The Outer Rim Braves Chapter 4: Miscalculations

Not every plan survives contact with the vacuum of space.

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Isaac stumbled forward as Erik hauled him deeper into the reactor control hall. The marine’s radar picked up movement coming from the tram station. The Alucar drone followed them. The two sprinted down the pristine white hallway overlooking the reactor banks. Isaac needed to find this lone remaining active core was, and fast. A klaxon rang as the drone triggered the airlock transition; the bulletproof glass doors revealed the drone waiting for the airlock to complete transitioning.

“Why isn’t it just tearing through the doors?” Isaac’s voice trembled as they ran.

“You want to go ask it? Keep moving.”

As they crossed the threshold out of the hallway, an overhead sign was posted marking the next section as administrative offices. Lining the halls of the area beyond the hallway were shutters with metal thick enough for use on bulkheads. The two followed the ship’s unorthodox construction toward the battery banks, guided by Isaac’s wrist-mounted navigation. With each turn, they found broken barricades of destroyed office furniture and scrap girders slowing progress.

Beyond a few sets of barricades, the rest of the section was only abandoned. Displays within the offices showed critical warnings over extinct reactor cells. As they continued, reaching the deck’s control zone, each reactor array monitoring station maintained an emergency state, red warning lights filled the tight spaces. This ship was on the verge of becoming nothing more than a tomb drifting through space.

They finally hit the bottom of the path, passing under the reactor deck into a vault embedded deep in the ship. Descending a set of metal grate stairs, everything around turned to pure darkness with only a small ray of forest green light emanating from the ajar vault door at the bottom of the abyss.

“Is that it?” Erik climbed down the steps backwards, gun trained to their rear.

“I think so.” Isaac’s voice filled with hope.

As they closed on the huge double-thick armor-plated door, Isaac’s containment warning shook the panel on his wrist. In his ear, the crackling of his digital reactivity counter stopped him in place.

“That thing’s hot!” Isaac pointed toward the vault.

Erik shoved him. “So’s the exit. Keep moving.”

Behind them, the Alucar drone descended the long staircase slowly and methodically, its movement eerily careful. With each step, the machine slowed to observe the vault. Like the drone was leery of what was inside.

Terrified, Isaac sprinted toward the vault. His radiation instrumentation screeched in his right ear with rising intensity the closer to vault he bolted. They crossed the threshold into the vault and light blasted them. Within loomed a massive room with a lone reactor core mounted upon a circular pedestal. White radiation-resistant tiling lined the vault. This place was nothing like anything Isaac had ever seen. An isolated reactor core would go extinct unless it was carefully managed and maintained.

Isaac stopped to study the core from afar. It was greened over to an extreme he’d never seen; thick emerald vines and huge leaf nodes were pressed against the glass as if being pinned by development alone. Usually, death to the central mass occurred if any part of it even grazed the sphere. There was an absurd amount of power contained within that lone cell. Maybe enough to power this whole ship, judging by the amount of radiation it gave off.

“How are we getting this thing out of here?” Erik shouted, ready to fire toward the vault door.

Isaac traced a tight spiral as he scanned the radiation plating on the floor around the veridian core. “Every cell has an emergency jettison procedure. We blow the locks, it gets dumped outside the hull, and the Excursion Unit picks it up.” Isaac’s gaze gravitated toward a small control room near the glass of the reactor.

“Do it.” Erik demanded and stopped, spinning to square off with the Alucar drone entering the vault.

Panicked, Isaac rushed for the reactor control room. The door gaped ajar, and the orange maintenance indicator smoldered. Considering the dust coating the control panel, someone must have thought to hide in the reactor core long before. But considering all the protective suits remained on the hooks, maybe whoever hid in the core chose to go out on their own terms. Given how reactive the cell was now, it leaked as much energy in stray radiation as was normally produced for running a ship this size. He latched his rifle to the magnetic attach points on his suit and got to work.

As he began to flip switches, Isaac spotted movement from the corner of his eye. He jumped in fear, but quickly, he realized there was nothing near him. The distraction was just the Alucar approaching Erik across the vault. He focused on what needed to be done, the control system in front of him. It needed multiple reboots because it was soft bricked and he also needed to decouple any potential disposal protocols, which would likely crush the core and everything else inside the vault, from the jettison executor. Waiting for the console to reboot, he startled as someone approached.

