Scrutinizing the reactor revealed a slightly larger problem. Namely, while the coolant and fuel injector pipes looked fine, the actual injectors were missing. In the case of the coolant, it would theoretically be fine if one dialled down the reactor every few days. But the fuel injector system was a problem that couldn't be brushed aside. Unfortunately, the injectors also weren't lying anywhere in the room, so they most likely weren't simply removed for maintenance. "The reactor isn't going to work," I simply said. At that, Noma turned first toward me and then looked at the large cylinder. "You see where the pipes reach the reactor? Normally, that's where the injectors would connect, but they're missing."

After a few more seconds of looking at the reactor, Noma turned back towards me. "Think you can fix it?"

"Nah, we don't have enough spare parts for that and I would rather not take apart our working ship just to hope this reactor even starts."

"Okay. You find anything else useful in here?" as she asked that, I had another look around the room. Especially the workbench had caught my interest. Unfortunately, though, most of the tools turned out either outdated or too bulky to carry around while exploring the rest of the ship. On a side note, apparently even the military used consumer-grade power tools. As a result, the compartments and lockers on the other side of the room were the next best thing to check out, and I made my way over there instead. They all had nameplates or labels screwed onto the doors.

Disappointingly, the insides were empty. No personal items or souvenirs from different colonies to snoop around in. The compartments mounted above the lockers were mainly labelled with the names of smaller spare parts. Most of them pretty standard stuff, although some seemed rather outdated, even for a vessel almost a century old. The last one, however, was labelled a promising 'Snacks'. Opening the compartment, though, revealed that reality was often disappointing.

In fact, this compartment seemed to be devoid of even the usual dust, as if to mock me for being hopeful. After closing the compartment again, I looked back toward Noma. "I think I am done here. To me, it looks like the crew didn't abandon ship in a hurry. They took any personal belongings, at least."

"Yeah, I already noticed that as well. Just raises the question of why they left in the first place, especially in the middle of nowhere. Any idea why the fuel injectors specifically are missing?"

"Hmmm, it's one of the easiest parts to remove, while still being crucial for the reactor to run... Maybe they planned to return to the ship one day and didn't want anybody to just stumble upon a running warship. Then they just forgot about it... or thought it not worth it for some reason?"

"I had similar thoughts, but why wouldn't they return? The ship seems to be in almost perfect condition from the outside." At that, I just shrugged, using both my shoulders and hands. It's a small gesture but one gets used to it pretty quickly when spending a lot of time in a suit. "No idea. But I'm ready to check on the engines if you are."

"Alright, let's go."

The engines are typically located directly below the reactor and that also held true here. While we still performed a breach, just like we had when going into the reactor room, I honestly believed there was no one but us on board. I think Noma thought so as well, but she just wanted to make sure.

The engines of any interstellar vessel could be separated into two distinct systems. The smaller - but no less important - was the 'sublight' engine. Usually, a couple of fusion drives linked directly to the reactor, and they were, technically speaking, the only real engines onboard. The system that most people meant when referring to the engines, though, was the massive array of ring-like structures I was looking at right now. The fluxspace engine. Not actually an engine, no matter from what angle one looked at it. It comprised two systems, the fluxspace generator, and the superflux inhibitors. The generator was also, like the engine as a whole, a misnomer, as it didn't generate the fluxspace itself, only the entry and exit points. It was also a rather small part of the whole machine, as most of the structure was taken up by the inhibitors.

While the mathematical formulas behind the phenomenon known as 'fluxspace' were pretty complex, one analogy that stuck with me from my time as a university freshman was the comparison to an air hockey table of all things. A ship, in that case, would be equivalent to the puck, the playable area would be the safe-to-traverse reaches of fluxspace and the barriers would be the superflux inhibitors, that prevent the ship from flying off into unstable areas known as superflux. The function of the mallets would be somewhat equivalent to the engines. They accelerate the ship to speeds that would be impossible in normal space, just continuously as opposed to the mallets' one-time boost. The only thing that didn't translate very well was the fluxspace generator itself, funnily enough.

