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

“Works,” Herzer said. “Two guesses where they’re heading.”

“Engineering,” Lieutenant Van Krief said. “Maybe Maintenance.”

“Where are we going to fix these things up?” Cruz asked.

“Life Support,” Herzer replied after a moment’s thought. The crew compartment, Control and Maintenance were on the “top” side of the ship on the first, second and third support rings, respectively. By the same token, EVA, Fuel Control and Life Support were on the “bottom” of the rings. The orcs were, apparently, passing across the top of the ship. Let them get to Engineering. They’d have about another seven hours before they could boost again without hitting the Earth. But at some point, the Tammens would have to be hooked into power. Cross that bridge when they came to it. “We’ll reconstruct the Tammens there, then figure out how to get power to them.”

“Works,” Cruz said. “We’re nearly done, here.”

“Everybody hurry,” Herzer said. “I want to get off the surface before we accidentally stumble on trouble.”

“I see what you mean about finding them,” Reyes admitted.

The six ion cannons for the drive were stacked in two sets of three, suspended over the fusion reactors and reaching up to the ceiling. Each of the drives had four dual-power input points, to first strip the electrons from the raw helium three they used for fuel and the additional three to apply more and more energy to it until the raw protons were blasted out the rear of the ship at a sizeable fraction of the speed of light.

The power supply for the vast undertaking consisted of ranks and ranks of buss bars that were accessed by catwalks. Elevators at the front of the compartment lifted techs, and their gear, up to the higher sections and there were four massive overhead cranes for heavier materials.

The problem was that all the buss bars looked exactly alike. And from the looks of the empty primary power point, the buss bars from there were identical to the individual supply bars.

Reyes walked over to the nearest lattice and considered the connection of the buss bars. They were fitted into clamps and then cranked down into contact with the transfer buss. There were also spare clamps on the transfer buss. Probably the Coalition team had hidden the busses in the maze. But…

“How long?” Reyes mused. “You took about twenty minutes to get here, yes?”

“We went as fast as we could, Great One,” Tur-uck replied.

“I’m sure you did,” Reyes said. “But I also don’t think they had time to hook them up fully. They’re probably just slid into a clamp. Spread out. Look for busses that are loose. You’re sure this is cold, yes?” he asked the engineer.

“Has to be, Great One,” the kobold said with just a hint of disrespect. “There’s nigh leading to it.”

“Spread out,” Reyes repeated, waving at the group. “One Durgar to every catwalk. Pull on every buss bar. Find the loose ones.”

It took about an hour for the teams to remove the four Tammen field generators and move them back to Life Support.

The life support section was mostly pumps and pipes with a narrow open area running down the middle. Herzer had half expected it to be filled with plants, but manual reprocessing of air and water was far more efficient.

Each of the engineers had taken one of the Tammens to modify and Evan estimated about another hour to get them changed to more powerful models. At that point, they could hook them directly to the power output on the fusion reactors and ignore the busses.

“How’s it going?” Herzer asked, strolling over to where Geo had his arms up to the elbows in the tangled cabling of the field generator.

“Just fine,” Geo said, happily. “I’ve got the replicator module in place. We’ll have to set up a neural link for controls, I think. I’d thought Countess Travante would be the obvious choice for using them. Among other things, Mother will have less issue with it if we come anywhere near Earth.”

“Hopefully, that won’t happen,” Herzer said dryly.

“Well, as long as the engines remain off…” Geo said, as the floor began to rumble. “Or not.”

“Not good,” Herzer said, glancing at the timepiece in his helmet. “Not good at all…”

“No, no, no!” the goblin pilot squeaked as his controls went live again. “No it is not a good time to fire, Master!”

“Shut up,” Reyes said over the communications link. “The engines are working again. Be glad.”

“But, Master…” the goblin said, desperately.

“Just shut up ,” Reyes growled. “Or I’ll figure out if I can fly this thing myself! Steer it for an orbit around Earth. Now!”

“I will… try,” the goblin said, engaging one of the forward thrusters. If he could just point the ship so that the engine vector pushed it out of the gravitational envelope of the planet ahead, they might all survive…

“Megan, Courtney,” Herzer said, striding down the corridor to where the majority of the team was resting. “Find a console you can hack into the navigational system. I don’t think you can control from here, but you should be able to find nav data. Try to figure out why in the hell Reyes just kicked on the engines. According to Joie, if we fired during this window we’d crash. I really hope she was wrong.”

“I’ll help,” Josten said. “Get me the data and I can figure out where we’re going.”

“Master, if you please,” the goblin pilot whined, crawling on his hands and knees to where Reyes was established back in his station chair.

“What now?” Reyes asked, balefully. “The engines are back on.”

“Yes, Master,” the pilot said, carefully. “I beg you, let me turn them off. It is not the time for them to be on.”

“Canna do it,” Gomblick said from Engineering. “He had me lock out the controls. They’re on until we shut them off manually.”

“Then we should leave the ship, Master,” the pilot said, reaching out a hand and waving it by Reyes’ leg. “Quickly.”

“Why?” Reyes asked, frowning.

“We are on course to crash into the planet in six hours, Master.”

“WHAT?”

“The engines are on a manual burn,” Josten said about fifteen minutes later. “It looks like whoever is piloting this thing is trying to avoid a degrading orbit, but I don’t think he can unless the engines get shut down. In fact, if they keep thrusting like this for another… fourteen minutes, there’s not a chance in hell. There isn’t enough power in this ship to prevent it from crashing into the planet. If they just keep thrusting and maneuvering as they are right now, we’re going to enter the planet’s atmosphere in about six hours.”

“Is that what they wanted?” Megan asked. “To crash it into Earth ? Surely they’re not that stupid!”

“I don’t know,” Herzer replied, grimacing. “But we’re well and truly screwed. The shuttles are going to return full of Blood Lords so getting us off of this thing is going to be tough. And I don’t know about getting the fuel off. I don’t know about getting us off!”

“We are so totally screwed,” Josten sighed.

“TURN THEM OFF!”

“I canna,” Gomblick said, angrily. “You had me lock them out , ye ken? Gotta go back to Engineering and turn them off manually. We’re halfway down the ship. Be twenty minutes before I could get there.”

“In… five minutes it will not matter, Master,” the goblin said. “After that we will not have enough thrust to avoid capture.”

Reyes’ eyes widened and he shook his head angrily.

“When we approach Earth, we can teleport out,” he said after a moment.

“Not with the teleport block in place,” Tragack pointed out. It was the first thing he’d said during the entire mission.