One Day on Mars

2:20 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

"Look at that, Daddy!" Deanna pointed up at the sky at the falling fireball while she sat comfortably in her father's lap. She was so tired of her e-suit and wanted out of it horribly bad, but at least she was with her daddy. Alexander was tired too and had to rest for a few moments. The work of finding wounded was slow and tedious. Moore decided to take a few minutes for himself and his family and then he would rejoin the AEMs and Joanie Hassed in their relief efforts. But to this point, they had found only two survivors and those two were so severely wounded they might not survive if they didn't get real medical attention soon.

"What the hell?" Flight Gunner Third Class Sammy Jo Tapscott was startled by the scene when she looked up from inflating the environment dome. "Vulcan, you want me to check squawk?"

"My AIC is on it, gunner. You and Yo-yo and Pac just keep working on that shelter," Lieutenant Junior Grade Seri "Vulcan" Cobbs, Angel One of the search-and-rescue squad, replied. They couldn't evac to anywhere right now, so she decided to assemble a staging area with two inflatable environment chambers. "Sounds like it's a Seppy rust bucket and the U.S.S. Margaret Thatcher," she said.

I'm getting the same information, Senator. The link through BIL is working fine still.

Thanks, Abigail. Senator Moore looked over at the big metal beast that was sitting beside the two boxy-shaped SH-102 Starhawks near the edge of the Olympus Mons base escarpment.

Any idea when long-range coms will be back up? Even though they had managed to override the Seppy software spoof on sensors and local coms, the long-range jam had not been stopped yet. Long-range communications still depended on line-of-site, Internet, or QM router-to-router connections.

I think the battle is still taking precedent right now, Senator.

Just keep us posted.

Of course, sir.

"Well, it looks like it is going to come down right on top of the main dome. My God, all those people," Reyez Jones said. He had put up tents before on overnight safaris across the inhospitable planet and was pretty useful in that regard. He was helping the SARs team with the staging area shelter. One dome was already inflated and the airseam in place. They needed to move the wounded into it soon.

"Tell me you're getting this, Calvin," the MNN reporter Gail Fehrer asked her cameraman. For her and her cameraman this day had just been getting better and better. She had to get this footage on air as soon as she could. She could just smell Pulitzer.

"You're getting this, Calvin," Calvin replied.

"Nobody likes a smartass, Calvin." Gail punched his arm. "Can you zoom in and get a better look at it? And let us see it."

"Hold on." Calvin had his AIC negotiate with the e-suit visors displays and then had the data QM wirelessed to them. "Look on channel three."

"All hands, this is the captain. If you are still with us, you have fought well and it has been my honor. Brace for impact! Shit . . . " Squawked over the engine room 1MC intercom of the U.S.S. Margaret Thatcher where Engine Technician Command Master Chief Petty Officer William H. Edwards was feverishly rerouting coolant flow loops from all over the ship to keep the engines. Bill had actually been the chief of the boat for more than a year now and was the senior CMC on board the Thatcher, but when the CO gave the abandon ship order he knew that someone had to stay in the engine room and keep the ship flying to the last second. He wasn't about to let any of his junior enlisted men and women do that. After all, CMC Edwards had started the Navy in the engine room. Learning the ins and outs of the propulsion system of the supercarrier had been the only thing that kept him from committing suicide when his wife of twenty-one years had died of rejuvenation cancer, and it was fitting that since he started his career in an engine room that that is where he would end it instead of up on the bridge with the officers. He had always been uneasy up there anyway, though not because of the officers. The CO and the XO and the other command crew were the best, absolute best, but it was too damned clean up there. Bill liked the dirty hard work of keeping the boat running, and the orange heavy coveralls with grip pads in the knees and elbows and grimy smudges across his face fit him much more than the clean and pressed uniforms of the bridge crew. Down below was where he belonged.

CMC Edwards really did know the supercarrier engine room like the back of his hand. He had spent his first tour as a fireman's apprentice on the Mandela, a deployment as an HT2 on the Washington, and then there was that horrible time on land while he was in school, but at least he had been studying about the propellant drive system for the Navy supercarriers. He left the tech school as engine tech first class, ET1, and then went back to the supercarriers, where he stayed. He had done a stint on the Washington and for two weeks he had been a visitor on the Churchill, learning about some engine upgrades the newest boat in the fleet had implemented.

