SEVENTEEN

Ivanova was first in the briefing room, but only just. Breck appeared as she was pouring herself a welcome mug of hot strong coffee. Seeing him arrive she poured one for him, then topped up her own mug again before sinking down into her seat.

They were just into the third week of the emergency simulations, and last night, during the fourth watch, Breck had run a surprise Fusion Reactor Leak Drill. Because every member of the crew had to be practised at the drills, members of the simulations team would be dropped from the roster and expected to take part. That included Ivanova, who had no prior knowledge of the emergency simulation and had not been amused by the disturbance.

For the first day they had started out by scheduling the emergency drills in advance so that the crew knew what was expected of them. During these trial runs the element of surprise was not an issue, neither was the time taken to complete each simulation was a factor. As Ivanova expected, Breck had planned a simple Emergency Evacuation. With his team monitoring the progress, the reactors had been shut down and sealed off, the armoury locked down, and the crew walked through their escape routes. On the bridge, the designated officers had used their keycards in sequence to authorise the auto-destruct sequence. This was followed by an Emergency Power Loss Drill. The different sections of the ship found themselves having to keep critical systems running by using their own localised power reserves until the grid was repaired and brought back online.

Soon Breck and his team were simultaneously running drills that required the attention of only certain sections of the crew. Ivanova had personally gone down to watch the maintenance crews dislodge a Starfury that the pilots had purposefully jammed in the launch mechanism causing a bottleneck in the central landing

bay. At the same time, as part of the ongoing Weapons Drills, the interceptor teams were kept busy by an already launched Starfury, piloted by Lieutenant Michael Oliver, the leader of Beta Squadron, randomly firing simulated projectiles at the Titans.

After that the crew had to deal with an atmosphere loss where, to simulate the ship’s air escaping into space, a mild toxin that caused the same effects as tear gas was introduced into the air supply and forced through the vents. As well as seeing how fast the crew could get into their environment suits or find the nearest breathing units, the Simulations team paid great attention to how quickly repairs were carried out to contain the vessel’s vital air supply.

Once the crew became adept at facing the tasks ahead of them, Breck and Ivanova decided to mix it up a little. Prior to another Atmosphere Loss Drill, scheduled just as the shifts were about the change, environment suits were removed from the emergency lockers and the air tanks for a selection of the breathing units were drained.

During a Fire Drill, which was potentially one of the most nightmarish situations for a crew to face, the built-in chemical sprayers were switched off and a stronger toxin introduced to simulate not just the loss of air but also the possibility of chemicals given off by burning certain materials. Adhering to the strict mandate that if a fire cannot be contained within a set time the damaged sections had to be sealed, the fire crews had to decide how many unconscious crewmembers they could before they were cut off from life support.

“Check the personnel rosters, let’s see how the enlisted men and warrant officers cope when the section chiefs are in the gymnasium or in their bunks,” Ivanova had said when they first started charting the program.

“See who has got leadership potential amongst the nomcoms?”

Breck replied.

“We’ve all done these drills on previous ships. I don’t want the crew to be thinking if its fourteen-hundred hours it must be a hull breach drill.”

“We can see to that,” Crawley told her.

“Good. And once we’ve worked out the timetable, I’ll want to see you separately to schedule additional drills that not everyone in the team has prior knowledge of. If your Simulation Assistants only observe the performance then they aren’t participating. In the event of an actual emergency I want them up to speed on following correct procedures. Both of you as well. If the worst happens it may save all our lives.”

“It works for me,” Breck said. Crawley nodded in agreement.

Although the crew were performing admirably through the steady progression of tasks, Ivanova was beginning to feel she was on the ragged edge. Roused from her sleep to deal with the simulated reactor breach was bad enough. What galled her most was it had happened on one of the few nights she had managed to get a decent sleep. She might have slept soundly on this occasion only because she was simply tired out from all the previous nights,

which had found her jolted away, the blue silk pyjamas she had bought in St. Petersburg soaked black with sweat. There had been dark and terrible dreams where she had felt herself constricted by fibrous appendages, black as midnight, which wrapped themselves around her. She had reached to touch her cheek, adamant that gauze veils had been draped across her face until she was breathing the swathes of material in and suffocating herself. Once awake and gulping air down into her lungs, she could feel the tingling sensation the materials left on her skin.

