Free Fall Fever

Posted on 28 Mar 2018 @ 3:20am by Staff Warrant Officer William Griffin

1,478 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Crossing Over
Location: Upper Hull, outship
Timeline: MD36 0100 Hours

Griffin hated wearing exo suits. They were uncomfortable, restricting and damned awkward. They rubbed at his shoulders and knees, gave him itches he couldn't get to. The air in his lungs was cool, sterile and recycled, with the slightest hint of chemical aftertaste to remind him that it wasn't natural. Inside, his gut was coiled tight as the pressure of cold, dark space squeezed him.

Griffin was standing on the outer hull, magnetic boots anchoring him solidly to the armor plates. In front of him was a ragged hole roughly the size of a type 15 shuttlepod. Around the edges, the armor plates were warped and twisted inwards, giving the edge of the hole a punched appearance.

Above him, a workbee hovered, a replacement hull panel in the grasp of it's claws, a portable welding rig was strapped to the side, along with a sealed box of assorted parts. They bright yellow of the 'bee was garish in the odd blue glow, standing out in sharp relief against the background

Looking down, Griffin could see the remnants of someone's quarters, blackened and burned. Most of the furniture was destroyed, smashed or burned by whatever energy had burned through the hull, though remnants of colorful art were still attached to the walls. Griffin could only hope that nobody was in the room when the calamity struck.

=/\= "Workbee One, put it down right here." He instructed, gesturing to a point just to his left. Squatting, allowing the boots to take the strain, he removed a magnetic attachment point from his belt and placed it on an undamaged section of hull. A button press activated it and made it secure. He pulled the tether from the spool of line that was atop the anchor and stood, reaching up to clip on to the panel as the workbee brought it down. Looking up at the workbee gave him a nearly unobstructed view of the blue space around them and he had to fight to keep his voice steady.

=/\= "All right, hold there." He instructed the kid behind the controls then moved, clunkily frog walking, across to the side of the machine to detach the portable tools. In next to zero gravity, it was easy to swing the welder and the box of other tools out and set them down on the deck. Another magnetic clamp held them down. The workbee pulled clear to wait for the broken panel and Griffin took a moment to make a plan and take a little breather. He was, he growled to himself, definitely not terrified. Just not as young as he used to be.

Plan planned and breath breathed, he set to work. Reaching into the box, he withdrew an isolinear spanner, a stem-bolt wrench and a medium sized plasma torch, all of which got attached to his tool belt. Then he went to work.

Decoupling the damaged panel was a simple enough job. Sixteen primary connections held the panel to the structural members beneath the hull, a further sixteen lesser joints joined the panel to the rest of the panels around it. It was a simple enough job, when the panel didn't have a hole burned through it and when it wasn't twisted in every axis it wasn't supposed to twist. It took Griffin the better part of ten minutes to release the thrice-damned thing. In some areas the bolts had broken free, in others the heat of the impact had fused them hopelessly. Most of the bolts that weren't broken or melted were so jammed by the torque of the twisting that they wouldn't budge.

Cutting slices in the panel with the plasma torch relieved enough stress on the torqued bolts that with sufficient leverage and a fair amount of cursing, he was able to get them to move. The melted bolts he cut, not even bothering with the effort of getting them out directly. The process was slow and laborious, but eventually, sweating in his helmet and still cursing, he lifted the panel free and shoved it as gently as his anger could manage towards the workbee.
=/\= "Here, take the god damn thing, find the nearest alien and stuff it right up his alien ass." He growled at the pilot, getting a laughing "Yessir" in return.

Then it was step 1.5, a part of the plan he had thought about but had hoped he wouldn't need. Moving back to the tool box, he took out a plasma tap cutter, a small device designed to bore out the melted and broken bolts and to re-make the holes where they were in preparation for the new panel. It was slow, precise work that he hadn't really got the patience for, but it had to be done. Standing next to the toolbox, he took another moment to breathe, wondering why he agreed to do the job for the Chief Engineer in the first place. Because you can do it, one voice whispered in his head. Because you can't let it go, idiot. whispered another. He shoved the voices back in their box along with the plasma cutter which hopefully, he wouldn't need again at this location.

Stumping his way back to the now significantly larger hole, he squatted at the edge and set the tapping tool up, using the built in sensors to align it perfectly with the location for the new hole, within a micron or two. Then he set it to work, slowly boring a new threaded hole for a bolt. Seven more to go. The suit was rubbing on his shoulders, pinching at the back of his knees and the sweat was making the fabric underliner stick to his back. He wondered, for the umpteenth time, if it wouldn't simply have been better to have a forcefield filled with warm air around him, then he could work in his uniform. But that was unstable, at best, and he didn't fancy becoming a Griffin-shaped space-popsicle. That errant thought made him shiver for real.

He had been in space without a suit once, for about twenty seconds. The astounding pressure on his body, the terrible tingling and pain he had felt all over his burning skin, the hopeless gasping for something that wasn't there. Being unable to breathe was one thing, but breathing and finding nothing to breathe was a whole other kind of nightmare. He had died in space, and been resuscitated in sickbay. It had taken him a week in sickbay and a month of restricted duty to fully recover, and it had been six months after that before he could go out-ship again. But that had been more than ten years ago, and...

Beep. The tap told him it was done, breaking him out of his contemplation and snapping him back to the outside of the Black Hawk. Grumbling, focusing on the job at hand, he knelt next to the device and switched it to the next hole. A little voice was whispering in the back of his brain, Shitshitshit youreokay breathebreathebreathe, shitshitshit... and when he lifted his hand away from the tool there was the slightest hint of a tremor. Some things, you never really got totally over. They called it space-phobia, or free-fall-fever and he had it, he'd had it ever since. Every time he stepped outship, it crept up on him, caught him by surprise every time.

"Computer, queue music, Earth, metal, 20th century America, Metallica, Battery. Isolate to this suit only, maximum volume." He grumbled at the suit, it beeped for a moment and then the sound of the music filled his head, he let the music fill him, driving out any other thought, as he stooped to check the still-working tap. He watched it finish, saw it flash but didn't hear the beep over the music.

Six more minutes of setting, watching and waiting had all the bolt holes tapped and ready, then Griffin reached out behind him and snagged the new panel. Installing the thing was a lot more straight forward than removing the bent one and took half the time. Personally, he was happy for the distraction as he connected, joined, bolted and sealed the panel.

Nineteen minutes of work, all told, had the damaged panel removed and a new panel sealed in it's place. One down, god knows how many more to do. He swallowed at the thought, then growled at himself as he forced his body and psyche to cooperate with what he had to get done. Damned if he'd let fear get the better of him, not this time.

=/\= "Workbee one, let's pick up the gear and move to the next hole." He said gruffly. If the pilot was disturbed by the blasting metal music through the comms, he didn't say anything. At least, Griffin didn't hear anything.

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