Chapter 9: The Incident

January 12th, 2279

Basil was looking around, slightly helpless. The best thing he could do at the moment was to not be in the way. There were engineers now climbing up the ladder into a larger opening in the hull, carrying oxygen displacement grenades and high-pressure gel extinguishers – still a prime option for unclear situations that involved heat and fire. They had their endosuits on – unlike Basil – and had grabbed their helmets and masks off the many hooks along the railings towards the ship. XD’s engineers were clearly used to this kind of scenario.

- Perlas, how many are in the danger zone?

- At least three, Sir.

Perlas didn’t stop to talk to the captain but used his threads to swing off the ship over to a workstation that had some connections running into the hole he had just come out of, shutting down all power systems by landing directly on the shutoff. The Visser doctor and his assistant were already climbing into the smoking pit after the fire team. The third medical officer was pulling equipment next to the ship, readying a gurney.

There were a few tense seconds without movement, Basil deliberating if he’d be in the way. Ultimately, he climbed the ladder but as he reached the hole now expelling fumes from fire extinguishing gasses, he stopped, still not wearing any safety equipment. The last thing he now needed was having to be carried away by his crew. But then, a head appeared out of the white mist, a slightly toasted engineer. She had taken a flash to the face, her skin bubbling off her cheeks. Basil helped her out of the hole and handed her over to the doctor below. From his elevated position, he could see another medical team arriving at the hangar, bringing reinforcements. Now, the helmeted head of one of the firefighters appeared, then another one. They were carrying a wounded Zeptorian engineer. He had to have been much closer to the flash, as his endosuit was riddled with holes and half his uniform was missing. He was unresponsive. Basil jumped down, off the ladder, received the body and helped getting it onto the next gurney, which was quickly wheeled away to the nearby medical station. His wounds didn’t look too bad, not fatal at least. Worryingly, the Visser doctor had not reappeared, neither had his colleague, which meant that further down in the belly of the beast there was at least one more critically injured patient. In the chaos and confusion, Basil missed the engineer yelling at him, and thusly missed the helmet now flying towards him, which hit him in the face. He was, however, able to catch the helmet bouncing off him and put it on, finally being able to get into the oxygen-deprived ship. He had always planned to triumphantly walk the center gangway when first setting foot on his warship, but such thoughts seemed like hybris now. The helmet was actually supposed to work with an endosuit, but it could provide some protection and breathable air without it. Basil swung up the ladder and entered the ship feet first. Inside, visibility was improving rapidly, revealing a tight walkway after the long passage through the broken armor which was comically thick. Someone had put the fleet’s bubble wrap over the sharp edges XD’s weapons tests had left.

The walkway was clearly just a service access to the systems near the outer hull and Basil feared he might get in the way of rescue operations. It wasn’t difficult to get to the source of the incident, as the staining on the bone-structure-looking frames increased as he moved forward. He ran into another engineer, largely unharmed but apparently blinded, being guided by a rescue operator. Basil squeezed past them. There was a tight bend afterwards, then he stood right behind the young doctors’ assistant’s back. She was holding up a device and as he followed the connections, he saw the Visser kneeling beside a body on the floor. The body was badly burnt and deformed. The poor soul had clearly been working directly on whatever malfunctioned and thrown against the wall behind. The Visser was still trying to get the E-collar around his neck to save his brain. It was a last-ditch device meant to take over the body’s primary functions in case of serious injury, hooking up to the blood vessels that provided oxygen to a biological brain. Basil knew it was too late, as the skull had been the first thing to impact the wall when the man had been thrown back, as shown by the bloodied impact in the metal on the opposite side, some blood slowly dripping down, forming into noses. The rubber lining all of their ships now had to prevent injuries from being thrown around when the hull was hit had not been installed yet, since many connections ran behind it.

The Rubicon had found her first victim. Basil turned and left the ship. He was glad he wore the helmet still, as his facial expression would have told the waiting crowd what had happened. He would let the Visser spread the sad news. Perlas and Feterni were looking at him. He took them to the conferencing table and removed his helmet. Feterni sat on the table, his head in his hand after looking at the captain for a moment. Perlas was holding his claws to his mouth, nervously nibbling on them with his hairy chelicera equivalents.

- We lost one.

There was no reaction from Feterni, who was still hiding his face in shame. As Basil looked at Perlas, he was surprised to see that Axxi could tear up, just in many more eyes than humans.

- Do you have an idea what happened?

Feterni answered through his hands.

- Shield generator 11 had a surge in testing.

- How can that happen?

- It shouldn’t.

- It clearly has, Feterni.

Basil hated the impression of assigning blame. It was usually a game played by people he saw as looking out for number one, but he was now dreading the incoming investigation and delays.

- Who did we lose, Sir?

Perlas had regained his composure, some smaller wounds on his legs dripping with yellow blood.

- Don’t know. Male, human most likely.

Perlas looked around quickly, each eye scanning another direction, counting the human engineers. One wasn’t to be seen.

- Ensign Howe. Mikka Howe, I think.

- Did you know him?

- I did.

- Which one of you was in charge of this part of the work?

Feterni raised his hand off his face.

- Perlas, get fixed up. Then you’ll be heading the investigation. Feterni, gather everyone and tell them to take the rest of the shift off. Get the security guys to secure the ship and hangar.

Nocks had been silently standing next to them for a few seconds, having wandered over from her usual hunchback position at the workstation.

- Nocks.

- Sir.

- Contact the admiral. Tell him we had an accident, one dead, four injured, possibly more. We need an investigator here asap.

- Aye.

Feterni gathered the marines and found one of the security officers, still holding a coffee pot of all things, instructing them to lock everything non-medical down. Basil spotted the other security officer ‒ the one with the half-mechanical body ‒ climbing out of a hole in the rear of the ship. At first, he wanted to send the marines to arrest him, until he realized what he was looking at. The security officer had used the confusion to get his coffee cup onto what would later become the bridge, while his colleague had assisted the rescue operation.

What the hell, man.

It was morally dubious, to say the least. In the defense of the half-cyborg, he could not have been aware of the seriousness of the matter. Having worked for XD he had likely seen a lot of accidents and usually, safety procedures and equipment resulted in preventing serious injuries. He could see the man’s point. He didn’t like it but he had found a security officer who didn’t easily get distracted and was able to adapt to a new situation quickly.

For a while, Basil just looked around. The hangar had been a noisy place for the past day, now it fell silent, with people preferring to speak in a soft voice. Then he read Mikka Howe’s file, trying to at least get some semblance of a connection to the man who had lost his life for his goals. Basil had lost agents before, but it was different in CO – they knew the risks, unlike engineers who largely just wanted to work on exciting things. He felt responsible in a way – and had to admit he was, as he had never checked in with Feterni and Perlas concerning workplace safety.