ABKoS Chapter 14

==Chapter 14The Adventures of the Beer Keg of Science!==
CIC, NMS Beer Keg of Science!
Interstellar Space, 3 LY from Stettin System, 13 August 3158
James Kirk watched the jump clock as it ticked down the final minutes before jump. He looked over the local crew with him in CIC today: Lieutenant Tony Mayweather, their resident Niopian Belter, on Conn, Jamie Shido at the Nav console, Bob Howard manning his SysOp/Comms board, Ensign Mary Stilly handling the Engineering console, and Lieutenant Felix Palamas on Tactical.
By modern standards, the Beer Keg of Science!, at less than 250 meters length, was exceedingly compact: the Vincent Mk. 39 and 42, for example, were 80 kilotons lighter in mass, but 160 meters longer, and nearly as wide as the Keg. Space, then, was at an absolute premium, and CIC bore all the hallmarks of that. The Keg's main bridge was already small, but it was spacious compared to the CIC, which mainly served as an emergency backup or, in the case of the Keg with its SDS-level AI, a backup to the backup.
Mac was offline now, though, to insulate the AI from the effects of the jump, and his team, even those with reservations, busily checked over their consoles to ensure everything was ready to jump. As a concession to their role as the emergency command post, CIC staff had already donned their suit helmets, hooked up to their station’s air lines, with their own suit air supplies in reserve.
Lieutenant Howard seemed to accept they were going to jump without complaint: it was hard to tell, sometimes, given his usual dour outlook. Ensign Shido, though, even with her face partially obscured by her helmet, was obviously nervous, as was their other rookie, Ensign Stilly. Kirk tried to set them at ease, without calling out anyone specifically. Kirk had no doubt that, despite an earlier ship-wide announcement from Captain Carpentier, everyone in CIC was still a bit worked up, even if they hid it – he knew he was, after all.
Doing his best to project an air of confidence to the CIC staff, Kirk calmly stated, “We’re all a little nervous about this jump, and that’s all right. This isn’t an easy mission: we’re jumping to a system its inhabitants either abandoned or died off in two centuries ago. That’s got all of us a little on edge, whether they’ll admit it or not. But our coordinates are good. They’ve been checked, verified, and are well within the limits of what’s safe. The variances are less than a millimeter in our calculations, and we have a margin of error of more than hundred kilometers past the proximity limit. We’re right at the threshold in the number of significant digits in the calculations, so there’s a good chance that our tiny little variance isn’t even really there in the first place. But, even if it is, the Keg’s gone through worse, and, like the Captain, I’ve every confidence in each and every one of you. We can do this.”
{“ONE MINUTE TO JUMP”}, the alert klaxon sounded.
Ensign Shido visibly relaxed a little, though she still appeared nervous. Lieutenant Howard, though, spoke up. “Commander?” he asked.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
Bob continued. “It may not be a rational fear, and it may be imaginary. But, then, pi isn’t a rational number, and i is an imaginary number. Both still exist.”
{“THIRTY SECONDS TO JUMP”}
”Dammit, Bob,” Kirk thought. “So noted. Just because I say I have an invisible elf that lives in my backyard doesn’t mean there’s one with a sneaksuit living there. Confirm SDS auto-wake settings,” he replied tersely.
Bob checked his console again, “Confirmed 5 seconds post-jump.”
{“TEN SECONDS TO JUMP”}
Kirk keyed the ship-wide intercom, “All hands, brace for hyperspace jump.”
And then all hell broke loose.
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