210-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the Stars
July 28th, 2552 – In-Flight Repairs
Scout Pilot/Pony Express Pilot/Sometimes Target Kat “S-Kat” James Reporting
You can say a lot about the design of the dart – it’s fast, maneuverable, and it packs a lot of punch. If you’re stuck in space with her maneuvering thrusters shot and only one engine – she’s got all the speed and maneuverability of a falling brick, which is really hard to deal with in zero-G.
Yesterday, I spent the time figuring out just how bad things were and working on what could be repaired from the inside. I was able to divert fuel away from the damaged area and shut everything down, which meant for a cold night’s sleep but I also know that the only way to fix the outside of the ship is to go outside.
Today started with a cold breakfast of protein pellets, half a glass of water, and a prayer. Then I verified that everything was locked down and my suit was pressurized before I set the system to vent and waited as the systems slowly equalized the pressure outside with the pressure inside.
Outside the damage didn’t look too bad— as long as you didn’t look too closely. They’d hit me with a rocket of some sort, and while it had damaged the engine – it hadn’t exploded, which was either very lucky or very deliberate.
Three hours later – I had two working thrusters and an engine with a combination time bomb and tracking device built-in. It was hard to tell if it was designed to go off if it was removed or to just keep transmitting my location until someone found the signal and traced it back to me.
Since I didn’t have anyone to advise me, I left the torpedo where it was and removed the engine and a fuel tank with enough fuel to send it away from me. I spent the next few hours rigging a remote to take the engine far enough away that when I started it the shock wave from any explosions wouldn’t do too much damage.
And that was about the time I noticed the alarm on my suit telling me that I’d almost run out of air while focusing on the project.
Since hypoxia leads to bad decision making, I let the engine drift away but didn’t do anything else with it until I’d had a chance to rest and rethink what I was doing.
We’ll see how things look in the morning.
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