Page 28 of Adrift!
As if rotten tomatoes were flying her way, she pelted back to the atmo-hall.
Heart beating too fast, she clambered over a huge hose blocking the portal. Her gaze arrowed to Ikaryo who was affixing a funnel to the upper curve of the hose near the tank of goo.
“When we divert power from the containment unit to pressurize filtration, the anomaly may escape,” Suvan was warning.
“The cinder seeds will provide most of the push,” Ikaryo said. “We just need enough flow in the lines to trigger the reaction.”
“Here you go,” Remy whispered as she passed him the jar.
“And my lucky bar rag?”
With a scoff, she flicked the purple fringe across his chest. “Like it matters.”
“It does, to me.” He dumped all the seeds into the funnel, his hand hovering over the release. “Captain?”
Nehivar had been prowling around an arch of pretty blue flowers but pivoted at the call. “Carbonated cleanser cocktail,” he rumbled. “I think I liked champagne better. Do it.”
“Lines are pressurized,” Delphine reported. “Just need some juice, literally.”
Ikaryo triggered the funnel release.
For half a second, nothing happened. Before Remy wondered what they could try next, a terrifying gurgling noise swelled in the hose. Orange bubbles leaked from the funnel attachment.
Half a second later, the distinctive fizzing sound of CO2 shot through the system.
Felicity clapped. “It’s working! Um, right?”
“Make sure all the outlets are open,” Ikaryo called. “And watch out. It’s gonna be a mess.” He glanced sidelong at Remy, his silvery eyes spinning in triumph. “Might need more bar rags.”
She couldn’t help answering him with a relieved smile of her own.
Their celebration was cut short by the chief engineer’s gruff voice emerging from Nehivar’s datpad. “Captain, I’ve been reviewing the ship’s status system by system, using a simulation of Ikaryo’s implant energy signature as a diagnostic reference key. Given the quantum tunneling we identified, I checked for any previously undetected connections.” Acerbic fake glee sliced through the technical terms. “And guess what?”
The captain sighed. “Please don’t make me play this game, Suvan.”
“No prize for you then. Or for any of us. There are signs of widespread interference. Just like the superbloom in the atmo-hall.”
Ikaryo glanced around at the acid-green slop streaked with orange, the silage curdling to a nasty brown. “This was the resonark?”
“Apparently romantic entanglement makes bactoalgae very happy,” Suvan said sourly. “Just don’t serenade waste reclamation next. We donotwant the decoupled recycle/remove outflow tracks mystically merging.”
Remy grimaced, noting Ikaryo doing the same. A wordless commentary on the chief’s disgusting allusion—or reluctance to sing with her again?
“How bad?” Nehivar asked.
“I would have said nothing lethal yet.”
“Would have?” Remy repeated, just as Ikaryo said, “Yet?”
“The linkages seem imperfect—minor fluctuations, insignificant disruptions, some slightly elevated levels of staticand signal artifacts. Mostly, the resonark isn’t syncing. Except…” The engineer hesitated, and in his silence, the low chittering of his repulsive pet was ominous. “As the harmonic resonance falters and fades, the effects of decoherence and then the collapse of all those weak connections could cascade without warning.”
Ignoring the overflowed bog brew, Remy sank to the edge of the algae tank. She’d already known the situation was bad—hijacked and adrift, remember?—so why did this seem suddenly worse?
“What are you saying, Chief?” With the back of one mucky hand, Felicity shoved back the loosened strands of her blond up-do. “That if the resonark dies, it will take the ship with it?”
When Griiek gulped, the little movement was shockingly loud in her thick throat, and she looked more green than usual. Delphine pulled the little Monbrakkan under her arm, murmuring reassurances that no one believed.
Suvan’s dour tone dropped like a bulkhead sealing off even that false hope. “And maybe worse.”
