Chapter 22: Chapter Eighteen Inspections, and Crawlspaces

Richards double-checked her gear and then stepped out of the locker room. She had changed out of her regular uniform, and into a skinsuit with a tool belt. It hugged her form much more closely, but didn’t have any lose fabric that could get caught. It was also made of materials that would protect her skin better from the heat still present in the nacelle. It was cool enough that they could get in there to start working, but not still warm enough to be uncomfortable.

Stepping out she found both Ruri and Countryman were dressed and ready to join her. It was nice to see Ruri looking more properly dressed. She had not said anything, but her previous dress had been rather inappropriate. She wondered what the scientist had been doing to have her clothes so dirty and torn.  Although thinking about it, she was probably crawling about that Cathamari engine or something like that.

Countryman approached her, and said quietly, “I suggest you keep a close eye on Ruri. She has some very interesting luck with clothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“You saw how she was dressed earlier? I guarantee you that by the time we are done, she will have done the same thing with that skinsuit.”

She scoffed, “You’re joking. These skinsuits are practically indestructible.”

Richards wasn’t joking. The suits were made from artificial polymers that were highly resistant to damage. If you tried to cut them with a knife it would dull the blade before the fibers tore. Not only were they resilient against being torn or cut, but they also had excellent thermal resistance.

He chuckled, “Trust me, that girl will be coming back with a torn skinsuit mark my words.”

On impulse, she said, “I bet she won’t.”

Countryman’s laughter deepened, “I’ll take that bet. If I lose I’ll tell you who your father is today.”

She responded, “And if I lose I’ll owe you a favor.”

He smiled, “Alright now with that settled, lets get headed out to the port nacelle.”

She nodded, and the three of them headed off to the port nacelle. The nacelle could be accessed via a passageway located in the armored connector struts. Those heavily reinforced struts contained more than just a passageway. Fuel and power conduit lines were run through them as well, and those lines were rather substantial. As such those struts were quite thick almost fifty meters across. So they looked more fragile than they were. Not to mention there were two sets of struts linking each nacelle to the ship. One is attached to the secondary hull, the other is linked to the primary hull. They were going to enter via the connection to the primary hull, as it was closer to their position. Given the length of it, she was glad that the passage included a tram system. So did the nacelle, but it needed it given each nacelle measured one thousand six hundred meters in length. Quite a few engines were fitted in that space, along with a very robust cooling system, and even a couple of fusion reactors. Reactors that were dedicated to providing power to the local sublight engines, while extra power was supplied via the power conduits running through the linkage struts. Those conduits supplied power from the main reactor directly to these engines including the warp drive.

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Richards crouched to study some of the damage on the floor. They had reached the back up drive which had been active when the cooling system had failed. Everywhere she looked the effects of superheated plasma could be seen. The damage at first glance was extensive.

Ruri was already crawling into the engine via an access junction. With her smaller body, she had little difficulty crawling into the tight space. She was kind of glad the science officer wanted to come along, but she had no doubt that she was mainly here to satisfy her own curiosity. Regardless she would be useful with that small form of hers.

Behind her Countryman was inspecting one of the coolant lines. It had apparently ruptured allowing coolant to leak into this section. Emergency baffles had already engaged to cut off the flow of coolant. Those lines were what cooled the heat sinks responsible for keeping the engines cool. They then transferred that heat into a series of absorber arrays that converted the excess heat into usable energy. Energy that was used in systems all over the ship which helped reduce the strain on the ship’s reserves increasing range.

As for the area of the floor, she was studying, it had been melted through. Beneath the floor here was one of the primary power conduits that ran the length of the nacelle. It fed power to the engines here. All 22 of them. Each nacelle housed twenty secondary sublight engines, and two warp engines. The conduit was rather substantial, but it had to be given that this was a main lead. It had a counterpart above her head, and there was another pair on the other side of the engine Ruri was crawling into. This part of the conduit was shot burned through by superheated drive plasma. That might be a problem. It depended on the condition of the other three main leads. Only one of them was actually needed to supply power to the engines here.

She sighed, and looked over, “Looks like some drive plasma burned through this conduit down here. How are things looking over there?”

“Bad. Coolant line is shot completely. It will have to be replaced.”

From the Engine, Ruri called, “The main spatial coils have been fused. They will need to be replaced. Everything else looks salvageable.”

“Salvageable? How badly are the other components damaged?”

“The field regulators are undamaged, but everything else has taken some degree of thermal damage.” she paused, then resumed, “Looks like there are some ruptured plasma conduits in here as well. Those will have to be replaced as well.”

