Engine Failure

Captain Abdulrahman was jolted out of bed by the sudden change in course of the C.S.S Lahore. Abdulrahman rubbed the bruise on his head and groaned “Alhamdullah”. Abdulrahman was at first not very alarmed until he realized that the emergency lights were on. Damage to the ships power system was very serious. His door’s emergency controls showed that there was air on the other side, so he cranked open the door and walked down the hall to the bridge.

The Captain found pure disarray and panic emerging, It took him a few minutes to calm everyone on the bridge down and they started to explain what had apparently had happened. After exiting the wormhole into the New Bengal system the ship had been struck by a boulder sized object which had an extremely strong magnetic field. The object’s magnetic field had caused a power feedback in the communications array and the power system. Several pieces of equipment had overloaded and burned out. After that the bridge crew was at a loss for information so captain Abdulrahman had to call down to the engine room.

Abdulrahman buzzed the engine room the ship’s com system was still working which he was glad for.

A voice shouting over a lot of static answered, “Engineering chief engineer Muhammad here.”

“Captain Abdulrahman here, what is the situation in engineering Muhammad?”

“It’s pretty bad sir, some kind of magnetic pulse caused the plasma pulse overdrive to overload, which then fried out both of the sub-quantum plasma disrupters. That triggered the emergency computer systems to take the phase source extractor, the stationary duality portal and the radiant quark accelerator offline”

“How long to get them back online?”

“Well sir it is going to be a while as they did not go through the normal shut down procedures, inshallah 4 maybe five hours each. But sir that is not the worst of it, to get to the sub-quantum disrupters I am going to have to take apart the gravitational singularity initiator and that sir is going to take, Inshallah ten hours at least. The good news is the particle singularity modulator is intact.

“So we are dead in space floating for a day is what you are saying.”

“Yes sir until we can get all these backs up the ship’s worm and thrust drives are both down. Inshallah, I may be able to save some time by patching the phase source extractor directly into the spectral sphere ignition system”

“Thank you Muhammad I know you will do your best.”

Abdulrahman started to think of what could or would happen next. He realized that he would have to prepare a statement to give to the colonists they were carrying. At this time the C.S.S. Lahore was ferrying over twenty thousand colonists to New Bengal and if they started to panic they could cause a lot of damage to the ship.

It was at this time the ship’s navigator broke the bad news. The C.S.S. Lahore was on an intercept path with Bengal 6 one of the systems 3 gas giants. According to the Navigators calculations in 14 hours the ship would become caught in Bengal Six’s gravitational field and approximately 20 minutes later they would burn up in Bengal six’s atmosphere. And the news kept getting worse as even though there was confederation naval heavy cruiser in the star system the magnetic pulse which had fried burned out crucial drive components had also gone though the communications array frying out key parts there as well. Noaman the communications officer informed him that while they could send out a distress signal, it would be limited to a range of one thousand kilometers.

Captain Abdulrahman called a meeting of his top officers and system chiefs in two hours. Everyone was to come up with some type of plan to save them and the ship. The meeting was a mad house of shouting and blaming. Over a dozen ideas were proposed and shot down as either completely unworkable or workable but taking to long to get into place. Finally a small fellow spoke up over the multitude of voices.

“Sir, engineering Ensign Dawud Naqvi, sir I am in charge of maintaining the ship’s fire suppression systems.” Stated Engineering ensign Dawud Naqvi directing his comments to the captain while avoiding looking at him. Something the captain found to be a rather interesting trick.

“Quite” Shouted the Captain, yes Ensign you have an idea.

“Yes Sir, we were talking and my friend Atif he is over in waste systems operations, well Atif said maybe we should get out and push. A joke sir but it got me thinking, we don’t actually have to fix the drives we just need a push to get us off our currently trajectory” he paused and shot a quick glance at the captain.

“Go on Ensign I am following you so far.”

“Well sir we can reroute some of the pipes we use to carry the CO2, it is under pressure, and we can use it to change our trajectory to one were we don’t all die a horrible fiery death.”

“Like a fire extinguisher race” said Abdulrahman as he stood up.

“Yes Sir Just like that.”

“But how long will it take you to do it?”

“Inshallah should take about four maximum six hours sir.”

“Do it”

“Yes Sir”

Five hours later the C.S.S. Lahore was on a new trajectory heading towards the inner system and away from Bengal Six. It took two more days to get the thrust drive online and the communications array to work properly. The C.S.S. Musa, the Quyata class heavy cruiser assigned to protect the New Bengal, was able to intercept them and escort the C.S.S. Lahore to New Bengal. The Colonists were on the planet before they were told how close to disaster they had all been, and oh yeah this is the reason that the Capitol of New Bengal is called Naqvibad.