To the casual observer it looked like Rúna was just leaning against the bulkhead outside the cabin she shared with Maggie, when in fact she’d posted herself there as guard and protector. She wasn’t standing at Parade Rest or wearing a starched uniform...the Valkyries didn’t do “Spit and Polish”...but the deliberately nonchalant way her palm rested against her sidearm spoke volumes regarding her intent.

Anyone trying to get past her was in for a really bad day.

So far, no one had made the attempt. Gyrfalcon’s captain had stopped for a moment, considered his options, and moved on, while Samara the Protean shapeshifter had breezed past without bothering to slow down. The Avatar Alphad could get in without being spotted, but even he seemed to respect her privacy.

Losing Diggs had shattered Maggie, and Rúna had no intention of letting anyone make things worse.

Everyone was feeling it...during times like these the divisions between Clans and Factions suddenly seemed trivial. Humanity was the only tribe that mattered now, and as the ship made its way to Man’s ancient homeworld, those aboard her struggled to find some way to make sense of what had happened...with limited success.

Which explained why the redheaded corporal raised a questioning eyebrow as Blye and the engineer Mairead approached, the latter looking smudged and disheveled. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is ‘No’,” she drawled, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet, a move the Knight recognized and filed away for future reference.

“Just hear me out,” the Chevalier petitioned, her palms raised to show she wasn’t a threat. “Maggie being alone is a terrible idea.”

“It’s what she wants,” Rúna replied. “Hell, after what happened it’s what she needs.”

“I disagree,” she answered, putting down her hands. “Right now she’s blaming herself. You do that long enough and it becomes this dark emotional whirlpool, sucking you down. She needs to get her feet back under her, as soon as possible.”

The Valkyrie took a moment to consider that and shrugged. “Suppose I agree with you. It won’t make a difference...at the moment she’s in no mood to listen.”

“Not to you or me maybe, but I’m betting she’ll listen to her,” Blye explained, jerking her thumb at the engineer.

Rúna shifted her gaze. “So what’s your pitch?” she asked.

“The thing you gotta understand about us Tinkers is we only feel fulfilled when we’re covered in grease,” Mairead told her. “Put a wrench in her hand, give her a diagnostic to run, and she’ll be back on familiar ground.”

Scratching her chin, Rúna mulled that one over. “Don’t think she won’t see right through any busy work you come up with,” she said at last. “She’s no fool.”

“Busy work? Ha!” The Tinker barked out a caustic laugh. “Do you have any idea the stress a Crazy Ivan puts on ship systems? There’s a damn good reason nobody does them. I’ve got my hands full inspecting this tub from bow to stern, and I need her.”

The corporal nodded. “All right...give it your best shot. But if you’re standing there,” she continued, pointing at Blye, “she’s gonna smell a rat.”

“...I’m already gone,” the Chevalier said over her shoulder, retreating into the corridor and out of sight.

She waited a few more beats just to be safe, then asked the engineer, “You ready?”

“Let’s do it,” Mairead grunted, as Rúna knocked on the hatch.

It took three tries before it opened. “...I said leave me alone,” Maggie barked, glaring at them both as she poked her head out. The Valkyrie managed to avoid shaking her head in dismay as she gazed at her cabin mate. She looked like hell; her eyes puffy and cheeks tear-stained, clothing disheveled and hair in tangles. She doubted the older woman had gotten much sleep either, and she knew for a fact she hadn’t eaten in hours. Blye was right, they had to do something.

“Yeah, but this is important.” Nudging Mairead, she jerked her head at Maggie. “Tell her.”

“I need you,” the engineer said without preamble. “After that fancy flying the Cap’n put this ship through, she’s in rough shape.” Her shoulders drooped...she wasn’t quite to the point of exhaustion, but her color wasn’t great, and she seemed unsteady on her feet. “You said I should ask if I needed help. Well...I’m asking.”

Maggie blinked, surprised by her request. “How bad is it?” she asked.

She snorted, shaking her head. “Multiple stress fractures on the hull, engines badly out of alignment, and getting worse, plus I’ve got diagnostics to run on every system. It’s bad. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Wincing as Mairead ran down her list, she knew by long experience those were just the highlights. Even as the captain performed his maneuver, she’d known there’d be a cost, but after Freya…

Her mind skittered away from that thought. She could even bring herself to say his name, let alone imagine what his last few moments must have been like. Blye was right, she should have kept him at her side.