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She mentally noted that down, while already starting to get an idea of what kind of repairs this section needed. There was thermal damage in this whole area, although thankfully it was confined to this part of the nacelle. As this was where most of the heat was being generated when the cooling system failed that made sense. Although coolant ruptures elsewhere released superheated coolant into other parts of the nacelle. It was looking like they were going to be here for a few days. At least it wasn’t a full rebuild. Although she would still need to hear the report on what the other port side warp engine looked like. It likely wasn’t melted like this one, but it had failed a few days ago. Something had gone wrong with it.”

Richards stood up, and turned around to note that Countryman had turned her way. As she stretched her muscles a little she noted something. She knew full well how she looked in this skin suit, but unlike other men she had worked with he didn’t even react. Richards wasn’t sure what to think about that one. On one hand she wasn’t being ogled, but on the other she worried it meant something more.

Ruri popped out of the engine, and saw her face. “Something wrong?”

Quietly she whispered what she thinking, and Ruri frowned, “Does that really matter?”

Countryman chuckled, “Asking Ruri is a waste of time. To answer your worries, I do find you attractive. I’m just very good at controlling myself. I’m probably better at it then your average Vulcan in fact. Not to mention such behavior wouldn’t be appropriate.”

She sighed, now that she was thinking about it Countryman was right, “I guess you are right about that.”

Countryman replied, “Although now that I think about it we might have to reexamine those rules. As it is we have a great deal to consider if our species has any chance at all.”

She frowned, “You don’t mean!?”

He sighed, “We will have to reexamine our customs and cultural beliefs. Not all of them some of them make perfect sense, and should be left as is.”

She nodded, “I guess we will.”

Ruri looked between the two of them clear confusion on her face, “So what are you two talking about?”

Countryman explained it to her, “We are discussing the future. As a species we are nearly extinct, and we need to encourage our remaining members to reproduce.”

She smiled, “I see, I see. It would be a bit of a disruption, but get me pregnant then.”

Richards turned red, and Countryman shook his head. Richards couldn’t believe it, especially when she started stripping right there. That act made her start, but thankfully Counryman stepped forward to stop her. What he said didn’t register with her, but it work. What did register was something utterly unbelievable that she noticed when Ruri started stripping. Something she had been too distracted to notice earlier.

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  Elsewhere in the nacelle a different group was checking out the main warp engine. A smaller woman crawled out the engines internal access spaces, and shook her head to the team lead, “Its shot. The primary spatial coils will need to be replaced. Looks like a stress fracture. Thankfully damage is confined to the coils, should be easy enough to fix.”

“Some good news about that then.” she said, then she continued, “I’m sure they will want to anaylze the scans you took before attempting any repairs. Lets head back.”

The smaller woman nodded, and stowed her hand scanner. It was an invaluable tool for any engineer. It used an array of sensors, and a micro computer. Components that worked in combination to give an engineer detailed information on the state of any component that they scanned. Maybe not as detailed as the more powerful sensors in the ship’s main sensor array, but detailed enough to get the job done. Her scan of the engine revealed everything missed by the suite of monitoring sensors installed in the engines. Combined with her visual inspection they had a really good idea of what happened with this engine now.

It would have been nice if the monitoring sensors were able to conduct that kind of analysis. They weren’t, mainly since the extreme temperatures produced by the drives prevented the more sophisticated sensors from functioning properly. The type of sensors in her scanner would have been cooked by the temperatures produced by the engines. More rudimentary sensors while not able to produce the same level of detailed date were sufficient for most purposes at least in regards to monitoring the engine. While also being able to handle the high temperatures.

The temperatures could spike high enough in fact to burn through the hull. The only thing keeping that from happening were the suite of monitoring sensors, and the cooling system. That system was what kept the temperatures at optimal levels. Levels that were still too hot to allow any human within this housing. One of the reasons why the nacelles were chosen to mount the warp engines was because of the high temperatures they produced. There were also other benefits to placing them here in regards to elsewhere. 

She was glad that there wasn’t much thermal damage up here, given that the cooling system had failed. Most of that damage was about eight hundred meters aft of this compartment. It seemed that placing them so far apart had worked as intended. As this engine had survived the failure of the back-up drive largely unscathed. Other than the damage that force them to switch to aft located secondary warp engine, there was no damage to this drive. At least none from the cooling system failure. She figured things would look a lot worse towards the rear of the ship.

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