They Reign - 6
#6 of They Reign (TF Themes)
THEY REIGN - 6
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Welcome to the amazing chapter 6! This fun and strange sci-fi story has been sponsored by Aaron Blackpaw , who definitely found this to be an intriguing idea, for sure! I shall look forward to your feedback!
Have fun!
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BIRNBAUMER 2 SYSTEM
BIRNBAUMER/UoM BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH OUTPOST
FEBRUARY, 2280
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They moved quietly, efficiently, with the stride of a soldier, even those who did not carry arms. They had done it many times before, both in simulations, virtual, full scale models, exercises using docked ships, land installations, and many times under real conditions as well. The dark hallways, doors left ajar and empty rooms carried few demons. They were just doing their jobs.
"I can't help but think that they all just left..." said Banks, whom was looking through the doorway into a room that was the office of "Corbett Warner - Head of Operations".
It was not a big room. The furniture was nondescript, steel and plastic. It was a neat room, and it had a window facing the central yard. The window was closed with the shutters that closed all the windows they had seen so far. The computer terminal on the desk was dark and faced the chair. It looked like someone had just popped out momentarily to get a coffee or something. There was an empty plastic cup on the floor. There was nothing in the room to suggest any reason why its occupant had decided to leave along with everyone else in the facility, it appeared. This Corbett Warner had not left any personal touches into his room - no precious knickknacks, nothing to mark his territory. Perhaps he was very boring.
"Anything in there, Banks?" Franklin asked from the hallway.
"Nope," the hare replied. "At least as far as I can see."
"Nothing here either!" Pitman yelped from the other side of the narrow hallway, through an open door. "Though someone's been eating here, on the desk!"
Franklin ducked into the doorway to see what the lynx was talking about. The owner of this room - "Antonio Dibiasi - Communications" had left empty food cartons onto his desk and into a trashcan next to it. Pitman was eyeing a picture of a mountain range that had been put to the wall to act as an alternative to the view offered by the window.
"I see," Franklin said.
"It'd only been more exciting if someone had been eaten here, on the desk," Pitman said.
"Is his computer down too?" Franklin pointed at the darkened terminal on the desk.
"Nothing on it," the lynx said, "it's as dead as the rest of the power grid."
"We'll have to see if we can bring it back up."
"Boss!"
Franklin heard the voice through his communications circuit, belonging to Banks.
"What is it?" he spoke up.
"We're opening the door to the Operations room. It's sealed but we can crank it open manually."
_"_We'll be there," the liion replied. "You heard him, Pitman."
"Oh, yes, sir!" she sounded excited.
They had all crowded into the hallway that connected the entrance hall into the actual command center.. Banks and Lynch were working on a panel to release the doors, and they appeared to be quite done, since they stopped when their Commander arrived.
"Ready to go," Banks said.
"Everyone..." the lion did not elaborate his command when it was given.
"Do it."
"Yes, sir," Lynch said.
The mare turned levers on the panel. The hare used his crowbar to force the doors apart enough that Wong and Lynch could get into the action and pull them fully open.
It was a tense moment that proved itself to be anticlimactic. The room was as empty and dark as the rest of the module, seemingly untouched at least to their cursory view from the doorway.
"Larsen, Pitman," Franklin said.
The security personnel took the front, their guns drawn in ready. Larsen walked forward into the darkness that was only cut his helmet lights and those shining behind his back.
"Careful," Pitman whispered.
The fox was only a step inside before dim lights suddenly flashed on above them. He stopped, obviously surprised, and swept about the room. The room revealed no surprises, only the consoles and displays that remained shut down. The only things that appeared to be amiss was an overturned office chair on the floor and a pair of white socks sitting on top of a table, of all places.
"It's just the emergency lights," Wong said," must be set on motion detector activation."'
The fox turned about and faced them now instead. His gun was down to his hip.
"Are you waiting for something?" he barked out.
They moved in quietly, looking about.
"We have to figure out where this power is coming from," Franklin commented as soon as he was past the threshold, "and preferably why the rest of the base doesn't have any juice."
"it's all a pretty standard layout," Wong observed. "Engineering controls, library computer access, environmental systems, communications...shouldn't be a problem."
Lynch padded about the room before she chose a console and touched the nearest panel with her gloved hand.
"At least this one seems to be down," she said.
"Check all the stations," Franklin ordered while he continued to look about the room.
They moved about the room, shuffling in their space suit like garments among the trappings of these people's working lives here. It too looked like someone had simply decided to drop everything and just...go.
"Gotcha!" Banks announced.
His words caused a flurry of furs to move over to the console where he stood, paw hovering over a panel that had lit up.
"This one has juice," the hare said as he gestured at the station in front of him for his new audience," Looks like the household system to me."
"Great!" Lynch nickered.
She wedged herself next to the hare and leaned down to stare at the displays. She gave the input terminal a few taps while carefully studying the readouts that came up. Soon there was an alarm as well, a brief one that went off.
"What's that?" Franklin asked.
Lynch checked the display again.
"It's giving a power alarm...and signal loss alarms. It started a system wide diagnostic when I activated the terminal but basically it's not getting signals from the systems because there's no power or the optical conduits are not connected."
"Where does it get power?" Wong asked. "Some sort of an auxiliary power unit? They should have one."
Lynch navigated the different display screens with practiced ease.
"Looks like local battery power...but it's running very low," she said. "Most of the data modules are offline."
