Tiger: The Far Frontier by Smith David

Author:Smith, David [Smith, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: David P Smith
Published: 2014-10-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The changes were palpable. For the first time in ages, the crew had a purpose, and Dave could feel the frustration of the last few weeks fade, to be replaced by tension, anxiety, but most of all determination.

Speed was of the essence, but the 9.1 light-year trip would take much longer than it had for the faster probes. Even when pressed, Romanov wouldn’t let them take Tiger above Warp 7. She was concerned that stressing the ships systems might lead to a cascade failure of the recently repaired power relays. In the worst case, this could immobilise the ship deep in alien space with no hope of rescue and only a limited chance of repairing the damage themselves.

At that speed, the trip would take nearly ten days, but at least that gave them more time to work on the ships other systems and prepare the away team thoroughly.

Dave spent much of the transit time on the shuttle deck and in the maintenance shop below it. Stavros had managed to get the warp drive shuttle operational, but the rest of the fleet were in a poor state of repair. The last race between Stavros and Crash had ended with some ridiculously high-gee maneuvers, and a metallurgical survey of those two shuttles suggested that neither could be safely returned to service. Another shuttle had already been cannibalised to provide structural components for her sisters, and the other two shuttles were in a questionable state.

Hawking, the shuttle they’d flown down to Hole had expired when PO Starr had loaded it to the gunnels with food for the party. It was potentially repairable, but had more faults than Stavros could remember. The remaining shuttle, Fermi, was theoretically serviceable, but even Stavros seemed to distrust it.

“I’m not convinced she’ll hold together when we hit atmosphere” he admitted.

In desperation, they even examined Chief Money’s private cargo shuttle. Bigger than the Starfleet shuttles, she had the disadvantage of being built to alien standards with alien equipment. They didn’t have a clue if it would even work.

In the end, Dave had to make a decision.

“Ok Stavros, get to work on shuttle Fermi. If you still don’t have confidence in her, then we’ll give Chief Money’s alien shuttle a test run when we get there.”

“No progress with the transporters yet sir?”

“Have you noticed an improvement in the menu at the galley?”

“No sir”

“Well, that’s your answer then.”

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Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara hand-picked her part of the away team. With only one shuttle likely to be available, spaces were limited to eight, plus a pilot and co-pilot.

They needed at least one medic, two security personnel and Dave had reluctantly agreed that Lieutenant-Commander Grosvenor should go along as the only person trained in first contact procedures.

Dave desperately wanted to go himself, but conceded that it was more important for the science specialists to go and gave up his seat to make room for another specialist.

Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara was equally eager to go, but her own specialist skills weren’t as valuable as some of her subordinates, and reluctantly she gave way for a better qualified person.

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