Beyond Sol

Chapter 5E

I kept entering 7700 and 7600, alternating, into the dead transponder. "It's dead Carter, don't try it." Muhammed sighed, sitting in the seat next to mine. Although we've established this before.
"Yeah, no shit. We blew a several hundred metre long object out of the sky in one blast, we fried everything and anything onboard." And with that, the screens ahead suddenly flickered, firing up. A sudden whirr throughout the ship. The APU bleeding out air, the transponder's buttons illuminating.
I quickly entered in "7700," meaning an emergency. "Magician." Muhammed snickered.
"Thanks." AETHER chimed with a few day old popovers. More of AETHER trying to raise the EMP blockers, around a minute after we got fried. After that for the past four days was AETHER wondering why there were apparently no systems online, nobody responding, etc.
I ignore them, trying to find the EER's. The External Energy Readouts would confirm if we did have some sort of EMP, or if we had to disassemble the whole electrical system. The data slowly read out, flashing.
ENERGY SPIKE DETECTED—JANUARY 1, 1400 HOURS.
Yeah, we blew that thing right out the sky.. Better than having to rewire a hundred metre long ship with countless wiring systems. (P.S if you stretched out every single wire on the Spectrum it would be around 1.3 kilometres long, so that's nice to know.)
"Powers on!" Eliza shouted from somewhere behind in the hull.
"Quiet!" James hushed her, before the sounds of a welder fired back up again. The Spectrum's core hummed quietly against the rustling of leaves and branches waving in the thin but steady wind.
"Wanna go check out what the kids are doing?" Muhammed asked.
"Anything to escape the boredom." I bumped into Muhammed over the centre console control panel. We practically strangled eachother getting out.
Okay that might've not happened.
We angled ourselves and budged until we fit over the CCC. "Asshole." Muhammed grunted.
"Deal with it, baby." I say, following the noise of the welder. Sounds like an Arc Welder. I looked up, down, side to side of the pipes that supported the massive rings. Only centimetres of the pipe below were crushed when we crashed, which means damn, they were built good.
"The fuck do you want?" Amelia grunted before firing up her welder again. The room was hot and sweaty. The OGS components lined every wall, a small corridor in between them. The OGS airlock was wide open. Dickheads. I twisted sideways, slipping through the computers and oxygen tank compartments. I got into the small compartment that opened up to exit the OGS through the emergency airlock.
I slammed it shut, cold air blowing through. "Oh, yes! Do that again!" Eliza begged before getting flipped off.
"What are you idiots doing?" I asked, looking around at the handiwork, which I mind you was shit.
"Fixing the OGS! Like you asked!" Emma remarked, firing up the torch again, on an oxygen tank. I swiped away the welder, burning my hand in the process. I blew on it, waving it infront of me. "Dumbass."
I swiped away the gun again before she could start 'welding' again. An Arc Welder is used for connecting things. It's probably the one you're most familiar with—but it's not for randomly blowing holes in high pressure liquid oxygen tanks. Although for some reason that's one of its specialties.
"Wrong welder dick." Muhammed sighed, leaning on the doorway, the HGS compartment sitting in adjacent behind him. It's hummed oddly, because it isn't doing shit.
"Which welder do I use then? We only have Arc Welders onboard!" James sighed.
"You use a metal inert gas one. Plenty of MIG welders in storage. Poking around at a high pressure liquid oxygen tank at 2500 PSI doesn't seem like a smart idea." I say, biting my nail. The other four seemed embarrassed—or guilty. As they should be.
"Now this is something you should tell us before," Eliza remarked, standing there, welder in one hand.
"He told you guys to go check out the EWSS, not to go and try and repair the very, very delicate OGS that only me and him are equipped to handle." Muhammed sighed, furrowing his brow.
"Yeah. But we have the welders, so we're equipped with them." Amelia shot back, looking him dead in the eyes.
"Are you qualified?" I asked back.
"Uh..."
"That's what I thought. Get your asses back to the EWSS." Muhammed sighed, pushing off the doorframe, walking back to the bridge slowly, swinging his feet as he walked slowly. I slipped between the four, into the main hull, which I mind you still reeks of dirt and unfiltered piss. No seriously.
"Yeah?" He asked as I pulled up beside him.
"You okay?" We walked into the greenhouse—by now the clay baskets re-molded. Little Mazkaris sprouted up, a plant genetically engineered just for the Beyond Sol program. Grows fast, makes a whole ton of new food, doesn't need much water, or sunlight. They kind of taste like potatoes and tomatoes at the same time.
"Mhm. Why wouldn't I be?" He looked over, before entering the even more piss like bridge.
"Dunno, maybe because we crashed on a planet 636 light years away from Earth with no way to even takeoff?" I say, sitting in my seat just over the Centre Console.
"That's a good point." Muhammed said, slipping into his, hitting his foot in the process. "Damn it!" He exclaimed wincing in pain at it, hobbling around. I may or may not have laughed my ass off. He eventually made his way into the seat.
I powered on the screens, making my way into alerts. I looked in the past days logs. Nothing much except for the EMP. I scrolled and scrolled. "What are you looking for?" He asked, looking as his screen on the dash scrolled automatically.
"Nothing in particular." I scrolled until a group of nine individual warnings popped up. I opened the folder, the latest just hours ago. 'Excessive H2O Warning' it read. The only problem is—this planet is dry. Very, very dry. This crater was one of the only spots that had, well, life.
"Too much water? What does it mean too much?" Muhammed asked, squinting at the screen.
"Means if a shit ton of water is nearby, and it falls on the Spectrum, the whole thing crumples like a tin can. She was designed for low to no pressure, not high pressure. The only things on board designed for high pressure were EVU's and any gas tanks." I furrowed my brow, thinking it through.
"So our problem about not being able to takeoff just got a lot worse?"
"A lot." I read off the screen. "It's somewhere just outside the wall. And it's pressure is building against the wall." I opened a graph chart that came with the nine alerts. The first had a relatively low water pressure, the latest was enough to crumple the whole ship. Each notch on the graph resembling a warning, each one higher.
"How long until it bursts the wall?" Muhammed asked AETHER, his processing computers clearly at work here.
"Six more warnings," AETHER remarked, now going quiet again.
"That's three days we have." I said, not with any particular tone. "I can expedite out to the wall, puncture a hull. Release some water pressure and give us time. Not by much though. I can bring Emma and James." I asked, dully watching the graph chart.
"You could, you're gonna walk?" He asked back.
"Could take the rover in the bay."
"I guess. When ya leave?"
"I don't know. Hours? I just have to fetch the children and load everything up. I'm pretty sure that wall is tens of metres thick. Rovers got good torque and horsepower, good suspension, roll over anything." I fidgeted with my fingers.
"Okay. Yeah." He said, I got up and left.