"Search team, you should look for an input terminal and hook up Mister Wong's portable power pack,"_came the Chief Engineer's voice over the radio. "_The schematics indicate they are fully compatible."
_"_Thanks for the tip," Franklin said, "Wong, Lynch, check for a terminal."
"Sure thing," the mare nickered.
The two moved away. Franklin took their place by the console. While the layout was somewhat foreign to him, he had no trouble figuring it out after a moment of browsing the menus. These commercial systems all worked the same, in the end, the lion thought.
"I hope the system logs are still intact," Franklin commented, "I want to see who sent the distress call."
The console let out another mournful beep. The lion must've been using the very last amps of power remaining in the batteries that ran the system when everything else had already failed.
"I'll get inside the systems once we get some power back up," Wong commented from the other side of the room.
"We've got the power access here," Lynch announced, "I'll just open this panel and..."
"Good thing," Wong said.
The horse took off his backpack. Much of its bulk consisted of a large portable power cell designed for situations like this, to provide a few hours of juice to keep the lights and other essentials running in a stricken ship or a facility. He set the power pack down to the floor once he had retrieved it from his backpack. Next to him, Lynch opened a panel that was marked with a striped black and yellow warning pattern and a "HIGH VOLTAGE TAPS!" sign upon it.
It was exactly what they needed. Her gloved hands opened the panel and exposed the connectors. It was a matter of seconds to snap the cable into the socket and to hit the switches that enabled the power grid to take input from the external source.
"Let's see..." said Wong, activating the power pack.
Further overhead lights flashed into existence. Several of the consoles lit up as well, mostly displaying abstract logos as the systems started up. A thrumming hum filled their ears, even through their helmets.
"Think the environmental control switched on," Chandler mused. "That must be circulating fans."
"I better see how much power it is drawing," Wong said while he hurried back to the console, "I don't want it to suck up the entire cell in a half an hour."
"Check all the stations again," Franklin ordered. "Let's see if they left anything for us to find.
"We should continue the search as well," Banks said. "I do not think we should linger."
"Agreed," Franklin said. "Pitman, go with Banks. Check the rest of the rooms in this module. Regroup here once you're done and we'll decide where to go next."
"I'll take care of him," Pitman cocked her pistol in reply.
The two headed out of the door and back into the dark, looming corridor beyond.
"Commander," Wong said.
The lion's ears perked inside his helmet at the voice that was carried over the radio.
"Yes?" he asked.
The stallion was standing in front of a console and had been busily tapping at it before rousing the attention of the team leader.
"I think I've figured something out," he said.
Franklin crossed the room so that they could speak to face.
"Yes?"
Wong pointed at the screen.
"The access log indicates that the system was last used on the fifth of January," the stallion explained," after that, with nobody accessing the computer, it went into safe mode on the sixth and into minimum power mode two days later when it lost primary power input."
"Must've been when their generators went out," Franklin extrapolated, "anything about that, Lynch?"
The mare was working on another console nearby, and looked over to her fellow crewmembers.
"The reactor controls are dead," she said. "The data line is unresponsive because there is no power on the other end. A few of the computers are running here but there's no power in the reactor module."
"What about auxiliary power?" Wong asked.
"Not responding even on the manual override," Lynch said. "There also no telemetry to determine the status of the system, so I wouldn't really want to try to turn anything on without knowing what is going on there. We have to go to the reactor module to turn the auxiliary power system on directly from the manual controls."
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Franklin said, "Our first priority is to search the outpost for survivors and only then make any necessary preparations for future salvage operations."
"Still got the crew quarters to search," Chandler said. "And the lab complex."
"I wouldn't mind the power," Larsen said. "We have to look through the security logs, anyway. Having cameras and sensors would help keeping this place secure as well."
"Well we're not being threatened at the moment," Franklin replied," and if anything approaches this place, the ship can spot it from orbit before we would see it here, anyway."
"If we get the system back on, we'll have the cameras and the logs anyway," Larsen defended his view.
Franklin gave him a brief look, before he turned towards Lynch and Wong on their stations.
"Can you get the security systems back online?" the lion asked.
"We'll see what we can do," Lynch replied.
"Yes," Wong said. "We might need more power, though."
"We could hook up an umbilical from the ship," Lynch offered. "Would take fifteen minutes, give or take."
"I'm not doing anything that might slow down our takeoff if we have to abort out of this place," Franklin was adamant in his own opinion.
"Agreeing with that, people,"_came Captain Hodge's voice, _"we have to run this by the book, even though we're all having a bad feeling about this."
"Still nothing on your screens?" Franklin asked.
"That's a negative, Commander," said the Captain, "we are looking at further layers here."
"What is Chief Burnett thinking about the power situation?" Franklin questioned.
"I'll let the Chief speak to himself."
"Roger that."
"People, without seeing the telemetry from the systems I can't say much, but it sounds like they've lost all power except emergency backups, so getting some extra power to get more functions back online should be a priority from the engineering viewpoint."
"Indeed," said Wong, "I've got the pack in but that won't do for more than, say, three hours at the current amp hours. And it's only running the lights and a part of the computer core system."
"We're looking at the specs in the rescue manual for the facility and see what we can do with their auxiliary power generator," the Chief engineer said. "Proceed as you are for the moment."
"That's what we can do for now," Wong said. "Thank you, Chief."
"We will keep you updated."
"Roger that, Lexell."
"I'm going to try to see to that security system," Lynch said.
"Let me give you a paw," Larsen told her.
He'd barely gotten in a step when their comm channels crackled into life.
"Banks here. I think we found something."
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