Extraction Issues 0

Prologue

Moodepac Sea – Far South Dead Zone Boundary

Cycle 6002.638.24.5 W

The expanse of sea was blanketed in dark clouds. Flashes of lightening revealed the sea’s violent movement. A storm’s tempestuous winds made the sea thrash and rain pelt down.

Tom Manson was known as Mean. He was traveling in an amphibious craft through the storm. The storm had already ripped one of the six legs out of the craft and another needed to be re-secured before it shared the same fate. He had been called to help the engineers fit the heavy plates and stabiliser.

Another wave smashed into the ship. Mean threw out his arm as he was thrown towards the inside of the curved steel hull. He focused on calming his breathing.

It’s going to be just like doing a suspension fix.

When he was steady he continued down the narrow corridor at a careful jog. There was only emergency lighting that gave a dim flickering glow as he moved through the buffeted craft.

Hands and a face appeared to float ahead of him in the corridor. He was approaching Gurney, who despite being limited by small stature and being retirement age, was the head engineer. A console, which was like a tablet but with a more durable roll out flexiplas screen, was casting dull light. It revealed some of the engineers features that weren’t hidden by his tidy work clothes.

There was a thin line that had a metallic glint over the engineer’s nose. Little gold watch-maker spectacles sat on the end of his nose, but they were only partially visible in the dim light. Gurney looked down his nose, through these glasses as he took in the displayed update on the craft’s structural integrity.

A stout finger on one of Gurney’s hands scrolled through details on the consoles screen. The console was firmly clamped on the girder. To hold himself steady, his other hand was clamped lower on the same girder at the end of the corridor.

Beyond Gurney the space opened up into the upper level of a leg joint compartment. The corridor turned into a catwalk that went around the top attachment of the joint.

The older man turned when he noticed the huge thuggish silhouette passing the corridors dim lights. Gurney bellowed a greeting over the storms howling, “Beautiful weather for a spot of revolute joint maintenance aye?”

“You know it’s day’s like this I wish we were traveling in a sensible boat, with the only robotics tech being a simple claw on the stern,” Mean yelled back.

Gurneys chortle could just be made out in the gaps between the din that surrounded them. “Well for some reason this masterpiece is the last surviving craft of the fleet, so let’s get her stable.” Gurney continued saying, “The outside slider cover of the joint in the hull is just holding. We need to get the joint secured properly back into her chassis so it stays that way.”

“Can you get that big plate on the trolley to where those three props and the chain are holding things together?” Gurney yelled. “One of my cyborgs will be with you shortly.”

Mean got the long trolley and focused on rolling it along the catwalk of this double height compartment. The cyborg comment was strange.

The emergency lighting was stronger in the joint compartment compared to the corridors. A skylight would have also given light if the clouds had not blocked it. From here Mean could now see the outline of Gurney’s black shirt and pants. The grey hairs gracing his head were uncommon for the crew of this ship.

Being able to see with some clarity made things seem a little more normal. He could also make out the complex revolute joint and the props that were securing it. The mechanism around the joint looked like it was made of huge suspension components that extending from the crafts chassis.

Running through the mechanism was the drive for the spherical joint that was kind of like a hip’s ball and socket joint on the outside of the hull. There was also the hydraulics that supplied the knee below and the cables that controlled the feet. As they carved through the violent sea these feet acted more like foils smoothing the craft’s movement between massive swells.

At the moment the joint capsule did not look like a well organised space. The props seemed to jab into the structure and joint. In the dim light it looked like the joint was in the middle of the mechanical equivalent of an acupuncture session.

Mean spotted the intersection of props where the large, freshly machined plate would connect several pieces of torn structure back together. It took only two dozen more steps to roll the trolley there and once there he locked its wheels in place. He hefted the plate into place to check the fitting.

There was a series of booming claps of thunder. There was no primer paint on one side of the freshly machined plate. The follow up flashes of lightening turned the surface into a mirror. It gave snapshots of the the top half of Mean’s reflection.

