Drifting Dark

Chapter 12: Attention Required

Cassie ducked through the shortcut to the maintenance hub and set the toolbox down on one of the many workbenches, in the first free spot she could find. The heavy box made an inaudible thud, the sound lost in the ambient noise. If at all possible, this place seemed more disorganized and chaotic than when she first met Aqeel here. The urgent beeps and chimes coming through the speakers on the ceiling only contributed to the atmosphere of disorder.

"Aqeel, are you in here?" Cassie asked, before realizing that even if he was here, there was no way he could have heard her with all the alerts chiming off. She sighed, went over to the computer and muted the alarms, without bothering to look at what the issues were. She didn't need the computer to tell her what a mess the ship was at the moment.

"Aqeel?" Cassie yelled at the top of her lungs.

"Over here!" Aqeel called out from across the room.

Cassie made her way over, carefully ducking under a set of annoyingly low power cables. As she walked by, a bright red laser sealer rolled out from underneath one of the huge industrial heaters that balanced the cooling effect of their Ellidium consumption. Massive fluid lines ran in and out of the top, the internals all hidden by a thick, insulated cover. There was nothing visibly wrong with it, but it's usually low, steady hum was absent.

It wasn't running.

But they were still cloaked, so the other heater must still be operational. Even so, it made sense why this key piece of equipment would be at the top of Aqeel's priority list, even if there was a backup. She wasn't surprised to see the tip of his black boots sticking out from under it. She knelt down beside the huge grey box, bending her head down to peer into the dark space to see Aqeel cramped into the the foot of space that separated the heater from the mesh metal flooring.

Aqeel glanced at her, his flashlight shone in her eyes, momentarily blinding her. He said something, but it was garbled, then he took the flashlight out of his mouth. "What's gone wrong now?"

"Um, that's not..." Cassie scowled slightly, unease at the thought that something else might go wrong. "I finished recalibrating the port side sensor array," she announced. "It's not as good as the starboard one, but hopefully it's good enough that we'll be able to see any more ships before we crash into them."

"We'll have a heads up if we're about to die, good work," Aqeel replied sarcastically as he spun a bolt loose with his free hand. "Lot of good it'll do if we can't do anything to avoid the shitstorm."

Cassie's scowl returned as she bit the inside of her cheek. It wasn't her call, but if it came down to flying into another debris field versus leaving dark mode and turning on the engines...

She knew which option she'd pick.

"I know there's still a lot of damage," Cassie said, sitting down on a stray stool. The seat tilted under her weight. "With all these power outages, too many sensors are down. It feels like we're flying blind." She picked up a screwdriver, turning the old, battered tool over aimlessly in her hands. "I don't even know where we should start."

Aqeel slowly shuffled out from under the heater. He sat up and starting wiping off the greenish oil coating his hands with a rag that had mysteriously appeared from some pocket, somewhere. "Helen will start a damage assessment, we just need to concern ourselves with the major systems." He tucked the grey-green rag into a large pocket on his calf.

As he tried to stand up, he tripped on the red laser sealer. He grimaced as his knee hit the floor, knocking a loose screw out of his greyish beard. It fell right through the metal grate to the level below, with hardly a sound.