I awoke to the feeling of a bottle bouncing off my head. I opened my eyes in time to see the bottle descend again. Bonk.

“Meep!”

The Wampus Cat vocalized her complaints, likely not for the first time. I sat up, narrowly avoiding being stuck again. I looked down at the creature. She didn’t seem to have grown much, if at all. It had been nearly a week since she’d emerged from the small stasis box just in time to miss a pressurized disinfectant spray.

“You’re hungry again, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Meep!” She flung the bottle at me with surprising strength. It bounced off my chest this time.

“Gravity makes things fall down. You have to aim higher to account for it,” I told her as I scooped the little fuzzball up with one hand.

There were two empty bottles nearby in addition to the one that had just been thrown at me, so I gathered those up as well. There was one more full bottle left. It was on the desk nearby. Either it was too high for her to reach or she didn’t know it was there.

Well, that or she just wanted to swat me with a bottle again. There was no knowing with cats. Especially not genetically engineered six legged super cat-dog-spider-and-who-knew-what-else things.

I fetched the bottle and applied it to the little beastie, who took to it with happy noises. In doing so I caught a whiff of my own body odor. It did not smell good. Not covered in zombie gore bad, but not good, either.

The Wampus Cat followed me into the shower, dragging her bottle determinedly with her. The only time we’d been apart had been when I gave her to Doctor Delveccio for safekeeping, back on the docks. I got the impression that she hadn’t forgiven me for that yet, given her dislike of letting me out of her sight.

It occurred to me as I was hunting for clean clothes, sweeping up the piled dirty ones to put in the refresher. For the first time in over seven years I was in a place that had no zombies. No live ones anyway, as there were still corpses around. It was a strange feeling.

We still had to maintain the ship, though. I exited the cabin in an unfamiliar suit of clothes. The shirt still felt too tight to me, but the rest of the wardrobe was serviceable. Even the boots fit, surprisingly enough.

I headed for the bridge, expecting to find Doctor Delveccio there, but it was empty. The same with the mess hall. While there I snagged a meal bar to eat and two more for later.

“Are you awake, Doctor Zolnikov?” The voice came over the intercom. I should have thought of that.

“Yes, I am here.”

“Ah, good. We’re working on the septic system today. While the drains work, the waste processing facility has been offline for quite a while. We need to release the bacteria from stasis and get the process moving so the toilets don’t get backed up. Meet me in engineering and I’ll walk you through where we’re at.”

The next two days were filled with tasks like that. I had never seen the guts of a ship before. It was interesting. All the various systems that worked together to keep the ship operational and the crew from living in their own filth and breathing toxic soup needed to be properly started up and maintained.

There were filters to be changed, valves to be flushed, various bacteria and algae cultures to test to make sure that they were healthy and working properly. My experience working the waste processing plant while I was in college actually came in handy for once as I helped gather up all the various remains that the zombies left behind once my shift was over.

I spoke with Sam about creating a device that could remotely detect the power nodes that I’d found so far. He was intrigued by the notion.

“And these power nodes, they just spontaneously generate power?”

“I have no idea, to be honest. I know they feed power to the nanites and allow them to replicate so long as they have the resources on hand to produce more.”

“So where’s the fuel source? Power generation needs fuel.” Sam frowned, a thinking expression on his face.

“That is an excellent question that I do not have an answer to. When I analyze something with my nanites I have to keep my threads away from higher power lines as those would fry them. As for fuel sources, I have not seen anything that I could identify as such yet.

“That does not mean that there is no source of fuel. Only that I haven’t been looking for it specifically and I have not seen something I could assume was such so far.”

“You know, scientists have been chasing Zero Point Energy for longer than you and I have been alive,” the engineer said, his words spilling out like he could no longer hold them in.

“I know we don’t have any solid evidence of it yet, but just bear with me for a moment. If these power nodes are harvesting ZPE, even in the relatively tiny amounts that you describe, this could be huge.”

It made sense, of course, and I said so.

“Rapid growth in technology has nearly always been linked to increased efficiency in power generation and storage. A node that could be worn on the body could enable me to use my nanites without draining my own stamina and energy. Clusters of them could power small devices until they failed due to metal fatigue and physical damage.”

“More than that, Z,” he said. “Energy density means these could be used to power spaceships that never ran out of fuel. Heck, they could power entire cities, Just imagine, power nodes woven into walls and floors. Heck, power armor that could run for decades without charging, mounting even heavier armor and weapons.

“Energy weapons would finally become practical to carry. Whoever had a monopoly on this tech could rule the entire solar system.”

“And we could finally defeat the zombies for good. Lure them in with automated traps and burn them down with lasers...” The possibilities captivated me. From the look on his face, it captivated Sam, too.

“Are you two finished with the hydroponics pump system yet? Once we get the plants revived, that will take some of the load off the algae trays. And give us fresh vegetables, too!”

Sam started in surprise as Doctor Delveccio’s voice came over the intercom.

“Uh, still working on it. We’ll have it up and running in a minute!” It sounded guilty, even to me.

“Right. Sure you are.” Her words carried a heavy does of sarcasm.

“Busted.” He chuckled weakly. “Well, we’d best get back to it.”

And we did.

We returned to the mess hall once the shift was over to eat a meal together. Doctor Delveccio insisted we gather at least once a day like that. Sam looked forward to the meal with anticipation. I had learned that arguing was pointless. My insistence that meal bars were entirely sufficient fell on deaf catgirl ears.

