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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 exchanger.
The inner core of the power plant had an emergency vent to the exterior, so as to blow plasma or super hot vapors out to vacuum should it ever be necessary. Sally used it this time, however, to simply cool off the core -- now shut off, but still lethally hot. When that looked good, she took a