Rebooting Power in Space is Easy, I Guess?

Chaeyoung convinces herself everything is going well.

“Uhh, Javi, are you sure that the lights turning off should be a good sign we did it properly?” She takes a good look at the tangled wires they were trying to fix. Javier, her fellow crewmate, shrugs his shoulders in response and proceeds to meddle further. 

Chaeyoung feels uneasy as Javier twists the wires and connects them in their not-seemingly-correct places, “I think you should stop, Javi. What if we disturb something else?” 

“Relax, C. If something goes wrong, we’ll revert it back and work on it again.” He gives her a pat on her helmet and pulls out another tool. 

“But we worked too much on it already to revert it back! Oh, we’re so doomed to Malene,” Chaeyoung mumbles all the possible things their captain could say to them when she arrives from buying stocks for their inventory. All Javier tells her is to calm down but she’s not having it.

“I knew we should have called Valentina for this,” Chaeyoung murmurs in her helmet, trying to push Javier away from the panel but it looks more like they are wrestling.

“But she remotely is not interested in doing anything, what more of helping us?”

“At least she knows what she’s doing!”

And snap! They both turn their attention back to the wires, one of them split into two. They know they’re so doomed once everyone goes back inside. Chaeyoung squeaks out a worrying tone while Javier looks at it like it’s nothing big. From her right, she hears the engine whirr softer than it usually should, then it stops.

“Aww man, what are we gonna do? This is beyond our knowledge and capacity--”

“Nah wait, let me fix it--”

“No! Stop playing around, Javier!”

“I’m not even playing around, C!”

“Then don't do anything anymore! Everything gets worse the longer we try to fix this,”

Javier stares intently at her eyes, he could surely read her thoughts. She’s awfully a readable worrier so he huffs, “Fine.” He surrenders and raises his hands up, letting the tool float off. Chaeyoung chuckles with a hint of nervousness and catches it before it could float away. “Let’s just try calling Valentina, maybe she could cooperate or something,”

//

Valentina storms out of her quarters in anger, someone has disturbed her sleep by turning off the conditioning and flashing red headlights everywhere. Her annoying captain and the newbie leaving is a good sign for her that for at least three hours of her life are peaceful. She wonders what her other crewmates are doing right now.

“Oi, which of the two of you decided to mess with the ship at this wonderful hour?” She bellows to the common room as she makes her way towards the pantry. She is only met with deafening silence, unusual for the both of them because Chaeyoung fusses over everything Javier does. She thinks how this could be her day but turns upside down when the hull echoes a message about a power shutdown. Valentina makes her way to the hull, the screens flashing a warning sign. Complete power shutdown in 15 minutes. The screen reads and only the manual controls are available to move. 

“Why did it have to be today?” She heaves an exasperated sigh, thoughts going through her mind as to what she should do. She could call Malene, oh everything’s going to get worse if she finds out. She could find some reboot power button somewhere. “Oh, come here mami,” she flips out the cover as she finds the button labeling ‘Restart Power Source’, but out of luck it won’t work and the AI echoed something about repairing the external device first.

Valentine grumbles, pinching the bridge of her nose. She hated going out of the ship and doing maintenance, not because of some trauma but her lack of willingness to be outside especially today is her Lazy Day. She hurriedly puts on her suit and takes her helmet in between her right arm and side. She presses on the ‘Open Airlock’ button but it only displays ‘Unavailable’. 

“Are you kidding me?” She gets infuriated, how could the airlock be locked during a power outage? Just her luck, she sees her missing-in-action crewmate, Chaeyoung, floating by the window to her left. Valentina’s bulb lights and pulls out her telecoms from the pockets of her suit. She quickly scans to contacts and presses on Chaeyoung’s name.

“Val! Thank goodness you’re there! We can’t get back in,” She hears Chaeyoung’s sigh of relief and Valentina sighs herself. “Yeah, I can’t get out either. What the hell happened anyway?”

“Why is something wrong?”

“Power’s out, complete shutdown in ten.”

