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VP Finance stepped away for a brief moment. When he returned, he was practically groveling.
Liea spent the best part of the day going through brochures, looking at material, being shown models of cabin mock-ups and actual personal yachts that the company was currently building. She worked with the interior designer to find her 'personal' brand for the interior and exterior look of the vessel.
It turned out that Pallanders did not have a retired Fairling Class available at the moment to modify, but they were currently bidding on several ships that were recently decommissioned. They would know in a few days if they would be able to meet Liea's needs. They assured her that two or three Failing Class vessels were being decommissioned every quarter and that they would be able to procure one soon. Liea returned to the Hotel Eclipsa with her head spinning at all that had happened to her that day.
Shock after shock had piled on her PSec, Ms. Talbot. She went from believing that Liea was the well to do daughter of a super-rich family, to understanding that Ms. Samson was super-rich in her own right. She knew that she would have to increase her security team by a factor of three before word got around of Liea's actual wealth. She would become a prime target within a few days!
What surprised Ms. Talbot the most though, was that Liea's undeniable wealth hadn't changed her basic character. So far.
Conference Room One, Liramor-23, Piscium Star System
It was two months since the departure of the NS Dewfall. Fiona and Capt. Raymond Clark had just completed a test in Navy tactics under the watchful eye of Capt. Bouyé Whatt.
Knowing that her navy pay wouldn't start until she finished the course, she had pushed Raymond and Bouyé for their help to get through the program. In respect of navy traditions, she only wore her jumpsuit when the monthly navy supply ship came through, mostly to assure the different crews that here was a person of note.
The three were relaxing in Fiona's office, going over the surprising results of the test. Surprising in that Fiona was not a navy person so the speed and ease in which she was assimilating the information was unexpected.
Fiona felt a large shudder go through the platform, immediately followed by alarms from control. The three rushed into control.
"Explosion in Construction Bay Eight. They are repairing various pulse engines in there," SOps called out.
"Fire suppression?" Fiona snapped.
"No indications from sensors. Fire suppression in the bay may be damaged," the Ops O informed.
"We have no working cameras in the bay," SOps informed her. "They were working before the explosion."
"I've got to get a look at what's happening down there. Mr. Fent, you have control. Don't send anything directly to me unless I ask for it or there is an immediate threat to personnel in that area," Fiona ordered SOps.
She immediately ran to the lifts with Raymond and Bouyé on her tail. The lift brought them swiftly to the ring were the construction bays were. They ran around the ring toward bay eight. Fiona was looking through the window into the inferno in the bay. She noted several bodies laying on the deck. The noise around her was incredible.
A shop foreman, dressed in fire kit, come over. "Ma'am, I'm Mining Shift Foreman Mark Brent. I've just checked the fire suppression system. It has been shocked by the blast and is not operating. I have people working on that now." He yelled
"The outer bay doors are indicating problems with the failsafe's, which may mean the back up systems might be out, or that the doors themselves will not work. It could also mean that the doors could open unexpectedly. We can't tell at the moment, again because of shock to the systems.
"There are people inside and we have no idea if they are alive or dead. In addition, if we open this hatch, we may let the fire into the ring. We'll have to cycle the airlock and I don't know if the hatches will work.
"I'm not sure how powerful the blast was, or what set it off, but anything strong enough to rock a station this size like it did was a very strong blast. It's your call, ma'am," he informed Fiona.
"We have to get in there to get those people out, alive or dead. We only have a few minutes to get things right. If we can't get in there, we will have even more problems as we have to knock this fire down," Fiona screamed over the noise around her.
She looked at Bouyé. "Capt. Whatt, I need you to return to your ship and prepare to fire on Construction Bay Eight's outer doors. If we can't knock the fire down, or open the outer doors, we will need to blast a hole in those doors to take out this fire," she ordered. Whatt snapped a salute and ran off.
"Mr. Brent, do we have a count on how many were working in this area before the blast?" She asked. Brent didn't have the information but had already thought of that and had other people trying to determine it.
