Free Fatal Boarding by E. R. Mason Page A

aren’t tugs. They’re
light-weights, thin-skinned. I’m not sure there is structural
integrity enough to attach bumpers much less push a large mass
object. And, you know better than I, Electra wasn’t designed to be
pushed. Tugs would use tractor beams to distribute the stress
evenly. We’ll have to either find some structure in the right place
or reinforce somehow. It’ll take hours. We'd have to depressurize
the high bay and then put men in spacesuits out there to bring out
the reinforcement gear, and guide the scouts in. The pilots would
have to sit in their pressurized cockpits the whole time the EVA
guys were setting up."
    "Look Carl, you get the engineering teams
together and tell them they get one more shot at making their
systems work. Then we try something else. We're not going to keep
bringing the teams up to the line and then not snapping the ball.
You work the engineering end, I'll see if I can find out anything
else useful from the Emissary. Meet me in my office at 21:00."
    Grey shook his head as he exited through the
door. Tolson turned to me with a touch of worry in his eye,
something not often seen.
    "Adrian, There is another possibility the
Captain and I have been discussing. It's why your here."
    "I am dying to help, Commander."
    Tolson exhaled deeply and rubbed one hand
across his mouth. He straightened up and tugged at the bottom of
his uniform jacket to clear the wrinkles. "How would you feel about
taking another look inside that ship out there?"
    "Really?"
    “It’s not a done deal, but it needs to be in
our back pocket. The doctor wants some of that organic material
pretty bad, but that wouldn’t be the primary mission.”
    “I can’t wait to hear what that would
be.”
    “It would be their power systems. We would
want them all shut down. It would be a search and secure mission.
If we must remain here longer than planned, we’d like to know that
ship is inert, completely dead.”
    “I understand that part.”
    “Think about whom you’d like to have along
on that kind of EVA, and what you’d want to bring with you, if you
know what I mean. Work it all out yourself quietly, and if this
gets stepped up to the next level, I’ll give you plenty of
warning.”
    “I have one question.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Who’s the Emissary?”
    “That’s a need-to-know basis. You don’t need
to know.”
     
     

Chapter 9
     
     
    There are cunning little tricks that
experienced captains sometimes play on their crews. With help from
the rumor mill, they will, on occasion, allow trite problems to be
exaggerated into monumental ones. A simple pressure leak in a
plasma conduit, for example, can easily grow into impending doom.
Throughout the escalating ordeal, the captain will make himself
appear only casually concerned, even indifferent, to the ongoing
crisis. And when all around him have reached a point that they are
teetering on the brink of hysteria, he will coolly instruct a
mechanic to go to the proper junction point and tighten the loose
coupling, thus miraculously implementing a solution to the near
disaster. In this way, a ship's crew can come to believe that no
matter how bad it gets, if the captain is cool, things probably are
not all that bad.
    I had just seen our Captain, not so cool. It
set off little alarms in my head. The Adrian Tarn rule-number-four
of self preservation had come streaming out of the mental ticker
tape machine. 'When conditions conducive to mortal danger first
become apparent, do not wait to see if they will go away.' It was
time to string the tin cans around base camp and listen for
anything that might set them clanging. And, it was time to learn
everything there was to know about the enemy. Most of my evening
was spent going over everything we had, and reviewing which SWAT
members were best suited for this particular unknown. By morning, I
had a good idea of the type of EVA that would need to be set
up.
    I squeezed the communications button on my
watch and spoke