Through the doors, she could see the passenger entry where suited figures tethered to the liner tried to free the Dreth equipment from the hatch. Focused on her teammates and their bubble, she guided it directly to the entry, which made the liner crew scatter as it approached.
She didn’t relax until she saw the bubble reach the boarding area inside the ship, where it landed hard and bounced. Her team were tossed around and rolled awkwardly together in the airtight magical ball. From the looks on their faces, she’d hear about it later, but she could live with that. At least they were alive.
With them safe, she backed away and took a running start. She leapt through the door and the umbilical and used her momentum to propel herself forward.
Thankfully, she made it through the boarding entry but landed almost as hard as the bubble had. Behind her, the tunnel whipped wildly as the pirate ship drew slowly away. Before she could stand, the crew finished removing the umbilical attached to the liner and activated the outer hatch to cycle it closed.
A familiar vibration shivered through the floor as the airlock sealed and filled with oxygen. With a flick of her wrist, she released her team and a liner’s crew member helped her to her feet.
The pirate ship headed away from them, now at full speed. When the bomb detonated, it was so far away that they didn’t actually felt a tremor from it.
Exhausted, Stephanie helped the other guys up, checked for broken bones, and thanked the Meligornians for their help. Marcus cracked his back and groaned and Frog wiped the blood off his elbow on his pants. She smiled awkwardly. “I probably shouldn’t have cut the AI?”
Lars shook his head. “The difference between stupidity and genius is success. Since we are here and the pirate ship with the bomb is way out there, I’d say it was genius.”
Frog jumped and clapped enthusiastically. “Day saved. Whoop!”
The comms crackled and the lights dimmed, and the red emergency ones began to flash overhead. The robotic voice of an AI came over the speakers. “Alert. Alert.”
The warning lights continued to flash but the voice crackled and went silent. Frog pouted and sighed. “Maybe I spoke too early.”
Chapter Forty
One of the officers in the engine room shook his head and waved his arms at the chief engineer. “No, we simply don’t have it. There is a worm invading the engine control system. I have no control over the engines. I can’t stop them from shutting down and then surging and it’s bleeding us dry. It’s like leaking gas during a jump. We could dive through and the ship would be stuck in the middle.”
Roger rubbed his temples and flicked impatiently through the schematics on his screen. “The Hats are working on the worm. Those damned techs say we’ll have control back any minute.”
The engineer shook his head, removed his hat, and lowered his voice. “I don’t think you understand, sir. We’ve already lost too much energy in the surges. Dreamer won’t only be dead in the water at any minute. Even if there is power, there won’t be enough for us to get back.”
Several crewmen ran past with large wrenches, sheets of metal, and new lines. The engineer watched them pass, looking over his shoulder. “They’re fixing things as fast as they can and as best they can, but these surges are stressing the ship’s frame and the engines themselves. We’re shunting excess power to try to keep it in the system and cut down on the release into space, but this is something that is known is a TKO. Normally, vessels are found a thousand years later orbiting some planet with everyone on board long dead.”
The chief engineer shook his hand and his head. “That’s not an option here. What do the numbers say?”
His subordinate rubbed his chin, reluctant to deliver the news. Roger laid a hand on his shoulder and injected a commanding edge into his tone. “Just tell me.”
The man stared at him for a moment and sighed. “The numbers say Dreamer will need a refit and early safety testing.” He drew a breath. “The engine stress is getting worse, sir. Like I said, soon, we won’t have the power to make the slip back, but there’s a chance we might not move at all—and we might never get them back online.”
Roger stared at him and then through him as he wracked his brain in search of some indication as to what to do next. He shook himself out of it as the executive officer led Stephanie and the team into Engineering.
He’d never seen a sorrier-looking bunch. His guys looked the worse for wear, but the girl’s team looked worse. They were battered, bruised, and covered in splatters of blood, and the two Meligornians with them looked equally as bad. They were a ragtag group, all of them, and he wondered why his colleague had brought them.
That was answered soon enough. “This is the Federation witch and her team. Since she knows how to handle MU at least as well as the Meligornsians, we thought she could help.”
The chief engineer resisted the urge to groan or put his head in his hands. This was the best chance they had for survival?
Hiding his doubts, he shook Stephanie’s hand and studied her for a moment. The executive officer pointed to the team. “They’ve just removed the pirates and an explosive device from the boarding deck, but they’re willing to help us here. Fill us in.”
Roger nodded to his officer, who tipped his hat to Stephanie and walked away to monitor the disaster happening around them. The chief offered her his arm and walked them into his office.
She stood at the door and listened intently as he broke it down to a bare-facts explanation. “The worm has infected our engine controls and sprayed our energy out into space. We have almost completely exhausted our battery power and the engines are in danger of failing completely. Basically, we might not have enough energy to make the slip to Meligorn. These batteries are run off MU, and there isn’t enough out here to charge them. We’re light years away from Meligorn.”
