Satisfied, she entered the ring activation command, “Zeroing now.”
As the reactors fed power to the ring, CeCe’s eyes lost their focus, and she closed them, “Admiral, what did we get, ten thousand out of a half million? I wish I had never heard of Forest.”
“Commander, look at me.”
She turned her head toward Wills and opened her eyes; they were wet.
He pointed a stern finger at her, “CeCe, don’t ever get the idea that we failed here. I don’t see anyone else putting in the effort we did. No, it didn’t go as well as we would have wanted, and we would never have gotten them all off anyway. We did good, we did our best, and that is something we all can live with.”
CeCe nodded and reclined her chair, “Ready.”
The control arms came up and the virtual hood enclosed her head.
“Get us out of here, CeCe, and don’t spare the horses.”
She hung in the virtual air on the last sunny day this planet would live to see. She was facing the game field and the large crowd that was standing there. She jerked her head away from that to look at the pads on the hard ground toward the beach and began applying power.
Those pads lifted just clear of the ground, and she swung her head toward the opposite side of the ship and the pads that were deeply buried in clay and soil. She could see the virtual representation of the pads but couldn’t tell if they were moving; she applied more power. Nothing seemed to move, so she applied more power and then more power.
The Global Attitude System has one function; it maintains the ship perpendicular to the gravitational field of the planet it is landing on so the pilot has an accurate visual reference between the virtual pads and variations in the surface being landed on. Once contact is made, the landing struts adjust extension length to keep the ship gravitationally level. The standard response of the GAS to an asymmetrical pad release situation was to apply more power to the lift ring section above the mired pads. In this case, CeCe had entered a limitation of ten percent to ring power distortion. The standard control procedure did its job and stopped feeding more power to that side of the ring in excess of ten percent above overall commanded input power. Now, instead of a heavy lift being exerted just over the stuck pads, increased power input translated into a massive vertical lift that, because of the still anchored pads, became the initial stage of a dynamic rollover.
All flying vehicles that land on geological surfaces have to do so with consideration for the nature of the surface they land on; horizontal landing and takeoff craft get stuck in mud or hit obstacles at speed while vertical craft run the risk of getting one side of their landing gear stuck without the pilot being aware and pivoting the vehicle around that stuck gear like a hinge. Having something the size of a Rhino-class ship do a full dynamic rollover was considered undesirable in the extreme, so a specific routine was included in the standard control system to watch for certain events. As the Weasel tried to lift, those events were recognized, and the routine transferred control of the ring to an emergency subroutine outside of the standard system--unrestricted by any preset limitations.
CeCe was looking at the buried pads; trying to detect movement. She should have been looking toward the beach if she wanted to see movement. What she did see was a blinding flash as a structural element sheared and an induction link insulator failed under a surge of power. The multi-megawatt arc vaporized a four meter section of the lift ring, and brought the beach-side of the ship crashing down when all power to the ring was cut. Unfortunately, that side of the ship had continued upward from inertia and didn’t stop rising until it was thirty meters off the ground.
Interior damage was minimal because the grav system masked the greatest part of the movement and impact; still, many people were thrown around, and there were some injuries. CeCe’s virtual view flickered and disintegrated as alarm reports filled her vision. She hit the emergency switch under her right hand and the chair returned to normal.
Wills was picking himself off the deck as was Captain Helt on the screen.
“HELT, WHAT HAPPENED? I LOST RING CONTROL.” She yelled.
Helt tapped his panel in a panic, “I’M NOT GETTING ANY RESPONSE FROM THE RING SYSTEM.”
He stopped and froze, “Uh oh!”
Everyone on the bridge looked up at his remark. One of the screens had a view of a section of the ring.
Helt slumped back in his chair, “We are not leaving here.”
Doctor Twisst gave Ames a sick smile, “Jonathon, it appears we should have gone with Hayes.”
Stoker was on the edge of panic, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WE HAVE TO LEAVE; WE HAVE LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR.”
Wills closed his eyes and shoved hard at the rising surge of fear and panic. He opened his eyes to face the people on the bridge, “There’s nothing we can do; repairing damage like that would take a month with all of the facilities on Archer.”
Doctor Treelam dropped back into her seat and began crying.
Wills put his hand on Stoker’s shoulder, “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do.”
A soft voice broke the silence, “Maybe there is.”
Wills turned to CeCe, “Huh?”
CeCe looked up at Helt, “Captain, what is our power status?”
“Ahh . . . well, all reactors are online. Two of the original Weasel reactors seem to have some damage to their primary cooling systems, but the secondary systems are operating.”
“What is the status of the isolator drive?”
That got a very curious look from Helt. His eyes quickly scanned a panel, “Ahh…fully operational. What are you thinking?”
“AI, say operational status.”
“RING SYSTEM OFFLINE. REACTORS W5 AND
