Astronomicon: Behemoth

Chapter 11 - Transport, Space and Security

"I've called you all together to work out a plan for the next few days," Megan announced to the group around her.

All five members of the Arcadian's crew that were currently defrosted had gathered mostly in the seats around her in the Communal/Briefing room. Walter was the only one still standing.

"We should start by exploring more of this place," said Aron.

"I intend to," replied Megan, "But there're a few things we need in place before we can safely do that."

"Such as?" asked Santiago.

"We need a bigger crew available," Megan replied. "I've started two defrosting already, but we're probably going to need more than that."

"This is going to eat into our food reserves, Commander," Walter pointed out.

"Yes," she replied, "And that brings me onto my next point. It's almost impossible to plan anything when we don't know how long we're going to be here."

"The only door we've found from this chamber we're in, is far too small for the Arcadian to pass through," said Aron. "Until we find out how the ship got in here, any escape plan is just guesswork."

"So, we need to find any other doors or hatches into this chamber as soon as possible?"

"I reckon there's going to be a very large hatch in the ceiling," replied Aron. "Finding it is only the very first part of solving the problem. Once we know where it is and how big it is, then we must open it and work out if we can fly out through it."

"If it is a large hatch in the ceiling, and we can find some way to open it, can we just fire up the engines and launch through it?"

"Probably not," chuckled Aron. "We're on about eighty percent gravity here. That's too much for the ship to launch against. We also don't know, yet, why the ion drives shut down in the first place."

"So we can't get away?" asked Meera.

"Something put us in here," said Aron. "I would guess that that something could put us back where we were."

"With the same velocity as before?" asked Walter.

"Who knows, but even if it adds years onto our flight that's not insurmountable."

"Getting whatever put us here to put us back is also going to require exploring the rest of this structure," said Megan. "Walter, how is our oxygen supply going?"

"More than ninety percent reserves remaining, Commander, but with more people awake, it's going to get used up faster."

"We can extract oxygen from the atmosphere around the ship," Aron suggested. "We've got enough kit and power to liquefy the air and construct a small fractional distiller. It shouldn't be too hard to rig something up so I can recharge the O2 bottles faster than we're using them up."

"Okay, that gives us targets to aim for. Aron, get something ready to recharge our oxygen reserves and then help Walter establish what's wrong with the ion drives. The next problem is food."

"We've got a lot of food in the supply modules," suggested Aron.

"I don't want to touch those," replied Megan. "That would be a last resort. Aron, is it possible to open a nose cone on one of the fuel tanks and get to some of the ground buggies?"

"With the tank still in situ?"

"Yes," she replied, "Can we do that?"

"Not without cutting it off. The cone section is bolted from the inside of the tank, and the tank has fuel in it."