Free COMBAT SALVAGE 2165 by A.D. Bloom Page A

That’s where their suits fused with the bulkhead in the fire. If we wanna send home what’s left of them we’re gonna have to cut away the bulkhead."  
    He glanced at Parker to see she’d turned green.
    " Quit spooking my cherries, Wambach. Get over here. If number One blew this way, towards the bow, then there should still be four, serviceable reactors in this stack. Maybe we can run ‘em from the bridge, but I want local control from here first. Get me an interface."  
    Wambach looked around the pentagonal control room at the blackened and crackled consoles. "You’re kidding, right? I mean, everything in here is melted."
    " Then whip out the cutzall and start hacking away the consoles. Data feeds under ‘em will still be good. I don’t care what you plug ‘em into. Just get me an interface with these fusion reactors. Parker will help you. She’s an ESys."  
    Tig said, "I’ve got plenty of ex-" The Chief held up her hand to stop him from talking and her eyes shifted off to the side like she was listening.
    " That was Raleigh on another channel," she said. "You and me are going to the upper decks, Mr. Meester. They found a survivor. A company officer."  

8
     
    The bridge was intact. Raleigh must have patched into their batteries because he’d got power hooked up and the lights were on. With the exception of the raised command chair in the center and all the extra consoles to run the ship’s more unique systems, it looked more like an observation deck than a command deck. The diamond-pane crystal dome over his head was stronger than the belt-iron-steel hull, but the fact that it extended all the way down to the deck made being on the bridge almost like being outside again. The ring section encircled the command deck at its center like a low, unbroken ridge and the ship’s five, reverse-engineered, alien particle stream emitters jutted up off it like stumpy towers.
    " He’s over there," Raleigh said, pointing his chin to the black exosuit slumped over the NAV console. "That there is Lieutenant Timms. He does the math."  
    " What?"  
    " You’ll see."  
    " I already told your man what happened," Timms said. His voice was quiet and flat. He had blood on the inside of his visor and when he did finally lift his head from the console and look up, his face was half covered in it.  
    Chief Horcheese took the man’s helmet in her hands and tried to get a good view inside. "Headwound."
    " It’s not…it doesn’t matter," he said. "It’s mostly a nosebleed. Minor concussion at most. I can get treated for it when we get back." Timms’ eyes shifted and when Tig followed them he saw the black exosuit near the deck on the far side of the consoles. Someone had laid the body out respectfully, but it had drifted sideways. The visor was nothing but purple-red with dark patches inside and he looked away as soon as he saw it.  
    " That’s Commander Elogin," Timms said. He opened the bridge hatch after the attack was over. He went through into the tube and Liu was about to follow him when it happened. When the reactors went nuts. He was about to go down there when the plasma hit. The hatch slammed shut and blew him back up into the dome overhead so fast I didn’t see him until he was bouncing off the deck. He’s spam now."  
    " You’re the only survivor we’ve found so far."  
    Timms nodded like he’d expected that. "This ship is built for one thing and it isn’t survivability."
    " What happened, Mr. Timms?"  
    " I don’t know. Really. I don’t know anything."  
    " You’re a lieutenant on this ship. You’re a bridge officer."  
    " I do the math."  
    " What?"  
    " For the hypermass transit calculations. I do the math. I have to pretend steer the stupid ship, too, because Staas Company only wanted three, non-union bridge officers. It's mostly auto-pilot. I’m supposed to be doing my doctorate, but they wanted Noondie Hypermass Physics specialists for this and there aren’t more than two or three