Phillips - Stowaways

STOWAWAYS

Matt Phillips

Copyright 2019 Matt Phillips.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author s imagination.

ISBN-13: 9781671471092

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019919812

Printed by Amazon POD, in the United States of America.

First printing, 2019.

10401 Windsor View Dr

Potomac, MD 20854

www.campdaddymd.com/stowaways

This book is dedicated to my three indomitable sons, Dylan, Ethan, and Noah. Always reach for the stars!

And to my wife, Grace, who has kept me grounded through lifes journey.

And finally, to my father, the first writer I ever knew.

Asteroids

D aniel braced for impact but it was too late. He flew, headlong into one of the computer consoles, crashing into it with a smack. Someone else crashed into him from behind and they both collapsed onto the floor. For a moment, the only sound was the buffeting of the spacecraft as it absorbed asteroid after asteroid.

Then the alarms began.

Daniel craned his neck to see the displays around the room. There were flashing red alarms on three-dimensional displays hovering at every work station around the spaceship's small bridge. He quickly wrestled himself out from underneath the other stunned crew member, glancing at her only long enough to make sure she was alive.

"Status report!" Daniel nearly shouted as he got to his feet. The ship shook again but this time Daniel held tight to his chair, and pulled himself into it, fastening the harness across his front.

"Good news, bad news, Captain," Leandro said quickly. A three-dimensional display of their ship rotated above Leandro's console. "We managed to miss the largest asteroid by twelve meters but over a dozen of the smaller ones have impacted our port side. We have lost all propulsion."

"The hull has been breached on decks five and six, port side. All personnel are accounted for at their emergency stations," another crewman said, his voice thick with worry.

"The damage has been contained. But primary life support has failed," another crew member, a girl Daniel remembered from school, shouted over the increasing din of alarm bells and sirens. "Secondary life support systems are stable."

"Deploy damage control probes," Daniel ordered. The damage was significant -- far worse than anything they had experienced in training. The one thing he needed was the one thing he could not have: time to think.

"The probes are deployed, Captain."

Daniel watched the three-dimensional star schooner image rotate in front of him. The ship was three colors: red, where the most serious damage had occurred, yellow, where the damage was more moderate, and green, where damage was minimal. There was an awful lot of red -- too much. They had to get their ship to a repair facility fast.

"How far to the nearest space station?" he asked.

"Cherokee Station is seven minutes away," the ship's navigator said seconds later. An image of a large, oddly shaped, space station appeared above Daniel's console, replacing the image of the damaged ship.

"Adjust course for Cherokee Station," Daniel decided immediately.

"Control thrusters are off-line," Leandro said. "We cannot maneuver."

"That eliminates Cherokee Station," Daniel said swiping at the image. It disappeared and the ship's damage status reappeared. "Reset the control thrusters!"

"You don't think I tried that? Twice...no response," Leandro said with just a hint of anger. He did not need Daniel doing his job.

Daniel let the attitude slide. They had been friends since the third grade and this was not the time to argue. "Well, we can't dock anywhere if we can't maneuver."

"I know that!"

"Okay, send a damage control drone out to survey propulsion and thrusters," Daniel said trying to display the leadership that he knew had been the reason he was selected for this particular job. "Navigator, I need emergency landing options."

"Yes, sir," the navigator answered. He looked down at his console searching the solar system for landing spots.

"Drone images coming in now," Leandro said.

All eyes looked at the main display at the front of the ship's bridge. The images were anything but good news. Their star schooner was powered by two large main engines. Half of one engine was missing entirely. The engine that remained was smashed beyond recognition.

"That's not good," Daniel said quietly. Then, trying to be more commanding, he said: "Don't worry about the mains, we just need to know if the maneuvering thrusters are intact."

The live video feed from the drones stayed on the screen. In a dizzying flurry, the unmanned surveyor drone spun, flew, and dipped until it was repositioned elsewhere along the damaged star schooner.

"Secondary life support is down to seventy-five percent," a much older man reported. Daniel looked directly at the man who had made the report. His name was Harry. Daniel somehow knew that, even though he did not recognize the man.

I must have hit my head on that console , Daniel said to himself.

He turned back to the image as the drone focused on the maneuvering thrusters.

"Rear maneuvering thrusters all look to be intact," Harry said. The drone buzzed around again and then stopped, hovering in front of the damaged ship. The images beamed onto the star schooner's large screen made the damage look even worse than the blinking red, yellow, and green image above Daniel's console.

"The forward thrusters appear fine as well," Harry said ignoring the other damage.

"Then why aren't the thrusters responding to the controls?" Leandro asked.

"The problem appears to be at the primary relay box," Harry reported. With all that was happening around them, Harry's demeanor was unshaken, as if he was completely unaffected by the emergency. Daniel admired that about him.

The video feed coming from the drone changed again. This time, the drone moved slowly along the hull until it stopped near a dark gray box. It was clear that the box had been hit by something, whether an asteroid or some other debris, Daniel could not be sure. It didn't really matter, he concluded. The box was barely attached to the ship and looked like it would break off at any moment.

"That doesn't look good," Leandro said.

"Can we reroute the maneuver controls through a different relay?" Daniel asked.

"The alternate relay boxes were even more badly damaged," Harry reported.

"So... What? We just tumble out into deep space and wait to be rescued?" Leandro said annoyed.

"I think it's worse than that," the navigator said. With a flick of his wrist, he moved the navigation chart from his console to the main screen. "The collisions from the asteroids knocked us way off course. In about two hours we will impact the sun!"

"Are you sure?" Daniel rose from his seat to stare at the chart.

"Technically, we will burn up long before we ever impact the sun," Harry corrected. "At our current course and speed we will be caught in the sun's gravity in one hour, 37 minutes, and 28 seconds. At that point we will be too close to the sun to break free -- even if we had our main engines. After that, it will take several more minutes before we begin to melt."

"Melt?" Leandro asked.

"I am not about to melt," Daniel said defiantly. "Options, Nav?"

"There is an unmanned mining station on Callisto that can dock a ship of this size," the ships navigator sent an image of Saturn's third moon to Daniel. "If we can get maneuvering thrusters online, I think we can get the ship down there without the main engines."