“Oh no, we’re so doomed,”

“Chae, chill.” Valentina hears Javier’s voice from the mic of Chaeyoung. So they are the ones who are behind all of this. “I can’t help it! We’ve messed it up, she's gonna have our heads for this,” Chaeyoung becomes frantic, Valentina could hear her breathe so rashly but she just rolled her eyes.

“It’s not the end of the world, Chae. Just a minor inconvenience,”

“How could you say minor when the whole power system is off?” Chaeyoung snaps in a panicky way and starts mumbling everything that could possibly happen to a ship with no power. 

Valentina strips off her suit and marches to the main controls. She takes a good look at their library to see any manuals on their ship. “Gotcha.” She exclaims, pulling out a book titled ‘ASTRA-147 Manual 1’. She quickly skims the table of contents, then the AI announces, complete power shutdown in 5. Well, they’re doomed.

“I think I’d rather have Malene cut my head off than wait for Val to actually help us do this,” Javier connects to their telecom, his jester voice annoying Valentina. “Shut up Jav, I’ll make sure of that one day,” She retorts back as her eyes turn to slits in scanning the ‘Manual Power Reboot’ page.

“Oi, Chae I got something for ‘ya,”

“Uhh, I think I’ll leave it to Javier.”

“Whatever, just do this. Make sure the blue end wire is attached to the first port and the magenta at the third, it’s the only ones that matter,”

Javier sticks in his hands to the panel and pulls the wires to their respective places, well according to Valentina. “Ok, all done.”

“Well you better be. Chae, latch the panel and Jav go to the engine panel. The last step from the outside should be there,” Valentina reads the manual carefully, hoping she won’t miss any instructions for them. She glances at the buttons in front and on top of her, “Jav, you there?”

“Yeah, what's the next thing boss? Oh wow, there’s a lot to press here,”

“Don’t touch anything, I swear--”

“Why don’t we chill and see what this does,” Javier starts pressing on a button, all the lights on the ship even the emergency lights turn off inside the ship. Valentina barks at him to turn it back on. 

“Javi, please stop doing that,” He sees Chaeyoung float to him from the corner of his helmet screen. He raises his arms in surrender, “why don’t you do the honors?” She retreats away quickly, going as far from the screen as possible. “You know I don’t want to do that,”

“So basically, you wasted your time here,”

“Basically someone had to watch you not get the ship to pieces!”

“Well, it seems like I’m too much of an airhead to do shit like everybody says so why don’t you do it?” Javier stares her down and Chaeyoung could feel the scorching through their helmet. She tries to make a comeback but Valentina pops in their comms. “Alright dorks, we’ve got two until complete shutdown and five ‘til newbie and cap comes back so are we arguing or what?”

Chaeyoung looks at Javier’s hand, which is pointing out to the screen. It feels like a challenge and she swallows everything because she’s got nothing to lose now. She prompts Valentina to tell her what to do and Chaeyoung keenly listens and brings out the orders.

“Ah! I messed up the pattern, it says I have to do it all over again,”

“Then do it, you’ve got the brains C,” Javier cheers her on while he watches her. They couldn’t see each other’s face through the helmets but Chaeyoung could feel his smugness. She feels her hand shake and her heart beating in her ears, there’s no way she could do this in less than a minute. Valentina’s bored voice seeps through the comms to tell her to do it again then. 

She could feel her whole left arm shaking in nervousness, afraid of messing the whole thing up and ending everything into wreckage. Her eyes are too attentive to watching her every move and glances to Javier to make sure she's doing it right. He just sits there unmoving, his arms crossed. She turns her attention back to the task, not bothering about whatever he wants to say about her lack of confidence anymore. Just as long as she finishes this thing.

Power rebooting in 60 seconds. It all felt like a clutch to Chaeyoung, she’s surprised she’s got this far.

Javier pats her back awfully hard and she drifts until she hits the ship. “Atta girl,” He unfolds his arms and glides back to the airlock. “Nice, now don’t disturb me.” Valentina announces on their comms before disconnecting.

Chaeyoung stays in her place for a couple of seconds, watching the numbers count down. She couldn’t believe she just did that, it’s small sure, but it feels like a big step to being confident with herself. She smiles to herself and pulls out her tablet from her leg pocket of her suit to check her next tasks.