Mean wasn’t reassured by the sight of his permanently bald head, almost black eyes and a jaw front stabbing forward with overly pointy teeth in it. A short and thick neck made his head seem almost part of his torso. Proportionally his upper chest was also too large. He was in the overalls he wore for engineering jobs.

His looks had led to one of the crew giving him the nickname Mean. He only spoke to a few of the crew about anything other than job details. Few on the craft knew his name, even though he had worked on the ship for over four years. So, he became known by his nickname.

In the dim light, Mean’s vision was like the static of an ancient television set, showing the picture captured by a poorly aligned aerial. He test fitted the plate to find it fitted over all the pieces of threaded rod bar one. A heavy piece of u-channel had been welded slightly out of line. Meaning the threaded rod was also out of position.

He found the weighty hammer that Gurney liked to refer to as ‘the negotiator’ and smashed the metal till enough of the tack welds had snapped.

As he was fitted the plate over the rods a voice cut through the din from behind him, “Yo Mean go easy on the craft, we’re trying to get her through the storm.”

Turning toward the voice, to find one of the crew looking very like a cyborg. Mean guessed that it was one of the newer crew, Caz. In the current conditions however, he was almost unrecognisable. He was working his way up the nearest girder in an exoskeleton, like a monkey up a tree.

As he smoothly swung off the girder and latched onto the catwalk’s solid rail Caz asked, “Mate where’s you light? Gurney had said you were around. A light would have made it obvious where you were and I could have come and helped. If you go swinging blindly you’ll make more work for us.”

Caz wasn’t one of the people that Mean chatted to. So, he waited silently.

Keeping his distance, Caz assessed the situation from behind his headpiece. He carefully looked everything over, with a hand adjusting his night-vision.

He quickly apologised to Mean, “Oh sorry Mate, I guess you can see. That’s quick thinking snapping those tacks. I guess the rest of the noise was you hitting the prop’s adjuster. I’ll give you a hand with those washers and nuts. Then we can go replace the stabiliser.”

They quickly fitted washers and nuts to six of the shorter ends of threaded rod sticking through the the plate. With the two larger rods, Caz used a rubber wheel on a mini grinding tool to spin on the last nuts. He then used a small gas torch to trim the remaining two rods to a similar length.

With the rods all short enough, Mean tightened them in a vague star pattern. In the meantime, Caz had found the appropriate size long socket and followed up with the torque wrench.

“Cool, that’ll do for now.” Caz announced. “Let’s get these two props off for when I come back to weld it up later,” he said slapping the props on the structures that were now secured again by the far sides of the plate.

Caz smoothly moved back onto the hand rail, then the girder that he had first climbed up. He steadily clamped the digits of two limbs at a time to progress upward.

At the top of the first prop Caz locked the skeleton in place so it became a hi-tech hammock. He unclipped his arms from the exoskeleton and loosened off the nuts that had been securing the prop. Mean released the lower end. It had been tied into a solid bracket that came off the craft’s main chassis.

Now that they were ready to move the prop, Caz clipped his arms back into the exoskeleton and activated the movement mode again. Clamping his feet firmly to the girder, Caz stretched out and tried to hold the end of the prop over Mean. Mean had a stable position braced against the catwalk’s railing.

Caz called out, “Hey Mean, you steady enough to get the prop back on the walkway?”

Mean nodded and Caz released the end of the prop. Mean could feel him watching as he smoothly swung the prop down onto the walkway despite the shaking of his footing. He shrunk the telescopic prop down and stashed in a slot on the side of the trolley.

In the meantime, Caz worked his way down the girder and swung across onto a crossbeam. Heading up another girder, he unfastened the prop that Mean had adjusted with the hammer. When Mean nodded he released the prop. It was safely lowered and shrunk to join the other on the trolley.

Caz joined Mean back on the catwalk. “Let’s get that trolley onto the winch point and I’ll guide it down.” After they’d hooked a pulley into the winching rail Caz asked, “Can you give me a second to jump on that girder, then pass the trolley to me?”

Once Caz was on the girder Mean pulled the trolley up and slid the pulley along the rail so that the trolley glided beyond the catwalk. Mean could just reach to lock the pulley in place on the rail. While he was doing this, Caz had grabbed the end of the trolley before it could start swinging madly.

