John Ringo - East of the Sun, West of the Moon

“Yessss,” Sardak said, uncertainly, flipping up his goggles for a better view up the rocket motor. “But what is that orange…”

“YES!” Josten shouted.

“It worked?” Nicole asked, picking herself up off the floor and checking for leaks in her suit. No apparent holes, but a couple of bruises. The burn hadn’t lasted more than five or six seconds and then one of the runs had failed catastrophically. The electrical blow-back had fed into the control board, since she’d locked out the safety breakers, and the resultant explosion had knocked her over. The engine was now thoroughly trashed, but the suit appeared intact. She’d have to take vacuum slowly though and check.

“Four crisped orcs!” Josten said. “It kicked them right off the hull and the last I saw of them their armor was half melted. Good job!”

“Thanks,” Nicole said. “That’ll teach them to fuck with an engineer.”

“What is wrong?” Reyes asked. The goblin pilot had meeped in surprise and they’d all felt the shudder in the ship.

“One of the shuttle engines fired, Great One!” the goblin said, excitedly. “Off course are we!”

“Get us back on course,” Reyes growled.

“Am Great One!” the goblin replied. “Fast.”

“Nicole, what’s going on?” Herzer asked.

Maintenance was bank after bank of mesh-screened enclosures and a small personnel area. Several of the enclosures held repair bots and he could see three of them lighting off as he watched.

“I had to fire the secondaries on shuttle five to get rid of some orcs,” Nicole replied. “The engine room is thoroughly trashed.”

Herzer watched as the vaguely humanoid bots floated out on anti-grav and began collecting materials. When one of them got to the bin that was supposed to hold injectors it paused uncertainly, as if surprised by the dearth of injectors in the bin, and then wandered off to grab a coil of heavy wire.

“Repair bots headed your way,” Herzer said. “Don’t get in their way.”

“They’re going to be busy in here,” Nicole admitted. “I’m going to see if my suit is still functional. If it is, I’ll join up with Josten and we’ll head for Maintenance. I think we’ll probably circle to the starboard side and enter over there. Any friendlies around?”

“Van Krief is over there with Richard and her security team,” Herzer said. “Join up with them. Take care.”

“Will do,” Nicole said. “Out.”

“Herzer, I need to go override the controls on the shuttles,” Megan said. “That’s next on the program, right? And I’d better hurry or they’re going to leave.”

“Take Joie and Michelle and go override eleven and twelve,” Herzer said. “Take Jacklyn for computer backup. Captain Van Buskirk, secure the councilwoman and her team. Take your team and Yetta.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain said, nodding and getting up from the station chair he’d appropriated.

“If you don’t run into resistance, cross over and override nine and ten,” Herzer added. “I’ll send Kristina and Irvin over direct. Cruz.”

“Yessuh?” the lieutenant said.

“Take your team and head out to the port-side shuttles and start shutting them down,” he said. “Take Evan as your tech. Link up with Van Krief and get back here pronto.”

“Will do,” Cruz replied, donning his helmet. “I live to serve.” It was the motto of the New Destiny orcs and it got a chuckle from the Blood Lords donning their helmets.

“That only leaves you and Layne here for security,” Megan pointed out.

“We’ll have to live with that,” Herzer said. “Get going, please.”

“Yes, sir,” Megan said, dimpling. She donned her helmet and let him buckle it in place. “You be careful.”

“I’m the one sitting in Maintenance,” Herzer pointed out. “ You take care.”

When the team was gone he wandered over to where Linda and Geo had set up some sort of engineering project.

“Working on the whatchamacallits?” Herzer asked.

“The Tammens, Herzer,” Geo said, chuckling. “I know you know what they are.”

The device was about two meters long and a quarter meter wide. Currently they had three of the side panels off and were bent over, removing portions of the interior. From Herzer’s point of view, the interior looked something like a wire-form human anatomy. Including the nervous system.

“You really think this thing can give us a field generator?” Herzer asked.

“Oh, it is a field generator,” Geo said. “But it can only handle a bare megawatt of throughput. What we’re doing is using that megawatt of throughput to form a secondary field generator that can handle, oh… a few gigawatts at least. Control is going to be spotty, however. I hadn’t realized how antiquated the interfaces were. This version uses copper base molycircs. Very very antique. We’ll have to hook them up to the primary engine busses for power. They’ll give Megan some significant power as long as the engines aren’t firing.”

“The engines are firing,” Herzer pointed out. “You hadn’t noticed?”

“No,” Geo said, finally noticing the rumble under his feet. “Why? I mean, why are they firing?”

“No idea,” Herzer said. “I don’t think there was a burn scheduled.”

“Not that I recall,” Geo agreed, frowning. “We need to find out where we’re going, Herzer.”

“Well, we’re not going anywhere fast,” Herzer pointed out. “This is an ion drive, remember, low thrust.”

“But it builds up a good deal of a velocity over time,” Geo pointed out. “They might be crashing the ship into the Moon, for example.”

“Oh,” Herzer said. “We need to override a console… shit. I just sent Megan down to the shuttles. We can’t override without her.”

“Can we look out a window?” Geo asked, looking up from the complicated field generator.

“You can’t figure out where you’re going by…” Herzer said then paused. “Josten?”

“Go,” the pilot said. He was breathing hard.

“You’re on the surface still?” Herzer asked.

“Yeah,” Josten replied. “We’re headed over the ship to starboard. Why?”

“Can you more or less tell where the ship is pointed?” Herzer asked, carefully. “Like, is it pointed at the Moon?”

There was a long pause and then Josten chuckled.

“Nice one, Herzer. No, it’s not pointed at the Moon. But we have been maneuvering. The latitude thrusters are firing, as well as the main engine. If I had to make a guess, I’d say we’re maneuvering towards Earth.”

“Damn,” Herzer said, frowning. “Thanks, Josten. Hurry and join up with Van Krief. We need her team back here, pronto.”

“I can get into a console and call up a navigational program,” Geo said. “Or Courtney can, for that matter. But it won’t tell us what the ship is doing unless we override the navigation controls.”

“And we can’t hack nav until Megan gets back,” Herzer said. “Joie.”

“Joie here,” the pilot replied. “Megan’s overridden twelve. There’s another thirty-seven minutes until it detaches.”

Herzer thought about the fact that the shuttle really needed to be secured and then shrugged.

“We’ll put a picket outside the shuttle. If New Destiny heads for it, punch even if you’re not full. Get back to Earth and get me some reinforcements. But for now, can you figure out the ship’s navigation from there?”

“Not really,” Joie said. “I don’t know how long their burn is going to be. I can tell we’ve been adjusted towards an Earth orbit. But, depending on the burn, we could be pointed to pass the Earth, go into an orbit, or even crash into it. It just depends on the burn.”