The Outer Rim Braves Chapter 10: Temptation
Starvation is the sweetener of forbidden fruit
Isaac pushed through the agony radiating from his chest to finally reach the reactor bay. The entrance led to a double-wide catwalk spanning the length of the area and overlooked the core bank. Out of breath, with beads of sweat pouring down his face, he descended the winding staircase to the control room. The intercom relayed an automatic alert message from the monitoring station indicating something was critically wrong with the core.
Inside the station, he hawked his space suit on the visitor’s chair and sat in the monitoring pit. Within, multiple displays showed every angle of the reactor bank in the center. Wrapped around the chair were arrays of hard switches for everything from controlling how much power came from the core and what amount went to what part of the lifeboat, to shutting down and even jettisoning the core. Isaac pulled the lockout key for the jettison sequence from the panel and put it in his desk, in fear of getting too punchy and destroying their only source of power.
As he looked over the data on a small screen embedded beneath the camera monitors, it was clear that core health dropped beneath safe limits. Usually, the bank held four cores which would balance out each other’s reactivity. When one needed maintenance, the reactivity of the others would be out of balance, which prompted removal from the bank. This was done by a team of specialists. But the lifeboat had only one core and Isaac was no maintenance expert. His focus was in power delivery. So, through a combination of load balancing where power went on the lifeboat, and carefully timed touchups on the core, Isaac somehow managed to keep it running this long. But time was up.
By Isaac’s calculations, the core had a few hours, maybe a day if they were lucky, until it went extinct. And then the battery banks could hold them over for another few days. Then the ship would stop making oxygen and frost over. Thinking back to the new-found core, it would take him at least a day to clean that thing up enough to get it ready to connect to the rest of the ship.
Isaac held his head in his hands and massaged his temple to relieve stress, thinking about how much work it would be to even trim down such an unkempt mess. He closed his eyes and as soon as his lid sank, the image of the mysterious reactor woman’s face etched into the darkness. In shock, he sat up straight and gasped.
Reaching over to the phone, he unhooked it and dialed over to the docking bay. He needed to figure out what it would take to get the core unloaded and into the reactor bay as fast as possible.
It took many rings before someone picked up. “Go for landing crew.”
“This is reactor control, connect me with the pilot who just ran E-47.” Isaac wasted no time with his response.
The line went silent after a click indicating Isaac was put on hold. Each second he waited increased his blood pressure. The question wasn’t if the current active cell would die, but when. Watching the slow trickle of text print out across the data monitor, the core’s vitals creeped downward, then slowly recovered, but not as high as it was prior. This oscillation continued with the same rhythm of a man on his death bed breathing his last dying gasps. Isaac clenched his teeth and tried in desperation to maintain composure while he waited for the docking crew to get him off hold.
An audible snap on the line indicated the landing crew came back on the phone. “Yeah, ah, he’s not available right now.”
“Why.” Isaac demanded through gritted teeth.
“Look,” the crewmember spoke with a hushed tone. “There was an incident with the logistics crew. Lieutenant Garod is bringing the core to you himself as we speak.”
Isaac’s demeanor eased, hearing the pilot was on the way with the cargo. “…incident?”
“He’s almost to the bulkhead now. We have medical responders enroute; I have to go.” The dockworker spoke with a demoralized tone and hung up on Isaac.
Confused and nervous, Isaac eased the phone back onto the hook. As soon as the two prongs clicked down, it started ringing. He snatched up the receiver. “Reactor control.”
“I’m at the bulkhead.” Gerod, the MEU pilot shouted. “Get this damn thing off my deck. Now.” Fury blasted through the phone’s speaker.
The landing deck shared a bulkhead gateway which allowed moving material between the docking bay and the reactor bank. Isaac pivoted in his chair and looked up at the bulkhead monitor. Near a heavy lifter, Gerod stood hanging by his arm on the nearby phone box. Upon the three-pronged grip on the front of the tracked hauler rested the new reactor core. Visual artifacts danced across the monitor, caused by the stray power shed.
After wincing from the yelling, Isaac recovered. He reached over to a long metal key with many teeth spiraling toward the grip, which hung from a wire next to the monitor and inserted it into a box next to the phone hook. “Go for unlock sequence.”
Gerod punched the keys on the box and tones rang in Isaac’s ear. After confirming the sequence on a seven segment display next to the inserted key, Isaac turned it.
"Bulkhead opening." An automated voice called out, echoing in both the docking and reactor bays.
The tracked hauler creeped into the reactor bay. As soon as it broke the threshold, Isaac felt the rush of power fill the space like oxygen repressurizing the area. Its strength dazed him, bringing tears to his eyes from the electrifying sensation washing over him.
As the hauler drew closer to the reactor banks, the monitoring station ignited with output warnings, sending the active core into a wild fit of power surges. With frantic swipes at the switch array, Isaac struggled to keep a steady flow of power moving throughout the lifeboat. He turned knobs and flipped switches, desperately diverting power in order to prevent the ship from being overloaded. The data readings fluctuated between borderline extinct to factors of ten times extra output in the blink of an eye.
Unable to keep up, Isaac surrendered and decoupled the bank from the ship’s electrical system, leaving the lifeboat to run exclusively on its battery backup. Out of breath, and arms shaking from the frantic rush to prevent damage to the ship’s wiring and components, Isaac flipped the switch to squelch the warning tones blaring at him, defeated.
Looking up at the monitors, he noticed the hauler stopping short of the core mount and Gerod bailing from the halted machine, making a break back the way he came on foot. Isaac stood up, rushed out onto the floor and shouted towards him.