His last boat assignment change had been more than seven years ago and it stuck. Bill was transferred to the Thatcher, where he had continued to stay on, learning everything he could about the engine room and what made the giant spaceship function, and more specifically, what was unique about this spaceship. All the spaceships, supercarriers, had little nuances about them that were different and Bill knew all of the Thatcher's. Even after he had been sent up above to the command crews, he kept up with his teams down below.

Then his wife got sick and he took all the leave he could until she died. He considered the Reserve so he could stay with his wife longer, but she was strong-willed and wouldn't allow him to do that. They had had twenty-two wonderful years together and they were both happy for that time. Then she lost the fight against the one cancer that resisted the rejuvenation treatments that had beaten basically every other terminal or chronic illness known to man. Bill had thought several times of ending things then but never could take the final step because there was always the nagging thought in the back of his mind that there was something on the Thatcher that wasn't battened down just right or that some punk fireman's apprentice was about to royally fuck up his beloved boat. So he stuck with the engine room, his only other true love. It had taken the CO and the previous COB months to convince him to take the CMC Program, but finally, reluctantly, he did and then his engine room was down below and out of reach. Oh, he could wander through it and inspect it and visit it anytime he wanted, but he couldn't get down there and get "intimate" with it.

Well, now he could. He was there with his true love and was absolutely going to keep her running until his last breath. The flow loops for the coolant were leaking like a sieve since major chunks of the ship had been completely destroyed by the enemy missiles. Liquid metal and other fluids on the port and aft sides of the ship were spewing vital coolant out into space. CMC Edwards had a DTM virtual sphere around him that displayed the entire boat coolants and electronics that were connected in any form or fashion to the propulsion plant. He had locked down leak after leak and rerouted the flow loops through systems that were still intact or at least partially intact to the point that the flow could be routed around the leaks or missing sections of conduit.

Bill ran from panel to panel throwing breakers that the software couldn't trip because of a malfunction or a missing circuit. A couple of times he even had to use a crowbar or a BFW to close a gap across high-voltage power couplings.

Mimi, how long to impact? he asked his AIC

Twenty second,s Bill! You need to strap in, she replied.

I've got to keep the propulsion systems on line!

Bill, strap in, please!

Remind me at five!

A missile impact or secondary explosion or whatever the fuck it was caused a short within one of the power generators that in turn caused a voltage source to have a path of zero impedance for current to flow through. Since Ohm's law means that the current through a wire is equal to the voltage of the source across that wire divided by the resistive impedance of that wire and the voltage source was a large finite value and the impedance of the short-circuit within the power generator was approaching zero, there was a problem. A finite voltage divided by zero resistance is equal to infinite current. So the power coupling conduit through that part of the engine room from that power generator had a spike of infinite current through it for a millisecond. A millisecond is how long it had taken for the power cables to melt, explosively. It also threw the oversized breaker and blew it into a million pieces. He would have to close that open switch somehow, probably a crowbar or BFW, once he got the cables replaced.

"This is gonna be a rough ride! Everybody strap in for impact now!" the captain squawked over the 1MC. The CO sounded nervous. But she could see what was about to happen and Bill couldn't. It was about that time that the propulsion system went offline, lost power, and was overheated to boot. Then shit got really bad.

Five seconds, Bill! his AIC screamed in his mind.

"Shit!" Bill made a mad dash for the nearest station and pulled the chair restraints over his shoulders. Just as the safety belt harness went click he was slammed forward hard into the restraints. He kept his arms crossed and held the restraint straps with both hands and cursed with every breath. Even though Bill was being shaken like a rag doll in his chair he managed to pay at least some attention to the DTM virtual sphere ship health monitor. Red highlights started appearing all over the virtual image of the ship in his mind, most of them on the forward decks of the ship. Sounds rang out with horrendous screeches of metal against metal and odd natural frequencies vibrated throughout the engineering room. The safety chair Bill was strapped into had reached a harmonic vibration and was singing like a crystal wineglass. For what seemed like an eternity, the engine technician command master chief was shaken and rattled and vibrated until his teeth hummed, but otherwise the engine room inertial dampening fields had done their jobs and protected him. Finally the ship came to a stop and normal gravity returned to the room. The jolts and the jarring were gone. So were the main propulsion units.