Through the observation window, he spotted a woman’s face beyond the green mire that now swirled chaotically within the core. Her eyes were hungry, her face shadowed by a scowl. Swallowing hard, Isaac blinked and shook his head. When he opened them, the face was gone. Radiation sickness must be setting in already. The screen ignited and blasted the control room in blue, displaying the First Expedition logo, drawing his attention back to the console. The computer’s hard chime reminded Isaac the vault was pressurized.

A burst of laser fire from Erik’s light machine gun lit the dim control room, the whine of the capacitors filled the space. As the rays deflected off the Alucar and were absorbed by the radiation panels with a low hiss. With each impact on the panels that lined the vault, the tumult of the reactor churned more chaotic, churning like the winds of a growing hurricane.

By the time Isaac figured out how to initialize the disposal procedure, the reactor began arcing, emitting lightning which struck the vault’s walls. Deep within, a tumultuous thunderstorm further darkened the deep green cloud. Isaac prayed they didn’t somehow time their arrival at the exact point the reactor was melting down. Judging by the power output, it would take the whole ship with it.

Something was off about the reactor though. Such immense power bleeds would reduce reactance and steady the core, which is why they’re kept in banks, situated into arrays. The proximity to each other acted as a natural balance. If one cell began to run away, the others would respond in turn to keep it in check. It was very difficult for a single cell to meltdown, never mind positively respond to external energy. This lone cell seemed to only grow in reactance from laser fire, which Isaac didn’t expect.

The Alucar closed on Erik, who skirmished the drone in a bid to keep the machine occupied.

Finally isolating the jettison procedure from the disposal protocol, Isaac initiated it. An error flashed across the screen and Isaac jumped in shock. He’d accidentally prevented the process from disconnecting the utility tunnel to enter the cell from outside. And there was no way to cancel the procedure without soft bricking it and having to do everything over again, giving the Alucar more than enough time to finish off Erik. The only way to fix this was manually disconnecting the tunnel.

Isaac yanked a hydraulic jack and a pry bar from the wall, then sprinted toward the metal tunnel, dragging the jack behind him. He only needed to cause enough of a gap from the glass for the system to recognize the disconnect. The hard part was finding the right place to attach without damaging the glass.

The Alucar was juggling two directives, kill Erik and keep its distance from the core. It would get close and then retreat before charging the marine again. But its patterns were unpredictable and staying out of reach while keeping it busy tired the marine. His panting echoed over the radio, spurring Isaac to work faster.

Isaac jammed the jack under the slightly raised lip near where the walkway met the glass and began pumping the handle to lift the armature. As it made contact and resistance grew, his shaking arms struggled to move the grip. Hunger had weakened him. He had to lean into each pump, using all his weight just to depress the handle. The jack failed to dislodge the tunnel, only deforming the rounded rectangular structure.

“Come on!” Isaac shouted, releasing the tension on the jack and bringing it closer to the seal.

Trying again, he was as close to the glass as he could get without inducing a total structural failure on the cell then worked the handle with exhausted arms. It seized, unable to extend farther against the tunnel’s weight. Angry and afraid, Isaac pounded on the metal of the tunnel’s frame with the crowbar.

“Just disconnect you bastard!”  

As Isaac struggled to dislodge the walkway, the Alucar abandoned its avoidance protocol of the core and rushed for Erik. The sergeant ran out of coolant cells in his weapon and dropped it. Then he drew his gladius and charged the machine, dodging a wrist blade strike and countering with a thrust to the lower torso which pierced the armor plating and staggered the drone.

A low rumble grew from within the reactor and Isaac felt the floor begin to vibrate through his suit. The jack handle chattered as it bounced. The tunnel hissed and the lights in the vault extinguished. Around them, the reactor threw bolts of wild lightning. The protective paneling on the walls heated from the strikes, glowing red while yellow arcs strobed the room.

With a swipe from its wrist blade, the drone lacerated Erik. He tumbled backwards over the jack, onto Isaac. The sergeant weakly brandished his sword with a shaking grip. The Alucar wound up and raised both of its arms ready to strike with both blades from overhead. A bolt of yellow plasma slammed into the machine, superheating its lower torso. The machine’s frame melted, and it tumbled apart in two.

Then Isaac realized that in addition to his failure with the jack, he had made a far more fatal mistake. A sliding panel underneath the reactor orb shot open and evacuated the atmosphere from the vault, slamming the door shut and shrouding the room in darkness. The pressure difference jettisoned the reactor—and them along with it, into space.

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