It was remarkable the distance there could be between stating an idea and executing it. Turning on the reaction mass pumps without the igniters had seemed like an easy solution to the problem. Unfortunately it rather ignored the reality of opening up the powerplant compartment of the gig which, due to the torque of the crash, required the use of the diamond bladed rotary saw they had brought with them, as well as three stout spacers heaving on pry bars. Once she was in Sabatine had discovered that the control unit for number two motor had been crushed and had been forced to remove it, replace it with the undamaged unit from the failed number one thruster and fire it that way. That action had nearly brought a smile of self congratulations to Motorman Gregor as she hadn't realized that the igniter circuit and the reaction mass pump circuit were integrated and she had come within a hairs breath of lighting the plasma thruster while it was clogged with enough mud to transform it into a moderately sized bomb. Having averted that problem she had to deliberately break the inducer rig and then cross wire it so it reported to the system that it was still operational. The two years she had spent working maintenance ot Harbor 3 were paying off in spades, but she was still covered in sweat by the time the pump reluctantly stuttered to life and started pushing water through the system. The task was made no more pleasant by the lack of environmental controls and an outside temperature that was creeping towards 40 degrees Celsius. 

Emerging from the gigs dorsal hatch and wiping the sweat from her face with her hat Sabatine looked down at the work her detail had conducted while she had been playing amateur mechanic. All of the spacers were filthy and covered with mud, having stripped to the waist and laboriously worked cables of woven beryllium mono-crystal underneath the gigs curved hull. The process had been accomplished at first by digging with entrenching tools, furiously scooping out water long enough to force the cable down and drag it through the mud by main force. As the afternoon had worn on however, locals, more curious than helpful but helpful also had shown up. While their main preoccupation seemed to be hawking fried food of various kinds as well as the local bush beer, one helpful man had donated a pump to the project. It was evidently a bilge pump of some description and launched a plume of muddy water into the air twenty meters in height as its diesel motor chugged to keep the improvised sluice dry. The whole affair had something of a carnival atmosphere to it as the locals gawped at the Cinnabars while others began cooking meat on portable grill units and generally enjoying the afternoon. Well there was nothing in Naval Regulations to prevent them from watching if they wanted to.

Sabatine might have scolded Klave about letting the men have beer. They were on duty and if Welkins heard about it there was no chance it would resound well on her. Still it was perishing hot and the men were filthy and miserable enough without depriving them of a little pleasure. Klave looked up at her and grinned sheepishly, as though sensing her imperial displeasure. 

"Here you go ma'am," he called tossing her up an aluminum can still dripping from the half melted ice bath it lay in. She snatched the can and pulled the cap drinking it in great gulping mouthfuls. The cool liquid felt heavenly and she supposed that Klave had at least kept hard liquor from the men and, by the gods, this was thirsty work. Finishing the can in one long pull she paused to look at the can. It was of local manufacture and had what might have been some sort of mythical sea monster stenciled on the side. Snorting she crushed the can and tossed it back down to Klave who tossed her up another. Rather than opening it she tucked it into a pocket in her now sweat drenched uniform.

"How are we looking?  she called gesturing down to the seven cables that had been passed under the hull. The shimmering lengths of monocrystal ran to a winch on the truck on the populated side and to a rocky outcropping on the other side of the river. Mangrove trees had been cleared with cutting bars, the racked of which she had evidently missed whilst she had been up to her elbows in circuitry. The monocrystal would have smashed the trees flat anyway but it might have jolted the improvised cradle at a bad moment, and spacers got to be old spacers by avoiding taking risks where they could. The gods knew the risks they couldn't avoid were bad enough, but you didnt enlist in the RCN, or take a commission for that matter, if risk was a major concern.

"I don't think we could lift her," Klave opined gesturing to the truck. "It just dosen't have enough torque, but we should be able to break her loose if you can give us some wiggle room." Sabatine considered it, wondering if there might be heavy earth moving equipment on the island they could requisition. Well they could explore that option if this didn't work.

"Alright, we will try it," she decided, raising her voice so all the spacers in the detachment could hear her and not just Klave. Spacers liked to know what was going on, and it was easier to explain to everyone rather than have someone screw up because they had been caught flat footed.

