A fiber optics view of the reactor core appeared in Liu’s eyes, transparently overlaying the gray metal and blinking computers of the corridor. A blindingly pale pulsating plasma hovered in what looked like empty space, smeared into a slightly elongated shape by great magnetic fields, then trailed by a faint, wispy tail of plasma. There was just a tiny bulge in the ball of light, a few pixels of imperfection and a few microseconds of timing imperceptible to human eyes but easily flagged by the AI.

  “You feel that?” Liu said, his sensitive inner ear detecting the subtle change in thrust. With each pulse, Liu could feel the Peacekeeper’s reactor plating groaning with the massive, asymmetric forces imposed on it.

  One of the reactor’s final ignition optics had become misaligned in the smallest way. Over decades to centuries, things inevitably fall apart. The ship’s reactor used a laser ignited chemical-fission-fusion cascade to crush a lithium-6 deuteride core to stellar densities and ignite a fusion pulse, confined by the great electromagnets to a steady stream.

  The tiniest misalignment of the laser pulses igniting the would first cause a misaligned blast, causing strain on the magnetic nozzle. The next symptom of failure would be unpredictable. A chain of fizzles and blowing off a chunk of the reactor shielding were both possible outcomes. Nobody wanted to risk any of that.

  “Wake the designated engineering watch,” Liu ordered Okeke. “I will shut down the reactor. It’s going to be hot.”

  “Why can’t we send the synths?” Okeke said, irritated. “Those tin cans are never used when we need real work done.”

  “Precision and risk,” Liu replied. “We need a human team with the flexibility to do the realignment. Besides, they can fix most of your genes better than radiation damaged circuits.”

  Okeke nodded. He navigated down the corridor to the nearest computer panel. He would start the slow thaw to bring those in deep freeze back over the next day. The next watch who happened to be on ready alert would be awake within hours.

  He needed something tangible to work with.

  >Project keyboard. Liu commanded. Instantly, his tac glasses manifested a transparent keyboard in front of him.

  Liu keyed in his commands to the ship. It was one thing to order his own implant around. It was quite another to talk to this behemoth with his mind, especially in an emergency situation. Better to use the keyboard this time, he thought.

  >Initiate emergency reactor shutdown. Code 588.

  >Identity confirmed: Captain Liu Yang. Request acknowledged. Reactor shutdown sequence in progress. Reactor temperature: 1565K. Emergency awakening confirmed by: Captain Okeke Tomas. Radioisotope hydrogen purge in progress.

  Good. The reactor should cool over the next day to a safe level. Any radioactivity from neutron activation and deposited radioisotopes should be down to acceptable levels too.

  >Open channel to fleet, broadcast frequency, he keyed in.

  >Channel open.

  “This is DF Peacekeeper, Watch 105, Captain Liu Yang. We have a code 588. Requesting engine shutdown for delta-V match and radiation safety,” he said into the thin air.

  A few tense seconds of silence passed as the radio bubble of the Peacekeeper expanded through the void before reaching their twin battlecruiser ahead of them.

  “Peacekeeper, this is Relativity, Major Hernandez. Acknowledging request. Sensors confirm your reactor is offline. Send your diagnostic files over.”

  Liu pressed the interface keys in the air. Another tense moment of silence.

  “Acknowledged,” Hernandez replied. “Deactivating reactor. Keep us updated on the progress.”

  Liu looked up at the display. The image of the variable star showed it sputtering before fading out completely, replaced by an icon circling an empty region labeled “projected location: DF-BC-3818M”.

  The wait for the emergency repair team to awaken was agonizing, yet there was little Liu could do. Artificial hibernation had to be reversed slowly, or it would not be reversed at all.

  >Speed up subjective time, Liu ordered.

  The proper motion of the stars began to speed up as he stared out the window. The wait was measured in heartbeats stretched thin by implant-induced tachycardia. He could perceptibly feel his heartrate, his breathing, everything except his thoughts accelerate to almost impossible levels.

  Echoes of confused bumps and cursing woke him from the near trance of accelerated subjective time. Okeke had led the other members of the repair team from stasis to Liu’s station. Some were still dizzy from their disorientation.

  >Restore realtime, Liu commanded. It was like holding your breath and finally being able to let go as he felt his metabolism return to normal.

  “Report, Captain. Did you have to bother me for a little thing like this?” a gray haired man with glacial blue eyes muttered. Rarefied lieutenant colonel pins adorned his collar and a nametag with GRAYSON written on it was affixed messily to his crumpled uniform. “I was on a beach with so many beautiful wom-”

  “Code 588. Your expertise is needed, sir,” Liu replied, accidentally interrupting the officer. Grayson scowled at him before sighing in frustration.