If she had...he’d still be alive.

The Siren’s call to madness was strong, luring her to treacherous reefs. She was just so tired...tired of struggling, tired of fighting a losing battle, tired of everything. It would be so easy to embrace oblivion’s sweet song of surrender. To finally just rest.

The only thing stopping her from closing her eyes and giving up was a lifetime of stubbornness, refusing to knuckle under or bow down. She’d never quit anything in her life, and the thought of starting now, no matter how tempting the circumstance, stuck in her craw. When the Grim Reaper came calling, she had no intention of going peaceably, and the thought of just giving up now pissed her off.

“Where do you want me to start?” she said at last, bowing to the inevitable.

“With the engines,” came her reply. “I’m going EVA to deal with the fractures, so they’re next in line.”

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“Yeah, sure,” she mumbled. “I’ll get right on it, soon as the captain shuts down the drive.”

“Fraid not,” the engineer replied. “He says we need at least another two days’ travel before he’ll even consider it, with the Aggaaddub armada still being out there.”

Maggie stared at her. “A hot repair, while we’re underway? Does he want to die?” She growled, rolling up her sleeves. “I’ll straighten this out...”

“Don’t bother,” Mairead informed her, putting her hand out to block her passage. “Once he’s decided, that’s it. He won’t budge.”

“He damn well better, unless he wants to blow up his precious ship!” she snapped.

“You don’t think I made the same argument?” the younger woman fired back. “He knows the risk...he’s just convinced it’s less chancy than the alternative. Hell, there’s a good chance he’s right.”

The Tinker was fully prepared to argue that point until the stars ran cold, but something made her pause. Maggie was no tactical genius: she knew machines, not strategy. Maybe she needed to trust him a little...despite her misgivings.

“All right. All right!” she shouted, throwing up her hands. “I’ll do what I can, but I ain’t promisin’ miracles.”

“No one’s asking for any...not yet, at least,” Mairead replied. “You need me, I’ll be on the EVA channel.” She turned and left, leaving Maggie to gnash her teeth in frustration. What she was asking was dangerous, and she wasn’t looking forward to it, but she also had a point about putting as much distance as possible between them and the alien fleet. Muttering about it being above her paygrade, she retrieved her tools and headed for engineering.

She passed by Isi, who gave her a friendly nod, and the Dharmist Genvass, who ignored her completely. Any other day she might try to patch things up between them, only she had enough on her plate already. Dragging her toolkit behind, she arrived in Engineering, and even before she ran a single analysis she knew the engines were in bad trouble. The rising and falling pitch of the drive shouted that the system was becoming unstable; unless she could shunt off the excess energy, it would continue to feed on itself, gathering force until it could no longer be contained. When that happened…

Damn it woman, quit stallin’ and fix this damn thing before it goes nova, she berated herself, breaking out her tools and getting to work.

Under normal circumstances she’d shut down the drive and bleed off the extra juice in increments, but since that option was off the table she’d have to do it the quick, dirty, and bloody deadly way.

The first step was setting up the correct pathways once she’d run a diagnostic. That was simplicity itself; they’d designed the engines to dump excess power in emergency situations, though it was assumed they’d be deactivated first. The second step was where things started getting hairy. To discharge the buildup, she needed to speed up the process, converting the raw energy into Gamma and X-rays before blasting it into space. The shielding she had to work with was just barely adequate for the task...one miscalculation and they’d never see Earth. Getting ready to “Tickle the Dragon”, as the procedure was known by the Tinkers crazy enough to attempt it, Maggie tapped into the EVA circuit and hailed Mairead.

“You got a safe place to hunker down out there?” she asked her.

“Are you kidding me?” she shot back. “Gimme ten minutes to get back inside.”

“Better hurry,” the Tinker cautioned, “I’m really not likin’ the numbers I’m seein’ here.” So far she’d contained the energy buildup, but it was edging closer to the system’s limits, and she wouldn’t be able to hold it off much longer.

It was closer to eight minutes when she got the call. “I’m in,” Mairead told her.

That was all she needed to hear. “Cross your fingers,” she said, half in prayer...and closed the circuit.

