Book 3: Chapter 27: Repairs
Herschel
July 2227
Delta Pavonis
There’s no real reason for your Virtual Reality self to be tense. I knew that. It didn’t help. I found myself gritting my teeth so hard that my jaw began to ache.
After months of investigation and tinkering, Neil and I were ready to try activating the power core. We had the nuclear deterrent sitting in the middle of the central corridor, just in case. But truthfully, neither of us really thought it would be necessary. The wiring had eventually succumbed to our detective work, and we were confident that we would be able to power up the core without powering up the bays.
Which still left the question of activating the power core. Since we’d never seen this particular technology before, there was a lot of guesswork involved. Needless to say, guesswork and power cores did not go well together.
We weren’t total idiots—we were standing off more than a thousand klicks, while the roamers and drones ran through the final steps. I idly wondered, for a moment, if the AMIs ever got tired of wearing the red shirts. Probably not, or they’d have gone on strike by now.
“If this doesn’t work, we’re going to be in deep doo-doo.” Neil glanced sideways at me.
“Better than being a cloud of ionized gas. And even if it does work, there are going to be questions, Neil. We really should have announced the find on the first day.”