Chapter 29: Chapter Twenty-four Horizon

Richards shifted in her seat, as she studied the ship they were approaching. Ruri wanted her to look over some data from the warp tests, but at the moment the Newton class vessel was more interesting. The long-range scanners may have helped them detect the ship, but the initial scans had left much to be desired in terms of resolution. They were much closer now. Close enough to take more detailed scans. It seemed while the ship had managed to make it here, she was not unscathed.

The other vessel had sustained some damage to her primary hull, most of it located around her aft quarter. There was also extensive scorching on her port nacelle. From the look of it, the damage did not appear to be the result of combat. More likely it was the result of an accident. One that seriously damaged the engines. Richards honestly doubted that ship would be able to leave orbit again under its own power. The main drive and secondary port engine both appeared to be no longer functional. That meant that all of her propulsion power was being supplied solely by the starboard engine. That engine was never designed to be anything more than a supplemental maneuvering drive. It was nowhere near as powerful as that primary drive. Honestly, she was impressed they managed to get into a stable orbit with only one basic maneuvering engine.

As for what caused the damage, she had a pretty good idea of what happened. The damage seemed consistent with the port side reactor module overloading. Emergency systems had kicked in, and overcharged structural integrity near the module. Thereby preventing the overload from claiming the ship. This also acted to contain the damage to the aft quadrant, but the overload must have ignited the fuel lines. Not to mention it appeared that the overload also damaged the main drive. As for the deuterium fire, the crew obviously managed to contain and put it out. However judging by the scorching on the port nacelle, they failed to prevent it from spreading to the portside engine. That fire also burned through the hull in several places. 

Richards wasn’t going to even guess what happened to allow that in the first place. There were a number of possibilities. It could have been human error, or it could have been caused by a simple burnout. Of course, with the second there were redundancies to prevent a burnout from leading to an overload. In any case, if she was going to guess her bet would have been poor maintenance. At sublight speeds, it would have taken them years to get here. That was enough time for some of the components to wear out. Although even with poor maintenance the computer should have detected the problem and automatically shut down the reactor before an overload could occur. Honestly, the overload was likely a combination of factors. Perhaps a mixture of poor maintenance, and human error. In any case, that simple overload meant the ship they were approaching had no chance of making it back home on its own. 

With a bit of practiced ease, she ran another scan on the ship. They were just getting into the range of the bio scanners. She wasn’t all that surprised when this scan revealed minimal power and no life readings. Also revealed was that all of the escape pods had been launched, and the shuttle bay was empty of landing craft. The crew must have abandoned the ship after the achieved orbit. Richards was not in any way surprised about that. The Newton class was never designed for an atmospheric landing in the first place. They were built in space and expected to spend their entire service life in space. Planetary landings were never part of their intended mission profile. That didn’t preclude a landing though. It was possible to land a Newton class, but it would require some very delicate piloting to do it safely. In their case however with only one working engine, there was no way to land the ship safely, and it surely wouldn’t make its way back up again afterwards.

While a safe landing may have been out, the escape pods were designed to make planetary landings, and so were the shuttles. Using both they must have evacuated the entire crew to the surface and left the ship up here in orbit. Why they just leave if there was up for debate, but they had. 

In the meantime, she might as well try and determine what was salvageable. Although they might consider repairing the ship. They weren’t comfortable sticking around but if they had had the time, they could have upgraded some of the sublight-equipped ships with warp capability. The Newton class wasn’t particularly durable, she had a rather basic armor scheme. A couple of well-placed shots from the Enterprise’s secondary battery could easily destroy it, and the ship was barely bigger than a frigate. Still, it was a ship, perhaps it would be useful for scouting ahead. However, if they were going to fit it with warp capability, they would have to do some work. Warp required a beefier power plant than any sublight vessel was likely to have, and the Newton class was no different. It was powered by two fission generators and a single low output fusion generator. Even all three working together couldn’t generate enough energy to sustain warp one, much less an interstellar velocity like warp three.

That meant overhauling the power systems and upgrading the reactors. There wasn’t a lot of space for that in the primary hull, so chances were they would have to tack on a secondary hull. Now they were already getting into the territory of a major refit, and she wasn’t even done with the work needed. Neither nacelle could fit a warp engine or the needed cooling systems. Hell, most of the space was already consumed by the two outboard maneuvering engines already there. As such the nacelles would need to be enlarged to fit them. Larger nacelles mean that the connection struts would have to be reinforced. In addition, the hull plating was never designed to withstand translight particle impacts. Bringing forth yet another upgrade that would need to be done. Then the structural integrity field grids would also have to be overhauled in order to ensure that the hull could withstand the translight stresses.

