Chapter Six of Brides of War
The Ark of Wanel shook heavily as it was battered about within the magnetic storm. Half a dozen screens within the control room had gone completely loopy.
Several alarms began going off and at about that point junior officers started giving me looks of extreme doubtfulness to which I calmly responded, "Maintain heading."
"But the reactors are being negatively charged by the magnetic flux Sir!"
"I can see that, but they're still within normal operating range. Hold our output steady."
"Yes Sir."
Visibly order began to come over those within the control room as they all realized my dedication to moving forward into the unknown no matter what the cost might be. An officer from the battle section arrays approached and gaining my attention he pointed to a screen in his hand and said, "Sir, I think running cloaked is causing a detrimental drag to occur with these magnetic vortexes that we're channeling through. See how it spikes on the graph when the cloaking array re-resonates with the base frequency of the ship. If we cut power to the cloak, then the energy coefficient will return to a more positive ion exchange and we may gain some positive charge back into the reactors."
I scanned over the handheld screen he had indicated as the Ark was jolted about as even more alarms went off from other parts of the ship. The ship was taking a beating, and there was a very real question of how much longer it would hold together given the current detrimental load.
Something needed to change fast if there was to be any real possibility that we were going to get through to a better future, if even such a thing existed out here in this unknown land that we were flying blindly into. We needed this ship not just for the voyage, but also for what came after.
We had no warehouses to repair the systems becoming increasingly damaged. We were tasked with restarting over as a culture and to do that taking risks was simply going to be a part of the daily survival game at times.
Meeting the Executive Officer's eyes, I quickly assented to the junior officer's plan. He quickly responded with, "We have no idea what that might do. We might become visible on enemy radars even in this magnetic soup."
"It would seem that we have no choice. Hopefully we'll look like an anomaly and nothing more serious than that which would warrant an investigation. Now take us out of stealth mode."
With an audible purring noise the stealth arrays retracted into the hull of the ship and once more we became visible to the world of radars. Thankfully here in the magnetic clouds of the north there was no one to see us, and it was doubtful that radar would even reveal us as a clear contact.
"Monitor all communication lines. See if you can pick up on any uptick in the action."
Tense minutes went by even as the junior officer's recommendation for restoring positive energy to the reactors by turning off the cloaking array was confirmed. The Telecommunications Officer broke the silence, "All communications are a fried jumble Sir. I can't make out anything."
"Let's hope their radar is in the same predicament."
The ship was indeed now gliding much smoother through the magnetic stream that surrounded us. Emergency crews had the one reactor that was malfunctioning the most patched and as I watched the dial I saw it go from yellow back into the green.
Turning I patted the gunnery officer on the shoulder encouragingly, "Good suggestion Lieut."
"Only if they don't see us Sir."
"Maybe so, but the important thing in the moment is that we're managing the strain to the ship where before we were not. Little else matters right now."
The hours passed by then and I remained in place not wanting to take my hand off the situation as it was, which despite some positives remained dire overall. In fatigued ponderings I remained in my chair in contemplation of scenario after scenario to the point where I forced myself to give up on doing so for the sake of my sanity.
Fighting against tiredness I focused on taking in the new realities of what before this moment had been the great unknown to my knowledge in that no one had ever ventured into the magnetic storms of the North as far as we had done so already. Most likely the reason for this was that no one had a death wish.
These were desperate times though, and we had nowhere else to go. The worrying thought that we would find no land and all that we would basically end up doing would be to continually wander, until one day we crashed out of the sky, came to haunt me again as it had for days on end.
My solution remained the same. I gave up my worries to God, even as I trusted the instinct that kept telling me to go north.
Sensing something I opened my eyes to find Alora standing there. She had a cup of coffee for which I thanked her.
She smiled, but made no effort to engage me in conversation. She knew I was busy and quietly she left as unobtrusively as she had come.
*********
Conditions beyond the hull remained harsh for the next two days. Even though the Ark was drafting through the stream better without the cloaking array switched on the magnetic storms were having an effect on almost everything.
Emergency crews no sooner fixed one problem before two more would pop up. We had fixed so many subsystems already that we were beginning to run out of spare parts.
Rubbing at my gritty eyes, I paced back and forth as tensions ran high throughout the ship's beleaguered repair crews and wearied on-duty staff. Right now both shifts were active as they had been for the last two days.
The Ark was fighting for its life and we were fighting as one to hold the Ark together. It was abundantly clear that no lesser built ship would have survived this journey to this point, which gave me solace in terms of questioning whether or not we would be followed.
That was little comfort, though if the situation did not improve soon. The real question was just how much more could the Ark take?
As the day wore on, or was it night, conditions worsened as we were held gripped by the most severe electrical mishmash of cross polymer winds that we had ever registered yet. Truly, I feared that we had come too far now to even make our way back out.
We were one or two backup systems away from the complete failure of the main drive. As it was we were diverting power from everywhere just to keep the drives, cooling systems functioning at maximum capacity.
Without the main coolant systems functioning at full capacity we would've melted apart at the seams a day ago, but without that power being utilized elsewhere in the ship the temperature was nearly freezing the farther away you got from the reactors.
There wasn't much farther we were going to be able to make it and I let God knows that. I waited in expectation of reproof, but instead I got the voice of my telemetry officer speaking, instead, "Sir I'm showing a weakening in the stream. I recommend we alter course four points to the West."
"Do it!" I said, as I came up behind him to gaze at what he had noticed.
The appearance of a bubbled out like area on his screen was a relief in that it was at least something that looked different from the swirling madness that we had been tacking through for days on end. The constant tremoring of the ship had indeed gone down a notch.
Then, within moments we were in the bubble, which is what it seemed to be. Atmospheric levels turned almost normal and the lights in the ship got brighter as they got more power with less systems robbing from the overall supply.
The telemetry officer pointed, "Look here and here Sir."
"Yes, I see it." There were more bubbled off enclosures to the North and at the farthest range of detection there seemed to be a clearing off of the winds in general. With exhausted exclamations of excitement the crew within the control room crowded around.
Making my way out of the huddle I called out for order, "Alright now, back to your stations."
Quickly they obeyed as I gave the order for a full stop of all reactor drives. Quickly the orders were relayed and the ship came to a halt.
Clicking the ship's intercom on I made a statement to the general population of the Ark of Wanel, "This is the Captain speaking. We have entered an enclosure within the storm that has normal atmosphere, but with no land masses detected. However, we needed this break and there are more such pockets to the north of us. In 12 hours we will power up once more and bubble hop between these low pressure zones and God willing there will be more of them along the way with land at the end of the journey. Something most definitely we should all be praying for. In the meantime, we need to continue with repairs and get rested for whatever may lay ahead. Except for essential personnel I'm ordering a six hour break for everyone before we get back to repairing damaged systems. I repeat that we are currently in no danger and the outlook for getting out of these magnetic storms looks to be highly likely in the next day or so. Thank you all for your efforts for without them we would not still be here."
Despite the general weariness the crew was affected by they all began to filter out of the control room and towards the rest the ship with an upbeat mood where before we had all been living under the grimmest of circumstances. Only essential crew remained within the control room of which Sally was one.
She came up beside me and insistently said, "You need to sleep Captain!"
"Yes ma'am, I do." I said, not denying it in the least.