Fiona turned to a suit cabinet and pulled out fire kit in her size, Raymond beside her. The two quickly prepared themselves as more people arrived ready to fight the fire. Fire on a station was a threat to all. Those who were not on duty stations were arriving to help as much as possible.
"Mr. Brent, I want you to have three crews set up with water hose for inside and outside the bay. With all the systems knocked down by the blast inside, we can't be sure that the hose pipes in the bay will function properly. We go in in three groups, three hose crew, whose task is to start suppressing the fire around the people trapped in there and knocking down the main fire itself. Maintenance people to look at the electrical systems inside the bay to see if they can get them up and running -- priority on the fire suppression systems and on the outer doors. And a snatch team to bring those bodies back here.
"Take a count of what you can see from the windows, two people per body. We have to move quickly, let's make this happen," Fiona ordered.
Brent began to snap off orders to his people. Everyone was ready in half a minute. Brent snapped the controls for the airlock, which refused to operate. Immediately, two people opened the small panel beside the hatch and began working the manual release on the door. Two others started to take the electrical panel apart, knowing that they would need a functioning airlock to save the station.
The hatch opened and nineteen people jammed into the airlock. They pushed the inner hatch closed and activated the outer hatch. Fortunately, it worked, and the hatch into the bay opened.
Intense heat hit the people in the airlock. Numbers, showing the temperature within the bay, starting rising on Fiona's face plate inside the suit. It was not good. The worse part was the diminishing oxygen levels as the fire consumed the air in the bay, though that might wind up helping in the long run if it didn't kill the injured first.
The crew broke into teams and headed to their respective places in the bay. Fiona and Raymond ran to the bodies furthest from the door and started moving them to the airlock. Four other pairs were working with them. When they had ten bodies in the lock, they closed the outer hatch and activated the inner.
The maintenance teams had repaired the inner hatch and it quickly slid open. Medical staff were waiting on the inner ring to snatch up the injured. As soon as they finished, Fiona cycled the airlock and her team went back into the bay looking for bodies.
She could hear Brent passing orders along to the two-man hose teams as they worked to knock down the fire. Bay Control came up on her system to tell her that there had been twenty-two known people working in the bay at the time of the blast. They had already retrieved ten.
Fiona and Clark worked to move three more bodies. The third time they returned to the airlock, Fiona noted eight bodies. She needed to find four more.
Fiona closed the hatch on her side and indicated to those on the other side to take the wounded out. The pair turned around and began to look for other bodies. They found one body missing its head. They left it there for the moment as they looked for others. The team reported finding two more, that left one. Fiona ordered another pair to take out the headless body while she and Raymond looked for the last.
Things were getting worse.
Pulse engines were very powerful engines that primarily used electrical power to produce a plasma charge that could be funnelled through a very restricted nozzle. Not that the nozzle was small, just restricted in comparison to the force moving through it. The Plasma could be formed of a number of different materials, but those that produced oxygen as a by product were preferable on many of the smaller engines the platform used as they increased the overall effect of the plasma stream.
The fire had consumed the ambient oxygen in the bay but had now reached a level of intensity that it was self fueling by producing its own oxygen from the fuel cubes. Bay Control had told Fiona that there was six tons of material in the bay that normally was safe, that now was not only adding to the fire, but would soon reach critical mass from the heat and could cause another explosion. This one would do much more damage to the platform.
"Found her!" Raymond called out. He was holding up the head and part of an arm for a woman. "This is the last body. The other decapitated body was male. We now have the means to identify this person."
Fiona nodded and told him to leave the bay. She ran over to were Brent was working with his hose teams.
"How are we doing?" She asked.
"Not good. The fire is getting more intense and we cannot throw enough water on it to knock it down," he told her.
"Doors?" She asked.
"The teams are not able to figure out the problem. They don't know if it will open or not. They tell me the manual override will work but that means someone has to stay inside to work it," he told her.
"Right, get everyone out now. The fuel supply is likely to go critical soon. We need to open the doors to bring the temperature down and to push burning material out into space. I need mining shuttles or Rockhounds to take the material out of the bay once the doors are open. Get everyone else out, I will work the door," she ordered.
