> (Main Lounge, Freighter Roses for Jolene, Sol System)

The engineers had worked for almost three solid hours, drafting the rest of the crew as needed to get the ship's systems stabilized. Enough at least so that Corwin could call a general meeting of all hands, crew and passengers packed into the lounge.

"OK, let's get through this quickly. Jolene was apparently struck by a mass that does not appear on any of the scanner records, resulting in several system failures. The impact appears to have caused the ship to tumble, leading to a change in our trajectory before the main drive failed. We have no sensors, no communications, no drive and our current trajectory and position is unknown."

As fortunate as they were to still be alive, that was still a grim accounting.

"Thanks to the engineering team we have basic power and life support. And we got lucky as hell. The impact apparently breached the hull in an area we can stand to be without."

"Speak for yourself, Boss," Erica growled. "I had some... important stuff in storage there."

Corwin waved that objection away. They'd already discussed it before the meeting, and it wasn't going to be a problem in the short term.

"What I'm saying is that we didn't lose anyone and we're not in danger of breathing space. That's a win, on both counts." He looked around at the group, ten faces wearing a mixture of exhaustion, worry and outright fear looking back at him. "Since we're all still here the next step is to figure out how we're going to get out of this jam."

Corwin pointed to Henderson and asked, "What's our engineering status Seamus?"

Henderson considered briefly before answering.

"The reactor is online so we have power. Primary power conduits are down but we've patched up the secondaries so we can get power to most of the ship's systems. Main computer core is operational, life support is up so we're in no danger of asphyxiation or freezing. All external sensor elements are unresponsive, as are the external communications arrays. From the readings I'm getting either there's a break in the connections somewhere near the hull or major damage to the sensors and the array."

"Right, so we're blind and mute until we can get someone out there to fix it. Any good news for us?"

"A little. We've figured a way to get some maneuvering back so we can at least take this spin off. If we can figure out how far off track we are we might be able to give the old girl enough of a nudge to put us inside someone's radar range."

"OK, thanks," Corwin turned to Bridgette for the bridge crew report.

"We've got nothing Captain," Bridgette stated flatly. "I've run the records and there wasn't a damned thing on any of the scanners. And the record cuts before the worst of the course change from the impact so the best I can give you is a wild guess as to our current trajectory. I can give you our rough speed but direction could be anywhere in a three degree cone off our original path."

"Right. Medical?"

"Not much to report there, Captain. Doctor Roche was in the medbay with me when the incident occurred, but as you can see he is unharmed. Paul's scalp wound was the worst reported injury. Scanners are still offline but he's not displaying any worrying symptoms yet."

"Glad to hear it. Now," Corwin pivoted to the group of passengers, "Doctor Eastman, what is your group's status?"

"Oh, we're all in one shape. Scared of course, but all functional."

"Anything you can contribute to our survival efforts?"

Eastman looked around at his group, inviting comment. Doctor Geitzmann nodded and Eastman signalled him to speak.

"I think I might be able to solve the navigation problem Captain. If you recall, I have a fairly sensitive inertial navigation device in my quarters. As I'm sure Mr Henderson reported it was deemed inoffensive and so I left it running. Assuming that the impact didn't damage the internals we should be able to use it to calculate our trajectory. It's not as quite as precise as the ship's navigation systems, and we'll need to do some simple transformations, but I believe we should be able to connect it to the ship's computer to give us some navigational input."

"That's great news. Seamus, go with Doctor Geitzmann and check out the device. If it's functional then work out a plan to get it hooked up to the computers. Can it be moved to the core?"

"Better not to, Captain," Henderson replied. "The passenger cabins all have data links though so that won't be a problem. Erica should do it though. I need to get to work on the maneuvering system so we can get the ship straightened out."

"OK, unless anyone has any more pressing engineering issues?"

Nobody did.

"Alright then. Apart from the three already mentioned, here are your assignments. Bridgette will work on narrowing down navigation targets based on her current course estimates. Bradley will continue to sweep the ship for additional damage. Paul, work with the Doctors here on any other ideas they might have. June, take stock of available food and medical resources. Doctor Eastman, you and your team are to pitch in where you can help, but your main focus should be on brainstorming solutions."

Corwin's quick census of facial expressions came back a little less fearful with some thoughtful looks throw into the mix. Better than it had been, at least.

"Alright, go to it."

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> (Passenger Quarters, Freighter Roses for Jolene)

Erica was delighted to find that the sturdy little inertial tracker was unharmed by the recent jolt and appeared to still be producing useful data. The integrated record was clean and, according to Geitzmann, contained everything needed to figure out their current course. Connecting its output to the ship's computer was going to take a little work but should be simple enough.

"That's a nice little rig you have there Doc. Custom job? The data interface isn't standard, but I've got some gear I can probably bodgey into a converter for it."

