Among Stars

Power

Naina sat on the floor of Travelstar's engine room, intently watching her wrist, sweat drops forming on her forehead. Minutes rolled by, and the hum of the hyperdrive slowly faltered, and grew quiet. The ship's engines were running at full power, and the screaming roar was hurting her sensitive ears.

"Two minutes, and we're out of hyperdrive energy," she said. "Then it's 13 minutes on the reserves and generators. It should be enough, but this is making me more nervous than that time when we ran out of fuel at the dead star."

"Have I ever been wrong, Captain Melcey?" Quera asked.

Naina scrunched her eyebrows together and scratched her left ear tip. Then she lifted her eyebrow. "You know what, you haven't," she said. "That actually makes me feel better. Thank you, Quera."

"You're welcome, Captain Melcey," Quera said.

Naina watched intently as the seconds and minutes counted down. She tried to listen to the great disc moving at the top of the station, but could only hear the occasional creak and the constant hum of electricity. If indeed you could hear anything else than the scream of the engines.

As the minutes ticked closer and closer, Naina arranged some things and made sure everything she needed done was quickly reachable.

"One minute to alignment," Quera said.

Naina grabbed her tools, placed her hand and her other foot on two switches, and held the screwdriver on top of the adjustment knob on the little box.

"Quera, on my mark. Reverse the polarity of the energy relay, and reroute the power the other way through the hyperdrive. And keep an eye on the M-Tech converter," she said.

Seconds ticked down, and when it hit zero, Naina yelled, "Now!" as she twisted the screwdriver in the knob, and toggled the switches with her hand and foot. There was a noise that sounded like what you'd think you'd get if you reversed the sound an explosion makes. Then everything went black. And as suddenly, as it did, everything sprung to life again. The hyperdrive made a content hum, and Travelstar's engines spun down. As the scream from the engines died, silence fell.

The only thing you could hear was the low hum of the hyperdrive, and various relays and automatics adjusting things on the fly. Naina sighed deeply and fell on her back to the floor.

"What ever cosmic power was watching over us today, thank you," she whispered, closing her eyes.

"Everything seems to be running, Captain Melcey," Quera announced. "I'm connecting to the station, and while it isn't at full capacity, most existing functions seem to be running," she said, and then after a few seconds of pause, added, "This includes ISS Infinity. I'm detecting increased activity on the ship, and the systems seem to be powering up."

A wide smile crept on Naina's lips as she lay on the floor. Everything had worked, after all. Now they were not running out of time.

"Out of thirty-five sleeping pods, thirteen are powered on," Quera said. "One seems to be failing, and one has been disabled."

Naina opened her eyes and stood up. "We need to hurry. There's no time to waste. Those pods need to be taken care of," she said and started running back to Perez, but turned towards the landing bay rather soon.

"Quera," she said as she run. "Now that the station is working, patch in to the audio system and let Perez now. Tell him I'm already on my way."

Perez entered the room with the pods only seconds after Naina did. He was wheezing, and his eyes glistened with fresh tears.

"Thirteen...?" he asked quietly. Naina nodded solemnly and didn't answer, just looked at the wall of pods, most of which were dark. His eyes scanned the wall and tears fell from his eyes. He shook his head and cast his eyes downward. "So many... so many dark pods..." he whispered.

Naina's eyes found the one disabled pod, and she sighed in relief. The ID plate on the pod said, "Luis Perez," and a series of numbers which Naina assumed was some kind of ID.

"You disabled yours?" she asked.

"To preserve all the power," he said. "I needed to be here to tend for the pods, anyway," he whispered. Naina nodded at him.

"Now that we have power, we shouldn't need to tend to the pods manually anymore, right?" she asked.

Perez nodded. "Yeah, the only reason I had to do it was because I didn't have power," he said.

"Quera, can we do anything with these?" she asked.

"I would advise not, Captain Melcey," Quera answered. "The system responsible for waking them up seems to be damaged. Our best bet is to get them to the Empire space, untouched. The only way for us to open these up now, is if they haven't switched to low-power mode, and thus have the protocols still intact in the pod itself."

Naina nodded and started going through the pods, looking for the status lights. "Low-power, low-power, low-power..." she repeated as he went through them. Naina shook her head.

"We need to get Infinity to fly. It's the only chance these people have," Naina said. Perez nodded. Naina scratched her ear tip and scrunched her eyebrows together. Something bothered her, that she didn't remember at the moment. Something that had been important.

"So, Quera," Naina said. "Scan the ship. See if we have anything to work on. Can we upload or transfer you to the Infinity?"

"Scanning now, Captain Melcey," Quera said.

Naina leaned on the wall, but was spooked up by a loud and demanding beep from one of the pods.

"Oh, Daew! The failing pod!" Naina yelled, and ran to the one that had made the beep. "Now, who are you, and how do we go about this?" she whispered, as she read the label on the pod.

"Valera Mizuni," and a series of numbers.