The executive officer rubbed his face. “That’s bad.”
Roger shook his head and strode to the window. “That’s not all. The second Dreth ship is moving toward us as we speak. They’re pissed that we blew their friends up and killed one of their higher-ups in the attack on our section. And now, we can’t move. This is a luxury liner. It doesn’t have any weapons.”
The other man stepped back and his gaze drifted when he realized how critical the situation actually was. If his colleague wished for guns, they either needed luck or a plain miracle.
Stephanie tried to listen carefully but something pulled her to the right like an invisible hand. She shook her arm in an attempt to ignore it. Finally, she looked out of the room and down toward the open hatch at the end.
Her eyes immediately widened, held by the sight of the large glowing cavern beyond. She shifted slightly to see it better, and Lars noticed she no longer paid attention to the conversation. He ducked his head out to discover what had distracted her and said, “That’s the engine cavern.”
“Oh.” She stepped out of the office and started walking toward the hatch. Lars followed, then the rest of the team brought up the rear. She reached the hatch, her voice soft with awe. “It’s enormous. There are batteries in there the size of school buses.”
“They have to have enough energy to make it through the trip,” Lars said. He stopped just outside and squinted at the bright light that radiated within.
Energy moved and swirled through machinery beyond. Wisps of it flipped out like tentacles, curled around her, and crept back in. She was the only one who could see it, but its light was visible to all.
Lars leaned toward her. “Your eyes are glowing again.”
She nodded knowingly. “I can’t help it. I need to see the energy flows.”
He shifted his weight to his other foot. “What energy flow? I don’t see anything. It’s bright in here, that’s all.”
Stephanie shook her head and broke contact with the energy leaking from the batteries. “It’s everywhere. The energy is literally flowing wildly around us—around the engine bank, around everything. But the storage batteries are acquiring it so slo
wly that the chief engineer is right. It will take too long to restore enough energy to move this ship. If it were all MU, the batteries might fill faster but probably nowhere near as fast as we need it to.”
The executive officer exited the office and wandered down the hall to watch her. His colleague followed and moved forward to stand behind them.
When he noticed the entranced look on her face, the executive officer turned to Lars. “Does she see something?”
The team leader glanced at him and raised his hand for silence. He needed to finish his conversation with her before she was distracted again. The two officers stepped back with the other team members and waited while Lars talked to her.
She waved her hands toward the batteries and made all kinds of motions as she described something to him. He stood quietly and nodded his head as though taking in what she told him.
The executive officer really hoped she had some kind of plan because they were sitting ducks, and it wouldn’t be long before the pirates were ready to fire on them.
Together, they watched as Lars stepped back between the JC and the engineer. Stephanie rolled her neck and stepped inside the engine bay, and the energy whipped her hair around her head.
She ignored it and moved between the massive core engines until they could only see her silhouette between the large batteries.
Lars talked to others and pitched his voice so it could be heard over the noise of the work going on behind them. “She wants to make sure the valves are closed.”
The engineer furrowed his brow. “The engine energy storage?”
He clicked his tongue. “Uh…yes? Whatever it is that stores the energy used when flying the ship.”
Roger nodded. “Yeah, that’s done as soon as we ejected the Surge. We have someone check and double check those things multiple times a day.”
He released a deep breath. “I think she simply wants to have a feeling of it—a really good one—and she wants to triple check your double check before diving into it.”
The other man shrugged. “Hey, that doesn’t bother me in the least. She might find something we overlooked.”
Stephanie stepped out for a moment and waved them over. “Have they confirmed that the worm is completely out of the system?”
The executive officer nodded and yelled over the noise. “Yes. But I’ll call right now to double check and confirm it for sure.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
He moved off to the side, made his call, and returned within only a few short minutes and nodded energetically. “Yes, the worm is completely taken care of. You’re free to work your magic however you need.”
The chief engineer settled his gaze on her. “You’re going to use magic to get this to work?”
Lars gave him a knowing smile. “Trust me. If it’s something to do with magic, she’ll get it done.”
Roger wasn’t convinced, but he was willing to let the girl try. This part of the problem was all about the magic. Something had to work.
They gathered around the door to the engine room, but none of them followed her inside. She planted her feet in the center of the ring of batteries, drew a deep breath, and let the energy inside her build into a good flow.
It could feel the energy outside and it jostled within her as though confused. She could sense that it would calm, though. Confident that she had full control, she began to sway and her body moved like a wave to follow the rhythmic motion of her feet. She put her arms out to the sides and gingerly let her wrists remain weak for a moment.
“These things better hold a lot of power,” she yelled over her shoulder as her whole body began to glow.
“More than you can make,” Roger shouted back and laughed as he threw the challenge down.
When he looked at her again, he had to squint and raise his hand to shade his eyes. The light she generated bounced frenetically in the engine room as her body danced to the beat of the energy inside her.
