Iron & Blood: Book Two of The Expansion Wars Trilogy by Joshua Dalzelle

Author:Joshua Dalzelle [Dalzelle, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-01-25T07:00:00+00:00

Interstellar space was a terrifying place, Celesta concluded. There was the nothingness of the void between the planets, but the gaps between the stars was truly humbling. The Icarus had been forced out of warp by a variance in the forward distortion ring that the computers couldn’t correct while the drive was running. Her Chief Engineer, Commander Graham, had quickly isolated the problem and assured her it would be quickly corrected. It didn’t make her feel any less queasy about sitting powerless in deep space.

The Darshik ship had done more damage than previously thought with its glancing blow, and once they’d been in warp flight for the better part of three days the issue began to make itself known. The power cable that was spooled out to feed the port, forward emitter had taken damage, not from the plasma lance itself, but from bits of the hardened alloy of the ship’s structure that were blown inward by the hit. The cable assembly had been inspected, but the damage had been undetectable until the drive powered up. The cable was damaged just enough that it caused interference with the drive’s control system.

The Icarus carried four spare warp drive emitter power cables so it wasn’t a catastrophic failure, just a time-consuming one. First the emitter had to be fully retracted, the hatch closed and the chamber pressurized, something it normally wasn’t. Then crews would climb in and dig out the old cable and detach it from the emitter/arm assembly. Once the new cable was installed Engineering would redeploy the emitter and then begin the forty-three-hour process of testing and calibrating the entire drive. Since the new cable would have a different impedance, no matter how miniscule, it required the full calibration so the new numbers could be entered into the drive controller tables.

To add insult to injury, when Celesta had ordered another of their point-to-point com drones launched to make sure someone at CENTCOM was aware of their position in deep space they found even more damage. The launch bay had been hit and the metal that had been broken loose inside had damaged the launcher for the nine drones she had left. They still had all their standard com drones, but they would be of no use in their current position.

“What update do we have from Engineering?” she asked for the tenth time since coming on watch four hours prior.

“They just finished the extension and retraction operational test, ma’am,” Accari said. “The emitter/arm assembly cycled ten times without any binding or problems. Engineering is preparing to power up the drive and begin the calibration. Commander Barrett says they may have it done in twenty-eight hours if all goes well.”

“Commander Barrett?” Celesta asked, just then noticing that her XO was absent.

“Yes, ma’am,” Accari said. “He’s been coordinating the efforts down in Engineering so that Commander Graham can be with his crews in the forward port warp emitter bay.”

“I see,” she said. She didn’t say so, but Barrett being down in Engineering was likely slowing them down more than helping.

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