Fuck, Kiran was dead. Died near the breakers. The breakers she’d mentioned a second or two before the jump. No, no, she couldn’t think about it like that. He would’ve done it anyway. Guy was a lot smarter than the dreadlocked beach bro one might write him off as at first glance, else he wouldn’t have been there in the first place.

“Yes ma’am.” Vigdis confirmed chief Zhao’s order as she switched off the shield system, salvaging what little power the still-intact control circuits were drawing before getting on the reactors. Undoing her straps, she moved over to Kiran’s former station and strapped in there. First thing she did was access diagnostics to figure out just what the hell the problem was. Whatever happened, it wrought havoc on power control, with Unit 2 scrammed and Unit 1 reeling from the experience. A short investigation quickly uncovered the culprit: the shields, and to a certain extent the FTL drive, simply demanded so much they robbed the number two reactor of the power its magnetic containment and fuel feed systems required to keep it running, but the reactor itself was undamaged. Normally that wasn’t supposed to be possible, but whatever caused the FTL anomaly might’ve been a software bug that could’ve also affected power distribution. The first reactor encountered a similar problem on a smaller scale, the fuel supply fluctuating within limits and slowly recovering. Next she opened the reactor relight menu, comparing what she was seeing to what the reactor and power guys had told her between beers.

Fusion reactors required a lot of power to start up, meaning one could be started either by another reactor or by a big capacitor. That was why safety regulations mandated ships with multiple reactors never bring any of them below five percent. Well now one of theirs was dead and she didn’t dare try jumping it with the other one for fear of something important dying on them as a result, which left option two: A battery dedicated to starting the reactors, enough to jump one. One last hail mary. If that failed, they’d be in trouble as charging it would take hours if one reactor was running well and the auxiliary wasn’t anywhere close. Fuel: Check. Containment magnets: Check. Preheat: Check. The reactor had fortunately been down for such a short period of time that going back up to operating temperature only took a few seconds. “Unit 2 relight in six seconds.” Hopefully, but she didn’t say that out loud. Urged by Anselm’s warnings, Vigdis rechecked her seatbelts, started the relight sequence and braced.

Just three seconds after she did, the high-pitched whine returned to the formerly silent reactor, the engine tune had changed into a more familiar, continuous screech and the whole ship shifted upwards as if a massive hand grabbed it and gave it a boost from below. Any jubilation lasted about five seconds before being ended by an impact. The noise was horrible, the ship might have rolled, or it might’ve been just her imagination, she couldn’t tell. Four years in space, she’d never been in an actual on board emergency, save minor ones. Vigdis couldn’t tell how long it lasted, probably no more than 30 seconds, but it felt like an eternity. As soon as her head stopped spinning, she undid the straps and patted herself down to verify nothing was broken. Checking the manufacturer label on the seat, she made a mental note to purchase Martin-Baker stock once back home and stood up, stumbling before catching herself due to the floor’s unexpected tilt. “You guys intact?”