Chapter 2 I Hated Having to Work on My Car… Much Less this.
It felt like I had been reading for weeks. Even though I mentally knew that it had only been a couple of days I still felt drained. The air scrubbers still worked enough that I had a couple of weeks of oxygen but I knew that if I didn't get the Manassas power plant back online and fix the K-F drive that I would be dead before long. Luckily, the Manassas had a full library of engineering and science books that were both on the theory and engineering of both the K-F drive and the Fusion plant. The chief Engineer and his staff had also kept ludicrously detailed notes on all of the quirks and repairs that they had made over the 6 months after the first misjump.
And that all led to this, this moment in the engine room where I had refueled the Fusion reactor and was about to do or die. I was by no means an expert, but I had hopefully learned enough to not die in this process. After holding my breath and exhaling after a ten count I flipped the switch to restart or explode the beast that I was dealing with. I blinked away stars for a couple of minutes after all of the lights switched on and the dull red of the emergency lights switched off. Tears flowed from my eyes as I realized I had staved off death for a little while longer.
Grabbing the pen and pad that I had filched from someone's locker I checked my notes against all of the readings on the terminal and made sure that I wasn't going to explode anytime soon. After I triple checked everything I made my way to the galley for a celebratory meal. While eating the MRE that I had found, I began to read over the inventory that the Noteputer that I had found had detailed on it. It seems that I awoke in the Quartermaster's main quarters and that he had kept very detailed logistical notes on everything that was both on the Manassas and the four Confederate dropships that were attached to the Warship. Of particular interest to me was the fact that apparently there were several field manufacturing cores kept on the Manassas. While they didn't detail any of the hard basics like a full field library had, they did have the details of how to manufacture double heat sinks and other assorted things that would be considered Lostech in this day and age. And while there was no first principles on any of those memory cores, there were a lot of science and engineering textbooks that were kept on hand by the engineering staff. This is what had allowed me to refurbish the Fusion reactor, and would hopefully help me to finish fixing the K-F drive like they had started to do.
After I had finished eating the most tasteless thing I had ever experienced, I floated over to the nearest crew quarters I could find and strapped myself into a hammock to sleep for the first time in over 24 hours.
After waking up from my long needed nap, I made my way to the bridge where I had moved all of the learning material that I had collected to. When I reached the Engineering chiefs chair, I strapped myself in and began to read and take notes. I had already been doing this for about 2 weeks before I had felt comfortable reactivating the Fusion drive and now I was about to do a deep dive into Science that I had never even wanted to understand.
Now, the basic principles of a K-F drive are actually quite similar to a SlipSpace drive from the Halo Universe on the surface, but the underlying physics are so beyond different that I had no knowledge base to work off of. And I was hoping that not having any knowledge of this science would allow me to finish the repairs that the Manassas' crew had begun and look at things with a fresh viewpoint.
A month and a half later…
"Dammit! Why is it always the left arm?" A voice echoed throughout the Warship's empty corridors as I swore angrily at having banged my arm into something while arms deep in the K-F drive. While working on the K-F drive I had programmed the Warship's autopilot to take me in a circular pattern at 1G so that I wouldn't continue to lose muscle mass in space. With that in mind, I had also frequented the ships gym in between studying and working on the mess that was the K-F drive. While I barely understood some of the math, the mechanical part while frustrating was surprisingly easy as long as you didn't hurt yourself on something accidentally.
"Alright Mark, time for a break." I said as I drank some water and headed out of the Engine room towards the training rooms. "Let's just set the sims to easy and blow some stuff up before we get down to the books again. How does that sound?"
Once I reached the training room I flipped on the lights and made my way to the sound system that was set up and hit play. At this point having spent so long in the Ship I no longer cared what the music was as long as I could hear another human's voice.
Thankfully, The weight room was located right next to the simulator and training room so I could get a solid workout in before hitting the sims. Now, before my arrival, I had been starting to put on weight in a way that I didn't like and now that I had nothing enjoyable to eat and nothing to do but eat, sleep, study, train, and attempt to fix the K-F Drive I had instead turned into a much better looking version of myself physically.
Three weeks later…
"Alright Mark, I think we have finished what was laid out in the Engineers notes." I said as I finished one last turn of the bolt holding the access panel on. "Let's finish up here and see if we can try and jump somewhere close to known space shall we."
After I got to the bridge I made my way to the Navigation workstation and put in a course for the Nadir point at the current 1G of speed it would take one more week before I could plot a jump out of here. I would be keeping my fingers crossed and praying that everything went according to plan