Beyond Sol

Chapter 6F

Garbage littered the craft here and there, especially in the quarters. The tricky malware in AETHER's processing core had proved to be one hell of a pain in the ass. The tidal waves below had gone through seven cycles in the past ten months, just about everyone on the ship ready to descend into ever living hell, AETHER the only thing keeping them from the whole program ending. Something that would get Mike's and Scott's asses kicked for. The Aeson's had multiple attacks over the 
Warp drive textbooks littered my desk and floor, but only one had captured my interest. ENGAGEMENT CORE WARP DRIVES.
The whole point was having the core running, but not engaged. It was something we were told not to try, because we could apparently "end up in a whole new place."
Yeah well guess what?
The whole goal was communication. Have the warp drive running, but not enough to warp the whole ship. Warping actively would be a bad, bad idea. It would absolutely destroy our core, leaving us in our Solar System, but dead. And—we'd also leave a nice trail for any unsuspecting Aeson ship on patrol to follow.
I flipped and skimmed through the pages of the textbook once more, before holding down a vertical radio control panel mounted on the wall. It connected to Muhammed quarters. "Fellow dickhead, it's time."
"Shit. I'll notify the others." Muhammed sighed, sneezing. I spun my chair around, wheeling myself to the wooden closest which say just behind my desk and I. The bed in the corner of the L shaped room neatly folded. I pulled open the sliding doors, a small capsule, around a metre tall, maybe a quarter wide, packed with small communication and tracking devices.
A wire at the end extended out, most of the closet taken up by the hundred metre long rolled up cord. The whole thing weighing around three hundred pounds. I stood up from the soft fabric chair. The door beeped and unlocked like a hotel room, Muhammed standing dully. Amelia slammed her door behind her. "I need help here." I wedged my arms underneath the heavy device.
"Help him up!" Muhammed grunted, forcing it up.
"AETHER, halt Ring 1's movement." Eliza sighed, walking out of her quarters just a room down the hall. The massive brake pads screeched, the metal device getting lighter and lighter every second. James floated out of his quarters.
"Why are we cancelling out our spin? You know how long it took me to perfect it!" He sighed in frustration.
"You never had to perfect it, you just had to make it liveable." Amelia pulled the device out of the closet, turning it and such to fit it through. "Just sorta push it through the door until it fits."
"Well isn't that obvious?" I watched the cord unwire as Muhammed, James, and Eliza floating it through the Cafeteria, positioned just outside of the Quarters. Three on each side of the ring, mine at the end connecting them all.
"I'll go prime the launcher with them." Amelia gripped the desk, pushing herself out the door, the other three rotating the device vertical to push down the ladder tube, Muhammed above it pushing it down, almost hidden by the curvature of the ring.
"Fuck!"  Muhammed shouted distantly. Later on I found out the device hit a ladder step, which bounced it into Muhammed's head. Yeah, that's something he would do isn't it?
"Right." I floated through the doorway, a stray white glass plate with last nights leftovers, spaghetti, floated in the cafeteria, I pushed off one of the quarters to the plate, pushing it back down to the circular table, before following Amelia down the ladder tube. I stopped about halfway down, three small circular windows on the sides of the pipe—except for where the ladder was positioned.
KLMA-3B sparkled with glimmer, ring two spinning elegantly. The lines and locks between the four segments of the ring in which it was assembled sparkling with shine. "I never should of been selected for this mission." I pushed myself off the ladder, catching myself on the last ladder step, swinging myself into the main hull. A red plastic cup floating, as well with a ping pong ball.
I pushed myself faster and faster to the engineering bay. I wasn't looking ahead, mesmerised by the puzzling patterns of wires and such below the catwalk. You can imagine how that went, lets just say my head is in a lot of pain. I am not writing this with an ice pack on my head, at all. Okay?!
I slipped into the bay, the four mounting the device on a custom mount that had been 3D printed just a few days ago. "Pop quiz, what are we doing with this?" I sighed, inspecting the CCC.
"Core containment chamber is gonna be breached, the two rocket motors on the device are gonna fire when it's breached, and the outburst of energy is hopefully enough to send it back to Sol I guess?" James locked down the mount on the floor."
"Mmm. Our fuel plant is only able to produce fuel so fast to provide sufficient energy for it—which means practically the whole ship will be knocked out for hours, including the heat and oxygen generators, which means we're gonna be requiring exoskeletons, expected." I double checked the locks around the mount and device.
"What's the catch?" Amelia crossed her arms.
"It's gonna temporarily sent out an EMP, not for long, around thirty seconds." I coughed into my arm, finishing my checks.
"I can survive thirty seconds in space," James sighed.
"He's right, Carter. We can survive thirty seconds."  Eliza clamped down a lock on the device.
"You're both right, we can survive thirty seconds in a vacuum. But you can't stay conscious for over fifteen. It'll get cold, very, very fast, it'll go dead silent, your ears will pop, the liquid on your eyes will boil, as so your blood. Any air you try to hold in will be ripped out violently, for a full fifteen seconds. On top of those issues, critical systems will fail, roughly forty five seconds after the EMP will you regain consciousness," I said, clearly scaring the ever living shit out of them. Their happy faces turned into terrified ones pretty quick.
"Right ... .the hold down clamps are secured, the CCC is ready for breach." Eliza finished with the last clamp, pushing the end of the hundred metre cord into a separate clamp from the mount.
"Grab the exo's from the ISRO airlock." I turned around, floating to the door, and eventually to the bridge.