On the Persistent Problem of the Pilgrim named Morgenstern

[Coliz]

Inside the Morgenstern, December 1st, 835 AS

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Main reactor room: "Ignition Attempt"

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They climbed in relative silence.
The access ladder to Engineering was narrower than regulations would have preferred and steeper than knees would have liked. The metal rungs bore the uneven polish of use—old use, not recent. Dust had settled in corners where airflow had once been stronger.

“Two decks up,” Albert said unnecessarily.
“No one was disputing gravity,” Hans replied.

The hatch to Primary Engineering required a manual override. That alone said enough. Hans knelt at the control panel, removed a secondary cover plate with visible satisfaction, and bridged two contacts with the sort of care normally reserved for delicate surgery or mild vandalism. The hatch disengaged with a heavy internal thud. The door slid aside.

The reactor chamber dominated the space—cylindrical in origin, but no longer in purity. The core housing had once been clean, balanced, designed by engineers who trusted supply chains and schedules. What now stood before them was something else.
External reinforcement ribs had been welded onto the containment shell at irregular intervals, intersecting with older structural members in ways that suggested necessity rather than design. Some braces did not align with the original stress geometry at all; they simply held.

Sections of the outer casing bore discoloration from repeated thermal overload. Entire panels had been cut out and replaced with plates of slightly mismatched alloy. The welds were not elegant, but they were deep—layered, deliberate. Scaffolding encircled the midsection of the core, clearly not original to the vessel. It had been bolted into place using brackets from at least three different manufacturers. One support strut had been fashioned from what looked suspiciously like repurposed cargo frame material. Another bore faint serial markings from a class of freighter long decommissioned.

Panels from different production eras coexisted without conversation. Some bore Rheinland markings nearly worn smooth. Others were stamped decades earlier. Cabling had been rerouted repeatedly, bundled in improvised harnesses that did not match any known standard. At least three generations of insulation materials could be identified from a distance—ceramic composites, polymer wraps, and sections patched with something that might once have been thermal shielding from a completely different vessel.

Here and there, handwritten calibration marks were still visible in faded grease pencil—notations made by someone who had been adjusting tolerances in real time, not updating software.

Hans stepped closer.
He crouched near a secondary coolant manifold, tracing the weld seam with two fingers.

“Oh,” he said softly.
Albert glanced at him. “That good?”
"That impossible,” Hans replied, stepping closer. His eyes moved rapidly across the patchwork. “Look at this bracing. That’s not factory. That’s field improvisation. And this—” he gestured at a welded manifold—“this was never meant to hold that load.”
He stepped back, almost smiling.
“This thing didn’t get refitted. It really got kept alive.”
Albert folded his arms. “That’s a living hell.”
“That's a miracle,” Hans corrected softly.

Huber walked past them and stopped at the primary control station.

“This,” she said calmly, “is your primary reactor.”
“So it seems,” Hermann replied.
“And it remains connected to the main distribution grid.”
“That's what's written.”
“And you have not attempted full activation.”
“No?”
A pause.
“Why not?” she asked.
Hans turned around slowly. “Because,” he said, in a tone that suggested the answer should be self-evident, “this is a century-old fusion core wrapped in emergency solutions and hope.”
“One might assume,” Huber replied, “that if the vessel is structurally sound enough to merit restoration funding, its core systems should at least demonstrate basic operability.”

“Power it,” she said.

The words did not echo. They did not need to.
Hermann blinked once.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Main core activation,” she repeated. “Begin diagnostics.”
Hans stared at her. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am”

Hermann took a measured step forward.

“With respect, Doctor,” he said evenly, “if that containment shell fails, we will not be filing a report. We will be vapor.”
Huber turned her head slightly toward him.
“Captain Schmidt,” she said, almost pleasantly, “your shuttle is docked and fully pressurized.”
Albert leaned closer to Hermann. “Two minutes. If we don’t trip.”
“That is not the reassurance you think it is,” Hermann replied.
"oh, I know, it's just my way to deal with existential threats"
The ministry engineer hesitated at the console.
“Proceed,” Huber said. There was no raising of her voice. No emphasis.
Just inevitability.

The engineer initiated auxiliary feed routing.
“Containment minimal,” he reported.
Hans stepped forward instinctively. “Stop. You don’t know how the coolant loops were rerouted. That manifold was never meant to carry full—”
“Mr. Belck,” Huber said calmly, “stand down.”
The startup command executed.
Nothing.
Silence.
Albert exhaled slowly. “There we are. Historical authenticity confirmed.”
“Repeat,” Huber said.
The sequence ran again.
Still nothing.
Hermann felt a small, inappropriate wave of relief.
“We can document non-operational status,” he began—
The deck vibrated.
Not explosively.
Deeply.
A low resonance rolled through the chamber. Everyone stopped breathing at once.
Containment indicators flickered erratically.
“Field fluctuation,” the ministry engineer said sharply.