Bill quickly unstrapped himself and checked back on the power generator that he was about to fix. There was a blown superconducting inductance coil bank that was used to store the power from the vacuum fluctuation energy collectors. Without the storage coils there wouldn't be enough power storage to bring up the main propulsion plant. Bill raced through potential solutions in his mind. He needed to replace that coil, but the goddamned thing weighed more than four hundred kilograms.

I can't replace the goddamned coil, Mimi. It's too fucking heavy. Any suggestions?

Yes. Don't move it if it is too heavy.

That might work but I'd need a shitload of high-power-rated conduit. Where is there enough for that? Bill flipped through manifests of materials and parts in the stores but didn't see what he needed.

You're right. The only cable rated for that type of transfer is in the DEGs and it would take too long to get to them and scrounge it.

That's it! Fucking Christ! That's it. The DEGs. We'll use them.

I just said that we don't have the cable to get from there to here. The nearest junction to the DEG power cables are two bulkheads port and one deck up.

Then we won't use the damned cables. Get the DEG with the closest junction up and running and storing power and map for me the best way to get to it given the present damage to the ship.

Roger that, COB.

Bill grabbed the nearest adjustable powered BFW and went to work pulling the bolts out on the panel to the power unit for the propulsion plant. He took the bottom four bolts out first and then the top two. The metal cover for the power-generation unit was more than two centimeters thick and it didn't fall off on its own. The metal was so thick that it stood in place and was too heavy for Bill to push loose with his hands. Bill looked around for the crowbar that he had been considering to use on the blown power-coupling switch across the room and found where it had ended up after the collision with the Seppy rust bucket.

"Come on, you son-of-mother!" CMC Edwards pried the bar in a good leverage spot and pulled at it with all his might. The plate finally broke free from the box where some dumbass had applied the wrong lubricating sealant around the edges where the cover was attached. The lubricant had reacted with the metal, rusting it together. If he survived the crash he'd have to tear some fireman's apprentice a new asshole for letting that thing rust together like that. The plate made a sucking sound from the rest of the box and then fell heavy to the deck with a loud metal to metal clang. Bill jumped out of the way to keep from getting his toes cut off.

DEG unit is stored full and functioning normal, CMC!

Right.

Bill looked where the power conduit entered into the back outside of the power unit and then followed them to find where the coupler lock nuts of the two five-centimeter-diameter cables were on the inside side of the box. He grabbed a spanner and spun the lock ring nuts off. The giant nuts fell to the deck of the box with a heavy kathunk.

Bill made his way over the cables and gridwork to the other side of the box and pulled the two cables loose. One of them was red and one was black. He tugged and threaded them through nooks and crannies, underneath equipment racks, through knocked out holes in some of the power room metal Faraday cage gridwork, and finally over the main tool box where the two wires went into the wall leading into the propellantless propulsion system.

He dragged the cables just a few meters more to two flow conduits. Bill double-checked the drawings in his mind to make certain they were the right two conduits. One was marked as an outflow coolant pipe and the one beside it was a return coolant pipe, both of which went off behind him to the liquid metal reservoir cooling system in the aft end of the engine room. The pipes went the other direction to the port side DEG cooling loop. Bill suspected that the captain had no desire to fire the dead DEGs so they wouldn't be needing their coolant pipes. He took the red cable and wrapped it around the outflow as many times as he could bend the giant flex cable and then tucked the cable under the last two wraps. Then he repeated the process by wrapping the black cable around the inflow pipe.

"Shit . . . where is that damned . . . ah, there it is." He grabbed the directed energy hand welder and the goggles from one of the tool box cabinets and rushed back to spark the cables hard-welded to the pipes. He had to cut a notch out of the the two-centimeter ceramic insulation with the handheld metal saw first before he could weld the cables to the conduit in both cases. "That's got this end!"

I understand what you are doing now, CMC! I think it might work. We need to flush the pipes into space first so they don't explode on us. And, Bill, we have to hurry!

Good, hadn't thought of that. Do it.

