Chapter 2: Sparks in the Dark
The heaters kicked again, a low whump that vibrated up through the cockpit floor and into Karl's boots. He felt the temperature rise two degrees before the thermostat caught up and cut the burners off. Two degrees was nothing on a chart, but inside a suit that had been clammy for weeks it felt like someone had draped a warm towel across his chest. He let himself enjoy it for three seconds, counted aloud to make sure he didn't get greedy, then opened his eyes and stared at the reactor monitor. The single green LED still burned steady. He watched it until his vision spotted, willing it to stay lit, willing the red siblings around it to switch sides. None did. Patience, he thought. Red to green is a war of millimeters.
He unstrapped, pushed out of the chair, and caught the handrail that circled the nav dome. The rail was sticky with dried coolant that had misted through a pin-hole fracture weeks ago. He made a mental note—find sealant, patch micro-leak, add to list. The list lived on a plastic card tucked in his left sleeve; every time the card filled he transferred the notes to the ship's log, then flipped the card over and started fresh. Both sides were nearly full. When the card ran out he would carve tasks into the bulkhead paint. After that, into his own skin if he had to. Lists were maps, and maps kept you from walking in circles until you died of dizziness.
Karl drifted aft, past the galley closet, past the sealed medbay he still refused to open. The corridor narrowed and the lights dimmed to conserve power, amber strips flickering like dying fireflies. He clicked his helmet lamp on and followed the beam. The pump rattled grew louder, the sound echoing off steel until it became a rhythm he could almost march to. He reached the reactor bay hatch, spun the dogs two turns, and swung it wide. Warm breath exhaled into his face, carrying the metallic tang of overheated windings and something sweeter—ozone, sharp and clean, the smell of electricity doing its job.
Inside, the fusion bottle sat inside its magnetic cage, a torus of superheated plasma circulating faster than bullets. The containment field generators were bolted to the curved wall like squat sentries. Two showed green, two amber, one red. The red one worried him. It was the same mount that had cracked during the original engine explosion, a hairline fracture that had been growing hair. If the mount failed the bottle would wobble, the field would collapse, and the reactor would scram, plunging the ship into a brownout that would take hours to recover from—hours he might not have if the hull decided to breach again.
He pulled the toolkit from the webbing on his thigh. The wrench was still the only tool with a full handle; everything else had been ground down into pry bars or shivs. He fit the wrench to the first bolt on the amber mount and turned. The bolt groaned, gave a quarter spin, then froze. He braced his boots against the curved grating and threw his weight. The bolt screamed loose, and with it the stabilizer plate shifted a millimeter. A warning tone beeped inside his helmet—magnetic field variance plus four percent. He had seconds before the bottle hiccuped.
Karl slapped the plate back into alignment, hand trembling, and threaded the bolt home by feel. The beeping slowed, stopped. The green LED steadied. He tightened the bolt until his shoulder burned, then moved to the next. Six bolts held each mount; he would retorque all six on both amber units, then see if he could coax the red one back to amber. He worked clockwise, counting turns under his breath—one, two, three, pause, four, five, six. Sweat beaded on his forehead inside the helmet, trickled into his eyebrow, stung. He blinked it away and kept counting.
When the last amber bolt was snug he moved to the red mount. The fracture was visible now, a white vein running across the steel like lightning frozen mid-flash. He touched it with a gloved finger, felt the slight ridge. Not separated yet, but close. He opened the kit again, found the last tube of molecular epoxy, bit the nozzle with his teeth, and squeezed a thin bead along the crack. The epoxy smoked as it bonded, filling the fracture with ceramic grit that cured in thirty seconds. He held the mount steady until the smoke stopped, then wiped the excess with a rag. The LED stayed red, but the mount felt solid when he torqued the bolts. Sometimes solid was enough.
He closed the hatch, dogged the latches, and ran a field test. The reactor hummed, pitch unchanged. No new warnings. He exhaled a breath he had been holding since the first bolt and keyed the comm. "Reactor stabilizers torqued. Field variance within tolerance. Core temp steady at eight hundred kelvin." The words echoed down the empty bay and died. He marked the task complete on his wrist pad, then added a new line: "Epoxy exhausted. Need more." The list never shrank, it only changed clothes.
