Rhodes's hour was up!
"Okay, Lieutenant," said Rhodes, interrupting her trance. "Cross-connects are firm, but I need ten more minutes to stabilize ion pressures and temps."
"Roger," Buccari replied. "Power manager is resetting. You're only going to get a conditional reset. There's not enough time to get a full null, but it'll be good enough. Good luck, Virgil." She redonned helmet and gloves and slipped into the darkened connecting tube, anxious to once again look out upon the shining planet.
It was brilliant; she opened the flight deck hatch to a white flood of natural light and had to squint to see the instruments. She flashed Hudson a thin smile and then hit a button on her wrist controls, causing her gold visor filter to click instantly into place.
"Well?" Quinn demanded. "What's it look like?"
As if in answer, the ship's lighting flickered to normal. Buccari glanced down at her power console as the primary circuit indicators switched to green, clearing most of the error messages on her screen.
"Rhodes needs ten minutes to complete cross-connect, but it looks functional," she reported, locking into her seat. "I wouldn't want to use the power paths again. Main busses are fried, and the alternates are just hanging together. We tested for load. They'll hold. We got at least one shot."
Quinn grunted and busied himself with preorbital checks. Buccari joined the litany of preparation; challenges were answered with responses of unequivocal certainty. The ship was a wreck; systems were out of specification, or inoperable, but the checklist moved onward and around these obstacles, measuring their impact and weighing the risks and alternatives.
"Preorbital checks complete," Buccari reported. She saved the checklist deviations to the logfile and cleared the checklist screen. She punched a button on the communications panel. "Flight deck to engineering. Your turn, Mr. Rhodes. Status?"
Goldberg responded. "Power manager shows a conditional reset, just like you said. You sure we can't get it to full function by a reload simulation? Mr. Rhodes and me think we can do it in five minutes."
"Go with what we you have, Goldberg," Buccari almost shouted. "The power manager may not hold together for that long, and we have a date with a planet in a few minutes."
"Mr. Rhodes says—"
"Ready for ignition, now! No more questions."
The circuit went silent. "Aye, sir," Goldberg said at last. Hudson shook his fingers as if they were on fire. Buccari ignored him.
Quinn came up on the command channel: "Ignition in ninety seconds. Let's slow this bucket down. You ready, Mr. Rhodes?"
The engineer responded: "Retro in ninety. Engineering is ready."
Quinn hit the maneuvering alarm and broadcast over the general circuit: "All hands to stand by for . . . five gees. Five gees for five minutes. Commencing retro sequence now."
Buccari monitored fuel readings and rechecked burn times. Five gees for five minutes would get everyone's attention. She switched the injection profile over to her primary monitor. Klaxons sounded and a controlled cacophony of chatter emitted from her headset, each station reporting their status. The ship's crew settled into known procedures, conditions for which they had trained and retrained, the urgency of their struggle dispelling the shock and surprise of post-combat and the helplessness of being in deep space without power.
Buccari's voice droned professionally as she verbalized checklist items rolling down her console display. Quinn's replies were equally sterile. The prominent digital clock was once again counting the seconds to their destiny, the gaudy red flickering a mechanical symbol of the tension rebuilding under the dispassionate routine of the checklist. Buccari rechecked the craft's alignment to the retro-axis for the twentieth time; cross hairs were centered on the thrust vector. A slight oscillation was apparent, but it was within vector limits.
"Orbital checks complete. Twenty seconds to retro," Buccari announced over the general circuit. "All stations prepare for final count."
Quinn locked the throttle at sixty percent, flipped back the ignition switch cover, depressed the interlock, and positioned his hand over the ignition. Buccari' s hands curled around the acceleration grips on her arm rests, fingertips playing lightly over the controls. She finished the countdown: "Five... four... three... two... one... ignition, now."
Quinn depressed the button. After an agonizing delay a surge of pure power pressed her into her seat. Never had five gees felt so good! She sensed the familiar gee-induced vibration inside her eyeballs. Peripheral vision tunneled inward. The red diodes of the ignition timer counted positive seconds into the burn ...009 ...010 ...01 1. Buccari forced her lungs to exhale a load of air.