Author’s note:

Okay, I know I use a very old action movie cliche in this chapter, and you have my apologies in advance.

Chapter 2.6

The four seasons on piano sounds a bit different than with a full orchestra. I played it that way, however. It took me more than forty minutes to go through all the movements. I was really having fun by the end. When I was finished, I liked up my twelve-string and did a Spanish flamenco, then I went back to the piano and played some light jazz.

I received an encore but I hadn't practiced anything else. In my previous life as a male, I had learned to play by ear, and I always considered the little dots on the page to be mere suggestions. I had heard some popular songs on the comm system, so I went to the piano and played one of them. It seemed to go over quite well, so I played another. Then I stood up and left the stage. While I received a standing ovation, I went to where John was standing in the wings. He hugged me and lifted me off the floor, and spun around. He set me down and gave me a delicious kiss and said, "That was wonderful!"

"The music or the kiss?"

"Both!" He exclaimed.

The next morning Paula invited John and me to the command center. When we arrived, Marc and Carla were already there along with Rashda and Colleen. Paula and Fred asked us to join them in the briefing room. After they sat down, Paula told us, "You have all been on the command crews of your own ships. I think it would be prudent to ask you to study this ship and be placed in the command line here."

"I've already got my hands full with my music and Heaven's Rose, " I told her. "Plus, I've decided to learn more about engineering from John.

"As it is, I'm going to have to put music on the back burner for a while to learn from him."

Marc gave me a strange look but didn't say anything.

Fred however did. "I never knew you were interested in engineering."

"I want to learn about what my husband enjoys, " I explained.

"I see."

While I wasn't sure he did, I wasn't going to press the issue.

"I'm not sure it's a good idea for one of us to be in the chain of command," Marc said. "All of us who have just come out of 'Total Fun' and the death of so many friends and family have post-traumatic stress disorder."

Fred nodded. "I understand. Do you think you can work in other areas of the ship and eventually move to the chain of command?"

"I think that is a possibility," John told him.

“As soon as I’m cleared for command, I’ll have the counselor talk to you,” Rashda told them.

We were on our way to our respective homes when we felt a peculiar vibration in the superstructure. A moment later, there was a incredible lurch that we felt in our bones. John turned around and started running back to the command center. A moment later, I followed him.

When I entered the command center, it was in turmoil. I noticed that there were lots of red lights flashing all over. I noticed that everything felt still as well. The vibration from the engines had ceased. I didn’t say anything, just looked around at the bustle of people who, though they were concerned, were still acting professional. John was beside Fred at a console that showed the status of the engines.

It looked like the starboard side had a burnout that affected all six engines on that side. I didn’t want to disturb them, so I just watched. I understood most of what the displays were saying. In the first engine was a pump which sent the fuel for the other engines on to them.

The engines were mounted on the central hub, not far from where we were. The engines were huge. It looked like they were fifty feet or thereabouts from top to bottom, and several hundred feet long.

Marc ran into the center right then. He looked at the board, and seemed to take it in all at once. “That’s going to blow if we don’t adjust it, now!”

Fred and Marc ran out, and John took my hands. “Honey, I’m going to help them, but I don’t want you out there. There is serious radiation in there, and you have to take care of that little one.”

I threw my arms around hims and kissed him. “Make sure all of you are careful, John!”

“We will be.” Then he ran out after the others.

This was later related to me from John.

The engines are set up three on the right, and three on the left. When you walked out the docking tube, you came to another tube that went right and left Apparently, I was wrong when I thought that one engine supplied the fuel for all six. It supplies just the three right hand ones. The one that was the number one for the right, which was the first one. In between them was the docking port.

When they got into the engine, the problem was near the exhaust vent, so they had to hurry to the other end. There was a incredible wind in the engine tube. The walkway had gravity that allowed them to walk along the ‘bottom’ of the tube and there was another gravity field that was pulling the air down to the front of the engine for just such a problem as this.

