Astronomicon: Behemoth

Chapter 59 - Count Down

"Walter has worked out that we have around nine days to find a way to redeploy the Arcadian back into space."

Megan had called the more senior crew members together in the control room to discuss their new situation. Aron, Walter and Santiago were sitting in the seats surrounding the command chair. Ekono was leaning against one of the poles above the ladder hatch.

"That could be a serious problem if we fail that," Ekono replied.

"The big problem could be our velocity when we get there," added Aron.

"What do you mean?" asked Megan.

"If this vessel drops us off at, or below, our velocity when we were captured, we're probably fine," Aron explained. "If it's travelling faster, then we won't be able to slow down enough when we reach the Proxima system."

"Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that it will stop when it reaches the destination?" asked Santiago.

"There's no such thing as stopped in space," Aron replied. "You can match the speed and course of another body, become stopped relative to something else, but you're always going to be moving relative to the rest of space."

"Walter, work out how much velocity leeway we have," Megan ordered.

"With the acceleration this vessel maintains, it could easily be travelling at a velocity relative to Proxima Centauri that we cannot recover from."

"At least we'd be free," replied Santiago.

"While we're inside this vessel, we have gravity, air, benign temperatures and probable food sources. Once we're out in space, we have our ship's supplies and that's it. If we miss Proxima, we'll starve to death.

"Do you want to stay here?" snapped Santiago.

"No way," Aron chuckled. "But we should consider assigning every resource we have to finding a way to launch the Arcadian from this hangar and working out how fast we'll be going when we launch."

"And we don't have much time left to do that," replied Megan.

"We have no reason to assume this vessel will release us automatically," added Aron.

"So, we have nine days to repack all our equipment, open the hangar's exterior airlock and find some way to get the Arcadian back out into space," she said.

"And we do not know how it brought us inside in the first place," said Ekono.

"True. It would help if we knew where this gravity comes from," said Aron. "If we could get rid of that, Arcadian could manoeuvre using just the attitude thrusters and push herself out through the hangar outer doors."

"If this alien vessel arrives back where it captured us, doing the speed we were when that happened, as you suggest, will our attitude thrusters even work at that speed?" asked Santiago sternly.

"Speed won't make any difference. Our velocity relative to the alien vessel will be zero. A few gentle nudges will push us clear. Then all we need to do is spin the Arcadian around and re-engage the ion drives."

"And we still don't know why those aren't functioning," Walter added.

"One thing at a time," said Megan. "We've got ourselves turned around. Next job is to work out how the external airlock opens. We must find the controls. And now we're working with a time-limit, I'm going to extend the gel-eating trial and defrost more people."

"Is that wise, Commander?" Santiago asked.

"Which, more people or eating gel?"

"The gel. We don't yet have any idea if there are any long-term effects associ..."

"You've done every test at our disposal, Santiago. No-one's been ill and everyone who's tried it seems to love the stuff. The alternative would be to drop one of our remaining supply pods and I don't want to do that when we're potentially so close to getting out of here."

"We're going to need those supplies when we arrive in the Proxima system," said Aron. "There's vital equipment in all four of them."

"You can keep monitoring everyone who's eating gel, Santiago," Megan added.

"Okay, Commander." He nodded, clearly unhappy.

"Good," she smiled. "Now, before anything else, you can help me choose another six crew members to defrost."

"Six?!" said Santiago, his eyes wide in surprise.

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