The Repairs (Fan Fiction)

Afraid it's some more geeky fan fiction. I nearly lost a BC the other night. However, the tale is nothing really interesting. We won and I got out with my ship in low structure. It was one of those pleasing warps where you are almost in warp but you can actually see the enemy missile salvo heading towards you. If you get into warp you are safe, if they hit you, you are dead. This time I did get into warp, the missiles streaked past harmlessly and the fleet finished off the enemy before I could bounce back.

So rather than write about the fight, I thought I'd write about the aftermath. We've already seen Scotty busy with other tasks now he's not moaning about us capsuleers trying to swap ships too quickly. How about fixing what's left of my BC?

-o0o-

Scotty looked at the battlecruiser. How the Capsuleer had made it back to station was a wonder to behold. The ship looked like it could fall apart at any second, or worse still explode in the hanger. He knew that was unlikely, if he'd managed to fly it back to the station in that condition then it wasn't going to explode, but it was going to take a lot of fixing.

Scotty's job was to assess the damage so the correct number of repair crews could be assigned. This was usually a simple task. He had a datapad that would connect to the service port on the exterior of the ship and the ships computer and the datapad would link. They would then make a list of the damage, what replacement parts were needed and any other important information that would help the repair crews. Hurricane class battlecruisers had this port by the rear engineering hatch.

As Scotty walked around the ship he could hear various sounds. Escaping gases, the crackle of fusing and melting electronics and small pops as various circuits and routers exploded. Of course you always had these sounds on a Minmatar vessel, just not normally so many.

He reached the rear of the ship and looked up, the dataport wasn't there. But neither was the engineering hatch. A 6m long scar of blackened and twisted metal sliced through the hull where the hatch used to be. Some Amarrian laser weapon glanced the ship Scotty summised. Probably from a battleship or one of those new battlecruisers packing battleship class weapons. He picked up a rusted stray bolt that was laying on the floor by his feet and tossed in at the rip in the hull. A blue flash appeared as the bolt hit an invisible forcefield. Ripples expanded out, bending the light and then vanished away again.

"Well at least the damage controls are online" he thought.

With the service port gone the only way to complete his task was to go to the bridge. Not a task he relished. Looking at that ship he knew not all of the crew would have made it back alive. Dead ship systems were one thing, dead crew members were another.

He walked up to the command hatch which had direct access to the bridge. Before he got there he could see that too had been hit. Not as bad as the engineering hatch, but a laser strike had fused the top right hand corner of the hatch. Scotty took his datapad and accessed his collection of the Sisters of Eve applications. The Sisters were experts in search and rescue and their databases contained detailed schematics of every ship flown in the galaxy. A rescue program would suggest entry points if you told it which ones were inaccessible. He keyed in the details of the ship and which entry points he'd already tried and the suggested route flashed up. Scotty groaned out loud. The access to the bridge would take him the full length of the ship from aft to fore. Of course it would, Minmatar ships usually had limited access ways and corridors. If it had been Caldari he'd have had 5 or 6 ways to access to the bridge.

Scotty made his way back to the rear of the ship and opened the engine access point. It was nothing more than a crawl space. He pulled himslef up and crawled along into the engineering bay. He kicked the grill covering the end of the crawl way and slid his body down to the deck. The damage was bad, heavy smoke lingered around the warp core which was now shut down. Powerlines had been severed and dangled from the ceiling gently swaying and sparking noisily when they touched something. Consoles flickered in the dim emergency lighting. Then he saw the first one. A young male Minmatar, from his overalls Scotty guessed he was engineering crew. One side of his face was blacked with plasma burns. Scotty forced himself on, out of engineering and into the central corridor that ran the full length of the ship.

There were countless doors between engineering and the bridge, but Scotty did not look in any of them. One or two of them had bloody hand prints on the small window, probably from dying people trying to escape from some fire, explosion or imminent hull breach. He passed racks of escape pods. The ship survivied so the abandon ship alarm had never sounded. Therefore the escape pods were never activated by the capsuleer who kept control of that system to ensure no crew abandonded ship too early.

