Intergalactic

Nicodemus Hallows was floating just above a chair in Binary Bloom’s main control room, though right now it controlled exactly nothing at all. Like the other two people in the room, he had tied himself to the chair, which was holding on to the floor with magnets. A bit of slack in the band he had used caused him to bounce around gently in the chair, mostly floating just above the place he should be sitting on.

The room was dark, with half a dozen candles providing a minimum amount of light. Just enough to see, not enough to read. They had been waiting for something to change for the past ten or so minutes. There was nothing else for Nicodemus to do but wait. The engineers were working on it. He was no engineer and would only be in the way.

Just then, the lights flickered, and after a short moment turned on fully. Nicodemus closed his eyes, blinded by the sudden brightness. It took him some seconds to adjust. The control consoles were restarting. Power had returned to Binary Bloom.

„Gonat“, he spoke to the man on his left, „leave the gravity field generators offline until we are running smoothly.“, then he turned to the woman on his right, „Dora, internal lighting first, that’ll let people around the station know that power is back.“

He glanced at his watch, then at the time display on the console. Like many small electronics, his watch had stopped working when the EMP hit. Today, Nicodemus congratulated him on being a fan of antique technology. His watch was not a smartwatch, but a really old fashioned one with hands. It was still showing the time of the EMP.

„25 minutes, give or take a bit.“, he mumbled to himself, comparing the two times.

While the console in front of him was running through self-diagnostics, an engineer floated into the room from the corridor leading towards the nearby reactor room.

„Two reactors are coming back. We don’t have a needed spare part for the third.“, he said, pushing himself towards Nicodemus.

„Got it.“, the governor said, turning to the controls. The display showed the system ready. Nicodemus pressed the intercom button, took a deep breath and spoke into the microphone: „Everyone, listen. Power has been restored but we lack full output. Until instructed otherwise, turn off electronics you don’t need, especially power-hungry devices like ovens or hologram units. Over the next minutes, we will bring gravity back up, at first very slowly so stuff that is floating around now settles down gently instead of crashing. Hold on to something and orient yourself towards the floor.“

Then he nodded towards Gonat: „Do as I said. Very gently until we have a quarter G or so.“

He turned around to see the engineer, named Masaki, holding on to the control console next to him. „Nico“, the man began, „The damage we’ve seen in the reactor room shouldn’t have been there.“

Nicodemus turned fully towards him, his eyebrows raised: „What do you mean?“

„Parts inside the shielding were fried. I don’t know details, I left as soon as possible to let you all know the situation.“

„Thanks.“, Nicodemus answered, „I’ll head down there as soon as we have some gravity and the core systems are running.“