Chapter 6: Looking Up

  I jolted awake, a sharp, insistent sound piercing my dreamless rest. Apparently, I had fallen asleep at the controls waiting for the reboot to finish up. I peered through bleary eyes at what was making the infernal racket.

  BEEP BEEP BEEP

  "Turn it off," I muttered, my voice gravelly from sleep. My hands groped blindly across the console, searching for the source of the noise.

  The alarm stopped.

  Blinking away the grogginess, I focused on the diagnostic screen in front of me. The reboot was complete, its final report blinking patiently on the display. The Mammut's systems were active again—barely.

  “Computer, status report,” I commanded to the air.

  “Not authorized,” came the automated reply.

  “Ah, forgot about that,” I sighed, cursing under my breath. Of course, I’d forgotten to restore my stolen command codes. With a few keystrokes, I reinstated them, bypassing the outdated security protocol to give me access.

  “Computer, status report,” I repeated.

  The synthetic voice droned out a list of the ship’s battered systems:

  Life Support: 87%

  Gravity Generator: 76%

  Warp Reactor-2: 65%

  Warp Core: 63%

  Warp Reactor-1: 61%

  Shields: 48%

  Engines: 22%

  Navigation: 19%

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  Integrity Fields: 7%

  Communications: Offline

  Sensors: Offline

  “Well, that’s only mostly terrible,” I said to no one, staring at the numbers as if they might miraculously improve under my scrutiny. Putting back on the EV suit, I step out into the ship to start repairs on the battered thing.

  Walking out onto Deck 3, I started prioritizing repairs. The reactor came first. Without stable power, nothing else would hold. I climbed down to Deck 4, where the reactors’ housings loomed like a sleeping beast. Their hum was erratic, the pulse uneven. Panels flickered, spilling light onto the black alloy creeping up their sides.

  “Let’s see why your energy readings make you seem like you’ve had 16 cups of pure espresso in the last hour,” I muttered, accessing the maintenance terminal.

  A warp reactor isn’t a simple machine. It’s a device that uses pulsed power modules to drive a Warp Core, which consists of two ion ring Marx generators and two dense plasma focuses. The dense plasma focuses fire at each other, injecting two ion and plasma beams from opposite ends of a double-barreled head. The beams merge near the device's mid-plane, and are then radially compressed and accelerated.

  Turning it into the beating heart of any ship, driving power to every other system. If it malfunctions, best case, the ship drifts dead in space. Worst case, it takes the ship—and me—with it in a catastrophic implosion.

  Both reactors’ outputs were unstable, fluctuating between safe and critical levels. I spent what felt like hours stabilizing the power flow, rerouting damaged circuits and replacing fried relays with spares scavenged from auxiliary systems. The AI regulated the energy input to the core the entire time to prevent it from melting down, but it was a tenuous balance. My fingers trembled inside the EV suit gloves, the strain of precision work amplified by the stakes.

  Finally, both reactors’ hum evened out, a steady rhythm like a heartbeat. It wasn’t perfect, but it was stable.

  “One thing to check off the list,” I whispered, stepping back, wishing I could wipe the sweat from my brow through the helmet. Even though the suit’s environmental controls kept my temperature regulated, I was still sweating from the strain.

  Next came the integrity fields. They were at a dismal 7%, barely holding the ship together. I climbed back up to Deck 3, where the field emitters were housed. The black alloy had taken root here as well, its tendrils growing across the emitter nodes like vines choking a tree. I pried them free and replaced the worst of the damaged components, watching as the field strength inched upward. The alloy seemed to resist my efforts, as though it was alive and unwilling to cede control.

  After what felt like an eternity, the emitters stabilized at 40% capacity. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to buy some time.

  The shields and life support came next. Both systems were heavily compromised, but functional enough to limp along with minor repairs. I reroute power to the shields, boosting them to 60%. Life support was stable for now, but I set up automated alerts for any fluctuations.

  By the time I returned to the control room, exhaustion had taken hold. My body felt like lead, my thoughts sluggish. I collapsed into the chair again, staring at the ship’s diagnostic display.

  “Well, Mammut,” I said, my voice thick with fatigue, “you’re not dead yet. That makes two of us.”

  The room was silent, save for the faint hum of the reactors and the soft whir of the air filtration systems. I slumped forward, my head resting against the edge of the console. I closed my eyes, just for a moment, I told myself. Just long enough to breathe.

  When I woke up again I shook my head, slid out of the EV suit, and set up the cot I’d dragged up from Deck 1 earlier.

  I lay back, staring at the ceiling, my thoughts muddled. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the unease lingered, whispering that I was missing something important. But I ignored it, letting the hum of the Mammut lull me into a restless sleep.