Beyond Sol

Chapter 14

I ran my hand along a rusting pipe. I furrowed my brow. "How fast?" Muhammed asked. "I'd give it what? 12 years at best. For all we know when we arrive at KLMA-3E the bridge could snap off and we'd be sucked out into oblivion."
"So I'm gonna take that as not long."
"Definitely not." I sighed.
The Spectrum was tarnishing faster than expected, every once in a while we'd be woken in the night to some of our oxygen supply being sprayed into space. Or an engine failure, hydraulic failure etc. "All crew to the bridge." I heard Amelia say. "Off to the bridge!" Muhammed shouted a bit excitedly. And I, in complete opposite sighed.  We sort of did a little jog to the bridge, walking in.
"Several near objects, not Bowsers." James said as I sat down. "Figure out what they are, then we can do an evaluation on what to do. If anyone dies today it's your fault." I say as I scan over the several hundreds of flips and switches.
"Okay, Master." James mocked, a quick middle finger behind as I continued scanning over.
"Asteroids." Eliza said, wiping her sweat. The temperature of the Spectrum (At Least the parts we inhabit of it) were raised to give some sense of home and to further prevent us going insane. But who's to say we haven't already, no one.
"What's the probability one could hit us?"
"Small, nothing should happen." She said with a small concerned tone hidden in her voice.
"You sound concerned-" I was interrupted by a blaring alarm. "CHANGE COURSE, CHANGE COURSE." The word MALFUNCTION lit up on every screen as a deafening blow of air shot past us, "LOCKING DOWN RING ONE." AETHER screamed, the shooting air pausing, but we were blown into an uncontrollable spin. The centrifugal force slammed us in our seats, the escaping air angled itself to start spinning the Spectrum rapidly, putting the hull under extreme stress. It creaked and groaned under the force of about nine g's.
"Hpp" I say, attempting to say "Help." I was barely able to crane my neck over to see the other also barely able to breathe. Distant glass shattering was barely able to be heard. Ring two. We were restricted from almost all of the ring until we reached Alpha Centauri. It contains all of the lab materials and the lab itself. So understandably NASA said no insane astronauts in a very fragile lab. "Anninude brubers." I said. Attitude Thrusters. AETHER was able to pick up the message and burned the RCS, attempting to steady the ship. A handle bar flew across the room, smashing James in the head, Shit. A loud smash echoed throughout the spinning ship. I painfully tilted my head to the screens above with the cameras, Uranium Oxide shooting out into space, speeding up the spin. The Attitude thrusters was only spinning the Spectrum up faster. The painful shock of air shot past our ears again, "LOCKING DOWN HANGAR." AETHER called. The atmospheric pressure was down to 0.637 atmospheres, if it drops below 0.47 then the Spectrum turns into a drifting wreckage with 5 corpses. I leaned my head opposite of the spin to make a (very bad) attempt to stay awake under the force. The Spectrum's hull was twisting and bending inwards. Blood splattered on the floor. My vision became slowly blurry, blacking out shortly afterwards.

"Watch that asteroid Elson." Scott says.
"Mhm-"
"What the fuck just happened!?!" Mike yells out as the screens blared as it showed the model spinning rapidly. "Damage control!" Scott shot to Walton Boon
"Spectrum took a hit to ring one! Escaping air blew it into a nine g spin. Attitude thrusters are attempting to right themselves." Walton shot back.
"Hull is bending! Ring one and the Hangar are locked down completely, holding 0.637 atmospheric pressures!" Elson said.
"Attude thrusters aren't helping!" Mike exclaimed.
"No one within two kilometres of the fleet until the Spectrum is stable. Shutting down the Attitude burners." Scott said as he lowered a small lever down to "ZERO."
"I'll attempt contact," Walton said.
"Don't, they're well blacked out." Mike responded. A devastating thought creeped into Scotts mind. One that could sabotage the mission. "Mike, how many objects could easily break inside the lab?" Elson asked.
"You're not thinking-" He said.
"Oh shit."