She ran over to the outer bay doors and the two people working there. They showed her the manual control and how to make use of it, then ran to the airlock, while Fiona strapped herself in at the panel. As soon as the airlock cycled, Fiona ordered Bay Control to activate the outer doors. Nothing happened.
She pressed switches on the panel but again nothing happened.
Fiona grabbed the handle for the manual control and pumped it several times. The bay doors opened slowly. Too Slowly. A large crack appeared in the middle of the doors and the foul air in the bay rushed out through it, pushing on the doors and slowing their progress. Fiona felt herself being pulled toward the opening, but she was securely fastened in place.
Bay Control informed her that she had maybe three minutes before the fuel went critical.
"Bay Control relay me to the Wimple," she ordered.
"Wimple here, Fiona," came the voice of Capt. Whatt.
"The doors are opening under manual input, but too slowly. The fuel inside the bay is reaching critical mass. There's six tons of it. If that blows it could rip Liramor-23 apart with significant injury or loss of life. We have maybe three minutes to bring the temperature down in here otherwise we are going to have a problem," she told Whatt.
"I'm working the manual pump as fast as I can, but the doors are only ten centimeters apart at the moment. In two minutes, if the doors are not at least one meter apart, you are to fire on them with something large enough to blow a substantial hole in them. Is that clear?" Fiona asked.
"Yes, but if you are where I think you are, a charge large enough to blow those doors will likely kill you," Whatt said.
"The platform comes first, Bouyé. Save the platform, then save me, if you can." Fiona ordered.
She started working as fast as possible, pushing the pump as hard as she could. The doors were not opening any faster. Suddenly, she was weightless. Bay Control informed her that the fire had damaged the continuity of the gravity plates. She activated the magnetic plates in her suit's boots but without the necessary fulcrum of her body under gravity, her actions on the pump only slowed down.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something ram the door from outside. The doors stated to slide apart faster and faster. Fiona saw the arms of a Rockhound pushing on the far door from her. The doors were now open a meter. Then five meters, then ten. She saw RH-149 on the side of the Rockhound, Clark's Rockhound.
Mining shuttles slipped in and grabbed the burning fuel, pushing it out the doors and into space. In a very short time, the bay was clear of burning material and the temperature gauges in her helmet started a significant downward plunge.
Fiona disengaged the straps on her suit and worked her way slowly to the airlock, the magnets at her feet clicking each time she put her foot down. She could see people cheering and clapping behind the plasteel windows as she approached it.
**************
Four people had been killed directly by the initial blast. The rest were saved, though injured. Two had significant injuries that would require they retire from the platform. The remainder had burns of varying degrees, damaged eardrums from the blast, shrapnel injuries, and damage to their lungs from smoke inhalation, all of it repairable by the platform's medical teams, though those with lung damage would be restricted from suit duties for several months until they healed completely.
The explosion and fire had caused so much damage in the bay that a cause for the blast could not be determined. Fiona ordered a review from imagery in the bay before the blast, hoping to find a cause that could be prevented in future. Without the cause of the initial blast, they had no idea what to protect from. It would take two months to repair the bay and make it usable again.
Safety procedures for storing the fuel cubes had been properly followed. Fiona ordered a modification to limit the number of cubes stored together and deliberately separated the smaller caches of fuel cubes so that a fire could not pass from one set of cubes to another.
Fiona noted the names of all miners that had entered the bay to rescue bodies, fight the fire, or attempt to save the platform by working on damaged electrical panels inside the bay. She would recommend that all of them receive the Medal of Bravery for their selfless acts of heroics in this time of crisis.
Fiona had the task of preparing letters for the parents or significant others of the four deceased. For her, that was the most difficult part of the entire incident. It was something that she had been required to do on several occasions during her time on the platform. It never got any easier.
Fiona had always enjoyed walking around her platform. She knew many of the senior personnel and even some of the workers. Usually, though, she was never approached by people as she made her rounds. Now, whenever she appeared anywhere on Liramor-23, people would come over and thank her for what she had done. A few had thanked her for rescuing their friend's bodies or saving the lives of fellow workers, friends, and even lovers. Some thanked her directly for saving the platform.
