Aeyris nodded to his crew to carry out these orders. Silsi turned around again to settle back into her chair, hands tensed near the weapons controls. Marchero was slouching, apparently not paying much attention to her console, but she spoke suddenly.
"Something's just registered on long range navigational sensors."
"Confirm?" Kirrik asked.
"Negative on combat scanner," Silsi informed. Sawaka reported similarly.
"What can you tell, Marchero?"
She shrugged. "Nothing at this range. It's there, it's moving, and that's all."
"Ship status?"
The man on the engineering station glanced at his displays, but with a worried frown started to examine one system more closely.
"The shields report they're working, but the Zieman emitters are only drawing minimal power," he said in fright. "If we've got any shields, they're pretty negligible."
Marchero's face whitened, and Silsi's hands moved away from the controls to grasp themselves tightly.
"What's wrong with them?" Aeyris demanded.
The man waved his arms at the screens. "I don't know! One thing says they're working, other things indicate they aren't! The whole bloody system's crazy!"
"Well get out of here and go and have a look!" Aeyris shouted at him. As the man stumbled off the bridge he added, "And take someone else with you, idiot!"
"You used to cope better with stress," Kirrik noted.
"So did my crew. Will you take engineering?"
Kirrik gave a slight jiggle of the head that might have been a nod, and sat down in the empty chair.
"Let's see... Is this thing engine output?" he asked no-one, poking at a random switch.
"Stop messing about," Marchero said.
Kirrik looked over his shoulder to grin a sarcastic smile at her before going back to a more serious examination of the display.
"Well, I don't know what's the matter with it," he said after a while. "We'll just have to wait and hope. How long have we got?"
No-one answered, but they were all watching Marchero. "Don't ask me!" she exclaimed. "I told you just a minute ago that I couldn't tell yet."
After leaving the bridge Edwards stumped out into the mess room. There were three people sitting there, talking loudly and holding onto a variety of drinks containers that appeared to contain beer. He snatched one off Garath and took a swig.
"Oi! Give that back!"
The mug was returned to its owner with noticeable reluctance. "Where did you find that, Jim?" Edwards asked in disbelief.
Garath tapped the side of his nose.
"Oh, be like that then," Edwards replied. "I'd only end up throwing over that idiot's head. Put it down and give us a hand, though."
"With what?"
"The shields aren't working, and there's something heading this way," he announced.
"What?" Arrachachak asked from the corner he was reclining in.
"I don't know! Nobody seems to have a clue what's going on," he said in an exasperated voice.
"Great." Garath took a long drink, then stood up. "Lead on," he announced.
They left the same way Garath had entered. Back in the main corridor, Garath pulled back a panel next to a closed door and peered into the wall.
"What are you doing?" Edwards demanded.
"Just wondering if there's any air behind there," he replied, gesturing towards the door that now sealed the entrance off from the rest of the ship.
"Forget it," Edwards told him. "Come on."
Garath dropped the panel onto the floor as Edwards unbolted and swung open the door into the equipment level. A cramped corridor led down the side of the ship, at the end of which openings passed into the cargo bay and the drive sector. Next to this entrance was a small locker, from which Edwards took two pairs of ear defenders.
Access was gained by releasing several latches and ducking under a low lintel. With the ear defenders in place conversation was still possible due to strategically placed microphones picking up the engine noise and subtracting it from other sounds that were relayed to speakers in the defenders. Most ships used better insulated engines.
They carefully threaded their way between the engine's ancillary equipment until they reached the sealed off compartment containing the main drives and generators. Edwards peered at the maze of pipes and cables in the ceiling.
"Looks OK," he noted. "Pass us the toolkit."
"What toolkit?"
"There was one around here somewhere when I was looking earlier."
Garath cast his gaze around until he found a box wedged between a bulkhead and the hyperdrive feeds. "This it?" he called back.
"Yeah, cheers." Edwards quickly extracted some sort of wrench from the kit and started tightening connectors. He put the wrench back, pressed a button on a wall-mounted intercom, and asked the bridge for a report.
"No change," Kirrik informed him.
Edwards passed the toolkit back to Garath and took a couple of steps back. Probing around the ceiling, he quickly found a catch, which when released caused a roof panel to swing open. He reached up and grabbed a handle, twisted it, then pulled down, at which point a ladder dropped down from the hole in the roof. At the top of the ladder he squirmed round to disappear into the narrow opening.
There was a bit of banging and a curse, then Edwards' head reappeared in the hole. "Chuck the tools up."
Garath took hold of the ladder in one hand and jumped onto the bottom rung so that Edwards could reach down and easily take the kit from him. Freed of the burden, he also climbed up into the ceiling.
The crawlway was tight but short, and opened into a low, wide space. Across it the area between floor and ceiling was taken up with an arrangement of plates contained within a clear box. Bunches of cables entered the box at numerous points; the two largest collections passed fore and aft into the rest of the ship.
Via one of the ever-present intercom points Edwards warned the bridge that he was about to shut down power to the shield distributor, then peered into box.
"Think I've got it," he grunted after some minutes.
"Oh?" Garath asked curiously.
"There's a charge plate going. Give us a hand with the cover."
With one of them working on each side they quickly undid the bolts holding the transparent cover in place and carefully levered it off. Edwards reached in to remove the defective plate.
There was a sudden flash and a bang. Garath instinctively jumped and cracked his head against something hard in the confined space. He lay there groggily for a while, unaware of the questioning voices on the intercom. When he finally managed to lift himself from the floor he saw Edwards sprawled back against the crawlway entrance.
There was no sign of life on the body. Garath hauled himself back over to the intercom.
"Edwards is dead. Residual charge in the plates, got him as he reached in."
"That shouldn't be possible with no power," Kirrik's voice informed.
"The power's off. Must be something to do with the fault." His voice sounded tired.
"Can you do anything?"
"Forget it. I'm out of here." He flicked the intercom off and headed back to the drive sector.
On the bridge Kirrik snarled at the now dead commlink and stood up.
"I'll go myself," he told Aeyris.
Kirrik met Garath as he was climbing down the ladder. He opened his mouth to shout at the man, but stopped himself when he saw blood dripping down from Garath's head.
"Get that looked at," he ordered him, then climbed up as Garath staggered out.
Kirrik ignored Edwards' body and moved straight to the defective device. Nearby lights claimed that there was no power to it, and any built up charge should have dissipated itself when the unfortunate Edwards came into contact with it, but Kirrik took something from the spilled toolbox and gently tossed it towards the plates.