Engineer Yili Curtiss was well on her way to solving Argent’s power and artificial gravity problem on her own when the whole room seemed to collapse into a loud metal heap at once.

One moment it was pitch black and Yili was working by memory and touch and the next everything was fully lit and the two Argent officers were on the floor amidst the scattered remains of relay access five and several dozen parts of the power monitoring mechanism.

Zony sat up and brushed herself off dramatically. “Hi.”

“How do you have power?” Yili asked. “The whole ship is dark.”

“I’ll tell you all about my magic spells later. I have one charge left in this thing, but the only other place on this ship we can teleport is to the brig. I figured out how to get it to provide a room-sized gravity field just a second ago. Took me two tries to find you.”

“Jumping into the brig isn’t very useful,” Yili replied, getting back to her feet and helping Zony up. “I wish you could restore power. We’ve got a big fleet full of big ships out there, and the last I heard they were headed our way.”

“The only other places this thing can go that I recognize are Barker’s Asteroid and the Dunkerque.”

“How about the bridge?”

Zony shook her head. “My working theory is we can only go where its been before unless we come up with the proper coordinates. Without exact data, we would likely rematerialize in an unfortunate place.”

“Well we don’t want to do that, do we?” Yili said, casting about for her field analysis scanner. “Can that thing maintain light for us for ten minutes before we go?”

“I think so,” Zony said. “What do you have in mind?”

“I think the skipper would appreciate it if we restored power before we fly off to some other planet. There it is.” Yili picked up the small device and opened the access panel next to the door. The manual system disengaged the track locks and the door slid to one side easily.

“I’ve got a working theory...” Yili said as she dropped the battery out of the sensor unit and rammed a new one into the slot in its place. The device lit up and booted. “Our enemies are using a power transfer scrambling technology of some kind. It works very effectively against our ships because I think whoever is using it knows our ships rather well.”

Zony followed Yili into the auxiliary power control room for Reactor Three. “The scrambler is a fleet technology?”

“Yep.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I invented it. Hold this.” Yili handed the sensor to Zony. She put on a pair of thickly insulated black gloves and opened a large metal door. She clamped both hands around a set of thick black wires and began tugging at them. She planted one foot on the wall and tugged harder until they ripped loose. Pieces of plastic and metal skittered and bounced along the floor. Yili dropped the wires, removed one glove and reached into the circuitry, gazing at the ceiling and obviously looking by touch for something. She found it and pulled it loose.

“Gimme.” Zony handed the sensor back to Yili. The engineer pondered the little device she had removed from deep inside Argent’s mechanism while she analyzed it with the sensor unit. “The good news is it doesn’t affect our batteries. So all we have to do is warm up the level three backups. These relays aren’t damaged at all.” Yili handed the sensor back to Zony and replaced the relay.

“Ever see an engineer jump start a strike battleship with a standard shop battery pack?”

“Nope, but there’s a first time for everything!” Zony said with a jaunty grin. Yili reached behind a metal frame on the opposite side of the room and retrieved a smooth, white device with rounded corners and edges about the size of a large gas can. She placed the device next to the relay console along the opposite wall and picked up two of the black wires she had yanked out of the access panel. In a few moments the relay console had booted.

“Dominique, this is Senior Lieutenant Yili Curtiss, Chief Engineering Officer of DSS Argent. Identifier Ghost Two Nine Four Six. Match voice print and acknowledge.”

“Affirmative, Yili. How can Argent help you today?”

Zony’s face lit up with a delighted smile. “How did you do that!?”

Yili smiled. “Dominique, I need to do a three-step cold start of Argent’s life support subsystems using only level three power sources. Advise on a thirty second delay and prepare to transfer power to intraship communications and activate the MC. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged, engineer. Standing by to activate life support at your command.”

“Perform cold restart in sequence and transmit safety warnings at sixty second intervals until further instructed. Curtiss out.”

Yili closed the cover on the relay console. “Argent will be back to full operation in about four minutes. I coded a message for the skipper in case any of our other ships are affected. Did you say that thing can take us to Barker’s Asteroid?” Yili was busy slapping new charger packs into her blaster pistols. She powered up a spare for Zony.

“It got me here. I’m not sure how, but I think it can put us on that rock the same way.”

Yili handed the signals officer a portable comm unit and a blaster. The intraship MC sounded an alert tone followed by Dominique’s pleasant voice.

“Attention all personnel. Attention all personnel. Engineering has initiated a cold restart of all activated level three power systems. Emergency gravity protocols are in effect. Stand by for re-activation of life support. All personnel secure by physical handholds. Repeat. All personnel secure by physical handholds. Stand by thirty seconds. Mark.”

“Take us to the big gun, lieutenant.” Yili said.

“Gladly.” Zony activated the unit and both officers vanished again.