"Not custom actually, just a bit dated. A gift from an old friend of mine many years ago."

"Well you can thank them for us when their gift saves our collective butts." She gently pried open the interface panel on the side of the machine and shone her torch into the wiring. "Oh yeah, this is going to be simple. Hand me that circuit probe - no, the blue one. Thanks. Hmm... Hallech opto-isolators on the connector, but that looks like an early V330 network block. Heck, I have an adapter for the V344 that should work. They use the same protocol, just need to adjust the levels a touch."

She was aware that here musings were going right over the Doctor's head. He might know astrophysics, but she knew circuits better than anyone on board. Well, except Henderson maybe, but he didn't count.

"That's very good news, Miss Douglas."

"Just Erica is good, Doc. I ain't formal. Besides, you're letting me do minor surgery on a friend of yours."

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He chuckled a little at that. "Well, it has been with me for a while. I think 'Doc' might get a little confusing though, all things considered. Call me Basil."

"Pleased to meecha, Basil," Erica nodded to him, then inclined her head towards the door. "I'm going to grab a few things. Back in five."

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Ted Eastman almost collided with the stocky engineer as she floated out of Basil's room.

"Oh hey Doctor Eastman." Erica grabbed a handrail and arrested her flight. "You need something?"

"Just checking in, Miss Douglas."

"Everything's going good. Basil and I should be done in half an hour. Gotta run." She waved, kicked off the edge of the door and floated off, incongruously graceful in freefall.

Ted was far less agile in zero-g and stuck with the ungainly but effective method of pulling himself around by various handholds. He stuck his head through the door to Basil's room and attempted to right himself. "Basil, we're having a quick group meeting. Are you free for ten minutes?"

"Erica has this under control, so yes. One moment." Basil grabbed a tablet and left a message for when Erica returned, then joined Ted in the corridor. "What's this about?"

"Louis wants to discuss something with us. He wants us all involved."

They arrived at the lounge where Louis and Mike were already seated, belt straps holding them to the furniture. Ted hooked his feet under a chair and strapped a belt over his lap, then turned to Louis. "OK, we're all here. Let's hear it."

Clearly the time spent strapped to a bed in the medbay had given Louis time to think. He looked worried, but there was an element of hope there too. He presented a tablet for all of them to read. Field equations, power calculations and a few other relevant items sat on the page. All three of his audience, having worked together for months on these very equations, could see the ramifications immediately. Mike was the first to comment on it.

"You can't be serious."

"But mon chér, of course I can. The Captain was quite clear, was he not? The main drive is dead. He pretends that we can survive but without some miracle we too are dead." He tapped the edge of the tablet for emphasis. "Here is our miracle."

"But how?" Basil was clearly intrigued rather than dismissive. "I won't pretend to understand the field itself, but we still need thrust don't we?"

"Oui, but not much. Thrusters will be enough."

Mike grabbed a tablet from her pocket and started running the calculations herself. "Assuming we can get full field strength, and that we can configure the field to cover the ship's volume, and using standard maneuvering thruster values, we'd get a velocity on the order of... hell, call it point six C."

"Really? That's incredible." Basil ran his own calculations. "Given our most likely location, we could make it to Ceres in only a couple of hours."

Ted could see the obvious flaw, but he always hated to be the one to dash budding optimism. "Yes, but with almost zero control over the flight. And the field geometry is going to be suboptimal. We'll be lucky to get more than half that." He raised his hands placatingly as the others started to protest. "No, I'm not saying we don't try. Even point three C is a hell of a lot faster than we're going to be capable of on ship's manuevering thrust alone. So... we're not dead yet. What do we need?"

"Well the prototype drive is in the cargo hold. We move her to Engineering and hook up to power. Without field guides though? We will have to tune the field by hand."

They all considered the technical problems that would cause. Ted could see a few issues, but none that should prove insurmountable.

"Basil, how sure are you that we can get an accurate navigation fix?"

"Quite sure. We have the data, we just have to get it out and processed. It won't be as accurate as you might like, but we should be able to drive a line within a few hundred kilometers of Ceres at this distance."

"Mike? How do the power figures look?"

"I'll need some accurate reactor data, but as a ballpark I'd say maybe thirty percent of standard reactor output for the field. We'll have to work that out with the engineers, but they'll need to be involved anyway."

Ted frowned, trying to decide whether the risk was worth it.

"So give me some worst-case scenarios. What happens if we get this wrong? Louis?"

"Worst case, the field collapses badly and we are fini. Or the field is wrong and we go nowhere. Or we miss and end up lost."

"We're already lost - well, a little anyway. Let's fix that."

Ted unclipped the lap belt and used a nearby handhold to pull himself towards the internal comms terminal to call the Captain.

