Free Fatal Boarding by E. R. Mason

the position was taken. I weaved my way as inconspicuously
as possible through the busy traffic and stood beside him. He
nodded a brief greeting and turned his attention back to the
monitors. At the back of the room, on the raised Command Platform,
Grey, Tolson and Jump Director Terry Osterly were huddled together
in a discussion. Tolson looked up for a moment and caught my eye,
his only acknowledgement that I had arrived.
    I scanned the range safety monitors. There
was not much to see. The printouts on the screens had stopped
during an Initiation Subsystems Test of the main engines. The
displays read ‘Auto Termination, step 10056789-1003, 400 No Gos,
000 SE-Data No Gos’.
    Grey's voice broke in over the net speakers,
barely audible over the room noise. "Cap to MECO, did we, or did we
not pass this initiation test only thirty minutes ago?"
    "MECO, that's affirmative, sir."
    "And you're certain the test had the same
checksum?"
    "Sir, inspection has the header printout in
their hand right now."
    "So, from All-Go, to four hundred No-Gos, in
thirty minutes with no changes?"
    "That's the way we read it, Captain."
    Grey moved out from behind the director’s
console and came up to the protective waist-high barrier at the
edge of the platform. He looked out over the bridge and rested his
hands on the railing. He pushed his headset microphone away from
his face and spoke so loudly it wasn't needed. "Alright everyone,
quiet please... I said quiet!"
    The crowd noise stopped abruptly. Everyone
stared up at him and waited.
    "Alright, this is what we're going to do.
We're going to secure the main engines and come back to them later.
Then we're going to use maneuvering thrusters to back us at least a
kilometer away from that piece of junk out there. We're going to
bring her around to the jump heading and go to station keeping.
We're going to do that right now! Does anyone not understand?"
    Stunned silence. People began scooting back
to their stations. Grey returned to his position behind the
director’s console.
    “Helm, please call up manual mode and input
five seconds of the aft starboard thrusters. You will execute on my
command.”
    “Five seconds of aft starboard thrusters,
Captain. Ready to engage.”
    “Execute.”
    We all watched the center display, expecting
it to swing away from the alien ship. Nothing happened.
    Captain’s Grey’s voice sounded more than
annoyed. “MECO, we see error code ast03. What happened?”
    MECO responded nervously. “That’s loss of
handshake with the thruster assembly, Captain. We’ll have to run
diagnostics to analyze it.”
    We all heard the Captain’s long exhale over
the com. “Alright then people, we shall go the other way. Helm,
input five seconds of one hundred percent to the aft port thruster.
Execute on my command.”
    “Five seconds of the aft port thrusters
ready, Captain.”
    “Execute.”
    Once again, nothing happened. This time the
Captain sounded genuinely frustrated. “MECO, we see error code
apt03. Do you concur?”
    “Yes, Captain. It’s the same failure.”
    Grey paused a moment to collect himself.
“All jump personnel, please stand down and secure the bridge while
we evaluate these error codes.”
    A nervous tone filled the bridge as people
attended to their shut down duties. Captain Grey and his staff
quietly exited. There would be no jumping this evening.
     
    I was unexpectedly called to the bridge
briefing room about an hour later. Grey and Tolson were the only
ones there. They had been debating for some time. I was entering in
the middle of it.
    “It was bad enough with the nav computer
fiasco, and now that, for Christ’s sake. We'll manufacture bumpers
and attach them to the scouts if we have to. You'd better get them
running simulations on it right now, because if we can't get
thruster control back it'll be all we've got. We'll be shootin'
from the hip, god-damn it."
    "Jean, we may not even have that."
    "What are you talking about?"
    “Those scout ships