Hold the Star: Samair in Argos: Book 2 (33 page)

              Quesh was looking over the shoulder of one of his watch standers, barking orders.  He checked out the displays.  Power was holding steady, the reactor was maintaining at twenty percent.  The control lines were out of whack, he had four people missing from his watch section, and there were depressurizations all along the starboard section.  He ran one hand over his scalp, blinking his eyes. 

              “All right, route power around junction four-sixty,” he ordered.  “That sub junction there isn’t going to hold for too long, I don’t want it to blow when we might need it.”

              “Chief, that’s going to put extra strain on junctions four-forty and four-ninety,” Horace, the tech at the station warned. 

              Quesh growled.  “Yes, Horace, I know that.  But they’re in better shape.  They’ll hold a lot better than four-sixty.  Just do it.”  The man nodded, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

              “Power rerouted, Chief,” Horace reported, nodding, his eyes never leaving his display. 

              “Good.”  He turned.  “Kid!” he bellowed.

              Kay’grax, kitted out in his skinsuit, turned from the display he was seated at.  His hood was unsealed, draped back, and open to allow his antennae and his mouthparts full range of motion.  “Chief?”

              “Get Paolo and get your shiny ass over to power junction four-sixty,” Quesh told him.  “We’ve rerouted, strip it down and get it back online.”

              “Right, Chief!” the zheen replied.  He leaped up to attention and then ran out of Main Engineering, his tool belt bouncing against his leg.

              Quesh turned away from the retreating zheen.  “All right next problem.  What’s the status on section nine?”

              Tamara entered the engineering spaces a few minutes later, Lorcan and the other technician having split off to deal with other issues.  “Quesh!” she shouted. 

              “Good, you’re here,” he said.  “We’ve got some serious problems.”

              “Oh, you’ve noticed?” she asked caustically.

              He chuckled.  “Yes, I did.  The reactor isn’t going to be able to manage the power levels we need in order to get the ship up and going again.”

              Tamara slapped her hand against one of the consoles, accessing with her manual jack.  “Yeah, I’m seeing that.  It’s stepped down to eighteen percent right now, looks like Stella is holding things together.”

              “Yeah, she is,” the Parkani replied, “But we need more than just holding together.  We’re going to need a lot more power if we’re going to be able to get the replicators running full blast like we’ll need for replacement parts.  Right now they’re down to save power.”

              “That’s crazy,” Tamara said.  “You’ve got to be able to give me one.  We’ve got three machines, Quesh.  I need one.  Hell, we’ll use one of the class threes.  Leave the class five and the e-rep off line.”

              “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Samair,” he said, turning to face her.  His upper hands were holding datapads, showing different status feeds of the power distribution net.  His lower fists were planted on his hips.  “We do not have it.  There isn’t any power to spare.  Right now the reactor is straining to give us life support, passive sensors, communications, maneuvering thrusters and
bare
minimum shields.  You want to trade one of those off?”

              “Chief!” Horace’s voice sounded strained.  “Shield failure on the starboard side.  The forward section, starboard side, power isn’t getting to the emitters.  They’re going down.”             

              Quesh slammed one of his fists into the bulkhead, which rang like a bell.  “Damn it.  You see?” he said, rounding on Tamara.

              Tamara pursed her lips, accessing more of the diagnostic feeds.  “What about the aux reactor?”

              Quesh’s eyes brightened.  “Yes!”  He turned back to one of the empty stations.  With so many dead over the last few weeks or now otherwise occupied, several of the engineering consoles down here were without operators, making Chief Trrgoth’s job that much harder.  His lower arms immediately moved to the keys on the console, firing it up.  His fingers flew over the controls and in less than ninety seconds, feeds to the auxiliary reactor were powering up.

              “It’s going to take three hours to get a hot enough seed to ignite,” Tamara told him.

              “I know,” the chief replied.  “But that’s all right.  I think we can hold things together that long.”  He pressed a control on one of the datapads, opening a comlink to the bridge.  “Bridge, Quesh.”

              A second’s delay.  “Quesh, it’s the Captain.  Talk to me.”

              “We need more power, Captain.  I’m going to take communications offline.  We’re going to have to route things like that to the boat bay.”

              “The boat bay?” the Captain demanded, clearly confused.  Then he stopped.  “Oh, okay, I see where you’re going with this.  Let one of the shuttles or Tamara’s fighter deal with that.”

              “Yes, Captain,” the Parkani replied.  “Apologize to Serinda for me, but we need every erg of power right now for other things.”

              “We’re showing the starboard side shields have collapsed,” the Captain said.

              “We’re showing that too, Captain,” the Parkani replied.  “There just isn’t enough juice to get to the shield nodes through the damaged power relays.  We’re losing too much through what are essentially leaky pipes.”

              “Understood.”

              “Captain, the main reactor is starting to fail.  We have less than a day before it crashes and the lights go out.”

              “A day?”

              “Yes, Captain, a day.  I’ve already started power-up procedures for the aux reactor.  It’ll be online and ready to take over the power load in three hours.”

              There was a sigh of relief.  “Good.  Then what?”

              “Then I take a team in to repair the main reactor, Captain.  Once that’s done, hopefully it won’t take too long, we’ll get serious about controls and power distribution.  I’ve got what people I can spare working on that now, but they’re basically in a holding pattern.  Every little bit of what they’re doing helps, but there just aren’t enough of us.  Not anymore.”

              Another sigh, this one of frustration.  “What can we do?”

              “We need to lower our power signature, take as much strain off the main and then later the aux reactor as we can.  We
need
replicator support and right now there just isn’t enough power to bring them up to make the parts we need to fix things.  We’re doing a hell of a lot of patch jobs right now, but they won’t hold up under the strain, to say nothing of the horrendous damage to the starboard side.”

