Chapter 109

Chapter One Hundred Nine

Nothing ever went easy on the crazy planet. Connor had to repeat that as a mantra sitting on the engineering bay deck in the white work light glow. It was the only way to get through installing one of the pipes he’d taken from the older ships. The specs were the same, but it refused simple installation.

Finally, he ended up shortening the pipe and re-threading for the fitting. It would be a pain to take back off, but he didn’t expect to be in the ship long.

Assuming it worked at all.

With all that had happened, that seemed like a long shot.

Realistic ambitions should be simple: getting lights to work; blowing out the stench of death that still hung over everything; a cool shower to wash away the filth and ease his aching muscles.

Maybe even fresh, sweet water to quiet the sensation he was dehydrating.

He set the wrench onto the deck plating, wincing at the metallic clank. Without systems running or a crew creating noise, everything seemed deafening.

Elise stepped out of the reactor chamber and closed the safety hatch, then pulled her environment suit helmet off. “Everything looks okay.”

“Reactors like that are built to last.”

“They are. But this planet seems to have a real hatred for technology.”

Connor chuckled. “Is that something you learned at university?”

“Superstition? More like it’s something I learned here. What’s learned through experience endures longest.”

“Okay, that sounds like something you learned at university.”

“Probably.” She glanced around at the sprawl of tools. “Are you done?”

“As done as we’re going to get. This pipe wouldn’t fit. I’ve adjusted it, and I’ve put a lot of sealant on it, but it’s something I’d swap out at the first port.”

She knelt beside the open panel and tugged on the line. “It looks solid.”

“But it’s not to spec. I was told that’s always the first step to failure.”

“It should get us out of here. At this point, that’s what matters.”

“Ready to fire up the reactor?”

Elise strode to the main control console, which powered on dimly when she tapped the start button. “We could use a couple more batteries from the Badger. I used up most of the reserve power purging the recycler system.”

“Let’s try it with what we have now.”

“You think the scorpions are still out there?”

“If we don’t need to test the idea, we shouldn’t.”

“I can’t argue with that. Well, I could, but I won’t.” She tapped a few more buttons, and an interface resolved on the main display. When she reached a menu, she navigated it quickly.

Then a dull drone came from inside the sealed reactor chamber. Pale blue lights winked on, and the console dimmed noticeably.

A second later, the dimming dipped toward a complete darkness.

Connor gulped. “I’ll get those batteries.”

“Wait.” Elise brought up another interface on the display. “Batteries are okay. This is normal. The big drain comes initially. Any minute now, the lasers fire and—”

The console darkened completely.

“Batteries?”

She bit her bottom lip. “Give it a minute. The first thing it does is transfer power to capacitors and internal batteries. Once the magnetic bottle powers on, and the lasers fire, we’ll know. It takes time.”

Inside the reactor chamber, the pale blue lights were barely visible. Connor leaned against the glass, working through how he would get to the Badger.

Would the internal batteries be sufficient? Pulling the ones mounted to the undercarriage would take minutes, and just a handful of scorpions would make that a deadly problem.

Elise poked him in the arm with something: the broken pocket computer. “I was looking at this earlier.”

“You fixed it?”

“I can. I transferred some power from mine to it, and it held the charge okay.”

“What about getting into it?”

“That’s going to take more time. I’ll replace the display first.”

“But you think you can get it running?”

She turned the thing in her hand. “There’s no significant damage to it.”

Lights flickered overhead; the archaeologist looked around.

Connor held his breath. “Is it—?”

The lights winked out, then came back on with growing intensity. Inside the chamber, the pale blue lights seemed bright as suns.

Elise clapped her hands together. “Power. Glorious power.”

She hurried back to the console, which now proudly displayed everything in bright colors. Every interface she brought up showed at least an amber condition, with most in the green.

After a bit, she stopped and pulled the data cores out.

Connor held out a hand, expecting her to tell him they weren’t worth the trouble. Instead, she took out the ones for the ship and headed for the shielded computer room.

A minute later, she returned. “I’m going to have the baseline systems reload onto the cores.”

“I wanted to know what—”

“I can tell you what happened here. And we’re not losing anything. I partitioned off the old data. For now, we need to focus on getting the ship running.”

He relaxed. “Okay.”

“When the restore completes, we’re going to have a lot of processing power to spare. The restores of those other cores should go quickly.”

Good news, finally.

Connor eyed his backpack. “How long before we could clean up?”

“Water? If you don’t need it heated or cooled, you should have running water now.”

“Where’s the bathroom?”

Elise squinted at the console, then turned around. “Follow me.”

She led him to the bathroom that had been set aside for the men, then headed off to her cabin to grab fresh clothes of her own.

When he returned to the engineering section, refreshed and clean, she was already there, toweling her hair.

Her mood had improved, and a smile spread across her face. “Happy now?”

“I don’t feel like an animal. That’s a start.”

“Well, the recyclers won’t have enough capacity to comfortably manage the entire team, not without some more work, but I think I can figure something out.”

“We’ve proven the ship is a viable alternative.”

“It is.” She held up a mug for him, then nodded at the main console display. “You might want to see this.”

The green vertical line of a progress tracker on the display showed ninety-eight percent, then jumped to ninety-nine.

Connor found the label at the bottom of the screen. “That’s the baseline system? That was quick.”

“The baseline system finished minutes ago. This is the archived data.”

“The restore?”

“I told you this ship had a lot more processing power than yours. It’s already restoring the other data cores.”

No sooner had she said that than the progress indicator flashed a message: “Restore completed.”

Elise brought up the interface to the security system, squeezed her eyes shut, shuddered, then sighed. “I guess it’s time to see what happened.”

She pressed the button to play the last recorded video.