Lilliana headed back towards the engine room as the Rebellion made the transition from faster-than-light to unpowered sublight cruising. Without any nearby points of reference, there was no visible difference between the two modes of travel, but Lilliana couldn’t help feeling uneasy.
To the sort of predators like the ship they’d so recently fled from, they were practically standing still.
“Here’s the offending bar,” Galatea said when Lilliana reached the engine room. The computer operator gestured to a single hexagonal bar of gold, which they’d extracted from the array. For safety purposes, it was now wrapped with a spiral of red tape, to distinguish it from any others.
“Regan, you’re going to have to try to reconfigure the engine to run on eight,” Lilliana said. “I know that would usually be Puff’s job, but you’ve helped her enough…”
“Hey, forget that! I’ve got a fresh bar o’ gold sittin’ up in me room,” Regan said. “I was gonna use it as the willy on a life-sized gold statue o’ meself, but this is at least as important as that.”
“As long as we’re contributing imaginary resources to the common weal, I suppose I should volunteer the services of my magical spaceship towing pony,” Galatea said. “The one that I do not actually have because it does not in fact exist.”
“Well, I suppose we should count our blessings, anyway,” Lilliana said. “If we hadn’t noticed the fake, we might all be dust in the lack of wind right now. How did you find out about it, for that matter?”
“It’s like this, the Gypsy,” Regan said. “I was just mindin’ my own business when I was visitated by an angel, like, and she said unto me, she said ‘Lo, for you have been gifted with false gold this day,’ and then she started to take off her…”
“Galatea, how did you find out?” Lilliana asked.
“I was of course, completely responsible,” Galatea said. “After watching Regan’s dismal performance with the multiscanner before, I did not believe for one second that she had operated it correctly and took it upon myself to commandeer the device for purposes of acquiring a second opinion.”
“But I did!” Regan protested. “Honestly, Gypsy Rose, I gave those bars a proper scannin’ and it said they was gold.”
“You clearly did nothing of the sort,” Galatea said, her voice dripping with unbecoming glee. “Even a cursory scan revealed that one of the bars contains a core of unstable alchemical reagents, carefully weighted to resemble an actual fuel bar.”
“Regan scanned them correctly,” Lilliana said. “Or if she didn’t, it doesn’t matter… I’d bet quite a bit that Roquelaire switched one of the bars afterwards. The only question is, why would Petrus–or whoever Roquelaire’s actually working for–want to blow up the Donna Stella?”
“For insurance purposes?” Galatea suggested.
“Maybe he’s a militant dadaist?” Regan said.
“We’ll puzzle it out later,” Lilliana said. “Regan, start altering the engine. Get it done sooner rather than later, if you can… we’re really vulnerable here.”
“Look, seriously, I’ll just run up to me room an’ grab the spare I’ve got there,” Regan said.
Lilliana narrowed her eyes and studied Regan’s face, looking for signs of an uncharacteristic truthfull streak.
“Bard, do you really have a gold bar in your room?” she asked
“Course I do,” Regan said. “If, ya know, it hasn’t been stolen by space wights or somethin’… but even if it has, I can get it back right quick-like.”
“Right,” Lilliana said. “Get to work on the engine, then. Keep the fake handy… if we’re attacked, we might have to risk plugging it back in and running.”
“No, but… ask Handjob,” Regan said. “She saw. Where’d she scuttle off to now?”
“Working, probably,” Galatea said. “She has a bad habit of doing that.”
“Girl’s got a lot o’ bad habits, I’ve noticed,” Regan said. “Look, I’ll go up right now an’ get the blamed thing to show ya.”
“Regan, we don’t have time,” Lilliana said. “We could be spotted by pirates or worse any minute.”
As if it had been waiting for just those words to be uttered, a harsh buzzing alarm filled the ship and red lights flashed on all the wall consoles.
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