Stephanie lost herself in the moment, connected strongly with all her energy centers, and allowed the power to course feverishly through her veins. She could feel every wisp and trail of the magic twisting through her as it prepared for release. That was the thing about the MU. It knew when she would do something and knew she needed to release the energy.
There was no resistance, and she fell quickly into a melodic trance. The only things she could hear were the flow of the energy and the swirl of it deep in her chest. She worked hard to push the MU to cycle and made it flow as fast as it could. The faster she managed to move it, the quicker she could push it out to saturate the batteries without losing too much of it to the room around her.
Her audience stood for several moments and simply blinked occasionally, mesmerized by her dance of magic. Slowly, she lowered her arms to her side, then raised them again and held them out in front of her. Without warning, she flung them over her head and her back arched as she lifted slowly onto her toes.
The engineer jumped and shielded his eyes as the energy erupted from her, surged into the batteries, and flooded the storage units throughout the room. Her silver hair blew riotously around her as her body became almost weightless.
With the magnitude of the energy she had held in, Stephanie couldn’t even open her eyes during the process. All she could do was focus and push the magic out as hard as she could.
The red lights on the panel outside the engine room had flashed to signal low quantity for hours. However, as her efforts continued, the lights clicked through amber and finally to green and their color flared brightly for a moment.
Roger was shocked. He spun and hurried to the gauges and stared in disbelief at the levels. They were higher than when they’d put fresh batteries in the system. However, once he adjusted to the number, his face assumed an expression of alarm.
He whirled and half-ran to where the crew were working and bellowed, “Open the cores on engines three and five! Come on. Come on! Get this ship moving or she’ll overload.”
He pointed to the executive officer. “Tell the captain to start the crank and not to stop until it comes on.”
Lars watched with amazement as one tiny person was able to power an entire city-sized ship. And she did it without question, motivation, or complaint. She did it because she cared about people. The engineer tapped him on the shoulder and squinted into the brightness. “Can we speak to her?”
The team leader looked at him and then at Stephanie. He tried to walk forward but had to catch hold of the doorframe. There was a resistance and extreme air pressure from within the room. Every time he managed to put one foot forward, his hands would slip. Every time he got a good grip, a gust of air would hurl him out again. Finally, he gave up. “I can’t even get in there.”
Roger was as close to panic as he’d ever been. He raced over to the controls as soon as the engines began to turn. “No! This will blow!”
He thrust the engines to maximum and listened almost despairingly as they strained until the ship moved forward a fraction. With a muttered curse, he shook his head at the executive officer and then at each of his men. “Dammit, tell everyone to use all the power they can. Turn the damned air-conditioners all the way to high. Start the coffee maker, turn on every light. Override the cabin controls and make it all work!”
The engines fought even harder as she loaded the cells but within minutes, when the energy was strong enough to begin to surge through the lines of the ship, they came fully online and engaged with a powerful thrust.
It took the chief engineer a moment to realize what was happening and when he did, horror tremored through his tones. “We’re translating!”
He tipped his head back and whispered prayers toward the ceiling before he slammed the release lever down. The ship was in service.
Chapter Forty-One
Stephanie jolted as the energy flow from her body ceased. She had spent everything she had to power those batteries and get the engines turning and had even willed the magic to take them home.
First,
she’d combined both the gMU and the eMU she’d had stored and flowing through her. She’d bolstered this by drawing in and converting the gMU that flowed all around them to give it as much power as she could. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Silver, purple, and blue energy swirled chaotically around her.
Finally depleted, her body fell back and her view of the batteries turned to a view of the ceiling. With the worst of the turbulence gone, Lars raced forward and thrust through the dying winds to slide onto his knees and catch her before she hit the floor.
Avery and Brenden remained with the few Dreth prisoners they had acquired in the earlier battle as the rest barreled into the room to surround her.
Lars swept her into his arms and carried her from the room and through the crowds of workers who were now frantically engaged in stabilizing the ship. He took her to Roger’s office, laid her on the table, and moved the hair out of her face as he stared at her. While he was so incredibly proud of her, he hated to see her so pale and still.
“Stand back, guys,” Baizel said as he and his sister pushed through. “These should help.”
They each opened one of her palms and pushed powered MU rocks into her hands, closed her fingers tightly around them, and held them in place. The energy inside the stones glowed and began to soak into her and twine around her hands and wrists as she lay there unconscious.
Baizel shook his head. “They aren’t enough. I can help.”
Crystal stepped back. “I would, but I used most of mine helping Johnny and that little girl, Marissa.”
The Meligornian closed his eyes and placed his fingers carefully on Stephanie’s temples. Lars was worried, but he knew she needed help he couldn’t give her. The man’s fingers glowed brightly as he pushed more energy into her body. While he didn’t say anything to the team leader, he could feel how weak the girl was and how her body fought to simply stay alive.
He kept his fingers on her temples for several minutes longer before he finally opened his eyes. Lars looked at him, his face strained with worry. “What? What is it?”
Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2) Page 44