13. Panic at the Disco
“Move!” I yelled, practically shoving a wide-eyed Chadwick out of my chair so I could scroll through the various interfaces to see what was wrong.
“Oh fuck,” I hissed.
Multiple systems were offline or going into backup mode due to a malfunctioning engine component, which the system was currently diagnosing.
The trill of my comm pulled me from my focus. It was an emergency call from the bridge. “Answer that!” I barked at Chadwick.
He fumbled with the comm, accidentally hanging up on the bridge twice before I wrestled the device from him and called them back.
“LARK!?” Vaughn’s deep voice boomed through the comm, almost as loud as the alarms still ringing from my station. “Don’t you EVER hang up on me when I call you from this line.”
“It was an accident,” I said frantically, not having time to explain to him that it was dear Chadwick that had done so, not me.
“Status report,” he demanded.
“Multiple systems down. There’s a broken component in the engine.
I’m working to reroute power to all systems and will be powering down the engine after the diagnostics confirm which part broke.
Then I’ll go in and manually fix the part,” I spit out while I was still scrolling through screens and updating coding and settings to get the offline systems back on, reduce power all over the ship, and why the hell wasn’t the god damned system diagnosing faster! ?
“We don’t have time to power down the engine,” Vaughn argued.
“It’s not safe for me to replace physical components while it’s still running.” I couldn’t believe he had the audacity to suggest otherwise.
“You’ll have to manage it. Restarting the engine will cost us time we don’t have.”
“Captain—”
“Officer Sterling,” he growled, “that’s an order. If you don’t comply, you’ll be departing the ship at the next port.”
I stared at the comm, huffing in disbelief. He was putting my life and limbs in danger. He had to know that. All for his precious deadline.
“Sterling. Confirm your orders.”
“Affirmative.” I seethed and ended the call.
Chadwick had pressed himself into the corner, watching me with horror on his face at the thought of us having to mend the engine while it was running. “I’m not touching it.” He shook his head.
I ignored him and kept working on the final system power rerouting until the engine diagnostic at last completed. “Fuck,” I cursed. “It’s the thermal regulator.”
And that shouldn’t have been a surprise considering all the shitty makeshift workarounds the previous engineer had been putting in place before I’d arrived.
Of course the regulator was bound to have issues when Sully had likely been running constant power surges through the system to accommodate propulsion boosts or turning on and off systems that should be running non-stop.
I glanced at the engine, running just beyond the transparent panel of shockglaze that separated the mechanics of the system and the heat it generated from personnel in the engineering bay.
Shockglaze was one of the patents that launched Starlane to its current pre-eminent success, in the early days of space travel in the system, allowing for spacefaring ships to be far more comfortable and safe for their human crews.
It wasn’t impossible to replace the burnt-out circuit the diagnostic had identified while keeping it running, and because it wasn’t impossible, I knew Vaughn wouldn’t let me turn it off.
I didn’t doubt he’d lock me out of the ship at Port Vesta, and any hope I had of working with him on our mission would be out the window. Doing a live fix was a risk I’d have to take.
I sprung out of my chair and bolted down the hallway to one of the ship panels I’d seen on the schematics, where I knew a non-critical circuit could be salvaged without much issue.
I cut my hand trying to wrench the board out of place, but it clicked out a moment later, only to reveal an empty cavity.
“Fuck,” I hissed. I must have misremembered the location on the schematics. I went to the panel on the opposite side and hit paydirt.
“Grab the thermal tape and heat-resistant gloves from the bottom drawer!” I yelled to Chadwick when I made it back to engineering.
He grabbed the tape and quickly followed me, but he was still terrified. “You can’t go in there, Lark—you could lose your arm—a finger, if you’re lucky.” He kept pace with me.
“Listen.” I spun around and poked a bloodied finger into his chest. “I don’t have a choice.”
His fearful eyes darted from the blood seeping into his uniform and back up to mine.
“This is going to take less than two minutes. The heat will be a challenge for a moment. I’ll go as fast as I can, but I need your help.”
