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don't yell Sally, but, wouldn't just shutting off the AG be enough?
That's a big draw right there."
She sighed, but kept her temper. "Artificial Gravity uses a lot of power,
yes, which is why we'll shut it down too; but we're probably going to
eat up most of anything we save there by running the power tools --
they weren't designed to conserve energy, keep in mind. If we have to
use them three or four times before we get it right, then we
sure-as-defecation better have the power we need."
"What about the restart?" I asked her. "We'll need a couple of
megawatts to bring the system back up to critical."
"Only as a surge at the beginning, to stabilize the waveform. We'll run
a jumper outside to one of your neupacs. Weapons-grade accelerators
use capacitors for instant power for the first round, so we'll just wire
out that part of it from the aft gun. Then, when we're ready to start, you
fire the thing off, and the surge goes directly to the power plant down
here, instead of running through the weapon's system. I'll just have to
monkey-up a regulator of some kind to rectify the gun surge with the
power plant's needs."
"Should we tell the others?"
"Probably, but I can't deal with Bayern right now. You run and give
them the basics, while I disconnect the dead batteries. And tell them not
to bother me for a while. This will be hard enough without an idiot's
questions." And she gave me a hard look.
It was actually easier dealing with the captain than I expected, because
I kept the conversation on the technical side and he just nodded sagely
and acted like he understood and approved. Genness, on the other hand,

who was usually so nonplussed, seemed genuinely disturbed.
"We have to at least keep emergency comm open," he protested, "in
case we can't fix this problem."
"Who are we going to call, Gen?" I responded with a shake of my head.
"We're too far out for anybody to come get us in time. The only shot
we have here is for this to work, and it can only work if we have all
available power. Besides, we can always scrape together some juice for
comm, if it comes down to that. We'll want to tell Deegman what's
happened before we shut down, and what we're gonna to do about it.
Once the power plant is back up, we'll have to return to port ASAP --
without a decent set of emergency backup batteries, we don't want to
meet up with any bad guys out here."
"Can't we keep passives online then? They hardly pull any juice at all
on their own. I realize we'll be keeping computers down to minimum
levels, which means no sensor analyses, but I can handle those myself
if I have a little time. I mean, if we do get visitors, we ought to know
about it."
That seemed reasonable to me, but Sally had to think it over once I
relayed the request. Sensors on a Bechel are bundled together in two
preinstalled packages, with passives and actives sprinkled rather
equally along the port and starboard sides. Cut power, and they both go.
She ruminated for a bit, then said she could run a shunt to passives
through comp, since we'd be keeping low levels there active anyway.
This way we could still tap the tiny backup power cells in the sensor
suite (actually located in a bulkhead amidship), while still keeping one
eye open. This was a good idea, but I couldn't help but be a little
irritated: if anyone but Genness had asked her for this, she'd have
dismissed it out of hand and spat rivets.
Disconnecting dead batteries is just a matter of rerouting a few cable
connections, so she was ready with the shutdown at this stage. We set
everything up for manual deactivations, and made sure everybody
onboard had a flashlight or headlamp, had some water and ration bars
handy, and had gone to the fresher recently (we would have to use

emergency biowaste bags until this was done). Then we started pulling
plugs.
It really takes longer than you'd think to shut down systems that were
never meant to be shut down while in flight. There were virtual and
physical failsafes to bypass; checks and double-checks to make of each
system's own backup power supplies (if applicable); and, in two
particular cases, replacement of failing small, though vital, components
that had yet to show up on diagnostics. In a few hours, we were floating
in zero-g, draped in darkness, and swallowed in silence. Actually the
other two guys aboard were swallowed in silence -- engineering was
still subject to the bang/hiss of the atmosphere