The first night it had happened, Ivanova had pulled on her robe and padded across the room to the com station to speak to Benton face-to-face rather than use her link. Once activated, the screen displayed the Earth Alliance logo above the Titans crest. As she reached to bring up the on-screen options the familiar graphics had suddenly flared into a swirling mass of illegible text and unrecognisable symbols. She turned her face away from the screen and for a moment saw her shadow thrown back across the room in hard relief before the images dissolved into blackness.

The few nights the dreams hadn’t managed to reach down far enough to violently rouse Ivanova from her deep slumber, she had still never managed to wake up feeling fully refreshed. She needed a shower every morning. She needed the coffee. It worried her that a day might come when she would need to rely on stims just to run fast enough to keep up.

“I suppose we have you to thank for last night’s entertainment,” Ivanova said as she hastily refilled her mug. All she could remember clearly was stumbling from her quarters after hurriedly getting dressed, checking on the chromatic tab attached to her uniform that had been specially adapted to register levels of the same mild toxin, used in other scenarios, that was now employed to stand-in for leaked radiation.

Once Ivanova got to the bridge she had allowed Graydon to oversee the operation while she watched the crew from the various shifts work together to ensure that the breach was contained. Berensen had been there as well. She remembered seeing a look of concern of his face, directed at her.

“You look tired,” Berensen had mentioned, days before when they were seated together in the Officer’s Mess. “This must seem very different for you compared to Babylon 5.”

“Dealing with new and different personalities is a lot easier than dealing with new and very different races,” Ivanova explained. “And having to deal with some old races. Some very old.”

“It was difficult to begin with,” she said. “Take the Minbari, for instance. When I was transferred to the station I had to put my personal feelings aside, which was difficult to begin with. Like a great many people, I lost family in the EarthMinbari War.”

Ivanova had looked up then as Graydon and Maddison arrived almost simultaneously for breakfast. The room was beginning to fill up and the kitchen staff was circling the tables serving

breakfasts. Ivanova carried on, wanting as many of them to hear what she had to say.

“It would have been so easy to hate them for what they did, but I had to put my differences aside. You can’t stay hostile because you once fought against each other. And in time I came to see that the Minbari were a very spiritual people and found out that they weren’t that different from you and me.”

“So you’re saying that we should just forgive and forget in a situation like that?” Graydon said.

“Forgive, yes. If you can.”

Ivanova hoped then that she had managed to get her point across. Whether it had worked or not, she was still uncertain. As members of the Simulations team arrived Ivanova wondered if she could every forgive Breck.

Harriet Crawley was certainly not as forgiving. Amongst their numerous Combat Drills, the marines had practised boarding actions, requiring them to defend key areas of the Titans from an enemy that had boarded the ship, before ultimately driving them from the vessel.

To simulate live rounds fire, each marine was outfitted with a vest that would deliver a mild electric shock once they were targeted by the opposing forces. Based on the strength and accuracy of the hit, a roundal on the front of the vest would indicate the extent of the injury inflicted. In the marines’ briefing hall, once the men where divided into intruders and defenders and the armourers had checked that the weapons to be used in the practise had their plasma caps removed, the Quartermaster’s staff issued the marines involved with the vest.

“So as not to place undue demands on sickbay you will be wearing one of these,” Captain Dorland said, taking a vest and holding it up for everyone to see. “To demonstrate I need a volunteer.”

Dorland had looked Breck straight in the eye. Ivanova turned to the marines and saw smiles break across their faces as the lieutenant responsible for putting them through the surprise drills eagerly stepped forward and shrugged on the vest.

“I’m sure we can sit here all day and explain the science involved,” Dorland said as he checked the setting on the slender battery pack. “What happens is something like this.”

He raised one of the modified pistols, aimed and fired. Breck jerked as the burst of electric current jolted through him but bravely stood his ground.

“The object, therefore, is not to get shot,” declared Captain Dorland. He altered the setting on the battery pack and fired again. This time Breck yelped as he was hit by a stronger charge. The roundal on the vest glowed bright red and stayed red.

“I’m afraid you’re dead, sir,” Dorland announced. “I suggest next someone points a gun at you, you step out of the way.”