Edwards grabbed the spot welder, a metal saw, a torch cutter, a crowbar, and a BFW just in case. You never knew when you might need to beat something with a big fucking wrench. Then he fumbled with the tools, trying not to drop them as he ran out the door and up the ladder. He rushed as best he could without dropping the tools up the deck and over two bulkheads. The ship was deserted and deep within it there was little damage other than an occasional spewing liquid from a burst flow pipe or sparks flying from the end of a broken electrical cable. But the deck he was on was in pretty good shape. It had taken Bill at least thirty seconds to get there and he was huffing and puffing every breath.

Shit, I've got to get more PT.

Here it is, CMC! Mimi told him.

Got it. Bill pulled the engineer's access panel from the bulkhead with the crowbar and stepped through the hatch, tracing two five-centimeter-diameter red and black cables into the wall from the DEG power generator.

Hey, you got this thing open circuited right? I don't want to get fried before I get a chance to crash into the surface of Mars at thousands of kilometers per hour.

The switch between the DEG and the DEG power source is open, yes CMC, Mimi acknowledged.

Bill grabbed the little metal saw and spun up the blade at the same time he slipped on safety glasses. The metal saw blade sliced effortlessly through the two high-voltage power cables.

"That is much fucking quicker than a goddamned spanner!" he muttered to himself.

Then Bill dragged the heavy cables to the edge of the engineer's hatch where the coolant conduits ran through the room about ten centimeters off the deck. He had had to step over them to get into the room. He wrapped the two pipes with the cables in the appropriate configuration—red cable to outflow, black to inflow. He sure as shit didn't want to cross the power couplings now. He ran the metal saw across the insulation on the pipes a couple of times and then he switched goggles and fired up the torch, quickly welding the cables in place.

He stepped back through the engineer's hatch into the hallway and went quickly through his process and the steps he had taken to get the dirty repair job done. He hadn't forgotten anything, he didn't think.

Throw the switch to the DEG power unit, Mimi.

Got it, CMC. There was a clicking sound he could hear through the wall but nothing else happened. He looked at the DTM virtual information and could tell that no power was getting to the propulsion systems.

"Fuck! That should have goddamned fucking worked!" Bill kicked the bulkhead three times and then regained his composure. And he and Mimi remembered the problem at the same time.

The open switch back in the Engine Room! they thought simultaneously.

Bill dropped everything but the crowbar and the BFW and ran as fast as he could back by two bulkheads and down a deck to the engine room. He was completely exhausted and out of time and his one-armed paper hanger act was in severe need of an understudy, especially if there was going to be an encore. He finally got to the point where he was standing in front of the blown-out high-voltage breaker.

The switch had originally been about ten centimeters long and several wide and thick, but when the power spike had hit it the switch was completely vaporized, leaving a hole in the switch panel with two large cables with charred frayed ends protruding from spanner lock rings on each side of the box. Bill held the crowbar and the BFW together in both hands. If he used one of them they might melt, if he used both as conductors to bridge the gap then the two should be able to withstand the current flow. Hell, Bill had used just a crowbar before but why take chances if you didn't have to.

Here goes nothing, he thought to Mimi, and with an underhand pitch tossed the two metal tools into the box between the broken cable ends.

The BFW and the crowbar made a slow arc into the cable box and as soon as the BFW got to within four centimeters or so of the cable ends a high-voltage arc jumped out across the air to it and immediately and explosively welded the BFW to the cables, completing the circuit. The explosive weld flashed the room with a bright white-hot burst of light and Bill quickly and reflexively shielded his eyes. The crowbar on the other hand . . .

The crowbar was fractions of a second behind the BFW and the explosive force of the BFW being grabbed and welded to the circuit vaporized parts of the metal box and air around it explosively and never allowed the crowbar to make an electrical connection. Instead, the explosive gases ejected the crowbar out of the box pointed end-first right through the engine technician command master chief's left shoulder, knocking him off balance. The crowbar impaled him just below the collarbone and came out his back.

Bill pulled himself up to his feet and looked down at the metal bar protruding out of the orange coveralls and from his body. There was a lot less blood and even pain than he would have expected. Then he started to pull it out. One slight tug at the bar gave him other ideas about that.

"Oh fuckin' Jesus goddamned fuckin' Christ!" he screamed in pain.

Leave it there, Bill. Pulling at it will make you bleed worse.

Fuck that. Bill grabbed at the crowbar and gave it a yank. He promptly passed out and fell out on the floor. The bloody crowbar clanged to the deck beside him.