  “Next time wake someone else. I’m getting too old and my rank is getting too high for this EVA shit,” Grayson shot back.

  “Acknowledged, sir. Will not make this mistake again,” Liu muttered.

  “You are on monitoring. EVA team, let’s go,” Grayson said, motioning his team forward. Okeke dutifully obeyed and propelled himself down the railings with Grayson, disappearing behind a bend in the corridor ahead.

  >Internal sensors, corridor airlock 2.

  Camera feeds instantly appeared in front of Liu’s eyes on command. The EVA team stood at the automated suit-up station, aided by gentle but firm robotic arms.

  Second skins of carbon filled polymer smoothly slid over them like gray dragon scales. Internal acceleration gel forcefully slithered over the imperfections in their body. Conformal breather tanks sealed smoothly into valve slots in the back. A claustrophobically tight helmet was firmly fastened over each one’s head.

  >All suits check. Grayson commanded mentally.

  The robot arms extended a small mass spectrometer probe, checking every crevice for leaks.

  >Leak test: <1E-9 mbar*L/s. Acceptable.

  The voice of the Peacekeeper’s AI was unnervingly calm. It simply went down the list of diagnostics.

  >Release. Grayson commanded. The robotic arms opened to free them. A massive round hatch slid open to reveal a small, brightly lit cylindrical room. Another round hatch was waiting at the other end, the only thing separating them from oblivion. The engineering team glided past the hatch in grim silence with their small box of tools.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  >Checking internal comms, Liu entered with his keyboard into the Neuronet.

  >EVA team respond.

  >Loud and clear, Grayson responded.

  “We’re good,” Okeke and the rest of the engineering staff said in audio. Understandable. Not everyone likes talking through Neuronet. Liu knew that most of all.

  >Close internal airlock hatch, decompression sequence. Liu ordered.

  With a click, the airlock hatch slid closed. A gentle flush of air gradually left the room as quiet pumps slowly removed the atmosphere from the airlock for reprocessing. Their suits slowly started stiffening in response to the pressure drop. The flushing sound died down, replaced by absolute silence. And then, the outer hatch slid open into what appeared to be a gaping maw of darkness. Grayson nodded. The entire team walked into the black.

  Automated LED lamps engaged, stretching down a long hallway. The pitch darkness was replaced by a brightly lit metal passageway.

  Liu watched every step with his sensor eyes. The team stepped onto the spinal corridor, a depressurized channel semi-protected from the outside dangers of interstellar space, but still hostile to humans by virtue of being airless. Its grated floor was coated with a thin layer of carbon steel specifically for magboot use. Their magboots automatically engaged, forcefully gluing their feet to a frame suspended above the ship’s internal spine.

  The spinal corridor was a halfway point. Though it was designed to be roomy with several meters between each wall, with a team it still felt claustrophobic. The first stop of the corridor was dozens of meters below them. Ladders and a ferromagnetic elevator ran along the hall, allowing for rapid passage. A few oxygen taps were placed along the wall, a small nod to emergency planning.

  >Close external airlock hatch. Liu commanded again.

  The outer hatch dutifully slid closed and locked with a shudder that reverberated throughout the entire structure.

  “Remember team, this is a hot fix, literally,” Grayson said by voice. This was serious. He usually preferred Neuronet texts when he was just talking; audio meant he was thinking.

  “We’re keeping the field on at minimal to keep things warm and so we have some orientation on the boots.”

  After what felt like an eternity, they had finally arrived at the reactor core. On one side of the door was the fuel bunker, a volatile drum of weakly radioactive pellets coated by theoretically safe explosives surrounding a dormant solar core. On the other was the crew. Only two doors were visible: one labeled “FUEL BUNKER KEEP OUT” with a radioactivity symbol prominently posted, and a door simply labeled “EXIT”.

  “All right. Let’s go,” Grayson said. “Get outside. Magboots should be good. External tethers all. Hook onto Okeke’s line. Don’t rely on microthrusters.”

  Rigid nods emanated from the EVA team. The door popped open to the exterior, revealing the vast, dim starfield superimposed on the pitch black of interstellar space.

  “God damn… er, sir,” Okeke muttered.

  “Okeke, engage the tether,” Grayson commanded.

  Okeke seemed to nod a bit, though it was a subtle motion, difficult to see due to the stiffness of the suit’s neck. He unbuckled a metal hook and cable from his belt and attached it to a railing point just outside the door. It was best to avoid floating away, as you never wanted your life to depend on the limited external gas thruster.