Overall, after all that work is said and done. The result would have been a major refit, that would take them two months minimum to handle. Although in her opinion it would not go that smoothly. At most it would take six months to complete the kind of refit work the ship would need for FTL capability. So she would naturally budget four months for such a project. Of course that just factored in the time to do, that didn’t even touch on the costs. With everything else they had competing for the very same resources. Chances were that the captain might decide it was better to simply salvage the vessel. In fact that is what she would do with it, salvage it for parts. Easier, faster, less costly, and frankly it was debatable if refitting the ship would provide any benefit at all. They didn’t really need a science ship. Not in her opinion anyway.

She started to compile a report. The format was simple, the first page would be the summary with all the critical information, and her recommendation. The rest of it would be the detailed information. It was how she was taught, and it made sense honestly. She outlined its condition. Before quickly summing up what it would cost to refit the ship. Like any modern ship it featured a very modular design, restoring it operation condition would be simple. They would simply swap out the damaged modules for newly built ones. The Enterprise had all the facilities to build the needed modules. The real question was cost. A simple repair was a minor refit in any case, and she outlined the cost for that. She also outlined the cost for upgrading the ship for warp capability, and that wasn’t a minor refit. It was far more involved than simply swapping out old modules for newer ones. It was also much more costly, and with all the other items already on the budget, she doubted they could afford it. As such she finished with a recommendation saying that considering the current budget situation she believed that they would be best served by scuttling the ship. While also listing what materials they would be able to salvage from the ship. There was actually a fair amount they could use. Modern armor was still made with a titanium base, and they could pull a lot of that from the ship. Already being processed would save them a lot of effort in making the alloys they need. They could make a lot of spare hull plating out of that ship.

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Countryman settled into his command chair and studied the ship on his screen. He had already read the report on it that Richards had submitted. It was informative, but it had lacked any mention of the ship’s name. Her power levels were minimal, and her transponder was off. Then again so were theirs. Those things had their uses, but they did crap all for maintaining any form of stealth. Not to mention drew power that they didn’t really need to use. So they were off.

Now that they were in visual range, he could make out a name. Unlike the black and silver paint scheme of warships, the Newton class ship before him used a grey paint scheme. Emblazoned in bold black text across the dorsal fore section of her saucer section was her name VFS Horizon below that was her registry, VFR 22470. The Horizon just hung there in a stable orbit as they approached, although since it was unmanned there was no surprise there. He already had Misaki scanning the surface for the crew. It didn’t take much imagination to guess where the crew went. With their ship damaged, and unable to make the trip back they likely went to the surface. The planet was no garden world, much of its surface was inhospitable desert, but it could support a small colony. There were quite a few sites down there with potential for such a tiny colony. Much of the habitable region on Rigel Kent II was in a narrow band of the Northern hemisphere starting just below the ice caps.

That region had water, and sparse vegetation. More than enough to support some two hundred colonists. There was enough supplies and equipment taken from the Horizon to provide the infrastructure they would need to support themselves. The planet would require a fair amount of terraforming and investment in infrastructure to support more than a minimal colony. Assuming they had the time and resources for that. Given that they weren’t staying, it was an investment that they were not going to make. An investment they could not make, it made no sense for them to invest when they were not going to be here more than a few months. The Horizon herself was more valuable to them than whatever colony her crew had established. The question, however, was what to do with the ship? Richards thought it best to have the ship scrapped, and he could see where she was coming from. There was an argument to be made for attempting a refit of the ship. An extra ship could improve their odds, but could they afford it? It was a lot of work, and her refit projections didn’t even cover upgrading her weapons. They only covered what it would take to give her warp capability. It was cheap by any measure, be it manhours or material resources.

Thankfully he didn’t have to answer that question right away. They had a crew to locate, and a colony to evacuate. It was a small one no doubt, but those souls mattered. He could not leave them here so close to the Cathamari border. There were both practical and moral reasons not to abandon them here. At Earth there may have been people left behind, but he had no way to confirm that. The plasma storms had made it impossible to scan the surface with any reliability. Even if he could have confirmed their presence evacuating them may not have proved feasible. There were limits to how many people a starship like the Enterprise could take on. However, he felt they could afford to take a couple hundred more on. With time the ship could support more but eventually, they will need more ships or a bigger ship. A problem that would have to wait.

Misaki looked up, “Sir, we have located the Horizon’s crew. 212 life signs. They have set up a small settlement in the northeastern hemisphere. Looks like they have been there a while.”

She tapped a button, and orbital imagery appeared on the forward screen. It displayed a collection of metal structures, a perimeter fence, and several fields. The settlement was built on the bank of a river one that was supplied water from the ice cap to the north. The settlement barely qualified as a village, but it seemed they had done alright for themselves. He smiled, “Send a shuttle down the surface to make contact with the crew. I also want an engineering team sent over to the Horizon.”

Richards had made a good report, but it was based solely on remote scans. They were highly detailed yes, but they still needed a physical inspection of the ship. He shifted in his chair already knowing that the next few hours would be an exercise in patience.

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