As the Wings of Eos started its engines and began to escape the gravitational pull of Vega VI the next morning, Sarah, Tina, and Tellius sat side by side on the bridge with Sarah at the controls.
The sub-light engines purred as the dropship pierced the artificial clouds. *Rrrrrrrrrrrr!*
"So, where to now?" Asked Sarah, just as the star map appeared on the nearby war table.
"Johal VII..." Replied Tellius as he brought up the planet in the Northstar Sector. With a warm look at Tina, he told Sarah."... We have a little girl to get home."
"Yes,... Commander!..." Stated Sarah with a warm smirk as this exchange reminded her of the good old times, when things had been easier. "... Locking in Johal VII in the Northstar Sector... Energy?"
"Energy!" Nodded the former commander.
And with that, the light engine began to power up, and a light hum echoed through the entire ship. *Wwwwmmmmmm...*
Yet, just as the ship would have gone to light speed, the light engine suddenly stalled, and they remained in place with the sub-light engine turned off. *... wwww... mmmmmm... www!*
"What happened? What's going on?" Tellius asked Sarah, who looked just as confused as he was.
"Well, I don't know..." Answered Sarah as she began to furiously type away at her control terminal. "... Could have been the bombardment that misaligned the light engine which triggered an emergency shutdown or one of a hundred other things."
...
A few minutes later, the three of them climbed down a spiraling set of metal stairs into the belly of the beast, aka the ship's engine room, nearly the size of the adjacent storage bay.
Surrounded by massive gears, cobweb-like power lines, and see-through cooling lines, the massive light engine itself looked less like intricate machinery than some ancient mechanism fueled by long-forgotten technology.
*Clang!* *Clank!*
"Damned! Who the hell built this dropship to be so fragile?!" Cursed Tellius as he accidentally broke off some old piece of railing.
"That would be the UCG..." Explained a blue-eyed Tina, hanging off his shoulder as she checked spaceship forums to find a solution for their possibly misaligned light engine. "... Yikes, we better have a professional realign the light engine just in case. I don't want to end up as jelly."
"Whatever you just saw will not happen to us..." Comforted Sarah, the little genius. "... In the worst-case scenario, we'll have to pay professionals to fix it."
"You promise?" Asked Tina cutely as her eyes stopped glowing.
Nodding, Sarah stroked the little girl's pink hair. "Yes, of course! Pinky promise!"
That said, the three finally reached the ground floor of the engine room, with the massive light engine above and the sub-light engine below them.
Unable to make out anything that might be broken, since his technical knowledge was only in mechs and not starships, Tellius whistled. "Pfft, I have no idea what I'm looking at..."
"Neither do I." Confessed Tina, still hanging off his shoulder.
Meanwhile, Sarah, accustomed to engines not quite as big as this, was able to at least find some diagnostic tools nearby.
Handing the two novices a bunch of buttons, she explained while pointing at a purple X above. "Here, take these and place them on marks such as this!"
"You sure about this?" Asked Tellius skeptically as he looked at the silver buttons in the palm of his mechanical hand.
YOU ARE READING
Steel Rising
Science FictionSynopsis: The story follows Tellius Warfield's and Sarah Lawson's renegade crew aboard the dropship Wings of Eos as they try to survive and make a living in a dystopian universe ruled by corporations from the shadows. Twelve years ago, Warfield and...