  They climbed out onto the thin exterior plating and affixed their tethers to Okeke’s flexible line. A few tentative steps were taken from the steel, but they quickly reoriented to the non-magnetic sections with railings. The abyss was no longer above them, but to their backs. It was eerily disorienting that way, though their absolute position hadn’t changed.

  They cautiously climbed using railings and the tethers onto a massive reactor plate. It was one of the Directorate’s finest pieces of engineering: a monolithic plate of zirconium with ceramic channels for a liquid gallium electromagnet, intermeshed with coolant channels.

  Each reactor component was known to the EVA team by heart. The Zr plate was neutron transparent, built to last centuries in the reactor. Optical fibers funnelled ignition lasers onto the drive pellet’s exterior. The Ga magnet channeled the fury of the fusion pulses into a coherent thrust stream. Nothing else could survive this hell.

  The hot liquid metal roiled beneath their feet as magnetic currents swirled in the tight channels. Their magboots were going crazy, loosening and tightening randomly from both the standby current and conductive fluid turbulence creating a magnetic dynamo even as they tried to hold on with railings and mechanical supports.

  “Just residual MHD turbulence from the magnetic nozzle,” Grayson said to the team. “Expect it. Don’t rely on your magboots here. Stick with the tether.”

  They flipped over into the reactor chamber. It was a cavernous hemisphere, a black maw that seemed to swallow the universe. The disorientation was immense as they climbed from one vision of ground to another over a single ledge. There were no ladders on the inside of the nozzle. Humans were not expected to be here and survive.

  The tether lines extended further, wrapping over the edge of the reactor’s magnetic nozzle projector. The EVA suits instantly responded with their external searchlights, like white fireflies in the darkness. Grayson set one foot down on the plating to test its magnetization for the magboots. He gave a silent thumbs up as his boots made firm contact.

  >Ambient radiation dosimetry activated. External radiation: 5.8 Sieverts. Internal radiation: 0.1 Sieverts.

  “5.8 Sieverts. Not too bad,” Grayson said with a chuckle.

  “I don’t know about this, sir,” Okeke said nervously.

  “It’s just a little radiation. It won’t kill you immediately. Won’t at all with medicine.”

  >I’m going to activate the diagnostic laser and shine it down the beampath. Liu typed.

  “Just don’t get the reactor and diagnostic lasers mixed up,” Okeke said with a laugh.

  >Diagnostic lasers on. Liu typed.

  Ghostly red beams immediately emerged from the diamond optics, intersecting at an almost perfect point. Almost. One was just slightly off.

  “We found the problem,” Grayson replied.

  >All right, you take it from here. Let me know when you’re done. Liu typed back.

  >Speed up subjective time, Liu commanded in his head. The details of reactor repair were going to be hours of soul crushing boredom that he neither fully understood nor could walk away from. The only way to pass the time was by forcing time to pass faster.

  >Error, nonroutine workflow encountered. Realtime restored.

  Liu suddenly snapped back to reality. The temperature in their section of the reactor plating was skyrocketing.

  >Electrical anomaly in reactor section R-120-5.

  He swiped his hands on the interface keyboard to a new window on his tac glasses. An electrical-thermal map of the reactor plate was overlaid over his camera view. The electromagnet channels glowed in an intricate pattern of dull gray on the current density channel, except for one spot in a U-bend near the EVA team. The temperature was also rising rapidly.

  >EVA team, move now! An invisible upwelling of heat began spreading towards them. Liu was furiously searching his combat upload like an encyclopedia for the answer.

  “What’s going on Liu?”

  >I don’t know, but you can turn on IR and look where I’m marking. Liu marked the position on his tactical glasses with a tap on the imaginary image.

  “Holy shit,” Okeke gasped as he visualized the hotspot glowing almost visibly by this time.

  >Slow subjective time, Liu ordered his implants. The world ground to a near halt around him. He must find the cause of the IR spike.

  >Search combat upload database. All possible causes?

  >Unexpected error, not found in database.

  Liu panicked. He looked at the thermal and current density map multiple times in what seemed like an eternity in his head, but was only a few seconds in the real world. The map seared itself into his mind. High current. A U-bend. The magnet was in standby, cooler than expected. Contraction. Capillary action. A void. A vapor lock. The gallium was boiling in place, thinning the conductor, guaranteeing a runaway. A boiloff would be catastrophic and burn a hole in the reactor plating.

  >I need to quench the magnet now!!! Liu typed.

  “What?” Grayson yelled into his audio processor. “No, you fucking moron-”

  Before he could respond, Liu immediately entered the command.

  >Emergency quench electromagnet.

  >Warning: Initiating emergency quench sequence. Inductive kickback & cascading voltage spike imminent. Confirm: [Y/N]?

  Liu stabbed the mental key.

  >Y.