come aboard. Stephanie had stopped in at her quarters to pick up her assault rifle and extra impact armour just in case there was real trouble. There shouldn't be, but you never knew what you were getting when you were on a rescue.
The rest of her team stood in the fifteen by ten meter bulk express car as the interior of the ship whipped by. The windows and transparent sections of the express tunnel afforded them a view of the empty, darkened sections of the ship, and she was secretly in awe at how large it was, how little of it was active and explored. The darkened hallways and large intersections that were visible only long enough for a glimpse made the ship seem dead, hollow, abandoned. As the car started slowing down it occurred to her that her brief tour only took her up and across fourteen decks out of twenty one.
There hadn't been any time to open the interior sections, while half of them were sleeping the other half were trying to learn from the existing crew how to operate the systems and where the most critical points aboard were. Sadly, the existing crew were barely trained, and though everyone behind her had experience with crowd control on their records, Stephanie didn't know a single one of them. Ramirez and Price had taken the Samson boarding and maintenance teams to help with handling the arrivals of the smaller escape shuttles in the lower hangars. The fact that she was First Officer had been trumped by the reality that she had been asleep when all of this started.
She could have pulled members of their teams into her own, but she didn't want to leave them short handed. “Ramirez, Price,” she addressed through the subdermal communicator in her jaw.
“Good morning Steph,” Ramirez answered.
“Yes Stephanie?” Price acknowledged.
“How is the retrieval going down there?”
“We're at eighty percent capacity. In about two hours we won't have room for any more vessels,” Price replied.
“Okay, as people finish up down there, send them to gunnery deck A. I'll need as many eyes and hands as I can get. I'll be taking people on a couple hundred at a time or more.”
“Aye, I'll send Douglas and Julie up now. They just finished securing one of the last shuttles,” Ramirez responded. “How many are we taking on?”
“The berth Captain marked for this can take up to fifteen hundred. We're filling up.”
“My goodness. We've taken in a few short of seven hundred,” Price commented. “It felt like a million.”
“Are they all logged on the manifest?”
“We have checked them all in, though it was difficult.”
“Good, we want to make sure we track everyone as best as we can. Be safe down there,” Stephanie said.
“You too, I'll join you with my team once we're finished here. Price can pick up security detail with his team.”
“I will, if that fits your plan,” Price asked as much as confirmed.
“That'll be fine, just make sure everyone gets situated safely and try to catch any disagreements early,” Stephanie reinforced.
The express freight car came to a gentle stop and the front doors opened. Stephanie walked out onto the gunnery deck and the lights started coming on overhead. As the space was illuminated her jaw dropped. The deck was marked where hatches leading down into the ship could be opened, where ammunition materializers ejected cartridges for loading into one of the many quad gunnery turrets built into the ceiling and where many other exits, machines and storage compartments, recycling processors could be accessed. Everything was stored either in the high ceiling overhead or in the deck until it was needed. There was a slightly curved open space stretching hundreds of meters.
They had come out right in the middle of the gunnery deck and all of them looked around at the massive open space. The rail cannon turrets, dozens and dozens of them on G Deck A, hung down from the thickly armoured hull, leaving two and a half meters underneath for someone to walk under. Massive cartridge slots waited for loading crews to fill them with ammunition, the small, armoured doors between them led to the gunner's seat inside, all of the posts were empty except for a few that had been automated.
To her left she could see someone had forgotten to put away a loader's suit. It looked like heavy infantry armour with hard plating and an exoskeletal frame, but she knew there were modifications so someone could climb in and start picking up ammunition cartridges that weighed upward of a ton each, loading them like they were toys. The extra armour plating was there just in case there was an explosion, other accident or a boarding incursion.
During combat the whole deck was decompressed, everyone wore vacsuits. It made recovering gunners from damaged turrets easier, and allowed everyone else to keep working if the hull was breached. Gunners always had a high mortality rate, but ships with sections of their hulls dedicated to rail cannons were always far more deadly, firing hundreds, sometimes thousands of projectiles per second in many different directions at once.
Stephanie had never seen a gunnery deck like the one on the Triton, and she was happy that she had no qualifications to be there when the area was used for its intended purpose. Frost will most likely be set up as the permanent gunnery Chief. I hope he supervises from the bridge. The nagging worry she had for him surprised her, and she shook it off. “All right, let's get this show on,” she called out to her team. Most of them were openly gawking at the massive space. “Start looking for the mooring points and marking off their designations on the common deck map. Also keep your eyes open for anything that isn't locked down. It doesn't matter if it's built into the deck or into the ceiling. The last thing we need is some kid finding their way into a turret and playing starfighter.”
“But they're over two meters from the decks. I can't even reach the gunnery door,” one of the newer crew members complained from behind.
Stephanie walked to one of the turrets and looked at the deck below it. The controls weren't locked, so she knelt down, pressed the ready button and moved to the side as the gunner's seat smoothly deployed from the turret. It came to rest right in front of her so she could sit down and let the turret draw her inside. “If I can do it with no training, a five year old can do it by mistake.” She said as she tapped the control on the floor with her foot. “Bridge, please lock down all local turret controls. We're live up here.”
“Oh crap! Sorry! Locking it all down now Ma'am.” Came the voice of one of the new hires through her communicator. “I'm not used to having anyone up there, sorry ma'am.” He muttered.
The next hour was long. As her small crew of ten made their way across the deck, ensuring that anything dangerous was secure, two smaller groups were checking the berth below them. There were hundreds of bunks, and it took them half an hour to secure one section with four hundred inside and she knew they had rushed the job. There wasn't much they could do about it. They were critically undermanned and again, in a position to save lives.
As they went about their work she knew there were ships filled with people looking to be rescued. The upper hull of the Triton was mostly transparent, and as the light of the distant star reflected off drifting, damaged ships she couldn't help feel the urgency of her duties press down on her. Hearing the first section of the upper berth was cleared was a relief and seeing more people join their team from the hangars fifteen or more decks below was an even greater one.
At long last it was time to start taking on passengers. “Bridge; we're ready to take on the first group. Just tell me where they're docking.”
“Dorsal mooring three. We also have someone coming through airlock twelve C. We've been talking to him a bit, he's an engineer that's agreed to sign on to help us out,” Frost said.
“That's lucky.”
“Check your command unit for his credentials, lass. We've never been this lucky.”
She did so as her team ran across the deck towards mooring three. His profile listed him as Liam Grady, Engineering Doctorate in Starship design and Engineering Doctorate in Computing. 12 years military service, recent port of call: Sol Lunar Station. “Holy hell! This guy's from Earth?”
“Not from what he was sayin', he's just coming back from retreat there. Might know something about how the ship works.”
“Did the Captain manage to snag him as permanent crew?”
“Aye, I'm sure he'll fill you in on the details. Didn't tell me much.” Frost said, sounding as though he were
