Beyond The Frontier (United Star Systems Book 2) by J. Malcolm Patrick

Author:J. Malcolm Patrick [Patrick, J. Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2017-10-10T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19 – That Looks Painful

“Pretty sure I felt that hit from the bridge” – Aaron Rayne

Engineering

Phoenix

Aaron stared at a visual feed of the damage in the starboard section.

Where there was once a hull, now opened to space twelve meters in diameter. The surrounding compartments were a mess. Bent and broken bulkheads, scatterings of debris, smashed internal components. That was the hardest hit section.

The sudden image of a giant, wild, indestructible elephant rampaging through the ship formed in his mind.

The residual damage scorched and hammered the adjacent sections. One of which housed a power matrix that controlled the flow of power to starboard ship systems. A jagged piece of bulkhead painfully wedged inside the main assembly.

Max stood next to Aaron.

“That looks painful,” he said.

Aaron gritted his teeth. “Pretty sure I felt that hit from the bridge.”

Aaron and Max were in engineering. Flaps and Lee remained on the bridge. The rest deployed throughout the ship, visually inspecting damaged sections the computer highlighted.

Garrett—as chipper as ever—listed his repair schedule like he was ticking off a grocery list. “—then half a day to clear this section. Meanwhile the fabricators are printing a new unit. That’ll be ready in a day. Another half-day to install the system.”

Fabricators were just a fancy name for twenty-fifth century 3D printers. All industrial manufacturing was carried out by these large machines. The fledgling technology in the twenty-first century used to print pieces of everything from cars to planes and marine vessels. If the raw materials were available, it could be printed. All Fleet ships carried a finite number of resources to build replacement parts, railgun munitions and generally any piece of Fleet equipment.

Phoenix also carried twelve mk-82 repair drones. These heavy-duty drones carried out external repairs along the hull. After the nanites re-sealed and reformed the damage surfaces to a point the mk-82s took over.

Each ship also carried a set of mining drones. If a ship didn’t have the raw materials to create spare parts or whole components, the drones could mine the necessary materials, and the fabricators would process it. The entire engineering deck was devoted to processing and manufacturing.

For larger parts, the fabricators would build them in smaller components, and the repair drones would take them outside the ship. From there the nanites and the repair drones would work in tandem.

Garrett tapped his personnel device as he continued. “All four starboard point defense batteries are wrecked. Some completely blown off. It will take the repair nanites a week to bring the hull to a state of readiness in those areas to receive new batteries. Then we’ve still got this breach here,” he nodded toward the image on the monitor, “and several other spots to shore up.” Garrett looked like he wanted to say more.

Aaron felt deflated. Starships didn’t carry spare point defense batteries. The fabricators could assemble them with the raw material they had aboard, but it would take days. Days they didn’t have. Garrett was still looking at him, like he wasn’t done with the bad news yet.

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