Toward the end of the corridor he faced a sealed bulkhead. The pressure warning light was on which didn't make any sense. They were in the hanger, any hull breach here didn't matter. Scotty assumed like most of the ship, the sensors were damaged. He flicked the safety stitches for the override. The door opened and there was a tremendous hiss. Scotty was lifted into the air and flew in past the door and landed 20 meters down the corridor. He shook his head to clear it.

"What in Divinity's Edge happened there?"

It was like he'd opened the door into a vacuum but he still could breathe. But if they were in the hanger how could there be a vacuum here. A breach in the hull would let the air out in space, but it would also let it back in when it docked in the hanger. Then he saw it, a hole in the hull. The blast had breached this section of the corridor but the damage control forcefield had not engaged fast enough. The emergency blast doors had sealed the corridor section off. But the area had been depressurised by the time the forcefield had finally come up. When the ship returned to the station the forcefield and blastdoors had stopped the atmosphere from entering. Scotty looked at the hole. It was relatively small and circular, he assumed a hit from a frigate. 220mm calibre titanium sabot? Then he noticed the blood and remenants of flesh around the blast hole. Some poor crew member had been in here and had been sucked through that tiny hole into space. What a horrid way to go. Was the crewman young or old? Was it a man or a woman? Is their partner in this station crying over their death? Are they on another station awaiting news of their loved one? Scotty moved on quickly.

Finally he reached the bridge. Again the pressure warning light was on. Scotty wasn't going to make the same mistake twice, it was probable that the same thing had happened here. He accessed the door control pannel and slowly vented atmosphere into the bridge. The pressure warning light went out and Scotty opened the door. Dead bodies littered the floor. Scotty surveyed the room but did not see any major damage or any obvious hull breach. The view port was cracked but it was still in one piece. He picked up his scanner and surveyed the window. The presision scanner identified a micro-crack all the way through the plexi-steel. This is were the atmosphere escaped, but as it was not a proper breach the damage control system could not detected it and did not put up a forcefield.

Scotty looked around again and noticed two bodies in the corner, different to the others that were simply sprawled out on the deck. One male was slumped, sat in the corner, he was embracing a woman tightly. Scotty couldn't tear his eyes away from the scene. Were they married? Were they lovers? Or just two people comforting each other as the atmosphere slowly drained out and they waited for death. Scotty did some calculaions in his head. It must have taken several minutes for the air to reduce to such a level that they lost consiousness. Why didn't they escape? Of course, the corridor had depressurised from the frigate hit. They had no where to go. They simply sat down and waited to die whilst the air screamed out of the micro-fracture. What were there last words? Did they speak at all or did they just sit in somber silence? Did any of the others panic? Where they screaming?

It didn't matter, they were dead now.

Scotty interfaced his datapad with the main console and saw the overall status of the ship. Strucutal intergrity down to 12%! Surely one more hit would have destroyed the ship. The repair inventory was downloaded, it was priced and a neat little estimate was ready to be sent to the ships owner.

Scotty was about to message the Capsuleer with the quote for the repairs. Something stopped him, the death, the destruction, he had to see him. The one that caused this. Was he in his quarters morning his dead, was he talking to an agent looking for his next mission or was he with his Militia members planning their next battle?

Finally he pressed the video-call button on his datapad instead of the message option. He was breathing heavily, he knew he shouldn't be doing this. No hanger crew ever spoke to Capsuleers other than docking control, and then it was brief and official. He'd never heard of anyone from the hanger crews calling a Capsuleer on their datapad.

After a few seconds the speaker sprang to life. It was noisy, but the screen remained black. Suddenly there was light as the datapad was removed from a pocket. Music was playing loudly and Scotty spotted a lot of people drinking as the datapad was spun around. Scotty assumed it was the capsuleer bar at the top of the station. He couldn't be sure, he'd never been there. Only capsuleers and their guests were allowed on that deck. He'd heard rumours, but he had never seen what goes on in there.

"Blast it"

The screen jumped and the view span. Scotty couldn't make out what he was seeing.

"Bollocks!"

The view stabalised and appeared to be that of a ceiling. Suddenly there was movement, one-by-one, a pair of slender legs came into view. 6" high stilletto heels were visible at each side of the screen, Scotty followed the view of the shapely female legs up, past the stocking tops until the view went too dark to see under her short flaired skirt.

