The Alpha Protocol: Alpha Protocol Book 1 by Duncan Hamilton (free ebook reader for iphone .TXT) 📗

enjoyed living.’ He let his breath whistle out between his teeth. ‘Okay, we have to power back, so let’s do that now. If we’re lucky, it’ll stabilise, and we can increase the injection rate again slowly. No more than we need. If we have to spend a few hours hove-to at the Nexus portal, so be it.’ With a hostile ship on the loose, it wasn’t ideal, but it was a choice between certain death and possible death.

Vachon nodded and started tapping on the reaction chamber’s control panel. It was taking Vachon longer than Samson reckoned it should.

‘Problem?’

‘Nothing beyond what we already know. The crystal’s not gone into cascade yet, but we have to assume it will.’

‘Ah. That’s something, at least,’ Samson said. ‘What’s the reaction rate?’

‘Just at threshold,’ Vachon said.

It could have been worse, Samson thought. ‘Keep it under control,’ he said. ‘Ejecting the reaction matter is the absolute last resort. Do whatever you can to slow it, and keep me updated, but do not eject the matter without my say-so.’

‘Aye.’

Samson went out to the corridor, and waited for the door to close before balling his fists and letting out a frustrated groan. If the reaction matter went into a cascade, the crystal would fragment into hundreds of pieces, creating so much reaction surface that the reactor would overload, and then explode with enough energy to rip the ship apart. They could shut it down before that happened, but cascades often occurred so quickly there was no time to react. You were usually dead before you knew what had happened.

He could be ultra-cautious and eject it now, but without the reaction matter they would have no power. They’d be adrift. Ships did pass through this system to serve the small population on Dobson, which was too far for them to reach with the Bounty’s resources. There was a slim chance a ship would happen upon their localised distress call and get to them before they suffocated. They wouldn’t have long until everyone on the ship was dead, though. That much he already knew for certain.

He’d never heard of a cascade being stopped and reversed. He could tell that Vachon hadn’t either, from the expression on his face. Although they weren’t in cascade yet, he knew it was very likely they soon would be. The rule was that a cascade always followed a fragmentation when dirty reaction matter was involved. What was he to do? Risk instantaneous death by explosion, or slow death by freezing or asphyxiating in a ship without power—they weren’t choices he had ever hoped to be faced with. Which risk was the greater?

He mulled over the two options as he walked slowly back to the bridge, taking as much time as he could. He’d have to tell the crew, but how would he break something like this to them? Should he make a decision and order them to go along with it, or allow them all to participate in a discussion first? Technically, the chain of command still existed—but after all that had happened, might they be justified in thinking everyone had a say in their fight for survival? He knew that the moment he gave away command authority, he would never get it back. Differing opinions would lead to conflict, which would damn them all.

Harper gave him a curious look when he got back to the bridge. He returned to the command chair and made himself busy looking over information on its console, still trying to work out what his next step was. However stubbornly the flame of hope might burn, in Samson’s mind there was no realistic chance anyone would get to them in time to effect a rescue. They couldn’t get a message out of the system so they were reliant on whatever ships might happen along and detect a local distress signal. In a remote system like this one, the chance of that was pretty much zero.

They were at least two weeks away from Dobson—more than a week longer than the Bounty would be able to keep them alive. Samson didn’t think it likely there would be any ships there able to get to them faster than that. He wasn’t confident there were any ships on Dobson at all. He discounted the chance of rescue from Dobson.

No matter how he framed it, Samson knew his initial assessment of trying to return to the depot was right, and the fragmentation of the reaction matter didn’t change that. In the absence of any real prospect for rescue, the risk of instantaneous death was the best choice. There was always the possibility that the reaction matter would hold together long enough to get them to safety. If they made it through the Nexus transit, hopefully he could bring them out a short enough distance from the depot that they could nurse the power plant—run everything on minimum power so as to reduce the stress on the reaction matter. It would mean being cold, hungry, and struggling to breathe for the duration, but better that than blowing themselves to bits, and never being able to report back on what had happened to the Sidewinder. It was a tenuous plan, but in the absence of anything better, all of its consequences seemed to be the lesser evils presented to him.

He ran the calculation on the command console once again to be certain—if they shut down the power plant, their air would last three days. Their boarding suits would give them another twelve hours at the most. If they instituted rationing, food and water would last longer than that, so air was their limiting factor. There was definitely no help coming within three days. They’d have to keep the power plant running to stretch out that time. There was little effective difference between running the reactor at the bare minimum they’d need to survive while they waited for help versus the level they’d need to continue on to the naval depot. They’d already shocked the reaction matter, and