After a few of these encounters, Fiona began to realize that they weren't expressing gratitude as they might to a superior who had gone above and beyond for them. They were treating her as they did their own. Fiona had moved from being a faceless functionary that people showed deference to, to someone that every worker on station showed respect and appreciation for. She was one of them, not one of the faceless controllers. She didn't know how to deal with all the praise and wasn't sure she liked it. But now, when she gave orders, everyone jumped to obey them.
Central Control, Liarmor-23, Piscium Star System
Three days after the incident in bay eight, alarms started blaring in the control center.
"Report!" Fiona snapped, as she stepped from her office.
"Unscheduled FTL event in the Navy inbound lane." SOps reported. "IFF initiated by the vessel. IFF confirms navy frigate NS Kindalla." Imagery snapped into place on the main screen showing a Fairling Class Frigate with F103155 NS KINDALLA emblazoned on its hull.
"Liramor control, this is the NS Kindalla, Capt. Liana Dostier commanding, on approach to station on orders from Fleet Admiral Thenton. FAdm. Thenton sends his apologies for not informing you of our arrival but thinks you won't mind, as this is the ship you were promised. Over."
"NS Kindalla, Liramor control, welcome to the Piscium system," Fiona replied. "You are authorized approach to the platform. My Ops O will send you your parking zone, please stay where you are placed. This is an active mining platform and rocks being jettisoned from the working areas can cause damage to ships in the wrong locations.
"I will want to speak to you, your Ex O, your Tac O, your Legal Officer, your Marine contingent commander, and your Boatswain as soon as possible. You may bring whomever else you want briefed in on the situation here but try to keep it to a minimum for now. Over."
"Kindalla, roger, we'll see you soon. Out."
The Kindalla was only two years older than the Wimple. Her crew was well-seasoned and had spent the last two years successfully hunting pirates in the vast areas of Sector Forty-two. Over that time, they had captured three pirate vessels themselves, and had assisted in the capture of two others. The ship had received the President's Unit Citation for their work in counter-piracy. They had earned a break, or so FAdm. Thenton had explained to Capt. Dostier. So, they would be seconded to Liramor-23 Local Authority in the Piscium system.
Dostier was not pleased to have been shunted off to this rather backward place. But orders were orders, and when they came personally from Commander, Sector Forty-Two, they were orders you obeyed.
Dostier and her staff shuttled over to the platform and were met at the airlock by two people in navy uniforms. One was in an undress jumpsuit with civilian equivalent Commodore rank and the second was a Captain of the Civilian Liaison Authority with more bling on him than half her command.
Dostier noted the Sector Forty-Two patch on the right shoulder, the Liramor-23 logo over Marsh's name, the Command Star, the Civilian Volunteer pin, the Sector Commander's Commendation pin, a ribbon she didn't recognize, and the command patch on her left shoulder. She snapped a salute to 'Commodore' Marsh.
"Ma'am, I am J-111335-554 Captain Liana Dostier, commanding NS Kindalla," she said formally.
"Captain, I am Fiona Marsh, Director Liramor-23 and Local Authority. Thanks to Admiral Thenton, I have been given equivalent status, which means that I own your ass. And it is a nice ass." Fiona said with a smile looking at the attractive woman.
Dostier was 184cm tall, with light brown hair and green eyes. She had a trim and athletic body but was definitely female and filled her dress uniform in all the right ways.
"This is Capt. Raymond Clark, Civilian Liaison Authority seconded to this station and specifically to me. He is late of the Black Lightning Combat Engineer Brigade," she said, pointing to Raymond.
That got the attention of the people in the airlock.
There had been some information deliberately missing from Thenton's brief, Dostier mused to herself.
Clark flipped the switch on the airlock's comms unit, "Arriving, NS Kindalla," he announced.
Fiona was introduced to Dostier's staff and then brought everyone to Conference Room One, where she introduced them to her own senior staff.