              “All right,” the captain replied.  “I’ll work on moving the crew to common areas; the mess hall, some of the lounges, crew berthing.  We’ll power down absolutely everything we don’t need.”

              “Good, every drop in the bucket will help.”

              “Keep it up, Quesh,” the Captain replied.  “Regular reports, please.”

              “Copy that, Captain.  Quesh out.”  He thumbed a control and the comlink shut off.

              Three long hours crept by as the engineering crews scrambled to keep the ship running.  Tamara was assisting with routing functions around the damaged or compromised control arrays, allowing Ka’Xarian and his teams to get to work on them.  For the moment, they were simply isolating the damaged parts of the ship, and just making sure that they could bring up the main systems.  However, shields were a critical system, so the Parkani had deployed two of his techs to try and patch up a few of the power conduits in the starboard forward section to allow the shield nodes to get power.  It had taken this long, but it looked as though the temporary fixes might hold.

              “We’re done, Chief,” one of the techs reported over the internal comms.  “Patches are in, and we can power up, but...”

              “But it’s a temp job,” the Parkani said with a sigh.  “It won’t hold long.”             

              “No, Chief, it won’t,” the man replied.  “I mean, it will do for the short term, in an emergency, but not for continuous use.”

              Quesh chuckled.  “You don’t think this counts as an emergency?”

              The tech shrugged.  “I guess it is, but I think you know what I mean, Chief.”

              “Yeah, I do,” he said ruefully.  “I’ll inform the Captain.  Good work.  Get over to Ka’Xarian and give him a hand.”

              “On our way now, Chief.” 

              Quesh rubbed his forehead with the fingers of one hand, while his other three worked the engineering console before him.  Power up procedures on the aux reactor were going smoothly.  The reactor had lit, a stable plasma stream was established and power levels were rising.  The aux reactor was now at eighty percent and was ready to have the load transferred over from the main reactor.

              “All right,” Quesh replied.  “We’re ready for transfer.  Begin shutdown procedures on the main reactor.  By the book, Samair.”  He glanced over to the woman, who nodded, though her own gaze looked far away.  Clearly she was lost in cyberspace, using her implants as well as her hands to direct the systems.  He swallowed a stab of incredible envy, but there was no time for thoughts like that now.  What they needed was to get the main offline and affect serious repairs.  “Aux reactor is stable.  Stella, are you ready?”

              “Ready, Chief,” the young AI replied.  “The aux reactor is holding stable.”

              “Cutting fuel lines to the main reactor,” the Chief said.  He pressed the keys and then rotated the appropriate dial.  Power levels decreased rapidly.  “Looking good.”

              “We have flame out,” Tamara reported.  “Reactor is offline.”

              Quesh let out a long breath.  “All right.  We give it two hours to cool down and then we get in there in hardsuits and start stripping out the damaged components.”

              “I’m heading to the replicators now.  I need to get as many parts out as possible.”  Tamara stepped away from the console she was at and hustled out of Main Engineering.

              Quesh nodded as she left.  He hadn’t given her leave to exit, but he knew she was right.  They
did
need her to be getting the machines to pump out the parts they would need.  Unfortunately, the raw materials bunkers would be just about tapped out after they got the parts needed for the reactor.  Still, it was something that needed doing.

              “All right, how are we doing?” the Captain asked, a day later.  Repairs to the reactor were nearly complete.  According to Quesh’s estimates, another six hours and they would be ready to begin power up procedures.  Finally, things appeared to be going right. 

              Quesh flopped bonelessly into the chair on the side of the wardroom table.  He was exhausted.  “They’re going, sir.  But we have a long way to go yet.”

              “I’m sure,” Eamonn replied.  “Quesh, don’t take this wrong, but you look awful.”

              The Parkani let out a very low chuckle.  “I feel awful, Captain.  And my teams are doing the best they can, but we can’t seem to keep up.  The patch jobs we’re forced to do aren’t holding up as well as we’d like.  We fix something only just in time before something else breaks.  We fix that and then it’s something else.  We’re barely staying on top of it.”

              Eamonn sighed.  “What can I do to help you, Quesh?”

              “We need parts, Captain,” the chief replied bluntly.  “We need in the very least to be getting some raw materials for the replicators.”

              “I’ll send a shuttle out,” the captain said with a nod.  “Right away, but it’s a two day flight, one way.  Give them a few hours once they’re there to wrangle up a rock and then haul it back here.  It’ll probably be an additional six hours on top of the two days to get it back here because of the extra mass of the rock.”

              “Then send two shuttles, sir,” Quesh replied.  “We’re going to desperately need the raw materials.  Hopefully we can get what we need from the rocks.”  He grimaced.  “What am I saying?  We already desperately need those materials.”

              “Then we’re going to have to move the ship.  A four day trip is just too long, especially considering the state of the engineering division.  I know your people have been working their asses off, Chief.  Don’t think I haven’t noticed.  But this nickel and dime stuff out here isn’t going to fly forever.  Shortening the time it will take to get the materials will help,” the captain said.  “Can we do it?  Is the engine working?”

              Quesh shrugged, running two of his hands over his scalp.  “Engine one is online, Captain.  But I’m concerned about the structural integrity.  We fire it up and push too hard, we’ll have similar problems as when the helm tried to compensate for that roll and nearly twisted us apart.”

              “I think we’re going to just have to deal.  We’ll ease up engine power very slowly; try to keep as much stress off the hull as we can.”  The captain nodded.  “But you’re right.  We do need raw materials and we do need to get in system.  Floating around out here is only going to antagonize the locals.  We need supplies, we need new personnel.  Hell, a docking and repair slip would be nice.”