Escape from Mars

ADVENTURER: T-PLUS 8 HOURS 
  Waiting, not able to do anything to help was the hardest part of the ordeal so far. Ty knew at this point, there was nothing more he could do to help. He was forced to silently watch as Anderson’s engineers continued to shut down whatever circuit and system they could to reduce the power bleeding away from the containment batteries. 
  He thought also of the team of engineers working in the deck beneath them trying to repair the severed main power buss. There had been two. Anderson was certain they could repair it given time. Once repaired they would have the full output of their main generators. But that was at best an hour away. 
  In the mean time, they worked by the light of emergency light panels since they didn’t draw power from the power cells. It was unusual to have such subdued lighting in the engineering space. Like everything that happened up to now, what he thought would happen hadn’t and what he never thought would happen, did. Ty kept part of his attention focused on the readout that plotted the current and projected power level of the power packs. The power had unexpectedly fluctuated and dropped below the line McPherson had made. His team was working trying to conserve enough power for them to make the jump. 
  Unlike the freighters that had jumped, the Adventurer with its military grade jump targeting system could safely make a jump much closer to a star. But for the time, they still had to wait. 
  Ty suppressed the urge to say something, knowing full well that everything that could be done, Anderson was doing. Ty turned back to the other nemesis pursuing the Adventurer, the last Aatarr battleship. According to the last reading he’d taken, the gargantuan ship was now thirty minutes from being in effective firing range of its primary directed energy weapons. 
  Before today, he would not have worried about the ship because they would normally be long gone before it arrived. But after today, he dared not allow himself the luxury of thinking they were out of danger. He didn’t know how much more the Aatarr had to give with its engines. The drive flare of its electric drive was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye from the Adventurer. From his perspective, it shown like a fingernail sized feathery wisp of light aimed above the solar ecliptic pointing away from the sun. He was in awe of the amount of energy it represented. 
  “Sir?” Anderson called out to him. She was feeling better and had resumed her post. 
  “Yes, chief,” he replied automatically. 
  “I’m suggesting we shut off gravity everywhere but where McPherson is working and in the infirmary. It’ll save us several kilowatts of power.” 
  “Sure. Do it,” he said. 
  “Ok, hang on.” 
  Nothing happened. He heard some muttered obscenities. 
  “What happened, Chief?” 
  “A lot of the gravity grid is not responding due to battle damage. About half the ship is shut down and the switching circuitry just failed. We can’t get the rest shut down soon enough to help out.” 
  “Is it working anywhere else besides here, that’s still inhabitable?” 
  “Charlie deck, above us. And the infirmary on Echo deck.” 
  He nodded his head in approval. Ty glanced at the power display, the level of power bleeding out of the batteries dropped a little. Knowing what it meant, he wished it were at zero. 
  “It has reduced the amount of power bleeding from the batteries. I’ll take it. I am going to need to look at that Aatarr soon. We need to know what he’s up to.” 
  She came over to his station. “I’m making a small change in the charts here,” she said. She entered a few changes into the chart properties. When she finished, the remaining power chart looked like a stack of thin rectangles. 
  “Each segment here,” she said as she pointed to the chart, “represents fifteen minutes of power to run the containment fields. Jumping is going to bring this graph down to here.” She pointed at the place on the chart showing about four hours of power would be left after the jump. “That’s all the reserve you have until we get the buss fixed.” 
  Ty nodded and Anderson walked back to her station. Twenty minutes and we’re out of this nightmare he thought. He smiled at the hope that they’d be gone ten minutes before the Aatarr could shoot at him.