LIGHTNOVELONLINE 2. Adrift
"All hands abandon ship. All hands abandon ship."
The emotionless vaguely feminine voice greeted me as I drifted back into consciousness. For a few moments I was confused and disoriented. It was almost pitch-black and the artificial gravity was offline, so I was weightless.
I found myself floating in a corridor, some dull red light came from an open hatch behind me and to the right.
Memories of what happened came back to me as I recognized I wasn't alone. There were two other bodies floating in the corridor with me. The chief engineer was still strapped to the stretcher, and I couldn't tell from where I was if he was still alive or not.
The ensign on the other hand, I knew at a glance it was too late for him. Still, I needed to do my job. I'd been trained for this, I knew what to do.
The moment I tried to move, excruciating pain shot through my left shoulder and chest. I let out a loud howl of agony, and was forced to assess my own injuries before I could tend the other two.
I didn't need a scanner to tell me my left shoulder was dislocated, and possibly broken. It hurt like hell but I used my right hand to undo the belt from my uniform, then used that to secure my left arm against my side. For once I was grateful we had all that zero-G training, I knew with the arm immobilized the lack of gravity would keep me from hurting myself too badly.
While I was in the process of getting myself oriented in the corridor, everything was momentarily lit up by a brilliant blue-white light, before it went dark again. I was left blinking as I tried to get my vision back. The light came from a small window in the engineering bulkhead. I figured it had to be the other engineers, they were probably using portable lamps to light things up while they worked on restoring power.
After another minute or so I was able to reach the wall and gave myself a very gentle push in the direction of the ensign's body.
A second later I was there, and my fear was confirmed. The young man was dead, it looked like a broken neck. It probably happened at the same time my shoulder was dislocated. Luck of the draw, I hit shoulder-first, he hit head-first.
There was nothing I could do for him, so I pushed off in the direction of my patient.
I was relieved to find the chief engineer still alive. In fact I couldn't see any indication he'd been further injured. The stretcher did its job, it kept the man secure.
"All hands abandon ship. All hands abandon ship."
The recording played again, it was on a loop or timer or something. That emotionless mechanical female voice always bothered me, but something else suddenly struck me. Normally the captain gave that order. That part of my training was more than four years ago but I was positive the automated systems wouldn't issue that order unless there was catastrophic damage to the ship.
I glanced around once more to get my bearings. I was in a stretch of corridor that was about ten meters long. There were four ways out. The forward bulkhead led to more corridor. The aft bulkhead led to engineering. On the starboard wall were doors that led to a lift, but those doors were sealed. And on the port side was an open hatch that led to a lifepod. That's where the dim red light was coming from, it was showing me how to escape. I also spotted my med-kit, floating near the ceiling of the corridor by the forward bulkhead.
There'd been a light from engineering though, and I was positive the XO had the other engineers in there working on the problem.
I gently pushed off from where I was holding the wall next to my patient, and caught hold of the aft bulkhead door. I moved myself over to the little window and looked through it, and my blood ran cold.
Aft, the port-side wall, and the ceiling were just gone. It was stars, open space, with numerous pieces of wreckage spinning in the distance. Most of the deck was intact, and to starboard much of the large engineering equipment was still present. Some of it was floating loose though, only tethered by cables or conduits.
As I stared, one of those large pieces slowly spun and revealed the ragged torn metal where it had been pulled apart. Another chunk of broken equipment drifted into it and there was a flash of blue-white light as the collision unleashed a dazzling array of sparks, and the two masses of debris started drifting apart again.
Stunned by the damage and startled by the blinding light I jerked back from the bulkhead, and ended up floating back down the length of the corridor.
A few seconds later I hit the forward bulkhead and the impact sent another wave of excruciating pain radiating from my left shoulder.
I let out another yelp, but it jarred me out of my shock. I still had a patient to look after, that meant I had a responsibility. There was a lifepod, we weren't dead yet.
While I was there I collected my med-kit and looped the strap over my right shoulder. Then I gently pushed off from the bulkhead, and carefully manoeuvred myself back down the corridor to where the stretcher was floating. Even weightless it wasn't easy. The engineer had mass and he was probably at the upper limit of what the Navy allowed for active service. Meanwhile I was towards the lower end of what was healthy for my stature. Between the man and the stretcher I was easily outweighed two to one.
I took a moment to gently toss my med-kit through the open hatch and into the lifepod. Then with my only good arm I struggled to get the stretcher lined up with the lifepod hatch. Finally I gave us a gentle push off from the wall, and we glided through the hatch into the pod.
As we passed through the small airlock, sensors in the lifepod hatch detected our identity implants and announced my patient and myself as we entered. It was the same emotionless female voice as every other automated system.
"Lieutenant Holloway, Chief Engineer."
"Junior Lieutenant Voss, Medical Technician."
There was a ping then the voice announced, "Automatic countdown initiated. Thirty seconds to launch. Please take your seats and strap in."
I cursed, "Belay that!"
Thirty seconds wasn't enough time to get the stretcher secure then strap myself in.
