What the Stars May Bring

A Rude Awakening

The sounds of sirens awoke her. "Hull breach, I repeat there has been a hull breach," the warnings blared repeatedly.

'What's going on?' she thought as she was trying to get her bearings. It was then that she realized that down was no longer down. In fact, she noticed that the 'gravity', for the lack of a better word, could not have been caused by the normal acceleration, nor could the rotation of the arcs. Instead, up and down were being caused by another source of acceleration.

'Shit,' she thought as she disconnected the webbing at the end of her bunk's cubby.

She was currently inside of a bunk embedded in the wall. It was quite cramped inside the rectangular coffin-like cell and all five sides of it were padded. This was to keep the person inside safe in case of an emergency. After all, the engineers didn't want the occupants to get injured by flying around the inside of a more normal-sized bedroom. Besides, the USS Lexington was a military ship, so making the crew comfortable by giving them larger quarters was far less important than keeping them alive.

As she pulled herself out of the cramped space, Simmons met her as he too crawled out of his cubby. Kobayoshi and Watanabe were also emerging from their capsules. Last of all were Johnson and Anderson.

"What's going on?" Simmons asked everyone, only to be met by shrugs from the others.

She decided to speak up. "We are in a lateral spin, judging from the fact that we are currently walking on the walls. I would postulate to think that a meteor struck and now one of the turning thrusters is firing continuously."

"Why don't we just ask the bridge for more information?" Watanabe said. "They should know what's going on as well."

"Good idea," Simmons replied with a smile. He then walked over to the communications device and pushed a button. "Connect me to the bridge."

"I'm sorry, but I cannot connect you to the bridge right now," said a recorded voice. "Please try again in a little while."

"So much for that idea," Simmons said. "I think we should take a proactive approach. Someone needs to get down to main engineering while the rest make our way to the bridge."

"We should also send someone to the front of the ship to secondary engineering," she proposed. "The malfunctioning thruster could be at either end of the ship, and I think we should check it out."

"Okay," Simmons agreed. "Who wants to go where?"

"I'll head towards secondary engineering since I did most of my initial training," she volunteered.

"Okay, who else wants to go with her?" Simmons said.

"Who put you in charge?" Johnson asked. "We are all the same rank, after all."

"Johnson, now is not the time for this," Simmons said. "We need to find out what's going on. There may be injuries for all we know. If you have a better plan, let's hear it."

"No, I don't have a plan," Johnson admitted. "I just don't enjoy being ordered around by someone of the same rank."

"Duly noted," Simmons said diplomatically. "I volunteer to go to the bridge. Who wants to go with me?"

"Well then, I will volunteer to go to main engineering," Johnson replied.

"I'm going to have to pick out the teams if no one volunteers," Simmons said, totally ignoring Johnson's comment.

"I'll go to the bridge," Kobayoshi volunteered.

"I'll go to main engineering," Anderson said while teaming up with her partner from the GUSA.

"Then I guess I will have to go to secondary engineering," Watanabe declared.

"Okay everyone, we'll put on the first emergency suits we come across, just as the drills taught us," Simmons ordered, as they all filed out of the room.

---