The hatchling slept. The engines were a mess.

  Our top engine had shattered, sending pieces of warpstone and housing fragments in a plume, puncturing the access doors and blowing away a big enough chunk of the Bucket’s top armor to make the inside of the engine housing a complete vacuum. The explosion generated a power spike that fried a set of relays and jumped two different circuit breakers, which was what had caused the smoke in the corridor. Fortunately, a vacuum abhors fire. And debris. Anything that could have burned inside the engine was gone.

  I sealed all the holes in the access doors that I could find. The repair kit extruded sealant in fat, dirt-yellow streams that stank of chemicals and were sucked partway into the engine housing. I’d checked the pressure in the cargo bay and run in, forgetting about the lack of my mageshield. By the time Hao jogged in, wearing an orange emergency enviro-suit several sizes too small for her, the holes were patched, the ventilation system had pumped the cargo bay back to normal pressure, and all that remained was cleanup and repairs.

  Which weren’t going to happen.

  “The right Rexard is fried,” Hao said. “It shut down, though, so the stones are probably intact.”

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  “And the left one?” I asked, mostly to keep her talking. I could feel the vibrations coming from the engine through the soles of my boots. It was working.

  Hao opened the engine nacelle and poked the insides with her diagnostic tool-on-a-stick.

  “Not good,” she said. “The housing is unbalanced but cycling.”

  “Translation?”

  “The outer grain is resonating in tune with the power cycles from our fusion core, meaning about a hundred hertz. This in turn causes the magnetic housing to fluctuate and—”

  “Translation for the technologically challenged among us,” I said.

  “It will fly,” Hao said. “I wouldn’t want to push it past fifty percent. Anything below should be safe.”

  “Should, as in ‘the engine should not explode’?”

  That got me an angry look from beneath her bushy eyebrows, clearly visible through the enviro-suit’s clear face plate. I’d always wondered why enviro-suits didn’t use polarizers, until I had to determine the life signs of someone in a damaged suit that did come with polarizers. I ended up trying to conjure a thread of force from him, before realizing he was dead.

  “I did say reasonably sure,” Hao said.

  “Not blaming you,” I said, “but are you reasonably sure the engine will hold below fifty percent?”

  “No,” Hao said. “I’m sure.”

  I laughed.

  “That,” I said, “was a joke.”

  “No,” Hao said, deadpan. “That was a fact.”

  We returned to the cockpit, checking on the sleeping hatchling on the way. At least one life form on the Bucket was taking things in stride.

  I wished I could be so relaxed.