Karl pushed toward the battery racks. The racks stood like skeletal bookshelves, each slot holding a brick of lithium wrapped in impact foam. Of twelve bricks, four showed cracked cases, two were empty, three glowed soft amber, two pulsed healthy green, one was missing entirely. He needed every amp hour if he wanted to keep the heaters alive when the reactor cycled down for night mode. He pried the weakest amber brick free and hooked it to the diagnostic leads. The meter read sixty-two percent charge, but internal resistance spiked under load. He labeled the brick with a strip of tape: WEAK. The second amber brick dropped to forty percent the moment he applied a test load. He marked it: DEAD. He swapped both bricks to the charging queue, knowing they would steal power without giving much back, but even a trickle might keep the coffee maker alive another week. Coffee was memory, memory was morale.
He moved to the green bricks and tested load balance. They held steady, dumping thirty amps without complaint. Good. He configured the power manager to treat the greens as primary, the reactor as secondary, and the weak bricks as emergency reserve. The screen acknowledged the logic with a dull beep. Lights throughout the ship brightened a fraction, then settled. Karl felt the faint vibration in the deck as the heaters kicked higher. Warmth crawled up his legs, and he realized how cold he had been. He allowed himself one shiver, then sealed the battery locker and pushed away.
Next on the silent checklist was water. The recycler sat in the corner like a battered washing machine, its intake hose patched with electrical tape and prayer. Karl opened the side panel and peered into the filtration maze. The main filter was black with sludge, the backup filter not much better. He pulled both cartridges, sealed them in waste bags, and swapped in the last two spares from storage. Nine filters left, he noted. After that he would be distilling urine in a pressure pot over the reactor housing. He had done it before, would do it again, but preferred not to think about the taste.
He primed the pump, listened to the motor cough, then catch, then hum. A trickle of clean water dripped into the reservoir. The drip became a stream, steady and clear. He filled a squeeze bulb, drank half, and felt the metallic chill slide into his stomach. Then he filled two plastic bladders, capped them, and stored them behind the pilot chair. Routine, routine, routine. The ship ran on electricity and momentum, he ran on procedure. When both aligned, he survived.
Karl checked the wall chronometer. Ten hours until reactor auto-cycle. Ten hours to inspect the attitude thrusters, patch a slow leak in the crew quarters, and maybe eat the other half of the protein bar. He floated toward the tool cage, grabbed a coil of copper tubing and a handheld welder, and pushed himself aft. The corridor narrowed, lights dimmed to conserve power. His helmet lamp painted moving shadows that looked like ghosts until he stared them down. He passed the closed door of the medbay and did not look inside. The tape across the latch was still sealed. Some compartments were monuments, others were graves.
At the thruster bay he found the access panel hanging by one hinge. Inside, the fuel lines were cracked from thermal cycling, white frost blooming where compressed gas escaped. He traced the lines with a gloved finger, found three leaks, and began cutting replacement tubing. Each measurement he checked twice; waste was death. The welder sparked, brief and bright, flooding the bay with white light that died as quickly as it lived. He worked in pockets of darkness, soldering copper, tightening fittings, listening to the hiss fade to silence. When the last joint cooled he pressurized the line and watched the gauge hold steady. No drop. He exhaled a cloud that fogged the visor, then cleared it with a wipe.
He cycled the thruster valve. A muted thump answered, and the ship shuddered gently. The attitude computer woke, ran a self-test, and reported all greens. For the first time in weeks the *Folly* could turn without grinding metal. Karl closed the panel, secured the latch with a fresh wire seal, and marked the task complete on his wrist pad. The list was still long, but every crossed line was a stay of execution. He pushed toward the galley nook, a closet-sized space with a dead microwave and a locker of rations. The protein bar waited like a promise he was not sure he wanted to keep. He broke it in half, re-wrapped the smaller piece, and ate the larger. It tasted like salted cardboard, but cardboard kept him upright.
Twelve hours of repair, twelve small victories. The ship groaned around him, metal expanding as heaters pushed back the cold. Karl floated to the cockpit, strapped in, and ran a full status sweep. Reactor steady, batteries balanced, water flowing, thrusters alive, hull holding. He stared at the board and saw more green than red. The sight hurt his eyes. He logged the moment, time-stamped it, and saved it to the archive. Then he dimmed the lights, let the hum of the ship sink into his bones, and closed his eyes without fear of waking up dead. Outside, the void remained indifferent, but inside, the *Folly* whispered maybe.