The engine room of the Fuchsbau had two Levels. Pretty unusual on such a small ship, but if judged by the size of the engines, it was basically a requirement. We were currently on the upper level, which was mainly used to access the ring array. The biggest of the rings was over 30 meters in diameter and was mounted to the ceiling. The smaller circles were all positioned in parallel positions to the big one, making them look more like a disk with a small piece cut out in the middle than the group of rings they really were.

"Huh, someone actually went through the trouble of shutting it down properly. Usually, you see them just turned off in whatever position they were currently in." Noma didn't respond to that and instead just looked up at the machine.

The floor itself was arranged in a concave balcony with a semicircle cut out for the rings. You could also overlook the lower level from up here if you went closer to the edge. When coming into the room, there was a workbench similar to the one by the reactor to the left. On the right, however, were a bunch of replacement rings strapped to the walls and ceiling. Pretty standard stuff, all things considered.

"Not much here. Wanna head down?" I asked while heading towards the edge.

"Sure, but please tell me you're not planning to do what I think you're about to do."

"Of course not! Who do you take me for?" I said in an obviously mock-hurt tone, before continuing with a big grin I could no longer suppress, "Buuut... It's not every day you get to use a multimillion piece of equipment as a launchpad!" Noma just gave a defeated sigh and a slight shake of her helmet in response before following me. Once I arrived at the edge, I deactivated my boots and pushed myself toward the outermost ring, before grabbing onto it. Turning around, I could see Noma going the boring way and just using her mag-boots to walk off the edge and start walking on the ceiling before she turned towards me.

I put my boots against the outer ring, aimed myself toward the floor below me, and pushed off. Mid-flight, I turned around, so I would land feet first. A few seconds later, I touched the ground, reactivated my boots, and struck a pose with my arms stretched out. Noma, meanwhile, was slowly gliding to a spot beside me after having pushed herself off the ceiling, "Okay, dork."

"You're just jealous I got to do it first," I answered with fake smugness while having a look around. The engines of a ship were, in most cases, the last part of the ship for obvious reasons. There weren't many things that could withstand super-heated plasma being expelled at a significant fraction of the speed of light, after all.

The Fuchsbau had eight engines in total, four big ones at the very end of the ship and four smaller engines mounted on gimbals and accessible through the walls of the lower engine deck. Similar to the upper deck, there were spare parts and replacements strapped all across the room. The only wall not clustered with them was the one where the elevator was. Instead, a row of 12 lockers was positioned there, although I couldn't see any compartments for smaller spare parts. There also didn't seem to be a workbench here.

The lockers were, as expected, pretty empty, except for some nutri-bars someone had apparently forgotten when cleaning up. They mysteriously ended up in my pocket. So what if they were 60 years past their expiry date? They were vacuum-sealed, you know. Turning my attention toward the engines themselves though, I instantly noticed a problem similar to the one in the reactor room. While the pipes running from the reactor into the engines seemed fine, the connectors actually linking them to the engines were, again, missing. Without them, the risk of a plasma leak was basically guaranteed but I couldn't see any spare connectors among the replacements.

Saying as much to Noma, we had a brief discussion about how to go from here. There were basically three viable - and one impossible - plans of action we could follow.

Option one: we could gut the Fuchsbau of any valuable systems and either build them into the Northern Seal - Noma's personal freighter -  or sell them at the nearest shipyard. That should be the fastest and second most profitable option.

Second option: we could tug the entire ship with us. Now, unfortunately, that would mean travelling at flux point-one maximum, or in other words, turning the normally one-week-long trip back into a full month-long endeavour. We did have the supplies for that onboard though, and selling an almost perfectly working corvette to a private collector or maybe back to the government itself could earn us a pretty hefty sum.

And option three: We send a message to the nearest patrol craft and wait for them to arrive on the scene. We could also potentially 'salvage' any systems that might turn out particularly valuable for ourselves. The advantages of this option would be that we would get a reward for basically doing nothing and it shouldn't take all that long.

Or last (and probably impossible): We cannibalize the Northern Seal to repair the Fuchsbau instead. That was mainly suggested as a joke by me. Although the Corvette was in pretty good condition, that was relative to the fact that it was lying dormant for at least six decades, if not longer. The sudden reactivation of the reactor or the engines could lead to a whole slew of new problems. Plus, even if you ignored any weapon or marine personnel, the Lynx-Class had a standard crew complement of over 30 sailors so it was clear that we would be in way over our heads. Thankfully, we didn't have to commit to one option right now, and I wanted to wait at least until we had checked out the data core.