I awoke to a much lower gravity than before, but I was still pressed into my seat. About three g's. A third of what we were feeling before. I was able to reach my hand forward to the stick and slam it to the right. I looked up to the cameras to see thousands of small bits and pieces of the hull flying into the vastness of space. The pressure on the barometer read "0.53"
I craned my neck to the side to Muhammed grunting. "What the hell?" He muttered tiredly. "I don't know-" A low pressure alarm sounded. "0.5" It read. We unbuckled the restraints and sort of floated up. The spin had been reduced to 0.3 G's. "What's up with the low pressure?" Amelia asked as she awoke. James was gone, presumably in the med bay courtesy of AETHER.
"Breach in ring one and the hangar. And there's another one somewhere but it's too small for AETHER to pick up." I said as the three of us half floated out. "Carter, do you have a match?" Muhammed asked. "Yeah, why?" I tossed over a box of matches to him.
"I can find where the breach is."
He lit one and observed the smoke. "Smart ass." Amelia said as we followed the small smoke trail through the long hallways of the Spectrum. The smoke eventually lead out a small hole. It was right in the middle of the cryosleep module. "Okay uh-" We grabbed three oxygen masks of the ceiling. We equipped them and started patching the hole.
We had welded a sheet of metal across the hole, which I mind you was only around a centimetre in diameter. "AETHER What's the rate of depressurization?" Muhammed called out
"Rate has decreased to: Zero percent atmospheric pressure lost."
Eliza floated in. "What the fuck happened?" She asked as she equipped an oxygen mask. "As far as we know? Impact to ring one and the hangar. They're both locked down but they're also in a vacuum. And the escaping air blew us into a nine g spin. Our pressure is holding at 0.48 percent. So don't take the mask off." Muhammed said.
"Okay, what's our reserve tanks at?" She asked.
"Enough to fill the Spectrum with the pressure of four atmospheres. So with our current atmospheric pressure and minus ring one and the hangar we could stretch it to 5.5 worths of pressure." Amelia said.
"We're eventually gonna fill the hangar and ring one again so call it 5 to be safe, start filling her."
"Okay then."
Eliza swiped a button on her watch and the hissing of air was audible, the barometer slowly going up. "0.6 atmospheres." Amelia said.
"0.7" Muhammed responded shortly after.
"Okay you're good for the masks," I say as I slip the strap off my head and take a deep breath.
"I want you guys to do a damage assessment. Muhammed we're venturing outside."
"Why me?"
"Because you suck at damage control and assessment."
"Fair enough."
"Kay we can do that." The other two rushed off.
We were in the airlock, just waiting. We had to wait for a few hours to remove any nitrogen bubbles. A light turned green with a long beep. "Here we go," the outer airlock door slid open, a pitch black nothingness awaited. A few lone stars waited. We floated outwards. We gripped the handle bars. As we let go of the bars, we spun with the Spectrum. We used the JPB, (AKA The Jet Propulsion Backpack) to manoeuvre out selves over to ring one, which had stopped rotating as of now. We floated down into the breach, which was right in the cafeteria.
There were tables, chairs flipped over and even a bed in the middle of the room. The door to the main hull was covered with sheets of titanium and kevlar. "The gods of air clearly had some beef with this room."
"Haha, funny Muhammed." I say sarcastically.
Me and Muhammed recovered pieces of the broken up asteroid. It was pretty large but the initial impact broke its speed and crumpled it. The hole in the Spectrum was about three metres in diameter.
We bagged the samples and sealed them in a large pocket we had. We lightly jumped upwards and caught ourselves on a half broken handle bar to break our speed. As the Spectrum was still rotating very slightly we couldnt just float outwards.
I laid the massive sheet of metal down and we began welding it on. "You good?" Muhammed asked.
"Just fine." I respond. We finish welding it down in place and give the call. "You're good to pressurise ring one. We're heading down to the hangar bay now. If you could cancel the spin completely that'd be great. Also don't start rotating any of the rings until we're inside." I call
"Got it." Amelia says. We float down to the hangar, giving a great view of the Spectrum. The two rings shimmering in the- What would we call the light from KLMA-3? Y'know what. K-light it is. The rings shimmered against the K-light reflecting off back into our eyes. We slide into the hangar, the hard light broken. Okay not too much damage here. The catapults held the jets in place pretty good, no impact on them either. I don't see any samples, weird- Oh. There's an exit hole. Stupid Carter. It went through both hard lights which means they just need a restart. Hey! Absolutely no damage to anything in here! That's wonderful.
"Muhammed we can probably just reboot the hard light and we can enter from here again. Miracle nothing really happened here."
"Okay!" He exclaimed.
I went over to the panel and selected "EMERGENCY" and from there I selected "EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN AND REBOOT"
"Okay it should do a reboot."

We waited for about 15 minutes before the hard light flickered to life. "Hey!" I said excitedly.
"Eliza pressurise the hangar." I call as air leaks in. The barometer on my suit rises. And once it's above 0.5 atmospheres we start unsuiting. "Two hours 19 minutes, record time." Muhammed calls. The kevlar and titanium sheets rise from the door, swinging open. We stored the suits inside the small EVA locker on the wall and wandered inside.
"Everything went well?"
"Yep. Seals are good I assume?"
"Indeed."
"Good good. Now we need to contact NASA, quick."

"Okay it looks like Carter and Muhammed went on an EVA and sealed the breaches." Scott said.
"Good. How's the spin?" Mike asked.
"Completely cancelled out. From our data the joystick was slammed to the right right after consciousness from Carter was detected, so a flight or fight instinct happened there. The pressure also dropped to 0.48 atmospheres at its lowest which means the Beyond Sol program almost ended with the impact."
"Why, at what pressure would the crew die?"
"0.47."
"Oh so it was really close."
"Yeah."
"Have you reconsidered Project Aurora?" Scott asked.
"A bit. You'd have to do some more convincing to get me fully onboard. Scott you really have to consider the cost to build all 389 ships. Plus all the warp drives. You also have to account for the fuel, food, water, distance covered. If we put out a request to the government they're probably gonna give us the order to shut the Beyond Sol program and laugh in our faces."Mike said.
"I know but we have to try and save the crew. I dont know how we would do it or why but when the Poseidon three launched over a decade ago there were over 4 billion people watching. Four billion people. Four billion people watched on shitty tv's and to the clouds to see the supposed 7 saviours of humanity. Four billion people watched the long trail of the Spectrum illuminating the clouds. Hell. A few bases on the moon depleted 12 oxygen tanks to blow the fucking thing back into into space. Triton colonies did everything that was in their power to get them on a fucking new Spectrum and send it off to Triton where it got rifted 600 light years away and are committing genocide just to stay alive. Everything we've done to keep these guys alive has cost 528 billion dollars. Billion."
"I dont know, I might look into it some more. No guarantees. And if we do do it, I better be seeing some Aurora on the way out