Wasteland of Flint

The Palenque

A subtle change in the background vibration of the ship brought Parker awake, his head throbbing from too much alcohol and too little nicotine. He threw back the hood of his sleepbag and squinted blearily at his chrono. Three hours of wonderful sleep, he thought, feeling the onset of a crushing dehydration headache. I will never, ever, sit down for just one glass of Tukhachevsky's bathwater again. Ever. With or without herring.

The pilot spread his fingers against the wall behind his bunk. With the Palenque under constant thrust, the habitat ring was locked in place, allowing him to feel some of the vibrations traveling through the spine of the ship. Something had changed; he was aware of a distinct flutter. A reading light above his head let him see well enough to punch up the comm code for Engineering.

"Parker to Isoroku-san. Are you awake?"

"Yes." The engineer's voice was terse and there was no video. "Maneuver drive three has started to stutter."

"Fuel feed?" Parker climbed out of bed and started to get dressed. "Fusion chamber flow control?"

"I don't know." Isoroku's face suddenly appeared on the comm screen. For a bald man in a Fleet engineer's coveralls, he seemed remarkably mussed. There were heavy bags under his eyes and a salt-and-pepper stubble darkened his chin. Parker assumed he'd been awakened from a sound sleep as well. "Fuel core pressure is constant, which may mean an intake line problem. As a precaution, I am shutting down all three drives."

Parker nodded, pulling a gray shirt on over his head. "I'll get to the bridge and balance the other two engines. And I'll tell our furry friend what is going on."

Isoroku nodded and the comm cleared to a default standby image.

By the time Parker pulled himself along the guide line into the bridge, Magdalena was awake and at her command station.

"What happened?" the Hesht female growled. "Engineering reports all three drives are offline?"

"Yes." Parker slid into the navigator's station and called up a drive schematic and the latest system alert logs and diagnostics. "Drive number three started to develop a thrust flutter sixteen minutes ago. Isoroku has shut down all three maneuvering drives as a precaution."

"How long will this take?" Magdalena was eyeing a chrono and flight plot on her display. "We have an intercept window to match if we're going to pick up the pack-leader."

Parker nodded, scanning through the diagnostic reports for drives one and two. They seemed to be running clean. The fuel system also seemed to be operating properly, which was troubling. Problem's going to be in the fuel-flow system inside drive three, then.

He punched codes for an engine restart on both drives, and then began working up a new thrust balancing configuration. "I'm going to bring one and two back online," he said to the hovering Maggie after a moment. "But we can't increase individual thrust without exceeding our 'quiet' threshold. So…it will be an extra twelve hours before we are inside the pickup window over Ephesus Three."

"What," Magdalena said, throttling back her temper, "if drive three comes back into operation?"

Parker made an equivocal motion with one hand. "Then we might be able to squeak back into the window, but probably not. We'll just have to see."