The two worked to get the trolley quickly lowered to the main floor area of the joint compartment.

Once the trolley was on the ground Mean pulled a spring loaded safety gate open. It gave him access to a ladder that went from the catwalk down to the lower level of the joint compartment.

Mean used his hands and the inside of his feet to slide down the ladder.

“Mate, we are not supposed to do that,” Caz commented. “Remember how they said that other guy did and his ring got caught. His ring sliced his finger off and he ended up without it at the base of the ladder.”

Mean held up his hands to show his chunky fingers, with pointy pads were all still there. He kicked the brakes on the trolley to free the wheels and pushed it over to get to work on the stabiliser.

The forces that had almost ripped the leg out of the craft, had bent the solid steel stabiliser rod. The two bushes in one of the pivot points were all but shredded. Mean didn’t like how the bent joint caused the tension to load up unevenly in the joint.

Caz yelled the plan to him, “Gurney’s said that our only option is to secure it in place with lifting slings, then hope it holds while we swap out the stabiliser. Can you secure the inside of the stabiliser with those two yellow slings and that ratchet? I’ll get one with some stretch on the opposite side.”

With the slings supporting the stabiliser Caz joked, “Right I guess we just need to pray, swear really loudly and work really, really fast.”

Mean went straight to freeing up the stabiliser’s fasteners. He got the nut off one end and started smashing an older bolt through. It took several solid hits with the hammer to even get anything to move. Repeated hammering finally pushed the bent bolt so that it was only holding by a few turns of thread. The shredded bushes’ rubber flakes fell out as he worked.

They wrapped a strap around the joint and stabiliser. After they pulled the bolts out, they used the strap to ease one of the stabiliser’s ends down. They re-positioned the strap. It was much easier to remove the remaining bolt.

They eased the part to the ground. Another blow rocked the craft. It pulled the strap from their hands and sent the stabiliser sliding along the floor. It collected Mean, taking his feet out from under him, on its way towards the hull. The stabiliser and Mean slid into one of the walls. Caz worriedly ran to help.

Mean was only a little shaken. He grabbed the strap that was still on the end of the stabiliser and tied it to an anchor point in the floor. He quickly cut the straps excess length off and secured the stabiliser’s other end to the next anchor point so it was secured against the wall.

He walked quickly back to the joint and Yeng was with the trolley.

“Let’s get this in place now,” Yeng yelled. While yelling, he had finished fitting the fresh bushes for the replacement stabiliser and was greasing the surfaces that needed it.

Yeng didn’t look as convincing a cyborg as Caz. He had a headset with night-vision and mag boots on. Unlike Caz, the solid engineer was getting himself and his beer-gut around in the rough conditions fine without the help of an exoskeleton. Over his overalls he was wearing a welding pack and gloves to suit.

With the three of them there, they lifted one end of the replacement stabiliser off the trolley and straight into place. The bolt slotted neatly into place. The craft was shaken and watching the slings take the tension made Mean nervous.

There was strained breathing as they heaved the other end into place. They struggled to hold it. Mean and Caz held it as Yeng gently tapped the final bolt into place. The final nut was spun on and Mean was relieved to watch them torque the fasteners. They got the slings off quickly.

Gurney came to check on them, “Is everyone okay” he asked.

His two engineers gave affirmatives.

“Thanks guys, nicely done. That’ll keep her running for now. Can you two head back and start with priority welding on the components that you’ve installed?” Gurney asked his engineers.

As they left, Gurney turned to Mean, “Thanks for that, things are as patched up as they can be for now except for welding. Can you shove that parts trolley back to main engineering storage?” Gurney asked after removing one of the tool-kits.

“After you’ve done that they want a hand on the bridge” Gurney informed him. With that he headed up the ladder with the tool-kit now clipped to the back of his harness.

Mean had nodded and unlocked the trolley’s wheels to head to engineering’s main storage area.

This feels like being in a giant pinball machine, he though as he crashed along, navigating through a maze weaving corridors. He wondered what sort of trouble was happening in the bridge for him to be pulled from engineering in a storm.

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