"Twenty five seconds to launch. Please take your seats and strap in."
With another curse I realized the engineer outranked me, so the computer assumed he was in command. The system wouldn't accept my orders. I knew there was an override but I had to find the control panel and punch it in, and there wasn't enough time.
Working as fast as I could, I manoeuvred the stretcher to one side of the pod and positioned it over the four seats there. I used the seat restraints to secure the stretcher as best I could, I could only hope it wouldn't bounce around too much. And the whole time I was working that infernal voice counted down every five seconds and I knew time was running out.
"Five seconds to launch. Please take your seats and strap in."
The lifepod hatch slid shut and sealed as I pushed off from where I left my patient. I grabbed hold of one of the seats on the other side of the pod and tried to get myself into position. It was almost impossible to get the straps in place one-handed, I just got my right arm through one of them when time ran out.
"Launch."
There was a bang followed by a massive sideways jolt that nearly knocked me out of the seat, followed by a brutal twist then an upwards jolt.
I had a vague understanding of how these pods worked. They used explosive bolts to blast free of the ship, then an automated computer-radar-nav system would get the pod clear from the wreckage and any debris as fast as it could. In the middle of combat you had weapons flying around, not to mention debris and explosions. The pod was programmed to get survivors away from the battle as fast as possible.
There was another brutal jolt and this time I was knocked loose from my seat. My head it the ceiling and once again everything went black.
• • • • •
I let out a long low groan followed by a few choice swears as I slowly regained consciousness. I was floating in the middle of the lifepod, my head was throbbing and my left shoulder ached. My mouth was dry, I was tired, and nauseous.
For a few moments I just hung there limp, and I found myself starting to mourn my own life.
All I wanted was the chance to be myself. If I'd been born on one of those core worlds, or a world with better tech and better social support, I'd have been able to transition as a kid. Hell if I'd been born right in the first place I wouldn't have needed to transition at all.
Instead I had to struggle and suffer through life as a guy. I had to sign up with the Navy because it was the only opportunity for a good education and decent pay, and a chance to get to a world with the medical tech I needed.
Now I was going to die out here, slowly and painfully. I'd die with the wrong name and the wrong body, nobody would ever know or care. I'd be one or two lines on a computer file somewhere.
There were no tears, I'd long since lost the ability to cry, but the emotions burned nonetheless.
I must have floated there ten or twelve minutes, wallowing in the sadness and grief, before a groan from my patient snapped me back to the present.
The shot I gave him earlier was probably wearing off, he'd be in pain and probably delirious. Not to mention all the shaking and rattling from the lifepod launch could have further injured him. I needed to focus on my patient, and my job.
The lifepod was lit by more of those dull red lights, it was enough for me to spot my med-kit floating in a corner.
I collected it then used my medical scanner to check on the engineer's status. The man was lucky, if you could call it that. His injuries weren't any worse, nothing else had been bumped or damaged in either the ship's destruction of the lifepod's launch. I administered another trauma shot and verified the temporary wound sealant was still in place, and he eventually settled back into unconsciousness.
Next I found the lifepod control panel, and had a look at that. I brought up the lights from that dull emergency red back to the standard day-cycle lighting, so I could see what I was doing.
According to the status panel the lifepod's emergency beacon was transmitting, and its nav system was holding us at a safe five hundred kilometre distance from the wreck. That was probably far enough to avoid any major debris, but close enough that any rescue ships coming for the Hammersmith would easily find us.
I remembered these lifepods were rated for five days of life support, and they carried water and rations for that long. We could probably stretch that a lot further, since there were only two of us and the pod was designed for eight people.
Except I doubted my patient would last that long. I might have been able to keep him alive that long in the ship's infirmary. I'd do what I could for him, but I knew in my gut the odds were he'd slip away some time in the next day or two if we weren't rescued first. Even if we were rescued, if the ship didn't have an actual doctor and a high-tech infirmary or sick bay, his chances wouldn't be that great.
The more I thought about that the lower my mood sank. If we were saved, it wouldn't be an Imperium ship. We were the only Navy vessel in this sector as far as I knew. Out in the frontier waving the flag. I wasn't even sure if our distress signal would be picked up by civilian ships, or if it was on an encoded military channel.
The hopelessness of the situation was getting to me, and I forced myself to stay busy. I found the rations and had some water and a bit of food, then used my scanner to check myself over.
My left shoulder was dislocated and the collarbone had a hairline fracture, and I had a mild concussion. If we were still on the ship I'd have someone help me get my arm back into the joint then spend half a day in bed. Or at least, half a day resting in the infirmary so I could keep an eye on my patient.
I couldn't do anything about my arm in the lifepod. Without gravity I didn't have the leverage to try and wrench it back into position on my own, and I wasn't sure I'd have the courage to do that even if there was gravity. Not without a decent dose of painkillers anyways.
So I left my arm lashed to my side, I took a low-dose painkiller to dull the throbbing in my shoulder and my head, then looped my right arm through a seat restraint and tried to get some rest.
