Cassie ducked through the shortcut to the maintenance hub and set the toolbox down on one of the many workbenches, in the first free spot she could find. The heavy box made an inaudible thud, the sound lost in the ambient noise. If at all possible, this place seemed more disorganized and chaotic than when she first met Aqeel here. The urgent beeps and chimes coming through the speakers on the ceiling only contributed to the atmosphere of disorder.

"Aqeel, are you in here?" Cassie asked, before realizing that even if he was here, there was no way he could have heard her with all the alerts chiming off. She sighed, went over to the computer and muted the alarms, without bothering to look at what the issues were. She didn't need the computer to tell her what a mess the ship was at the moment.

"Aqeel?" Cassie yelled at the top of her lungs.

"Over here!" Aqeel called out from across the room.

Cassie made her way over, carefully ducking under a set of annoyingly low power cables. As she walked by, a bright red laser sealer rolled out from underneath one of the huge industrial heaters that balanced the cooling effect of their Ellidium consumption. Massive fluid lines ran in and out of the top, the internals all hidden by a thick, insulated cover. There was nothing visibly wrong with it, but it's usually low, steady hum was absent.

It wasn't running.

But they were still cloaked, so the other heater must still be operational. Even so, it made sense why this key piece of equipment would be at the top of Aqeel's priority list, even if there was a backup. She wasn't surprised to see the tip of his black boots sticking out from under it. She knelt down beside the huge grey box, bending her head down to peer into the dark space to see Aqeel cramped into the the foot of space that separated the heater from the mesh metal flooring.

Aqeel glanced at her, his flashlight shone in her eyes, momentarily blinding her. He said something, but it was garbled, then he took the flashlight out of his mouth. "What's gone wrong now?"

"Um, that's not..." Cassie scowled slightly, unease at the thought that something else might go wrong. "I finished recalibrating the port side sensor array," she announced. "It's not as good as the starboard one, but hopefully it's good enough that we'll be able to see any more ships before we crash into them."

"We'll have a heads up if we're about to die, good work," Aqeel replied sarcastically as he spun a bolt loose with his free hand. "Lot of good it'll do if we can't do anything to avoid the shitstorm."

Cassie's scowl returned as she bit the inside of her cheek. It wasn't her call, but if it came down to flying into another debris field versus leaving dark mode and turning on the engines...

She knew which option she'd pick.

"I know there's still a lot of damage," Cassie said, sitting down on a stray stool. The seat tilted under her weight. "With all these power outages, too many sensors are down. It feels like we're flying blind." She picked up a screwdriver, turning the old, battered tool over aimlessly in her hands. "I don't even know where we should start."

Aqeel slowly shuffled out from under the heater. He sat up and starting wiping off the greenish oil coating his hands with a rag that had mysteriously appeared from some pocket, somewhere. "Helen will start a damage assessment, we just need to concern ourselves with the major systems." He tucked the grey-green rag into a large pocket on his calf.

As he tried to stand up, he tripped on the red laser sealer. He grimaced as his knee hit the floor, knocking a loose screw out of his greyish beard. It fell right through the metal grate to the level below, with hardly a sound.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Aqeel glared at the laser sealer. He huffed, then picked up the tool and tossed it aside. It bounced off a wall and rolled back under the heater. "People really need to learn to clean up after themselves," he complained gruffly.

Cassie tried hard not to laugh, she covered her mouth with the back of her hand to hide her widening smile, which vanished as soon as a new alarm went off. It was one she hadn't heard before, shrill and piercing, nothing like the annoying constant beeps from earlier. Even Aqeel's eyes widened at the new sound.

"What's that?" Cassie asked worriedly.

"It can't be..." Aqeel shot up, ran out of the room and made a beeline for the main maintenance workstation, Cassie at his heels. He ignored the comfy chair, standing directly in front of the array of screens, his sharp eyes scanning the list of alerts. "Those hell damned hunks of metal."

Cassie stood up on her tiptoes to look over his shoulder. "It's the dark generator?"

"It's in the back of the damn ship," Aqeel muttered to himself as he disabled the annoying alarm. "How on Earth did that get smacked?"

Cassie pointed at the flashing blue lines on display of the ship's layout, on the righthand screen. "It wasn't hit by anything. The cooling lines running though the ship were damaged."

The pipes went from the generator, through the ship, then the heating stations then finally back to the generator. They branched out to enable temperature regulation throughout the entire ship, making the diagram it look less like a huge loop and more like a network of blood vessels. Most of the pipes ran close to the exterior of the ship and had been damaged by incoming debris, at which time they'd automatically sealed themselves off. The result was there were a lot less routes available for the fluid to flow through.

So the pressure throughout the system was rising, which only seemed to be causing more damage. As she watched, another section of pipe near the crew quarters failed and was shut off. But that's not what had triggered the alarm.

There wasn't enough fluid getting to the dark generator.

"It's a temperature warning," Cassie added, when Aqeel didn't respond, now staring at the generator's status information. "There isn't enough heat being put into the system. The whole thing is overcooling."

Aqeel tugged lightly on his short beard, not taking his eyes off the screen. "No need to explain my own ship to me."

Cassie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Of course," she replied as politely as she could. In a huff, she went to the other computer and navigated to the dark generator. "But all we need to do is reroute the fluid to go directly to the heater-" Her train of thought was abruptly interrupted as she finally realized what Aqeel was looking at.

The temperature in the pipes was steadily dropping. The temperature inside the generator itself was even lower, barely within the guidelines. There was no way they were using water, the pipes would have long since frozen and burst if that was the case. But whatever coolant was running through those pipes would hit it's freezing point eventually.

Then there would be no hope in getting the generator working again.

Cassie slowly reconfigured the valves to redirect more coolant to their single running heater. It was difficult. She double checked the numbers. Then triple checked it. The numbers were good.

She just needed to hit "Apply All".

Her finger hovered over the button. She glanced at Aqeel, who wasn't paying her any heed. She tapped her foot silently. Then she hit it.

Nothing happened.

Cassie stared at the display in confusion as the temperature continued to drop. "What?" She hit the button again. Then again, when it became clear that nothing had changed.

Aqeel squinted at the display, ignoring her as she continued trying to send the commands from the station next to his.

"It won't let me change anything!" Cassie exclaimed loudly, mashing the button repeatedly. She made a low, frustrated sound as she stepped back from the console. "It's not working. It's going to freeze."

"It is not going to freeze," Aqeel grumbled gruffly, sounding more determined than ever. The next moment, he was gone, out into the corridor, and Cassie sprinted to keep up.

"Wait, where are you going?" Cassie called out, panting heavily.

"The generator's controls weren't connected to the main computer system," Aqeel explained quickly, without slowing down. "The only way to change 'm is to go down there."

Their eyes met for an instant as he turned round a corner.

The eyes gave him away. The deep brown held only intellect, a mind sharp with age and experience, but the fine crinkles around them revealed the masked fear underneath. This wasn't him just being dramatic. A lump began to form in her stomach.

He was afraid.

Maybe more than she was.