"Alright, everyone stand clear, Klave you spot on this bank," she turned to look over her shoulder at the far side of the river where Danzetti and Hogartern were peering across at her.

"Danzetti, get your commo helmet and spot from that side, if the cable starts to tangle or slide let us know asap got it," she shouted, before nodding to his answering affirmative. Cramming her own commo helmet onto her head she dropped back into the clamy interior of the gig, hoping up to the pilots console and taking a seat. She didn't strap herself in, if this went wrong and she sank the Commodore's gig to the bottom of the river, she was at least going to survive to be taken to task for it.

"Squad," she said, the helmet's AI queuing her transmission to the detachment with her, "Everyone clear?"

"All clear Ma'am," Klave's voice sounded in her ear piece.

"Roger that, commencing manuever," she replied. It wasn't really a maneuver but stars above it wasn't like the RCN had nomenclature for 'digging ship out of mud hole.' With her right hand she bought up a feed control panel then with her dominant left hand she qued up the attitude control screen. That was wishful thinking on her part, it was long odds that the thruster would be able to gimble even once it was water rather than mud that bound it, but hope sprang eternal. With a flick of a switch she engaged the pumps and there began a deep arrhythmic thumbing that shock the ship, rattling the fittings. For a few seconds the thrumming grew more and more insistent until there was a sudden gurgling boom as the built up water pressure blew several hundred kilos of mud from the thruster nozzle. She could hear the screams of shock outside for a second or two before a muddy rain splattered down over the view port obscuring it. Instinctively she backed the feed a hair and then quickly remoted in the views from both Klave and Danzetti's commo helmets. Mercifully both men were actually wearing them as directed and she could get a sense of what was going on. Great rolling waves of mud were bubbling around the hull of the gig as the nozzle blasted water out at fire hose pressure, scouring away the sucking mud beneath. Experimentally she touched the attitude control and, to her delight, felt the thruster gimble. That wouldn't last long of course, the mechanism was designed to work in space and atmosphere and mud and grit would grind the hydraulics to scrap in minutes, but it couldn't be helped. 

"Ok, fire up the winch!" she shouted, instinctively raising her voice despite the fact the commo helmet would broadcast at an audible level on the reviving end even if she were in a firefight. There was a grinding chug as the cables began to take up the slack. With slow arcs, Sabatine began to work the thruster back and forth, angling it slightly towards the channel of the river. The deck canted greasily as the cables pulled taught as she continued to sycthe with her thruster, a great grey plume extending from the hull into the center of the river as she cut away the mud bank with the pressurized fluid.

"Come on you pox bitch," Sabatine muttered and, as if in response, there was a sudden grinding slosh. The cables  suddenly taught as the suction holding the gig in place broke. Sabatine suddenly realized she should have attached a bow line to drag the gig out into the channel but it was too late for such second guessing now. Next time she had to rescue a Commodores private transport from a mud bank she would be better prepared.

"Stand clear!" she called, even though she had already ordered everyone out of the water.

"I want you to drop tension on my mark," she added.

"Ready Ma'am," Klave's voice came back, confused but obident.

"Three, two, one, mark!" An instant before the cables when slack she shoved the thruster full to the rear and opened the gates, pouring water through at the maximum rate of the pumps. The gig poggoed forward, ground for a moment on the remnants of the destroyed mudbank and then slid into the river channel under neutral buoyancy. The crowd behind her cheered even as a vast plume of water burst from the rear of the craft to soak all and sundry with muck. With a smile of satisfaction Sabatine powered down the feed pumps and then climbed out of the seat and back up onto the hull. Klave and Danzetti were already on the banks to either side of her, each of them tossed her a line which she expertly snagged around a stantion to lock the gig into its new anchorage. Muddy spacers grinned at her from the beach as did several dozen filthy, but happy looking wogs.

"Three cheers for the LT!" Klave called and she was treated to several hurrah's from the assembled crowd. Sabatine allowed herself a satisfied smile and then took the beer from her filthy vest and cracked it open. Commodore Welkins would probably still bitch about the condition of his gig, especially now she had rained filthy river water into its open hatches, but that problem could wait. A hard task had been managed in only a few hours and there was nothing at all that could ruin that.