“I see it,” I said as I reached through the wires. The cord had two copper colored connector male parts, and the pistol magazine had two female holes that were set too close together. I grabbed the ends with my fingers, squeezed as hard as I could and then wiggled them into the magazine.
“I think I’ve got it,” I said as I pushed the parts together.
“Yeah,” Zea laughed, “you are good at fitting big things into tight holes.”
“Ha,” I chuckled. “It’s in as far as I can get it.”
“Let me try to turn it on. You might want to get your head out of there in case something explodes.”
“Got it,” I said as I pulled my shoulders out and looked up at her hands.
“Cross your fingers,” she said, and then she started tapping the controls
The keyboard flickered for a moment, and then it lit up with a cyan glow.
“Fuck yeah!” Zea shouted, and then her hands began to dance across the keyboard as the terminal screen spit out Nordar runes.
“You can read all that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Zea said. “Kasta figured it out in a few days and has been teaching Paula and me. I’m not native yet, but this shit is easy.”
“You are all geniuses,” I said as I squeezed her shoulder through her suit.
“Awww,” Zea gushed. “Okay, soooooo, looks like I was right about the battery. Main engines weren’t charging the backups. I’m going to try to get the main power on. Ohhh, so dumb. These guys have a password on their engines? Why would they do that? I’m gonna need my computer.”
I watched her pull her small system out of her suit pocket, and then she fumbled with the connectors on the terminal. Half a minute later she had it plugged in and she was typing on both keyboards at the same time.
“It’s ironic,” she muttered. “If the life support was on, I could just plug in. Then this shit would be done in a minute. Once I get the systems on I won’t need to plug in though.”
“What about the hole in the hull?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m going to leave the life support off, and just turn on the main power to the engines, lights, and elevators. Then I can get our transponders connected to their relays and the twins can start patching up the hull. I think this is gonna work. No wonder that guy had been stuck here. This thing was a mess from a systems standpoint. Annnnnd voila! Systems on!”
As soon as Zea said the words, the lights in the bridge turned on, and every terminal sprag to life. The front view screen also booted up, and I could see the corvette and orange tow line. It looked like Juliette had pulled us from the trash, and I felt my tense shoulders relax.
“--from the bridge.” I heard Kasta’s words pop and crackle in my transponder.
“Can you all hear us?” Zea asked as her fingers danced on the terminal controls again.
“Yes!” I heard five women shout in unison.
“Are you okay? Where are you?” Paula asked.
“We made it to the bridge,” I explained. “One Jotnar was still alive up here in a suit, but we took care of him, and Zea figured out how to turn everything on.”
“We can see the lights,” Kasta said. “We have a spare panel to replace the one outside.”
“Do you want me to turn the gravity on?” Zea asked.
“Hmmm,” Paula said. “Can you do that while there is a hole in the hull?”
“No,” Juliette said. “Well, you can, but the ship might get confused and pour too much power into that area trying to correct the vacuum.”
“That’s what I figured,” Paula said. “We’ll jump out the hold door and get to work on the hole. It will probably take us half an hour.”
“You got all the time you need,” Juliette said. “I pulled you out of the trash so… oh shit.”
“Uhh. Oh shit?” Zea, Paula, Kasta, and I asked in unison.
“Yeah,” Juliette sighed. “I’m picking up a signal on the long range scanners. It’s way out at the end of the system, but someone else is definitely here, and it’s only a matter of time before their scanners pick us up.”
Chapter 10
“If it’s the Jotnar, we are fucked,” Zea hissed.
“Won’t be much better if it is Waymund either,” I heard Elana say. “Not everyone knows Adam is their king.”
“Can’t you say something to them?” Kasta asked.
“Sure, but how strange of a story is this? Most of my clan thinks I am a man, so I would have to explain that I am really a woman, and that I am now Queen of the Vaish, and they are now Vaish. They won’t believe it.”
“Juliette, how much time do you think we have?” I asked.
“Hard to say. We were already scanning the system, and I had fired probes out to relay. They might have just paused here between drives, but I doubt it.”
“Occam's Razor says they are either Jotnar or Waymund,” Kasta said.
“What do we do, Adam?” I heard Aasne ask, and the transponder went silent as the women waited for me to figure out a plan.
I spun the problem in my head a few dozen times as I tried to figure out what to do. We could probably all make it back to the corvette in a few minutes, but I hated to give up on the Jotnar cruiser. This really did seem like a gift given to us from Odin, and we would be able to skip a whole leg of our quest if we could get the large ship functioning.
It was worth fighting for.
“Juliette, tow us to the other side of the debris cloud so that they might not see us through the trash,” I said. “That should buy us some extra time. Paula and Kasta, you need to fucking hurry with your repairs. Zea, figure out what kind of guns this thing has and try to get them working.”
“Got it,” the four women agreed, and I saw the corvette’s thrusters engage. The towline grew taut almost instantly, but I really couldn’t feel the shift in momentum.
A few tense minutes passed in silence, and then the twins let us know that they were on the outside of the hull.
“We are just going to do a rivet patch instead of a weld,” Paula said. “It should hold up through hyperdrive, and we can weld it from the inside.”
“Scanners are telling me that the ship is heading our way,” Juliette said.
“I’ve got the cruiser’s cannons online,” Zea gasped. “Four heavies and six lights. Adam, you can access them through any terminal.”
“Got it,” I said as I swam to one of the seats and strapped myself in. I still couldn’t see the approaching ship on the cruiser’s scanner feed, but I trusted Juliette wasn’t making this shit up.
“This thing has a pretty good warpdrive,” Zea said. “Four light years per hour with a three hour battery. Then an eight hour recharge. Hyperdrive is forty-five hours for one light year.”
“Is the hyperdrive working?” Eve asked. “Could we not just travel across the system or one over and then do the repairs.”
“You can’t hyper or warp with a hole in the hull,” I said. “Ship would tear apart.”
“Ohh,” Eve sighed.
“We are a quarter done!” Paula panted. “Ahh fuck dropped my--”
“Got it!” Kasta shouted. “Here.”
“How much longer?” I asked as I tried to ignore the slamming of my heart in my chest.
“It’s moving faster,” Kasta said.
“That’s not much of an answer!” Zea hissed.
“Fifteen!” Paula shouted.
“How’s the other ship?”
“It’s weird,” Juliette said. “It could just hyperdrive over to us, but it’s just cruising. I think they are waiting for their scanners to digest all the info from the trash cloud.”
“This is going to be close,” Aasne whispered.
“Who knows what they are thinking, though,” Elana said. “They could just think the corvette is another trashed ship, and the cruiser is dead.”
“How close is the next system over?” I asked.
“Let me check,” Juliette said. “It’s close, actually. Quarter of a light year. What are you thinking?”
“We need to get the Jotnar cruiser working, and then we need to get you all off the corvette and onboard with our supplies. I don’t want to do that with this enemy ship breathing down our neck, so we’ll hyper one system over. Zea, can you figure out how to do that on this ship?”
“I think so,” Zea said.
“Paula and Kasta, how we looking?” I asked.
“Fourteen minutes, since you asked us a minute ago.” Kasta laughed.
“The other ship has paused,” Juliette said.
“Do you have an identification yet?” I asked.
“No,” she answered. “I just see a sensory ping from the relay probes.”