“If they’re all the same, can’t they just remove one of the other ones and reinstall them?” Bus asked.
“No,” Evan replied, nodding to Linda. “Pull one of the busses and you’re going to cause a cascade failure in the drive. And with the busses in place… You made sure they were a hot contact, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Linda said, smiling.
“With the spare busses in place, the system would be totally destabilized,” Evan noted. “Think of it as being shorted out. And I’m not sure you could trace the short with any great ease. You’d have to have full power. Damn, you’re right, I don’t know if I could find them.”
“Herzer,” Nicole said, “I’d like to apologize.”
“Why?” Herzer asked. “You did one hell of a job. Hell, you all did one hell of a job. All I did was sit here and worry.”
“I got really peeved at you in training,” Nicole admitted. “You kept pushing and kept making us learn some really oddball stuff. I thought we just needed to know how to pull the injectors. But I’ve had to cover half the ship. If you hadn’t made us learn all that stuff…”
“Hell, if I had to, you had to,” Herzer said with a grin. “Van Krief, what do you think New Destiny will do when they realize they don’t have a way to redirect the ship and they don’t have control of any of the shuttles?”
“Try to seize the functioning shuttles?” Van Krief said. “Maybe figure out a way to get the engines back online? Why were they doing a burn, anyway?”
“I think I’ve figured that one out,” Evan said, frowning. “If they can get the ship inside geosynchronous orbit, they can teleport the fuel out.”
“I’ve got a teleport block in place,” Megan pointed out.
“Then they’ll try to find you and take you out,” Evan replied. “But they don’t have controls. Heck, they don’t even have power.”
“They’re going to do something,” Cruz noted.
“They’ll have to attack on the surface,” Van Krief pointed out. “If they can get the shuttles, Reyes can override Megan’s controls. But I don’t know if they have pilots.”
“They won’t need them,” Linda pointed out. “If they just let them run on program they’ll get half the fuel.”
“And we don’t want that,” Herzer noted. “When the shuttles get back, we’ll be supplemented by twenty-four Lords. But until then, I think we’re still outnumbered. Maintenance has just about lost its utility to us. Evan, get with Geo and find out what he needs to rework the other Tammens. Then we’ll split up, collect them, and head for Engineering. When the shuttles come back, we’ll use the incoming teams for security on the transfer. We’re going to hunker down in Engineering and hold out until then.”
“You may have my head, Great One,” Tur-uck said, bowing before Reyes. “We tried to find the power leads but they were either thrown away or hidden beyond our ability to find.”
“There are over four thousand buss bars, Great One,” Gomblick said, licking his lips nervously. “If they were hidden in that tangle, I couldna find them.”
“Get up,” Reyes growled at Tur-uck. “We have no control, here. We will move the whole group to Engineering and search it inch by inch if that is what is necessary to find the power bars.”
“Great One, I have a question,” Tur-uck said, cautiously. “When we were returning, I noticed that most of the shuttles were still attached. Were they not supposed to have refueled and returned to Earth?”
“Yes,” Reyes said, looking at Gomblick.
“I dunno know why,” the engineer said, his eyes widening. “I didna do it!”
“Find out,” Reyes growled.
The engineer took a seat in front of the shuttle control panel and began hunting through menus as Reyes furiously tapped one foot.
“They’re disabled,” Gomblick said, finally, wincing as he did. “The injector system canna work on the engines. Only shuttle one and the four to the rear launched. The four to the rear launched under internal control. They’re all heading to Coalition reactors.”
“Damn them,” Reyes screamed. “While we’ve been running all over the ship trying to deal with their crap, they disabled the shuttles and no one noticed?”
“I was in Engineering,” Gomblick said, cowering in front of the raging Great One. “Tom was trying to fix the doors and Goblast…” He ended, nervously, looking at the body in the corner.
“Can you fix them?” Reyes asked, trying to control his temper. He only had two engineers left and he didn’t need it pointed out that the one he’d killed would have been the one to tell him the shuttles were being deactivated.
Gomblick hunched over the control panel again and began calling up more menus, muttering under his breath as he did. After a moment the mutter died away.
“What?” Reyes said, dangerously.
“The injectors ha’ been pulled from the engines, Great One,” Gomblick replied, not bothering to turn around. “And Maintenance lists the spare injector bin as empty. The bots ha’ repaired shuttle five’s damage, all but the injector. There’s a replicator in Maintenance, but it’s been taken offline.” He turned around and looked the Great One in the eye, firmly. “No, I canna repair them. Not wi’out the injectors. And if they’ve gone an’ buggered them this good, they’ll ha’ gone and buggered the spares.”
Reyes stared at him, hard, until the kobold dropped his gaze; then the Key-holder looked away as well.
“We’ll capture their tame shuttles when they get back,” Reyes, finally. “In the meantime, we need to get to Engineering and get the engines back online. Somehow. Pilot Reefic and four Durgar stay here. The rest of you are on me.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Whoa,” Corporal Berghaus muttered as the airlock in the distance opened. He was hiding in the dimple near shuttle eleven, one of three pickets left out in vacuum to watch for New Destiny’s response. And it was a good thing he was since New Destiny was responding. First four scorpions crawled out and spread out. The metallic arthropods did, indeed, have magnetic feet and they could move much more quickly than humans or orcs on the exterior of the ship. The question in everyone’s mind was how long they could survive on the surface. They’d only been seen in death pressure for a few minutes at a time.
Behind the scorpions, the airlock started to disgorge armored orcs, at least a half a dozen. Then a second wave of more orcs with a couple of soft-suited figures, then what could only be Reyes and the Changed elf, the latter looming over all the other figures.
“Lieutenant, this is Berghaus,” the picket said, quietly. “We have a problem.”
“Great,” Herzer muttered, looking up at the thruster assembly. Linda and Geo were up on the vaguely dildo-shaped thruster, removing the Tammen reactionless drive. They were on the starboard side of the ship and the orc force had emerged to port so they probably weren’t going to run across his team. But Captain Van Buskirk’s teams were to port and they’d quickly be in view of the orcs.
“Bus, did you hear what Cruz passed on?” Herzer asked.
“I was listening in,” the lieutenant admitted. “We’re halfway through pulling this Tammen. As soon as they’re done, we’ll head downward on the ship to the yaw thruster and pull that one. I think we have enough time; among other things, we’re in shadow here so we’re harder to see. If they’re getting in view, we’ll give up on this one and boogey out.”
“Works,” Herzer said. “Two guesses where they’re heading.”
“Engineering,” Lieutenant Van Krief said. “Maybe Maintenance.”