During the first simulation, which saw them guarding engineering and the hanger bays only the marines were issued with the vests. Ivanova had been making her way back to the bridge

when a voice had bellowed “Make a hole!” and a squad wearing green armbands had raced past her toward the landing bays, ready to repel the red-banded invading forces. For further simulations, crew working in designated sections of the ship had been issued with vests. In no uncertain terms Dorland had explained that if the ship was ever boarded, every member of the crew was a target. Soon the invading force were given more men and more targets to take. Flash charges had been handed out, which would overload the vest settings and light up the roundels instantaneously.

Forewarned of the action, Doctor Benton had the MedLab staff ready to receive actual casualties. Sure enough, a number of overenthusiastic marines either limped in on their own or were carried in, leaving the nurses to treat muscle strains and any number of broken bones.

One unit, designated alien invaders, had gone so far as to pull up deck plates and work their way through the crawl spaces. The bridge crew had been surprised when three marines came crashing through the ceiling. Ivanova had even stood and applauded their ingenuity. In return the marines shot her while they lay sprawled on the floor, waiting for the medical staff to arrive.

While Breck and Ivanova had been shot once, Harriet Crawley, monitoring the combat simulations, found herself repeatedly on the receiving end of weapons fire and flash grenades. Jolted by the electric shocks, she stumbled blindly into the bulkhead, splitting her lip.

Ivanova had reviewed the results of the first round of test with Dorland and Marine Lieutenant Lindsey Garland, the assigned simulations assistant, and was pleased by the performance. Wondering if they could do better, she had let slip on purpose that after the Nightwatch security officers had been shipped off Babylon 5 Sheridan had replaced them with Narn warriors. She wasn’t surprised to see an added ferocity to the fighting in the next scheduled simulation. By then Crawley had taken to carrying a PPG of her own.

“What’s on the agenda today?” Ivanova asked as she took her seat. Rather than run through the list from start to finish and cycle around they had decided to make random selections to keep the crew on their toes.

Breck studied his checklist, glancing up briefly as Jack Durden, an Engineer’s Assistant, and Gillian Bruhl, one of Benton’s MedLab nurses who had been co-opted for the duty, slipped into the room and took their places around the table.

“A Hull Breach Simulation scheduled for fourteen-hundred hours. At nineteen-hundred, a Lost Starfury Drill,” he announced once Captain Dorland and Lieutenant Oliver arrived. In the event of a hull breach, simple micro-punctures and minor breaches would be quickly repaired by maintenance crew in environment suits, using plastic-foam as a temporary sealant. For more serious damage, sections of the ship would be sealed to isolate the breach. Although hull breaches were not as dangerous

as a fire on the ship, if the breach was large enough to vent a critical amount of air into space it could represent a serious threat to the structural integrity of the ship. For the second, one of the fighters would be flown out and disabled in space. Pilots and crew would have to work in concert to retrieve the Starfury before the pilot’s life support fails. Ivanova mulled over his suggestions.

“What about bringing the Jump Failure Drill forward?” she suggested, catching the expressions from around the table. Jump failures occurred when either a ship failed to form a symmetrical jump point due to problems with the vortex generators or the energy waves were disrupted by a gravitational anomaly in local hyperspace. The backlash of energy could inflict massive damage on the ship. Even if it avoided the potential huge stresses on the superstructure, key electrical systems would surely be disrupted.

“It’ll be a fail, I know, because we’d be leapfrogging ahead of hull breach drills and gravity failure. But I’d like to see how big a fail.”

Before anyone could add their opinions the lights dimmed and Ivanova was alarmed to feel a shudder go through the ship. Her body felt light and was alarmed to see globules of coffee rise out of the mug, which lifted one edge off the table.

“Gravity’s gone,” Durden said before the ship shook again and the floating coffee splashed down onto the table.

“Captain to the bridge,” Berensen announced over the intercom, his voice rising above the hiss of static. As the emergency lighting kicked in, Ivanova looked at Breck.

“I haven’t ordered this,” he explained. Breck turned to Harriet Crawley who was equally at a loss to explain what was happening.

The hatch only opened part way but Dorland and Oliver put enough weight against it to make room for everyone to get out.

“Get back to your stations,” Ivanova ordered as she ran to the bridge with Breck in pursuit.