Not that Doctor Delveccio was actually deaf.

“Okay, so tomorrow we will be meeting up with the Pride and attempting to bring her to a stop. That’s the first task. Then we have to decide if there’s enough fuel in the tank to take the ship and the ice back to Walker.

“Sam, how are we looking on the maintenance schedule?”

“Looking pretty good so far, Del. There are a few minor issues that I want to take a look at in more detail, and Doc Z’s power nodes are fascinating as all heck. But we need to make sure the ship is in good shape for the crew of the pride, just in case we can’t bring their ship back with us.”

None of us wanted the people we’d come to know in the past few days to lose their ship. But physics was not something that we could cheat. Either the ship could be saved or it couldn’t.

“Alright, thanks Sam. Z, I know you’ve been cleaning up the bodies when you’re off shift. Thank you for that, by the way. You get some rest after this. Sam, we still need to clean out the cabins in officer country, just in case. I’ll be taking a nap midshift so I am ready when we match speed with the Pride. Are you okay staying up a little later once we meet up?”

“Sure thing.”

“Okay then. Let’s meet up, say, 16:30 tomorrow while we’re on approach.”

* * *

A part of me was waiting for the other shoe to drop as we approached Maggie’s Pride. It looked small on the forward screen, but rapidly grew larger.

The ship itself was relatively small. Large engines dominated the craft, with what looked like massive claws gripping a block of ice that appeared to be larger than a skyscraper, if I was reading the scale correctly.

“Maggies Pride, Hog Mauler. We’re coming up on you now and you should be able to see our running lights as we pass over you in a few minutes. Is Magnus awake over there?” Doctor Delveccio had the conn, preparing to decelerate and match speed once we were in position.

“Hog Mauler, Maggie’s Pride. Yeah, the old coot is awake. Hang on a tick and I’ll get him.”

The older we’d seen before appeared on the screen. She turned and appeared to yell something that the com did not pick up, facing away from the camera. A moment later Magnus came into view, carrying a sleeping child on his hip that he passed off to the woman. I still didn’t know her name.

“Howdy there kids. You folks about ready to do this thing?”

“Just tell me where you want me to link up on the other side of the block.”

“You know how to rig a capture field over the cargo?”

“I grew up in the belt, old timer,” she replied. “Just need those coordinates, so gimme.”

The old man chuckled and sent over a string of digits. I assumed they meant something to Doctor Delveccio. And probably Sam.

We flew over the ship, flipping over and rolling to face the massive chunk of ice as our pilot lined up the claws on the Hog Mauler. The claws did not actually touch the ice as they spread a familiar looking field of energy over it.

“Alright Sam, are we good to push?”

“Let ‘er rip, Del!”

Sam’s voice came over the intercom. He remained in engineering to monitor the engines and the reactor. I was still not completely comfortable with the power nodes being in the reactor circuit. Our engineer had assured me that all his tests had come back solid.

I still worried, though. We hadn’t revisited the topic after our discussion yet. There were still plans to make, as well.

There was no sensation of motion, but I could see the fields in front of the ship expanding as the Hog Mauler’s mighty engines roared, steadily slowing several thousand tons of ice and ship. Cheers came over the com as the crew from the other ship saw the bloom of our exhaust extending out into space.

“It will take around twenty hours of constant thrust to bring us to a stop. According to the calculations that Sam and Magnus agreed on, it looks like we can all make it back to Walker. It’ll just take another day, day and a half to make the trip as we’ve got a lot more mass to move around on the trip back.”

“Will we be good on fuel?” I asked.

“Yeah, we’re good. Still have a bit left in the tank once we get back to Walker, and there’s bound to be fuel stores aboard station still. Once we clear the fines we should be able to top off the tanks, no problem. The question is, what are we going to do next once we get back?”

“I think that’s something we need to discuss as a group. With the crew from the Maggie’s Pride as well, I think. Are they going to stay with us? Can we even retake the station, like Sam thinks? It’s going to be dangerous.”

“Says the man that plays tag with hordes and wrestles giants.”

“I was in an exosuit at the time, if you’ll remember. And that was a special case.”

“You’re a special case.”

“He really is,” came a new voice over the com. It belonged to a different man, younger looking than Magnus but older than Sam in appearance. His salt and pepper hair and trim beard gave him a mature, but weathered look.

“We will never forget what you did for us, and what you continue to do for us today. If there’s ever anything we can do-”

“Ah, shut it, mate. We’re spacers. What’s rule nine?”

Even I knew this one. There were eight public rules that spacers followed. Practical things, like helmets required in sections that connected to space and the like. The ninth rule was unwritten, but as important to spacers as all the rest.

“Leave no man behind.”

“That’s right. So don’t be offering no open ended debts to me and mine, Pride. You folks come on over once we hit zero velocity and we’ll have us a feast. Bring all the little children along, too. Walker’s mess is fully stocked, and we might even have some fresh tomatoes by tomorrow.”

“Real tomatoes?”

“On my word. The hydroponics was locked down while the ship was asleep, but the plants are growing now. We’d be glad to show off our garden once you all come to visit.”

Meeting more people was not something I particularly wanted to do. I had successfully put off thinking about that while working on maintaining the ship. But it was beginning to look like I didn’t have any choice.