Tritium Gambit

  Chapter 18. Miranda

  Sparks flew out of the Phoenix’s console accompanied by fizzing and popping sounds. I ripped off the side panel and began searching through wires. The problem with stealing a ship from a repair dock is that it was there for a reason.

  John tapped a blinking panel. “There’s a pressure leak in the starboard reflector.”

  “Crap.” I put down the wires and moved to the environmental controls.

  Par for this mission, I thought, everything spinning out of control. Even though John wasn’t an agent, he felt like he was another partner and I wasn’t going to lose another partner. I resolved to fix this mess, get Max, and be on our way.

  I flipped through a few commands and sealed off the life support for the cabin from the rest of the ship. That would prevent us from losing all of our oxygen immediately, but the rest of the ship was unusable for the moment.

  I hurried back to the wires I had left dangling. “Blue to red or blue to green,” I mumbled.

  “You instill me with such confidence in your skills,” John said. “Maybe you should flip a coin.”

  I attached the blue wire to the pink wire and slammed the panel shut. “Close enough.”

  John rolled his eyes. “I’m sure it doesn’t really matter.”

  I grabbed a screwdriver and went to the rear cockpit airlock door.

  “You forgot to turn life support back on,” John said.

  “No, I didn’t. We need to save the air we have until that leak is fixed. There will be enough oxygen left for me to get the repair done.”

  “You will be subjected to freezing temperatures.”

  “I’ll work fast. I need you to keep an eye on the com link for Max’s call. If anything else comes up while I’m making the repair, you should be able to contact me on the intercom,” I said.

  Before he could argue, I opened the airlock at the back of the cockpit and stepped out. With life support suspended, the temperature was already dropping; but if I had left it on, our remaining energy and oxygen would have been depleted.

  I made it to the starboard access hatch and crawled into the latticework of the ship’s hull. My breath fogged the air as I wriggled my way to the reflector panel. About a foot of composites and metal stood between me and the near vacuum of space, but the surface of the latticework was ice cold. A strong wind whistled past me and toward a thin gap in the reflector. The weld in the composite had split, and I was going to need to find a torch to reattach it. I banged my screwdriver against it to see if it would budge. The whole ship rocked and tilted sideways at that moment and I dropped the screwdriver. I watched it fall into the darkness below me.

  “Miranda,” John’s voice said over the intercom. “A port stabilizer strut burst. It looks like we might tumble into the atmosphere soon. Just thought you should know.”

  I cursed like a Stellar Command maintenance worker. The ship would break apart if we reentered in a spin. I figured I had fifteen minutes of air left, give or take, but I would probably freeze to death before I suffocated.

  “Oh, and the control panel is making a strange humming sound,” he added.

  “Anything else?” I yelled. Unfortunately, the intercom was one-way communication when in the latticework.

  I scrambled back down the latticework to deal with the strut. I had to fix it before the leak because having the entire ship break apart was a more imminent problem than suffocating. Both outcomes sucked, but first things first.

  I exited the access hatch and zipped toward the back of the listing ship. Because we were tilted to the port side, I had to walk on the wall rather than the floor. I entered the holding bay and followed a ladder to the strut that John had reported broken. The damage wasn’t as bad as I expected. There were some loose screws allowing graviton seepage. If only I had the screwdriver that I had just lost, I thought. I bit back a scream.

  I looked back into the bay area and saw a roll of duct tape, jumped to it, and grabbed it. I fixed the strut with ample gray tape, nearly the whole roll, and the ship righted itself immediately. I fell down to the bay floor and crates tumbled on top of me. The icy air told me that I was running out of time.

  Armed with what was left of my favorite fix-all, I hopped through the debris, then through the rest of ship to the starboard reflector’s access panel. I finished off the roll of duct tape, sealing the leak, and the day was saved.

  I vowed never to tell anybody that a ship that would need to go through a wormhole, if all went according to plan, was being held together by duct tape. I descended the latticework and reentered the corridor leading to the cockpit. I wondered if the ship would disintegrate on atmospheric reentry when Max called, if he called. The last thought was sobering.