NirSighed Chapter Fourteen: Put It Back Together
"Everything looks to be all right," Simon said for the third time as he moved the ultrasound wand over the third stomach that day.
"Are you sure?" Emilia Sage asked, peering over at the screen. "Looks like weather radar to me."
Simon gave her a smile, then pointed with his free, gloved hand to the screen. "See that right there? Those are your baby's feet."
"Ohh," Emilia said. "I guess they do look like feet. Do you know if it's a boy or girl?"
"We can check if you would like," Simon responded. "Are you sure you want to do that?"
Emilia hesitated for a moment, then said, "No. Never mind. It will be a surprise."
"Good!" Carole said from the door. She, like Jimena and Emilia, had chosen not to discover her baby's sex. "We're all in for a surprise."
Kaylee appeared behind Carole. "Carole? If you're all done, we need t' talk about the engine."
"Oh, right," Carole said. "Yeah, let's go take care of that."
"Be careful," Simon cautioned them, but it wasn't clear who he was speaking to.
"We will be," Kaylee assured him, and she led Carole away from Stoïque's infirmary. "So, what seems t' be the trouble with the engine?"
"It just refuses to turn," Carole replied. "We've been stuck here two weeks, nothing we do to it seems to fix it. But we're desperate to get to Irving-Keene before our deadline."
"Is it a flexible deadline?" Kaylee asked as she hauled the door to the engine room open.
"It was, two weeks ago," Carole answered. "It isn't anymore."
"What's yer cargo?" Kaylee questioned, peering in at the engine.
"Ohh, you misunderstood me, Kaylee," Carole said with a gentle smile. "We're not delivering anything… well, no, that's incorrect as well. We have to get to Irving-Keene before the babies come."
"Oh. Well, that complicates things," Kaylee said, then disappeared under the engine. A moment later, she said, "I see yer problem."
"Is it fixable?"
"Not here," Kaylee answered. "We're gonna haveta tow you if you're gonna to make it, and you know as well as I do that that's never a good solution for the situation."
"Are you sure it's the only way?" Carole asked.
Kaylee reappeared from under the engine. "Yes. It is the only way if yer desperate t' get t' Irving-Keene before the babies come."
Carole sighed. "Is it the major heat transformer?"
"Yes, that's shot, but I'd prob'ly wager that yer major, most pressin' problem right now is the thrusters. They're blown all t' hell, and I know they don't have anywhere to fix that on Breakstaff." Kaylee stood up and wiped her greasy hands on her coveralls. "You'd better tell ever' body t' get on over t' Serenity; we'll have t' carry the extra bodies since there's no way yer ship can carry the tow weight now. Get what ya need and we'll rig yer ship fer towin'."
It took forty minutes and the combined efforts of Kaylee, Nir, and Jayne to ready Stoïque for towing. Nir seemed capable with machinery, but Jayne had to be constantly supervised. "You'd think ya hadn't lived on a ship a'fore," Kaylee grumbled as she redid one of the catches. "Ya do this wrong, the ship goes flyin' off in ta the black and they haveta live with us." To Nir, she said, "That's right, use the circular wrench. That cable needs to be as tight as you can make it."
"Understandable, Miss Frye," Nir said, leaning over the thick cable connecting Stoïque to Serenity. With a click of the circular wrench, the cable was securely latched into place. "I do hope this is not the only thing connecting these two ships."
"Kin I go have some lunch?" Jayne demanded from his corner, where he was struggling with bolts.
"Hang on, we're almost done here," Kaylee said to Jayne, who was still attempting to grasp the bolts with his stripping wrench. "Nir, is the cable tight?"
"Tight as it is ever going to be," Nir replied with a final tug on the circular wrench. "How long before the BluePac is set off?"
Kaylee hollered up towards Serenity's open hatch, "Wash! How long til ya detonate the BluePac?"
Wash's voice came back, tinny and far away: "Twenty minutes! Antony and Kolya went back for some food supplies!"
"All done," Jayne grunted.
Kaylee checked over the bolts Jayne had been responsible for securing. "Yer bolts are too loose. Stoïque's gonna fly off in ta the black if'n we don't do this right."
"Well then, YOU do it," Jayne said crossly, dropping the stripping wrench.
Kaylee obligingly picked it up and set to work correcting Jayne's bad work.
Twenty minutes later, Wash and Zoë came out from Serenity with the BluePac. It was the size of a large footlocker, and resembled a large, blue, extremely dense pillow with a short tube connected to one corner. Wash set the BluePac and an additional, smaller box down in front of Kaylee. "Yer BluePac, milady."
"Thank ya kindly, Wash," Kaylee said. "We'll have her up 'n runnin' in a minute here."
She knelt in front of the BluePac and removed a small, square, black box from one of her coverall pockets. The box had a hinged lid, kept closed with a small painted-black catch, and in the center of the lid was a round red button. Kaylee flipped open the catch to reveal a handful of shiny gold three-pronged plugs, one prong facing away from her and two facing towards her. From the other box Wash had brought, she removed a length of clear tubing. Quickly she jammed the single-prong end of the plug into the tube attached to the BluePac. Then she connected the additional tubing to the other two prongs of the gold plug, forming a circle of tubing around the outside of the BluePac.
"What's that do fer us?" Jayne asked as he watched Kaylee fiddle with the tubing and plugs.
"It keeps the air pressure constant in the BluePac while it surrounds the other ship so the air pressure gyros don't think they're being overwhelmed and decide to explode on us," Kaylee explained. "Any additional pressure that needs t' be distributed will come out through this circuit and be redistributed throughout the ship. If we don't do this, it's more likely that the pressure gyros will be too caught-up in trying t' redistribute the air and they'll forget to cool the engines, the ship will explode, and because we'll be connected t' them, we'd be screwed too."
"Not a happy little circuit," Wash remarked.
"No, but this should hold 'til we kin get t' Irving-Keene," Kaylee said.
"And if it doesn't?" Zoë asked.
"Then we'll have t' suit up 'n come out here 'n fix it. That ain't the first plan, o' course, but it'll do in a pinch," Kaylee replied.
"You wanna put some spray-hold on that circuit?" Jayne asked, looking suspiciously at Kaylee's mess of tubing.
"Spray-hold disintegrates in the black," Wash reminded Jayne.
"Oh, yeah."
"D' we have any sticky-hold?" Kaylee wondered. "That might hold the circuit."
"Brought some fer the occasion," Wash said, and dipped into a pocket on his vest, coming out with a wad of gray-white sticky-hold, which he passed over to Kaylee. "This enough?"
"Should work." Kaylee set about smearing sticky-hold on the tubing circuits, then looked over at the cable connecting the two ships. "Ya think we should put some on there too?""
"Might be a good idea," Nir said, "even though that cable is as tight as it's ever going to be."
"It is awful tight," Kaylee agreed. "I guess that's all we can do then."
They headed back into Serenity, Kaylee giving the BluePac and its surrounding circuits one final glance before saying, "'Kay, Wash, let 'er go."
The pilot obligingly took the small black box from her and mashed the red button in the center of it. There was a quiet whirr and an almost imperceptible beep, and then the BluePac began to expand, a laser sight swinging about the outside of Stoïque. Once the laser sight had determined the size and weight of the ship, the laser-driven grid began to appear on Stoïque's hull. The blue, tarp-like material began to expand over the ship, until Stoïque was completely covered in a safety laser grid and blue tarp. Kaylee knelt near the cable's end and gave it a tug. "Seems fine," she said. "Cap'n ready t' go?"
"Let's go find out," Nir suggested, and led the way into the galley.