The ship screamed in protest as it spewed out a massive blast of deadly radiation, hot enough to fry an unprotected human. Even a thick wall of lead would do little to stem the blistering tide of X-rays, but as Maggie watched the telltales, she’d been monitoring began easing back from the danger zone, down to more tolerable levels. Bit by bit the engines’ power output abated, the wild fluctuations tearing them apart receding to a more stable rhythm. She realized she’d been holding her breath as the numbers continued to fall, letting out a shaky exhale as she wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve.

It looked like they wouldn’t be exploding today after all.

It took almost half an hour to drain enough energy that she felt sanguine about shutting it down. They’d still need to monitor the drive to make sure the levels didn’t start building once more, but caught early it was a straightforward procedure. It had only been the captain’s last-ditch tactic that had driven the entire system to the breaking point.

Mairead appeared at her elbow, still clad in her EVA suit, her helmet tucked under her arm. “How’s it looking?”

“It’s stabilizin’,” Maggie answered. “She’ll still need tearin’ apart sometime soon, but she’ll hold for now.”

“Thank Mother Terra,” the engineer said in relief. “Soon as the radiation dies down, I’ll head back out, but in the meantime if you could get started on the diagnostics, it’d be appreciated. Priority and checklist are in the mainframe.”

“Need to swap out a couple boards first,” Maggie replied, bringing up a schematic, the affected subsystems highlighted in bright crimson on the display. “Have any in Stores, or do I gotta improvise?”

“We should,” she said after studying the readout. “Might have to dig around for ‘em though.”

“This ain’t my first dance,” Maggie snorted, “I’ll find ‘em.” With a nod, she left the Engineering section and headed for the storage hold, taking a moment to study the layout on her arrival. You couldn’t just throw spare parts in a crate if you ever hoped to find them again, and there were certain items that couldn’t be stored in the same vicinity, so over the years a standard blueprint had evolved, designed to maximize space and accessibility. Every Tinker had their own quirks and preferences for storage, but the overall model rarely varied. Within a couple of minutes she’d narrowed down her search to one remote corner of the hold and began rooting around.

She paused in front of a storage bin, grimacing as she spotted a scattering of crumbs and a gnawed food wrapper. Rats, she thought to herself, wrinkling her nose. They’d hitched a ride on Man’s spacecraft just as they had on his sailing ships back on Earth. They were all but impossible to eradicate; even when you exposed the affected sections to vacuum, a few always survived. They weren’t the worst opportunistic scavengers out there...the Limodrian Blood Weevil was particularly nasty...but as someone who’d often sheltered in rough and ragged places, she had a deep-seated hatred of the pests. Maggie made a mental note to speak with Remi on the subject, when a rustling sound nearby caught her attention.

Her lip curled as she lifted a pipe wrench from its place on the wall. Given her current state of mind, a little rat killing was just what the doctor ordered. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the heavy tool’s handle, waiting for the varmint to move again and give away its location. Her patience was soon rewarded with a faint scraping, allowing her to zero in on the target, a nearby chest with a hinged lid. Must have chewed its way in, she mused, setting her feet wide as she raised the wrench high. She’d have to time it just right, flinging the lid open while bringing down the heavy metal spanner. Maggie gave herself a mental count of three, taking a deep breath before exploding into action as she heaved the lid back and swung the improvised weapon down…

“...Diggs?” she screeched in shock, only just averting braining him at the last second. The boy’s eyes went wide as he saw the wrench, ducking out of the way in terror. The metal tool clattered to the deck as she fell to her knees and grabbed him, hugging him tight enough to make him squirm in discomfort. “Oh my God, Diggs,” she blubbered, “...I thought you were dead!” Tears filled her eyes as she held him close, until his struggles forced her to release him, drawing back to gaze at him in disbelief as she held his shoulders. A brief glance past him to his hiding spot showed a cozy nest, complete with smuggled blanket and food. “...how…?”

Diggs slapped her across the face. Hard.

It was several heartbeats before the pain registered, as his hand came up again. Smack. The blow rocked Maggie’s head, more to surprise than actual force, only to be slapped yet again as her brain struggled to keep up. On the fourth swing she intercepted his arm, pinning them both against his torso as she hugged him once more.

“I’m sorry!” she sobbed, bawling her eyes out...as Diggs began weeping as well.