"Oh dear, Mr Clumbsy. You dropped your datapad, I guess you'll have to reach down there and pick it up" purred a seductive female voice with a slight giggle at the end. Scotty watched as a hand reached out and the fingers curled around the white skin above the top of her stockings. The hand then slowly slid down over her thigh, knee, calf and ankle before leaving her leg and grabbing the datapad. The view shook again as the datapad was picked up and a mans face appeared.

"Yes"

"Sorry to disturb you Capsuleer Drackarn. But I have the report on your Hurricane. Mr Alpha."

"Right... don't you guys normally send a message. What is it?"

Scotty saw a woman slide into the picture, Caldari looking, short dark hair, she nuzzled the capsuleers neck. He didn't react and just stared at Scotty. Scotty didn't know if it was the same woman he'd seen stood over the dropped datapad or a different one.

"Yes sir, we normally do. It's just....... in this case....... erm...... I thought I'd call."

"Why this case? What's different?"

The Caldari woman ran her tongue up the side of the capsuleers neck before taking his earlobe in her teeth and pulling on it gently. That time Scotty noticed a slight reaction in the capsuleer. That woman was good at what she does he thought.

"Well sir...."

Scotty was now wishing he hadn't called.

"What is it?" the capsuleer sounded impatient.

"The required repairs are pretty extensive and won't be cheap."

"How much?"

"Erm, 9 million ISK sir"

"HOW MUCH?" The capsuleer shouted at the datapad.

"Sir..... the amount of damage...... the...." Scotty stammered. Why did he call him?

The capsuleer laughed.

"I'm joking with you grease monkey. That's nothing, how much do you think this one is costing me for the night...." he gestured with his thumb to the woman still nuzzling his neck "...and her friend."

"What sir? Her friend sir? Who...?" Scotty was all confused, he'd wanted to speak to the capsuleer about the dead crew but now...

Suddenly another woman entered the picture. Again stunningly beautiful, red hair and clearly of Minmatar origin. She started nuzzling the neck of the first woman.

The capsuleer smiled at the two women and retrieved a bottle of Gallente vodka from the table and took a swig straight from the bottle.

The reason Scotty called him was that he was going to make a point about the dead crew, try and reach the capsuleer, make him see what he had done. But he saw there was no point. Only a few hours after his command crew had slowly suffocated on the bridge of his ship, he was out celebrating the victory by partying, drinking and whoring. The stereotype of the aloof, immortal capsuleer was spot on. They didn't care about the mere mortals of this galaxy.

"And the dead crew Sir?" Scotty finally said with resignation in his voice.

"Do what you normally do. Contact the families, see if they want the bodies sending back or sold to the cloning company and the money from the sale returning to them. Really grease monkey, is it your first day on the job?"

Scotty watched as the Minmatar woman reached over and gently pull the Caldari womans face away from the Capsuleers neck. She twisted it towards her and kissed her deeply. Scotty could see her tongue slip into the other woman's mouth.

"No sir, I'm sorry sir. Its just with so many dead...."

"Then there will be a lot of well compensated families. Look you can see I'm busy, my companions are also getting bored with this conversation and having the entertain themselves" the capsuleer smirked.

"So if there is nothing else...." the Capsuleers tone indicated the conversation was over.

"No sir, I'm really sorry to have bothered you sir. I apologise. Have a good night."

The capsuleer tilted his head to one side and his look seemed to scream "Are you blind or stupid! Of course I'm going to have a good night!"

The datapad went blank.

Scotty lent against a bulkhead and gripped his head in his hands. He really shouldn't have done that he thought. He imagined being called into the office next morning. His boss screaming at him whilst that capsuleer sat in the corner, feet up on the desk, idily flciking though a datapad without paying any attention to them. He imagined words and phases such as "gross misconduct", "fired" and "never work in this industry again".

Then he thought, no, that won't happen. That man didn't care about most of his crew dying horrible deaths a few hours previously. Why would he care about a short call from a lowly "grease-monkey". He had no doubt the Capsuleer will have forgotten the whole conversation within 10 minutes.

Scotty sent the damage reports off to maintenance. The ship would be back in services in a matter of days with a new crew. All eager for the riches that capsuleer crewing could bring...... if they survived long enough to claim it.