Page 54 of Captain's Treasure
If only?—
“Captain? I think we have a problem?” The concern in Blaize’s voice made Cyra stiffen. “We’re burning fuel at twice the expected rate.”
“Are you sure?” Not good. Her gills flapped as she gulped air.
“I ran the calculations several times and verified the requirement with Rhysa. We loaded sufficient fuel with a buffer. I would never have let us leave without a sufficient reserve. But we’ve burned through the buffer and are still consuming at an unexpected rate. I originally discounted it as launch overhead, and I expected the usage rate to stabilize. It hasn’t stabilized at all. In fact, if we continue to see the same trend, we will continue to double our usage every few cycles?—”
Cyra interrupted Blaize to get to the critical issue. “Is the ship in danger?”
The worst possible scenario was the ship self-imploded—a quick death. Or slightly less worse, they had to shut down the engines and die a slow death unless a rescue ship reached them in time. Neither option comforted Cyra.
“The ship is in no danger according to the other readings and system alarm states. There can be only two reasons for the excess burn. Either we were sold substandard fuel, or we have damage to the fuel inlet or the turbopump undetectable with the current system monitors. I’ve disproven every other theory.”
“Which is more likely?”
“If the fuel was just substandard, the rate of use would have stabilized by now I believe.”
Blaize was so careful with the ship. Cyra had inspected the engine rooms, internal and external, and they had sparkled. But maybe the cleaning was to mask incompetence? She struggled to believe that about Blaize based on the previous legs of their journey. She was meticulous. “How could the damage have occurred? During liftoff?”
“No. Everything about the launch was normal.” Blaize crossed her arms. “There’s no sign of a hull breach. We didn’t cross any debris fields or dust clouds.” She bit her lip briefly. “It’s my opinion that we were sabotaged.”
Cyra let that gem settle.
Sabotage.
It wasn’t completely unlikely. She hadn’t seen Varik on the station, but she’d heard he was still there. He would have known they were at the station. And it was possible someone other than Varik had a reason to resent the situation withThe Treasureor one of her crew.Whywasn’t important to their safety. “What are the possible solutions?”
“The problem is that there is no guarantee I’ll be able to make a repair on the fly even if we identify the issue. Ideally, we find a place to land that’s within the range of the remaining fuel based on my conservative estimate.”
“Rhysa, are you aware of this situation?”
“I am, Captain. I’ve identified two possible destinations. We can return to Cassan and we should be able to make it all the way there. Or, we can change our trajectory slightly and stop at a planet called Arbotriz.”
“Recommendations?”
“I think we would be better off going back to Cassan. There are known suppliers there to get the parts we need to fix the ship and get more fuel,” Blaize said.
“I disagree, Captain.” Because of course Rhysa disagreed with Blaize. Cyra blanked her reaction and let Rhysa continue. “We should be able repair the ship and refuel at Arbotiz and that would require less fuel than turning around. It’s a shorter distance, not by much but shorter none the less. And we don’t have the loss that will be incurred by reversing direction, making Cassan higher risk.”
Cyra considered the dilemma. It was a risk to stop on Arbotriz not knowing how they would get the repair done. Returning to Cassan was a bigger risk not only because the fuel usage would be higher, but their saboteur was there. At least, she had to assume that was true. “Go to Arbotriz.”
Chapter27
Cyra breatheda sigh of relief when they were granted landing authorization on Arbotriz. She hadn’t been to this planet previously, but her hasty research told her that it was primarily females living on the planet. There was supposedly a strong agricultural industry and the majority of the population lived in tightly packed communities. She’d asked Dez what he knew about the planet and he’d just chuckled and said it was safe, but she should see it for herself and he wanted to witness her first reaction. She couldn’t understand what would be so odd about the planets or the inhabitants that he would expect a reaction. She’d been plenty of places and seen all matter of beings. She wasn’t going to be surprised by some odd-looking humanoids. Obviously, they spoke Galaxian, the universal language, so they couldn’t be that odd. Could they?
After disembarking, she admitted Dez was right—she was a little shocked. She hadn’t seen a population with wings before. At least, not wings that didn’t seem to function for anything. They were small and translucent and looked delicate enough that they could rip if they were breathed on too heavily. Apparently, one of the original NOAH exploratory shuttles that landed there found the most advanced species to be an insect—a bee population. Whichever NOAH team had come to Arbotriz galactic centuries ago must have been amazingly talented. The humanoids looked similar to walking bees. Would their social structure be similar too? Cyra wanted to meet the locals, but she needed her ship fixed and refueled before anything else happened.
“Blaize, will you to get eyes on this failure and figure out what it’s going to take to get it fixed as soon as possible? I need to know the cost of any required repair.”
“Rhysa, please investigate what ER Bridges are available to take us closer to Kolben with less fuel.”
“You hate worm holes, Captain,” she argued.
“We may not have another option.”
Rhysa spun in her chair. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Dez?” Dez had come to the deck after they landed. What did he want?
