Chapter Fifteen
***
ELODIE HUNCHED OVERthe table across from her dad, toying with the food he’d managed to create. Gummy pieces of popcorn sat in a cup of gelatin that was slowly dissolving. Balls of water teetered to the sides as she rolled them back and forth, her movements strained. She was captivated by what felt like a king’s ransom in water compared to the tiny gels they were given in the brig.
After weeks of no real food beyond the tasteless, chewy rations, she should’ve been ravenous, but she couldn’t manage to eat. Elodie pulled Gunner’s jacket further around her and shivered.
“What’s that?” she asked her dad. He had a contraption in his hands and several found tools and gadgets lying about.
“Found it hooked onto the wall outside our door. It’s an alarm but some of the older pieces are rusted out. The guts look serviceable though.”
“What’re you going to use it for?”
“Well,” he rubbed his lips, brow creasing, “if I can clean it up, I can switch its channel to broadcast and turn it into a distress beacon. But I’m aiming for a radio, something I can use to communicate instead of just broadcasting a canned message. Spacers are a little wary of distress beacons, we might just end up with more pirates. If we have communication, we have everything.”
Leave it to Dad to always be off the beaten path. A hopeful smile tugged her lips. “Good idea. Do you think you can get it to work?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On if I can find the parts,” he huffed. “But we’re surrounded by machines and we’re both damn good at keeping these things running. If we pull a transponder out of one of those ground vehicles I saw a little ways back and wire it directly to one of the secondary power rails in the ship to boost the signal, I can use it as a relay so the bridge won’t know where we are. The mains would be too dangerous. After that, maybe I can pull the two speakers out of this broken alarm and use one as a low-sensitivity microphone...”
“I can help,” she quickly added.
Her dad nodded. “You’ll need to. Your fingers are steadier than mine.”
An idea came to mind as she watched him cut a wire. “Dad, what if...what if we get this to work? If we send out a beacon or get back onto the network, we’ll have to have a location to broadcast. No one’s going to put in the effort to triangulate us without a reward, and we don’t have much to offer. But maybe we can get a government cruiser to come if we tell them it’s a disabled pirate ship.” Elodie leaned forward. “We’ll need the ship to stop long enough for that. We can make the ship stop.”
He lifted his eyes. “Break the machines?”
“Yes!”
Chesnik canted his head. “Near impossible with them running. But a good back-up idea. Hand me those tweezers.”
The odds of single-handedly stopping the ship were slim, but it was possible. With the hope of a functional beacon, she felt little more comfortable.If we can get a signal out maybe someone will come. If we can hide long enough...we can survive!