Chadwick began to shake his head again.
“Chadwick!” I snapped.
His head shaking ceased.
“All I need you to do is hold open the compartment door for the thermal regulator and give me light from your comm so I can see what I’m doing. There is no chance of you getting injured. I will replace the circuit and use the tape to patch the microfluidics conduit tube. Do you understand?”
He swallowed.
“Tell me what you’re going to do when we go in there.”
“I’m going to hold open the thermal regulator compartment door and use the light on my comm,” he panted, his eyes darting over my shoulder to the engine behind me, tucked beyond the pane of solid shockglaze.
I rested my palms on Chadwick’s shoulders and forced him to make eye contact with me.
“We’re going to be fine. If I leave with all of the appendages I’m going in there with, attached to their proper places, I’ll make sure you have a glowing recommendation from myself and the captain when you disembark. Okay?” I was never above bribery.
“Okay.” He nodded solemnly.
“Prepare yourself for the first blast of heat,” I told him as we approached the keypad to open the door to the engine room.
“It’ll feel like you’re in a furnace and you’ll start sweating right away, so keep a tight grip on the comm and the door.
If the comm falls, let it. It can be replaced. You cannot be.”
I punched in the code and pulled open the door before I had a chance to second-guess myself, pulling the thin, heat-resistant gloves over my hands, temporarily stemming the flow of blood from the cut on my hand.
They were thin enough to allow for dexterity, and the material would prevent burns, but not dismemberment.
The sweltering blast of hot air was even worse than I remembered it could be.
Having worked mostly on smaller ships for the past few years, their temperatures weren’t nearly as debilitating.
Ignoring the sweat that was already forming on my brow, I ripped a piece of tape from the roll and shoved the roll into my pocket.
“That one.” I pointed to the compartment door Chadwick needed to hold open. It was spring-loaded while the engine was running to make it difficult for anyone to perform maintenance, due to the danger of such an activity.
Once Chadwick had the door open, I stuck the end of the tape strip to the bottom of it and pulled the replacement chip from my pocket, along with a good old screwdriver from the other, to help me pry out the old one.
“Need the light higher,” I instructed. “Little to the left. Perfect. Don’t move.”
I could hear Chadwick panting in my ear. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry already, I would have sped up because I knew the adrenaline coursing through both of us was only going to last so long.
The chip in situ was absolutely fried and took longer than I’d hoped to wedge out of its casing without flinging it into the engine and causing another whole host of problems. When I finally managed to get it out, the casing sliced through the glove, creating a second gash along my already injured palm.
But I was too focused to care or think about the pain, or the blood dripping everywhere.
I used the head of the screwdriver to clear out some of the eroded pieces of the old chip so I didn’t have to get my hand too close to the whirring mechanisms on either side of the panel where I was working.
While not exactly best practice, I blew a breath to get out the remaining dust fragments and chip particles, then easily clicked in the new chip, which immediately lit up, much to my relief. If the casing had been blown, that would have been a much worse issue.
“Almost done,” I reassured Chadwick, who had begun to tremble, knowing what was coming next. “Please try to be as steady as possible. Just a little bit longer.”
He swallowed and nodded. The light still wavered, but not as much as a moment before.
The conduit was extremely close to a moving gear, and if I wasn’t steady, the injury could be severe. I could see the crack, and I knew the second the tape sealed over it, the system would recognize it as being back online.
I wiped my bloodied palm on the side of my uniform before grabbing the thermo tape strip from the panel door, and willed my own hands not to shake as I aligned the strip with the crack and pressed the tape against the tubing, slowly and gently using the tips of my fingers to seal the edges while steering clear of the nearby moving parts.
The last alarm stopped blaring, indicating the repair was complete.
Without wasting another breath, I pulled my hands back, grabbed Chadwick by the arm, and wheeled both of us out of the engine room, securing the door behind us, before sinking down to the ground, my back against the shockglaze, absolutely drained.
Next to me, Chadwick vomited and then began to sob.
All I could think about was storming up to the bridge and giving Vaughn a piece of my mind.