“Hey! Where are you going? Don’t you need to take the mover with you?”
Gerod slowed to a jog. “Keep it. That thing killed two of the deck crew. It’s your problem now.” Then he returned to his sprint, running for his life back to the landing deck.
Isaac slid a palm down his face in distress. He regretted not getting hauler certified. Running over to the mover, he jumped into the open pit controls. It didn’t seem too hard, a couple of levers near his left leg, a few near his right leg, and a display on the roll cage support next to his head indicating the status of the hauler.
Unsure of which lever to move, he grabbed the first one he found and pushed. Gears grinded. He released it, acknowledging that was the wrong one. Picking another at random, the motor began to whir, but nothing else happened. After some experimentation and plenty of gears grinded, he managed to shuffle the machine forward enough to lower the core into the bank’s retainer and lock it into place.
Then using an overhead winch and the lift as a fulcrum, he managed to shift the maintenance entryway from the old core over to the new. It was a rectangular rounded metal tube that served as both an airlock and a means to ascend to the core while it was still in the retainer, which was several times higher than Isaac was tall.
After shuffling the hauler back enough to keep it out of the way, he powered it down. He would worry about returning it later, when the reactor situation was sorted. Sparing no time, driven by the panic from the current reactor status, Isaac rushed over to the maintenance booth not far from the core entryway.
Within were multiple orange protective suits. They covered the body from head to toe, with a small window to see and a respirator to breathe. After donning one and sealing it with the wrist-mounted controls, he tipped a wheelbarrow back from leaning against the wall and into it, piled all the tools he’d need to get the core in a decently respectable state. He took the chainsaw, that was certainly going to come in handy, some manual clippers, an axe in case the chainsaw ran out of juice, a spade, and a hoe.
Piling his tools into the wheelbarrow, he struggled with all his weight to push it into motion. But once he got going, Isaac burst into a sprint, rushing across the reactor deck. At full speed he shoved the wheelbarrow over the entryway lip and up the ramp.
Losing momentum, Isaac shook as he struggled against the slowing wheelbarrow, which continued to resist his push. Panting, sweating, and coughing as the respirator fought his desperately needed inhales, Isaac inched up the incline until finally he made it to the landing.
The first doorway was already open and thankfully the door controls were drawing power from the core, so he didn’t have to manually crank the damn airlock open. Stopping to catch his breath, Isaac stared through the glass of the next set of double doors at the soupy mire on the other side. His plan was simple, work from the doors and in a clockwise motion around the outer perimeter. He’d deal with the higher regions that looked even worse, hoping that as he fixed the lower perimeter, the upper sections would descend and make it easy for him.
Finally catching his breath, he positioned the wheelbarrow in front of the airlock door and then pressed the toggle. Behind him, the entryway double doors sealed shut. Then the ones ahead of him opened, letting out a hiss as the atmosphere within the airlock balanced with the interior of the core.
As the doors parted, he lifted the wheelbarrow and readied to push inside. But as the partition made way, he stopped, and his jaw dropped in shock and anguish. Inside the core was a large sprawling meadow with rolling hills. A single great oak sprouted and reached all the way to almost the top of the glass barrier, its leaves colored in gradation from red at the very top to yellow in the middle, and a deep, vibrant green at the bottom.
A slight breeze blew across the ankle-high grass which danced and swayed. Isaac stepped into the core and looked around in nervous amazement. There was nothing to fix here. It was perfectly kept, as if a team of ace maintainers just came through.
Isaac placed the wheelbarrow down and paced slowly, dismayed. If there was no need for upkeep on this place, then this was the natural state of the core. He hung his head in defeat. It was going to take so much more, and there was a good chance this thing couldn’t be hooked up to the lifeboat. It had way too much juice. Which was something he should have expected, considering it came off a massive Gen 1 battleship.
Before he could feel too sorry for himself, Isaac spotted movement in his periphery. Snapping his head up, there was someone lingering around the tree. His heart raced and he snatched up the spade from the wheelbarrow and readied to attack as he inched toward the tree.
“Who’s there?” Isaac’s voice was a mix of terror and anger, praying it wasn’t an Alucar drone that somehow stowed away.
Closing in on the tree trunk, he paused and looked around, seeing if the stranger somehow flanked him. But only the sweeping meadow filled his surroundings. Closing his eyes for a moment to steel himself, he readied to swing his digging implement at anything that might be on the other side of the tree.
With a single bound, he leaped up and over an exposed root, then found himself in clear view of the other side of the oak. There was no one. He was alone.
Still suspicious, Isaac did several laps around the tree, trying to find any sign of the stowaway to no avail. Perhaps he was exhausted, hungry, stressed, or any number of other things that would make him hallucinate.
Out of breath, he stopped and despite it being against regulation, he sat down and leaned against the tree, having spent all his energy and needing a moment to recompose himself. As he leaned his head against the trunk and stared up at the vibrant leaves on broad branches, he spotted a small dangling object not far from his head. On one of the branches, a red object wagged in the breeze. The tree was sprouting fruit.
Isaac sat in bewilderment at the sight. He’d never seen a reactor do such a thing before. And there was certainly nothing in the manual about reactor core fruit. In a few moments, not far from his face, a lush, plump, juicy red apple grew and dangled from the branch overhead.
Curiosity got the better of him and he struggled to his feet to get a better look. With two small green leaves on the branch from which it hung, the fruit shimmered in the overhead golden glow of the reactor, through the sparse canopy.
Isaac’s stomach growled and temptation gripped him. As he reached for the apple, the mark on his chest grew warm and before he touched the fruit, the mark began to radiate heat.