Tritium Gambit

  Chapter 22. Miranda

  If Max was questioning reality, then he needed help and I needed to pick him up, but we were low on fuel and our next trip into the atmosphere would be our last. With the ship held together by duct tape, I was a little nervous about reentry anyway, but it was a risk I’d have to take. It seemed unlikely he would finish his task without me. I tapped the console to engage cruise drives to navigate toward Zeta-Terra.

  The ship computers went offline. There was no warning message, no blue screen of death, no spinning beach ball—the computers just went offline. “Super advanced technology at its best,” I grumbled.

  John looked at me with an expression of concern on his face. “I will assume you meant to do that, even though I can’t imagine why.”

  “Yes, I’m a very mysterious woman. Please, go fetch me a pair of wire cutters and a screwdriver so that I can torture this computer into coming back online.”

  John walked out of the cockpit shaking his head.

  I didn’t actually know if I needed the wire cutters or the screwdriver. What I needed was time to find the damn power switch to restart it. I didn’t know the first thing about the ship’s computer, but I figured it must have a way of rebooting. Then I saw what I needed at the back of the cockpit. I went to the back wall and a panel that housed a hard reset switch. I hit it, and the entire ship’s power went out. Even the segmented electrical backup systems showed no signs of activity. We needed power for the life support as well as the computers.

  I sighed and put my hands on my hips. “No need to panic,” I declared to the dead circuitry. I flipped the switch back on. Nothing happened. No clicking, no humming, nothing. I took a deep breath. This wasn’t even the first time that day life support systems had been threatened, I reminded myself. I wondered whether one would eventually become desensitized to the constant threat of annihilation. I must have liked the risk, because I didn’t take the cushy desk job at a Stellar Command orbital command center working on a computer. Though that job was looking better by the day.

  There was a tap on the airlock door, and I realized that, without power, the door wouldn’t open. If I needed a screwdriver or wire cutters, I wasn’t going to get them any time soon.

  “Maybe I need to toggle the switch more than once.” I toggled the switch again, then tried a few more times. I flipped it into the position I had initially found it and sat back in my chair. I’d just be patient and give it time to warm up.

  As I sat in the pilot’s chair, pondering my doom, I heard a buzzing sound like electricity humming in high voltage lines. For the briefest moment, the lights came on and the airlock door sprang open.

  John stepped into the cockpit. “I couldn’t find a screwdriver, but here are some wire cutters.”

  “What the hell was that?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I have a way with electrical devices. I don’t know if that the door will ever seal properly again.”

  I hung my head. “I screwed up,” I said.

  He walked over and handed me the wire cutters. “You didn’t screw up. When you’re an agent, shit storms find you even if you’re not looking for them.”

  “You talk like you’ve been there,” I said.

  “I have. I used to be an agent. I retired.”

  “You retired? Why would you do that? There are so few agents and we need every one of them.”

  “Look, I know it sounds bad to you, but not everybody is thrilled to risk their lives day in and day out for a planet that is too busy trying to destroy itself to notice the bigger picture.” He sighed. “When I was your age, I wanted to make a difference. I was cocky and arrogant and sure that I could change things. When I became an agent though, all I saw were horrible ways to die—and nothing has changed.”

  “If you’ve given up on the humans, why did you stay on Earth?”

  “I still want to make a difference, but rather than save an entire world, I just needed to be there for a county. Rather than merely surviving another encounter with Virrean Wolves so that I could then withstand some other alien onslaught, I needed to find a place in this universe where I could fight a winning battle. I picked a small quiet town because I wanted to be on the winning side for once.” He exhaled and looked me in the eye. “Unfortunately, once you’re an agent, the bad luck follows you. Here I am, still fighting a losing battle for a cause that I gave up on years ago.”

  The lights flickered on and the computer began to hum. I thought about what John had said while I pulled off the access panel and began looking for the cause of the crash.