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> (Engineering Bay, Freighter Roses for Jolene)

"OK Seamus, give it to me."

"Well, we managed to rig a drone to get a look at the damage, and you're not going to like it." Henderson grabbed a floating display and hauled it around so they could both see the video feed from the drone. The hull of the Jolene curved away from the middle of the screen which showed a long, ragged tear. "That would be the comms blister. Or at least where the comms blister normally sits."

Corwin swore softly. The torn hull section showed no evidence of any remaining electronics. The view panned as the drone turned to a new view, showing more torn hull plating.

"And that would be one of the sensor blisters. Whatever happened, we lost pretty much every piece of surface electronics we had."

"Well, crap. It looks like we took on a defence frigate and lost. How the hell did we come out of that with atmosphere?"

"We carry extra radiation shielding for runs to the inner planets. When we were hit the shielding vaporized and pushed back against the impact." Henderson stopped the drone and had it zoom in on the closest damaged hull section. "I'd say we got lucky, but then we found this."

Lodged in the torn hull plating was a shard of metal that clearly hadn't come from the ship itself. The curved piece of metal, painted matt black and only visible due to the damage it had taken, was clearly no part of the Jolene.

"If you want my opinion, that's what's left of a stealth sabot. We didn't hit something, someone hit us."

No wonder Henderson had wanted to discuss this privately. This wasn't an accident, someone had tried fairly hard to kill them.

"And hard, apparently. How bad is the damage really?"

Henderson brought up a model of the Jolene and started marking damaged areas.

"Communications array is completely gone. Sensors shot to hell, what little is left is fused wreckage." He spun the model and drew a set of marks on the drive section. "Drive was holed but not badly enough to blow it immediately. The drive chamber was holed and burned out after a few seconds." A large section of the drive disappeared under Henderson's cursor. "We lost most of the drive body. When it went it took out the primary power conduit, so no bringing that back online." A few more red marks completed the damage, leaving less than half of the hull plates unmarked. "Finally, the storage room on aft deck. From the drone footage it looks like we took a hit but it failed to penetrate all the way. We can't get to it at the moment but it can probably be patched and repressurised."

For all the good that would do. Nothing in there was going to help them anyway.

Henderson flipped the model around and zoomed on one of the red marks.

"Here's the coup-de-grace. That's the primary reaction mass tank. We've lost around eighty percent of our maneuvering propellant. If we're not already heading towards Ceres we're not going to be any time soon."

Corwin was still staring at the wreckage of his ship when the comms chimed for his attention.

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> (Main Lounge, Freighter Roses for Jolene)

Ted sat on the sidelines while Mike and Basil pitched their idea to the Captain. He was clearly not pleased about the idea, but still seemed to be giving it due consideration.

"The math is solid," Mike concluded, "this will work."

The Captain held up a hand before Basil could continue.

"OK. It's not an option I would have looked for. Frankly I don't care for the idea of using my crew as lab rats in some test, but this is the most positive idea we've had today."

Now that was surprising. Ted had been expecting a lot more push-back from the Captain. After all, he wasn't far wrong about the lab rat crack. Except of course that the scientists would be in the same position.

"Doctor Eastman, how long are you going to need to set this up?"

Ted had already worked through the problem, but he spent a few moments considering how best to pare it down for the Captain's consumption.

"We need to move the drive assembly from the cargo bay to a central point, preferably in your engineering bay. Power draw during the initial field establishment will be in the low megawatt range at peak so we'll need a decent power connection. And we need Basil to finish patching the navigation system to get the best data we can from his inertial nav. Alltogether? Two days, with help from your engineers."

The Captain nodded and tapped briefly at his tablet before continuing. "Paul will work with you directly Doctor Eastman. Anything to do with the ship, he has the final say. Now if you'll excuse me I need to brief my crew."

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> (Freight Bay, Freighter Roses for Jolene)

"...If it works, we'll be close enough to Ceres to read on their monitors and maybe get a signal out, even if we have to stand on the hull and blink a flashlight at them."

Erica knew she could do better than that. Probably. Hell, she could rig a drag line aerial in a few hours that would at least let them communicate over a few thousand kilometers.

"And if it doesn't work," Paul chipped in, "then we're not worse off than we are now."

"That's the size of it, yes." The Captain glanced around at the crew. "Comments?"

A lot of mumbling and shuffling - or the zero-g equivalent - but nobody else volunteered, so Erica spoke up.

"Elephant in the room: what if our attacker comes back before we're ready?"

Corwin scowled, but he acknowledged the question. "I'm working under the assumption that a) if they wanted to finish us off they would have done so by now and b) if they hit us again there's not a damned thing we can do about it." He shook his head and shrugged at her. "Best thing we can do is get this done."