“Course laid in,” the pilot said.
“Engage.”
The pilot hit the control for warp and there was a loud bang from somewhere to the rear that rang through the ship, following which they immediately lost artificial gravity.
“Okay,” Spectre said calmly. “That did not sound good.”
“Conn, Engineering.” There was a sound of coughing in the background of the sound-powered comm system.
“Go, Eng.”
“We just had a catastrophic failure of the neutrino generator. We’re down. We also have a fire but we’re getting that under control.”
“We’re not all that far from the Dreen task-force, Eng,” the CO said. “Getting up is rather important.”
“Understood, Conn,” the Eng replied. “We’ve got our rolls of duct tape out already.”
“Very funny, Eng,” the CO said. “How long?”
“When I have the slightest clue I’ll tell you, Conn.”
“Weaver,” the CO said. “Get your happy ass down there and find out what’s wrong.”
“Roger,” Weaver said, unhooking his belt and grabbing a stanchion. He shook his head and swallowed, far more affected by microgravity than normal. His head was swimming and he could barely figure out where the hatch out of the conn was. The repeated warps were seriously grapping with him. “On my way.”
“Grapp,” Weaver muttered as he pulled himself into the engineering spaces. He wasn’t, by any stretch, the only visitor. It seemed like half the mechanics in the ship were in the room, some floating around waiting for orders but most dealing with the mess. Most of them still had the helmets down on their space suits, indicating just how bad the fire had been. Bill could smell the stench of melted plastics and ozone still, despite the recyclers being on at max.
The problem was immediately apparent. The neutrino generator, an electrically charged Looking Glass boson held in a magnetic field, had blown a gasket. The LGB charging and confinement system was in pieces that were floating all over engineering and one of the nuke techs who manned the room was being given some rough and ready first aid for a piece of shrapnel from the controller.
“What do you mean we don’t have a spare?” the Eng shouted just as Weaver entered the compartment.
“I mean there’s no spare, sir,” LPO Macelhenie said, slowly and carefully. He was more or less upside down and had his helmet flipped back and his feet hooked around a pipe. “There was no anticipation that the controller would blow. It’s practically solid state.”
“It’s not designed for repeated cycling, though,” Weaver said. “Chither. We ran it through a thousand cycles in tests but not this fast and we’ve done way more than a thousand cycles, all told, on it since installation. It should have been pulled and replaced before the cruise. It’s solid state, but it takes a massive electrical load to generate the neutrinos. Probably it just overheated and blew up like a transformer that’s been under too much stress for too long.”
“So what do we do about it?” the Eng asked, trying to stay upright with a hand clamped to the back of a chair. “I’ve seen the schematics on it but I can’t really make heads or tails of how it works. And without the neutrino generator we are dead in space for the foreseeable future.”
“I’m aware of that,” Weaver said, frowning. “Tchar?”
“Human tech.” Tchar shrugged. He was more or less in midair, and also more or less upside down. “I’m thinking. No use of duct tape comes to mind.”
“There’s the power input system,” Bill said, trying to think through the haze that the repeated warps had made of his brain. “Then the connections to the magnets. We’ve got dozens of magnets that can be used for stabilization. The power inputs to the LGB itself, but they have to be modulated. It was probably the modulator that overheated. We need a high power but small transformer, a modulator, an analog to digital converter—”
“A computer,” Miriam said from the back of the room. She was tucked into a ball in an upper corner, clearly trying to stay out of the way. For once, she didn’t appear to be minding microgravity.
“The power supply won’t take it,” Bill pointed out. “We’re talking about nearly a thousand amps.”
“It will last for a while,” Miriam pointed out. “Replace it when it starts to wear. We’ve got dozens of computers in the science offices. And parts for them.”
“No, a computer at best uses a ten amp power supply. The breakers and fuses on it will go out in milliseconds. It won’t work, trust me, I’ve blown them up before. Hmm…” Weaver shook his spinning head.
“We could use a computer with an A to D card to drive the modulation though, but what would we modulate?”
“A CD player,” Miriam replied. “It uses the same algorithms. We may have to do a manual adjustment but the controls are in the player, too, so that’s easy enough. Make a case from number thirty-two piping; there’s a four-foot section in the machine shop. From there it’s just a matter of enough duct tape.”
“That’s a great idea, Miriam, but I still think it to be too small.” Weaver shook his head again. The spinning just got worse. “Uhg… hey, Tchar’s lazy Susan works just like the CD players do.”
“You mean the thing he put together for the gamma ray Morse code thingy?” Miriam asked.
“Yeah, that thing. Would it work?”
“I can make it work!” Miriam agreed. “And that would solve our transformer problem too! But we’d need two of them, one for the modulator and one for the transformer. Drat.”
“Always a two for one value at Triple A Plus Industrial Warehouse Online!” Weaver said, mocking Tchar. “He has two of them.
“Why are you the only one whose brain is working?” Bill asked. “Mine’s fragged from the warps. In the past you would have been curled up in a ball somewhere.”
“I don’t know,” Miriam said, shrugging. “I’m not bothered by whatever’s getting you guys. Maybe because I’m a girl. Maybe because I’m weird. But that’s not getting us fixed.”
“Agreed,” Bill said. “Eng, you up with this?”
“Not… really,” the ship’s engineer admitted. “My brain’s sort of melting, too. I don’t think I can even recall the design, much less figure out what Miss Moon’s talking about.”
“Miriam, what do you need?” Bill asked.
“Red and Sub Dude,” Miriam replied. “And about thirty minutes.”
“We’re in range of the Dreen fighters,” Bill pointed out.
“That does not help me think, Commander Weaver,” Miriam said, straightening her legs and bounding off the bulkhead towards the main hatch. “Just leave me to it and don’t tell me if we’re about to get blown up, okay?”
“The neutrino generator blew out,” Bill said, strapping himself back into the astro chair. “Just blew the grapp all over engineering. Miss Moon’s figured out a fix. She’s on it.”
“What do I even bring you guys along for?” Spectre said tiredly, then straightened. “I mean, she cleans, she paints and now she’s fixing my busted-up engine. I bet she can even figure out where we are if I need it.”
“Right now I wish you’d left me on Earth, sir,” Bill admitted.
“Conn, Tactical.”
“Go.”
“A flight of Dreen fighters has just broken away from the task force. They’re on a course to intercept ours. They’ll be in range in twenty minutes.”
“Seriously wish you’d left me on Earth.”
“How long on those repairs?” the CO asked.
“Miss Moon said thirty minutes,” Bill replied.
“Tell her to hurry up!”