A field that I really didn’t understand, even though John explained it to me held held the radiation away from the walkway, and thus held it away from the rest of the ship. That had failed. Because of that, the gravity fields were weaker, to keep radioactive particles from settling down to the walkway as quickly as they might. The other gravitational field pulled anything that might get out of the walkway field to the forward part of the engine tub. Thus any air would stay in the engine, rather that leave through the exhaust port. This would start as soon as someone entered the tube because the walkway was not usually pressurized. With the mysterious field broken, the electronics behind the walls of the walkway were fried. What they had to do was fix the generators for this field.

What was causing the wind was that the gravitational field that held the air to the front of the tube was on full power. This field also pulled the air ‘down’ to the depressurization vents, but they were closed and wouldn’t open until no one was in the tube. The field would also stop air from going back to the walkway, but with it broken, air was in a cyclonic circle. The three men were fighting a tailwind to keep from being pushed to the end of the tube. When they reached the end, they had to be careful because the wind was being sucked ‘up’ at high velocity.

Marc opened an access panel and started to set it to his right. Apparently the wind caught the panel and it pulled it upwards. The edge of the panel sliced three of his fingers off! Fred grabbed at the panel, and he was pulled up. Before he could be flung ‘down’ to the other end, John grabbed his hand and started to be lifted. Marc grabbed his ankle, and threw his left arm, with the severed fingers over a rail on the walkway.

Not only was Fred being pulled by gravity, but he was being forced ‘downward’ by hurricane force winds. Marc could not hold onto John’s ankle for long. There was no good handhold, and he was losing blood fast. He was trying to pull them ‘down’ but it was no use. John tried to hold onto Fred’s wrist and pull as well.

Fred saw what was happening, and he somehow got his right hand up to his left wrist, although how against the wind, I had no idea. He started pulling John’s fingers away from his wrist. John could barely hold on with all his fingers. He shouted at Fred to stop, but Fred wouldn’t. He finally got a couple of John’s fingers loose. He fell. Hard. The gravity near the front was close to three G. He normally weighed eighty one Kg. At the end of the fall, he weighed two hundred forty Kg. He was dead. The power of the fall broke almost every bone in his body, including his neck and several vertebrae.

Much of what happened, we saw on monitors. I was beside Paula when she watched in horror, her husband fall. It was terrible! All of my distrust of Fred evaporated in that moment. He had saved my husband’s life by giving his. Fifteen seconds after Fred fell, Marc passed out from the loss of blood. If John had kept hold of Fred, he would have fallen too.

Any one of Fred’s injuries, or even a few of them, could have been repaired by his nanites, but so many spread them too thin. They couldn’t repair him fast enough to hold off death.

Paula fell apart. After that, Gina took over command of the ship. Some other engineers fixed the engine and we resumed our acceleration, but none of us felt like doing much of anything. We wept. Paula because of her husband dying, me because I never trusted him until I saw what he was willing to do for someone else.

I felt that I hadn’t given him what he deserved. John had trusted him, but he saw how it affected me, and he knew why. I spent a lot of time depressed. Feeling sorry for myself, I suppose. I couldn’t imagine that I could treat someone so unfairly. That seemed so foreign to me.

I had been spending a fair amount of time with Paula before this catastrophe, and after she blamed no one as she had seen what happened. I hated to see her so hurt because we had been developing a wonderful relationship.

A statue was made of Fred, and put over his grave. On N21 and N22, we had recycled bodies. We had to. Here, we had few enough people that we didn’t need to do such a thing. Fred was buried in the town square where Heaven’s Rose was located. My restaurant didn’t look out on it, for which I was grateful. The steakhouse did, however.

We had a memorial service for Fred as well. I did my best to play piano for it, but I was so broken up I had trouble. I was asked to sing as well, but my voice broke so many times, I think I butchered the song. John told me it was okay to display that type of emotion. I knew it was, but it still bothered me.

It took a long time for us to get life back to normal. Paula and I both had our babies. Paula named her little boy Fred. I had a girl, and she was named Frieda, in honor of the man who saved her fathers life.

To be continued...