepare for your jump."
There was more static coated panting over the comms as Amanda moved into their planned second position. This was a hard one. She needed to get the angle just right or she wouldn't have enough propellant to fix their situation.
"Just like flying a kite…" she muttered to herself as she pulled out a tank of compressed gas, then gently pushed away from the ship. She floated towards the aft thrusters, eyes closed to stop the vertigo. Her far tether reached its maximum, swinging her slowly out until the other tether caught her in-between and bounced her about. The spin eventually fixed her position to a suspended midpoint.
Amanda imagined herself as a dog walker trying to control a giant metal beast. It didn't sound half as crazy as what she actually looked like.
Out here the spin was bad. Amanda groaned and bile worked its way up her throat. She gagged, fighting the urge to vomit.
"Close your eyes. Breathe." There was a crack in Sarek's tone. Or perhaps Amanda was projecting… but she thought she could hear fear behind his coaxing.
"Sarek-" She started, but words were too much of a risk.
"Focus on the task. Nothing else."
Amanda needed to angle her propellant towards the spin. The idea was to use herself as a weight - the force of the compressed gas pushing back on the craft acting like a chute. Hopefully it would negate their spin at the cost of their speed. Yet Amanda had to suss out what way was towards the spin and the disorientation was too much.
She threw up in her suit.
It was the most dangerous thing she could have done.
Her vision was momentarily gone, as was the ability to breathe. Oddly, Amanda calmed. Her threshold for panic had reached maximum. Her fat gloved fingers of her free hand sought the tethers at her waist. She gripped tight and rotated so she was facing away from the ship. The inertia of their spin rolled her vomit away from her face and towards her visor, the surface tension of it working to keep it there. She took a wet, stinking breath, and used it to blow any floating remnants toward the main mass.
There was silence on the radio. Amanda continued to try and stabilize by blowing any debris away from her helmet ventilation ducts. Once everything jiggled where it was safe to, she allowed herself to panic.
"Oh my god. How… HOW are we still alive…?"
"Amanda?"
"Seriously." She grappled with what was left of her sanity, reigning it in by talking it out. "Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. We should be dead a hundred times over."
"I am only aware of three instances where death was probable. I admit, when factored together, it is impressive we have made it this far. I often wonder what it is about the human variable that affects the fundamental laws of mathematics so drastically."
"It has to be that we mess things up SO MUCH that we're practiced at surviving our own dumbness." With potential madness staved off, Amanda refocused on the task at hand. She angled her tank of compressed air in the direction of her spin, and slowly opened the valve of her tank.
"Perhaps that is the crux of it." Sarek said softly as Amanda felt the fruit of her labour. "Evolution thrives in entropy. Survival is a critical skill for the advancement of a species. Perhaps humanity is at that perfect point between chaos and ambition."
"You took what I said and made it sound beautiful." Amanda laughed, calming as the spin slowed. She could only feel it out with her sight still full of goo; but as the spin slowed, the force pushing her vomit against her visor lessened, and it threatened to pool into her breathing space.
"If I drown in my own sick… can you make that sound nice at my funeral?"
"The spin is almost completely neutralised. Turn off the tank and come back to the hatch."
Amanda turned off the tank and then jettisoned it with a half-hearted kick. "You dodging the question doesn't-" She couldn't finish the sentence as she needed to sputter to take a breath. Desperation had Amanda moving faster to unhook her right-side tether to crawl up the other towards the ship. Her nose and mouth were being threatened with every maneuver. Hand over hand she went, struggling for pockets of air. She only knew she was at the ship when she crashed into it.
As her shoulder throbbed, she felt around blindly for the hatch, panicking when she couldn't find it.
"Knock on the hull."
Sarek must have assumed what was going on from her panicked gurgles. She hit the hull with her fists as hard as she could and he immediately came to her aid. "Knock again to your right."
She did, choking now on her own acid. She felt her heart beating wildly and knew that panic wasn't helping her situation, but it was out of her control. She still had to get the hatch open, then into the airlock… then through the cycle…
"You are very close! The hatch is more to the right, follow your tether against the hull. You will feel it."
She did feel it. The outer hatch opened at the squeeze of her glove in the right grooves. The inner hatch required some strength, but she managed that as well. She slipped inside, pulling it closed behind her with a hiss. The artificial gravity inside pulled her down to the ground with a clatter.
Noise was all she could remember for the next part. Whooshing and hissing. Not being able to see was disorienting, but she could breathe now that gravity pulled everything away.
Sarek's hands were at her neck, unclipping seals to get her helmet away. She must have been an awful sight, but the skin of his fingers wiping over her lips, nose and eyes were welcome. She cracked an eye open to see the shape of him against the tattered remains of the emergency airlock.
"M-mission complete?" She managed to ask.
"Complete success." He said with none of the revelry she would have used. Instead he was focused on getting her gear out of the way.
"Good… good." She shifted, letting him at the clasps and zips of the rest of the suit. "I'm never doing that again."
"For all your lack of training, you were extraordinary."
Amanda smiled. His words warmed her to her core. "Dream team… right here…"
With Sarek's help she stumbled to the ship's small shower, and she took the longest sonic ever. By the time she came out, Sarek had cleaned up most of the mess. The recycler was humming at max capacity in the background. He had just started to view footage from her spacewalk, recorded on a closed loop body cam, as she approached.
A cup of tea was ready for her when she sat down next to him. She glanced at the PADD he was using to take notes and couldn't make out the many star charts he was referencing. He was tracing diagrams and measuring angles on a napkin as if he were a millennia younger.
"Did I get enough footage?"
"Yes. When you lingered to clear your helmet, you were facing directly backwards from the ship. This is Sol." He tapped a light spot on a still image that looked like nothing more than white smudge on a velvet background. "The variations in light trails let me know our new heading, and I am attempting to use some additional information to calculate our new speed and position."
It only hit Amanda just now, that even though they survived what the day had thrown at them… this was no longer a six month journey to Vulcan."
"W-what have… do you know… oh damn. Do I want to know?" Amanda sputtered as she put a hand over her face, wishing for all the world something could go right. Maybe they were 6 days from Andora? That was a possibility right?
"We are many years from any Federation system."
"And the non-Federation systems?" Amanda asked weakly, anticipating his answer.
Sarek shook his head.
"O...kay. So when you say many years…?"
"Outside of your lifetime."
Amanda forced herself to breathe slowly in, then out. "Well…fuck."