So, we were currently making our way back to the airlock in a comfortable sort of silence, the only noise was me humming some tune stuck in my head. I had usually worked either in silence or, if the situation permitted while listening to music back in the yard, so I was used to it. Noma's habit of having her microphone on push-to-talk also showed that she didn't mind the quiet, or at least she had never said anything about it. As we arrived by the pried open door, however, Noma finally turned around. "There is still the front of the ship to check out and I would rather do it now. That's also where the rail guns and forward PDCs should be located, so I can understand if you preferred to wait here."

Oh, right. This was still a warship, after all. Somehow, I forgot about that while following my old work routine. It was honestly pretty surprising how few indicators there were from the inside. Aside from the one weapons locker and the gun tucked away in my pocket, you could mistake it for any old civilian freighter. "It's fine, but thanks for asking." And with that, she turned around again, going past the door and towards the front of the ship and I quickly followed her.

Breaching the door at the end of the elevator shaft turned out to be as uneventful as all the others, so we eventually reached a small corridor that had four doors leading into it. The one we just went through, one each to my left and right, leading to the twin rail guns and one ladder at the far side of the corridor, going up to the sensor array and forward point defence cannons at the very front of the ship.

We decided to check the rail guns first and made our way to the door on my right. The doors only allowed one person to enter at a time, at least if you wanted to have a weapon out while doing it, so Noma went in first, though this time I followed in a few steps behind. I had obviously been nowhere near a ship-mounted weapon before and didn't really know what to expect, but the cramped area I found myself in definitely wasn't it. There were only about two meters of space between the door and the opposite wall. Though calling it a wall would be ignoring the gaping hole in the middle. Apparently, that's what a rail gun looked like from the inside. Noma just put her gun back in her holster and poked her head into the hole. I guess she would have more experience than my literal zero knowledge of weapons.

"Someone removed the magnets, as well as the internal magazine," was all she said as she pulled her head back out of the hole. While she had examined the weapon, I had a look around the small room. There were just two empty lockers, like the one in engineering, and a table that could be folded up against the wall, but nothing else of interest. Also, as queasy as the weapons made me, the engineer in me was rather curious to see them up close, so I made my way over to the hole in the wall and put my head through.

What I saw on the other side was pretty underwhelming, though. A rail gun was just a carriage propelled by strong electromagnets, after all. So without the magnets, it was only a carriage that had nothing to pull on it, nor any payload for that matter. Beyond the gun itself, however, I also saw the outside doors they would be poking out of, as well as the internal doors at the hole that I was putting my head through. With nothing much more to see, I pulled my head back in.

"The other gun's in the same condition," I suddenly heard Noma say over the radio. She had already left the room and checked the other one out. Just as I was entering the corridor she came out of the opposite door. Wordlessly, we headed towards the hatch in the ceiling.

It was a bit awkward to get the crowbar into position, with the ladder in the way and all, but soon enough the doors slid open and Noma pushed herself up. Pushing my feet off the ground, I slowly floated after her into the cupola at the very tip of the ship. The room could be roughly divided into three different sections, each separated by a PDC. First was the sensor array. It consisted of a few unpowered consoles and a couple of chairs screwed directly into the ground. The section to the right of that was another row of lockers. And the last one seemed to be a workbench used for weapon maintenance. I first checked out the lockers and was not disappointed to find the emptiness I had learned to expect. Better to check and find nothing than to miss something important though.

While I was checking out the few things in the room that might have value to me, Noma went over to one of the guns. "The PDCs are out of ammo, as well. Also looks like they removed the motors and feeders." I didn't really know what those parts were for, but they sounded rather important.

"Then I think we're done here unless you wanted to check the crew quarters or raid the kitchen or something," I said while having one last look around the room. Unfortunately, there were no windows installed, probably because it would be a huge structural weakness, so the room looked rather bleak.

"There are also the torpedo tubes, as well as the cargo hold left, but I suspect they are empty as well. Let's head back to the airlock for now."