Orphans - Kevin Killiany [26]
“Soloman was injured in the explosion,” Kairn answered.
The leader motioned the two riders at the left end of the semicircle forward. One dismounted, towering even taller than Stevens had expected, and bowed to Soloman in what appeared to be respect.
With a gesture to the rest of them to follow, the leader turned his mount and the riders headed back the way they had come at a slow walk.
“It seems we’ve been invited to join them,” Tev said dryly.
Kairn grunted.
With no choice, the party followed the horsemen.
Lauoc hung back and Stevens turned to see the Bajoran hastily arranging stones in an arrow that pointed in the direction the natives were taking them.
He did not ask who it was for.
CHAPTER
14
Domenica Corsi kept her eyes fixed firmly on the job in front of her. Just at the edge of her vision, the stars shot so quickly over the horizon she expected warp streaks. It was difficult enough to work with tools that wanted to fling themselves into space without having to cope with her own vertigo.
Though the Klingon beacon network told her exactly where she was—and that there were a dozen other workers within sight of her—over three thousand square kilometers of curving metal hull could be overwhelming. It was easy to imagine herself alone on a blue metal plane beneath an endlessly rolling sky.
She set her spanner too near the edge of the gravimetric bubble and it began to slide toward the horizon. She caught it with the absentminded skill of long practice, setting it near the personal generator without taking her eyes off the open junction panel.
This phase of the job was simple, and dangerously monotonous in its simplicity. Someday when she had the time, she’d compute the odds on a culture that had never developed active scanning technology choosing hovinga iridium to insulate their conduits. For now, the sensor-blocking compound meant all available personnel—i.e., anyone not already pulling a double shift trying to get the colony vessel’s engines working—had to be on the surface checking tens of thousands of hardwire connections by hand.
Fortunately, ninety-nine percent of the navigational and control network was sealed within the duranium hull, intact except for the region the Dancidii had blasted. The network itself was integral to the hull, laid out before the builders had known where the rockets would need to be placed to balance the ship’s rotation. Each unit was simply mounted on the surface and plugged into the network. That meant external junction boxes at each of the twelve hundred rotational rockets that had to be inspected.
Having external junction boxes on a system like this made no sense to Corsi. On the other hand, sending thousands of people on a two-thousand-year journey inside a tin can because there just might be a habitable world at the other end made even less sense. There was probably some perfectly logical engineering reason for the setup. Like maybe they just came that way.
Green, green, green, green, green, green, green, purple,she read the telltales. Damn.
“Corsi to da Vinci. ”
“Go ahead, Commander.”Haznedl’s voice came crisp and clear. This far from the bow, there was no interference at all.
“I’ve got a break between thrusters nine-sixteen and,” she checked her padd, “seven-two-nine.” She stood and, blocking the view of the horizon with one hand, surveyed the hull as far as she could. “No visible surface damage,” she reported.
“Confirmed,”Haznedl replied. “Disconnects have been reported between unit seven-two-nine and units seven-one-one and three-oh-six as well.”
Corsi consulted her padd again, this time checking the inspection schedule. Thruster seven-two-nine was scheduled to be checked by a Klingon team in thirty-six hours. The next step was obvious, but in any cross-cultural cooperative effort it was best to be sure everyone agreed what obvious meant.
“Bridge, seven-two-nine is less than a kilometer from here. Please ask Commander Gomez to advise the Klingons I wish to divert