The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [5]
“You’re right, Admiral Satie,” he said, wishing for the force field holding in the atmosphere to fail right then. “There was an accident that involved the aft photon torpedo launcher, which we are unable to see from our vantage point up here. It exploded, killing twelve unfortunate engineers who were performing tests on it. It took us a long time to find out what caused that explosion. Early on we suspected it had something to do with that thermal expansion problem we thought we’d solved years earlier, but then we discovered the real reason. It was a fault in the system that ignited the torpedo before it left the launcher housing. We had done many tests on it in the years since we spotted that other error, but that one escaped our attention entirely. The general assumption is that it wasn’t a constant glitch; more likely, it occurred only occasionally. Sadly, it took the lives of twelve people during a firing exercise whose only goal was to test the systems and clear up some space debris at the same time.”
Thomas became silent, breathed in, and waited for the reactions of the others. Satie was a rock, as usual, with no indication of her feelings showing on her face. Patterson’s expression was pained, but then he already knew about this, had been at least as shocked as Thomas, and had contacted four victims’ families himself. Magodin’s face was unavoidably expressionless, her scaly skin being far less malleable than that of, say, a human.
Admiral Quinn’s reaction consisted of a quiet cough to clear his throat before he said, “I remember hearing about that. Tragic incident, really tragic. But wasn’t there another one after that?”
Stemming the tide of rising desperation was impossible, but Thomas attempted it nonetheless. Many a night he had lain awake in his family’s house in Central Burroughs, thinking about the children who had lost a parent, the people who had lost a loved one, all because of a stupid, unnecessary accident that should not have occurred at all. The entire launcher should have been swapped with another one back when they had had those troubles with it.
Yet even that would not have prevented the other tragedy in the starboard nacelle control room. Three engineers had died there in a plasma explosion. At first, it had seemed that they had only disappeared without a trace, but it was later discovered that their disappearance had coincided with a plasma surge, and while there were still a lot of unanswered questions, the final report’s conclusion was that they had died in the surge.
“Yes, Admiral, there was. It was equally tragic, and it shouldn’t have occurred, either.” Thomas outlined what they knew about it, which was not much.
It had happened less than a month after that other incident, and the weeks following those disasters had been the worst in Thomas’s life. They had been full of self-doubt, of insecurity, of general depression and despair at the thought of getting back to work. He had taken two months off to give himself time to come to terms with everything, and without Solveig, he would never have succeeded. In fact, he’d probably have given up early on, having been brought down by the shame of not being able to deal with this situation the way other commanding officers had done in the past.
He had finally come to the limits of his own capabilities, and he had no desire to go any farther. When he had at last been able to return to duty, it had been only because of the decision he had made…the one he had yet to tell anyone about.
“Are you enjoying the view?” he asked, deliberately changing the subject of their conversation to something infinitely more pleasant.
“Very much,” said Magodin, and Thomas had the feeling that she was being absolutely honest.
“I’m glad to hear that.” Thomas mustered a small smile. “Now, Admiral Patterson and I want to show you all a few more interesting locales on the Enterprise, so I suggest we move on. Our next stop is main engineering.”
They followed him back to the turbolift, and this time he made sure not