part 2
He looked out into space thru the clear front of the tube, the blast must of put them back in reall space. . Below relative to him he saw the Bluenose headed down and to his right. He wasn’t connected yet. When a person knew they were going to spend some time in space they had a series of tubes and electrodes connected to various systems of their body. When you entered an escape tube or a berth you can easily connect yourself to the tube and go into hibernation. But since the students and cadets were not hooked up they had about a days worth of water and air in the tube.
”Wonder what a raider wants with science vessel?” Chimed in one of his companions.
”How can you tell it was a raider?”
”The roughness of the outer the hull and the design of the fighters.”
”How would you know?”, he partially snarled back.
”My father served as a fight pilot and is a cargo pilot. He has seen them a few time usually the hit and take some cargo they need, trade or sell but the Bluenose doesn’t have much for them. ”
Then all of a sudden there was a sudden tug above his head. “This the medical frigate Banting, hold on we’ll have you in a few minutes.” He saw the other tubes around him with cables attached to them and in the distance he saw another frigate gathering another collection of pods.
The there were three more vessels shimmering out of hyperspace, the three cruisers the Intrepid, the Sackville and the Warwick names popped onto the screen in front of him. Two of them come from two sides of the attacker then the third came down the z axis relative to the attacker. Then the attacker disintegrated into nothing. The three vessels all turned off their main engines and their braking thrusters and their port thrusters to turn starboard and out of the way of the material left behind.
The three cruisers attached cables to the wounded Bluenose and went off to hyperspace. The medical frigates keep reeling in their catches until they were aboard. The pods were put directly in the sickbay of the craft which took up the entire 4th deck of the craft. As soon a the cadet was checked over and found to only have a few bruises and scratches he was released to do whatever he wanted until they got to the nearest station. He went to the observation deck that was located right above the two partial decks of the bridge but all three could see out the main screen into space. Below you could see the staff going about their business, you could overhear some of the conservations below.
”They could use more medical personal on the Bluenose ”
”We could send over some from here, could you send over a shuttle and dock to the top port.”
”We could do that in about 15 minutes, it will be a few weeks until Halifax. But we should try to stabilize the crew and ship before we get there.”
Then the young student got to the intercom and interrupted, “ Could they need a hand over there, i would like to volunteer.”
”I will check with the docs, what is your name kid?”
”Jacob Smith”
”Okay, sit down a bit”
Fifteen minutes later he was standing on the fifth deck right under the top hatch. He heard the the shuttle touching down with a light thud. Then when the sensors on the airlock were satisfied the seal was good the crew on the shuttle open the hatch and a ladder was lowered onto the frigate. There were crate of medical supplies that had be raised thru the hatch by cables to the shuttle this took about twenty minutes and then several medical crew went aboard and finally him. He was to go over to help secure different sections of the crippled vessel to make sure they weren’t leaking air into space and making sure different sections were safe. On the way over to the larger vessel they could see the front was completely taken off and twisted beams were exposed and wires still sparked. The pressure dome on top was still intact but there was a crack forming. Only the central engine was going and only the port docking bay was still useful.
”You guys took a beating and fast.” ,said one of medics near him.
””Out of nowhere.”
Once aboard his former transport he was instructed to get into a space suit with its own life support and start walking up the port side with one of engineers to check things out. They went up a corridor and checked if any one was in there and what kind of structural damage there was. For the first part most of the rooms were empty because most of the crew was either their stations or started to fight the damage. As they got closer to the prow they could the damage increase with wall panels all over the place and a few injured crew laying on the decks. If there was injured crew they tell the medics where and moved on, the eventually got the front where the bulkheads came down and there thru the tiny windows in them you could see the orange of hyperspace. They eventually got to his tiny cabin where nothing at all disturbed. After a day of this he was ordered back to the Banting on the next shuttle. For the Next few weeks he stayed aboard the Banting reading and watching vids form all over the alliance.
They were all told about when they were going to arrive at the Halifax system. Since he had time to do some reading he looked up all he could about this new location. It was started as science out post to study the formation of planets around a brown dwarf. As time went by and the colonies came further and further out a forward base for exploration and commerce was needed. So the Halifax Citadel Station was built, it was 30 km in diameter, the central part was not pressurized, it was loosely based off of a design from old science fiction series. As the time to leave hyperspace was approaching the observation deck got crowded a the survivors left the med bay. Then they were back into real space, and Halifax Station came into view. The giant doors opened, they were 2 km on each side. The two medical frigates went in first and went to their berths on a landing pad that was encased by a force field and was pressurized. Then the Warwick and Sackville hauling the damaged Bluenose into to massive chamber, and the one of stations tugs took over and placed it in its berth. All over the station the inward facing windows were crowded to see the wounded vessel. Once off the Banting he down a corridor and eventually was were they were unloading the crew of Bluenose. Some you could still see the person inside, these were the ones that still needed medical attention but more then what was handy. Then there were ones that were blackened in respect, these were going to the morgue. The captain was in one of the ones that were clear. He was allowed to go aboard and get his things and was assigned quarters aboard the station.