Levi's Rock - Chapter Two - Staying Put - Part Two

Ecksel was in the bullpen when Spencer entered. He took one look at Spencer—distracted, nervous, and flexing his fingers—and realized that Spencer was having an attack. No one else seemed to realize it.
Ecksel did nothing. He stepped back against the wall and watched.
Spencer headed straight for him.
Ecksel opened his mouth to say something, but then Spencer reached past him to the intercom, removed the handheld unit, and left the bullpen.
After a moment, Ecksel followed.

Hawking and Corsi were still debating when the intercom sounded. Someone answered, and then Hawking was interrupted by Ecksel shouting, “The rookie’s in the crawlspace—I think he’s headed for the deck—Hawking, he’s having some sort of a seizure—,” and then Ecksel was cut off by Spencer’s voice, eerily calm like a sleepwalker, saying, “Stay put, sir. It’ll be fine.”
For a moment, no one moved. Hawking closed his eyes and took a moment to regret ever letting Spencer get comfortable. Graeber was surely questioning his judgment.
On the deck and in the control room, the men began shaking their heads and murmuring, the general consensus being that Spencer had lost it completely now.
“Did you hear me?” came Spencer’s voice again. “Stay put.”
“Why does he keep saying that?” Hawking asked no one in particular. “Where does he think we’re going to go?” He reached for the commlink, but stopped as Corsi’s voice poured out.
“Oh my God! He’s right!” Then louder. “That’s it! That’s it!” Over the ship’s transmission, everyone could hear Corsi suddenly begin demolishing the cockpit. He must have just grabbed the nearest heavy object and started smashing everything—the console, the viewscreen, the overhead controls—and suddenly Hawking realized what he was doing.
“That boy’s a damn genius,” he whispered.
Spencer’s voice came back, echoing a little. “Clear the deck. Brace for impact.” The echo turned into a whine of feedback. He must have passed an intercom in the crawlspace—
“Crawlspace!” Hawking hissed. “Ecksel, where did you say he’s headed?”
“To the deck, sir.”
“Why through the crawlspace?”
“Clear the deck, please,” Spencer droned, still sleepwalking.
Hawking realized that only a few of them could hear the request, and he quickly thumbed an open channel, shouting, “Get off that deck! Now! Clear the deck!”
“Do you want me to open the bay doors, sir?” someone asked behind Hawking.
“No!” Hawking barked. “Not yet—he’s down under the deck. I think he’s planning on coming up under one of the ships.”

Hawking, Corsi and Spencer were now on the same page.
Ships like the ones they were testing were usually cobbled together with parts from decommissioned ships; if someone built a new engine or a new propulsion system and wanted it tested, they could integrate it into a cheap ship built out of spare parts instead of building a whole new vessel. Fancy prototypes were usually built once all the bugs in the various systems were caught.
What Corsi was flying was a ship with a scavenged console, which was why it had frozen up on him—but being scavenged meant it had Pathways protocols in it already, and one of those protocols was called “Stay Put.”
Stay Put was an emergency procedure that the ship could perform without any help. Basically, in the event that the navigation system became inoperable, the ship would retain its last reported position—or as close to it as feasible—and signal for help until towed or until it received course instructions, demonstrating that it could be piloted again.
When the console froze up and the ship kept moving, Corsi waited only a minute for Stay Put to take over before he assumed that the ship was not equipped with it. The problem was that the ship was still receiving course information from the console—even though Corsi could not get in to change it. This also explained why Hawking was unable to access it remotely.
In order to get Stay Put to kick in, Corsi was going to have to render the console completely useless in the next three minutes. After that, even the ship’s computer would not be able to brake fast enough to avoid the station.
There was a chance that, even if the ship fired its braking thrusters in the next minute or so, it would still impact with the station at high enough speed to kill Corsi and demolish the flight deck. Hawking had an idea of his own, but he didn’t know if he could communicate with Spencer—he wasn’t sure Spencer was capable of actual discussion in this state. They would just have to wait and see.

Within a minute, the station received a signal from the ship—and it wasn’t Corsi’s voice. It was the ship itself, asking for assistance. Over the simulated voice came a whooping, cheering voice that was definitely Corsi’s, and he informed them that the braking rockets had fired.
Hawking cut off the loud response from the crew and asked for quick calculations as to the ship’s deceleration arc and distance from the station. He needed to know whether they should open the bay doors now, or wait, or not open them at all.
The tricky part was knowing whether Corsi would survive if they kept the doors closed. This was the best option for the station and the crew—and if Corsi could withstand the impact, he would probably come out of it damaged but alive.
The next best option was opening the doors at the last moment and doing so without decompressing the deck. This would force a jet of air out, probably damaging the doors, but hopefully slowing the ship just a bit before it slammed into the deck or one of the ships inside. Instead of a direct impact, it would be a ricochet, sparing Corsi some damage but severely damaging the deck and perhaps obliterating another ship as well. Hawking hoped that Spencer was headed for the right ship. The wrong choice would put him in as much danger as Corsi.
Hawking looked up as one of the techs finished his calculations. The news wasn’t good.

Hawking silenced everyone before opening a channel to Spencer; he wasn’t sure Spencer would even hear him, but if he did then it had to be clear.
“Spence,” he called out. “Are you on deck yet?”
For a moment, nothing came back. Then a voice said, “Stay put.”
Hawking exhaled slowly. “Stay put. Got it. What now?”
There was silence. Hawking waited. The crew waited. Nothing came back.
“Spence,” Hawking called.
Nothing.
“What now?”
Silence. Then a crackle, and a static-smothered voice said, “Blow the hatch, and get the hell out of there.”
It made no sense to Hawking; he looked around and got blank stares from everyone else as well. Turning back to the panel, he said, “Blow what hatch?” But that was the last time Spencer spoke to anyone for a while.
Corsi was coming in, and he was coming in fast. Hawking projected cool with every spare bit of energy he could muster, but under the surface he wanted to scream. He closed his eyes and began mentally surveying the ships on the deck—
“That’s why his voice was breaking up; he’s gotten into the airlock on one of those ships, but why?”
—the controls to the bay doors—
“They don’t blow open, they just slide apart, that can’t be it”
—and Corsi’s ship—
“It’s got a hatch, but he can’t get off the ship, he’s got no suit, why would he get off the ship?”
And with another rush of adrenaline, Hawking caught up to Spencer again. He lurched for the open channel and began shouting commands. This wasn’t just going to be close—they were about to have a by-God catastrophe on their hands. The braking thrusters had given them about five or six extra minutes, but that was the last reprieve they would get. Everyone on the station was moving.