After long, restless hours, the ship's reconfiguration was complete. We now had a reliable system to produce energy using the combustion rocket engines, but it's effect on our flight was yet to be determined.
"Professor Yamamari on the bridge, sir. All tasks complete."
"Good work, prof." I said. "Now, let's see what half a ship can do... Mei, rebalance propellant tanks to align the ship's center of mass to the Z axis. Set consumption rates as you see fit."
"Alright, but this might take some time." said Mei. As she pumped fuel and oxidizer between the ship's tanks, we listened to the sounds of giant valves opening and closing.
"This should do it." she then reported once she checked her calculations for the second time.
"Prof, take your place at the sensors console please." I ordered. "Activate passive sensors and navigation systems. And then... let's see if we can get somewhere."
"Sir, the solar power shuttle is still outside." Admiral Mei reminded me.
"Order them to get back into the hangar and close the hangar bay." I said.
"Passive sensors booting up, navigation systems recalibrating." said the professor. "This should take no longer than two minutes."
In those two minutes, the shuttle had returned to the hangar bay and the doors were closed. It was almost a miracle; the ship, with the entirety it's forward starboard section missing and it's main reactor destroyed, was ready to move again.
"All hands, prepare for orbital maneuvers." I announced using the ship-wide intercom. "All decks, report status."
"Forward habitation, both ready."
"Rear habitation, both ready."
"Starboard torpedo bay, inoperative but ready for maneuvers."
"Port torpedo bay, ready."
"Close-in weapon systems, missing two railguns on top starboard. Ready for maneuvers."
"Magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters, inoperative but ready for maneuvers."
"Combustion rockets and propellant systems, ready."
"Wide and narrow band communication, ready."
"Navigation and sensors, ready. Expect reduced performance."
"Main engineering, reactors secured and ready for maneuvers."
"Medical bay, ready."
"Bridge?" I asked for the last report.
"Bridge ready." said Mei.
"It is time then." I said. "Admiral, test run. Ignite the engines and slowly raise to full throttle for performance evaluation. We will then calculate our efficiency loss and make our plans according to that."
"Yes, sir." she said. "I advise you to take a seat beforehand."
I sat on the weapons officer's chair, and Mei activated the engines. I started to feel the increasing G force as she throttled up all engines.
"Shutdown engines at your discretion." I said. "Once you think we have enough data."
Mei slowly throttled the engines back down, and completely shut them down within about twenty seconds. Just after that, we heard people applauding and cheering in the nearby decks. All hope wasn't lost, the ship could still set sail.
"Sir..." Mei said. "The engine efficiency dropped to 60 percent with the new modifications. With our current propellant reserves, we can make it to Mars in a week and Earth in about three."
"We want to go to neither one of these." I said. "What is the farthest we can go?"
"We can theoretically make it out of the Solar System, but it would take more than ten years." Mei said. "It is not a matter of where we can reach, in fact we can go pretty much anywhere... but it is a matter of travel time. How fast do we want to go?"
"At best, what would it take to go back to Makemake?" I asked.
"Makemake..." she said. "About half a year, I think."
"A lot can change in half a year." said the professor.
"Do we have any other choice?" I asked. "Any celestial body closer to the Sun than Neptune is enemy territory."
"Almost any." said the professor. "I'm almost sure there are people hiding underground on small moons."
"But we have no idea where those people could be." I said. "We can't just hop between moons to look for them. In that case, does it even matter if there are?"
"That was just some food for thought. I don't know what to do either." said the professor.
"Admiral, what do you think?" I asked Mei.
"I don't know." she said. "Only if this ship could mine and refine asteroids, things would've been much easier."
"Well then." I said. "I think the best course of action is to head for Makemake. It might take a long time, but I don't think we can do anything else."
"Should I set up the trajectory on the flight computer?" asked Mei.
"Please do." I said. "Professor, make sure you don't use any active scanners on our way. We don't want to be an easy target."
"Yes, sir; of course."
Mei's orbital maneuver calculations took about ten minutes. After that, everyone was seated again, ready to go back home.
"Engine cluster ignition!" Mei reported. "Seventy percent... and one hundred percent throttle now. Acceleration: 0.4 G."
I now had to sit and wait for the maneuver to end.
"All engines throttling down... And engine cluster shutdown." said Mei. "Maneuver successful with 99.6 percent accuracy. Next maneuver coming up in three days."
"Perfect!" I said, and made a final announcement for the crew. "Maneuver successful. You are free to resume normal operations."
For a second time, people were in joy, cheering loudly.
"Chief, battery status please." I said.
"Chief engineer George here, all batteries full. We will keep getting energy from the rocket engines before they can cool down, but after that, we will have to launch the solar power shuttle again to keep the systems running."
"We may not need that." I said. "Now that we have some time in our hands to work on relatively long projects, I want you and your teams to extract the nuclear fuel that are used in our fission reactors."
"That's a dangerous process for the crew." he said. "What do we do with that anyway?"
"I want you to use the thermocouples we relocated earlier, and craft me an RTG, a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. If we can somehow use the remainder of our nuclear fuel for energy, we will get through this flight just fine."
"I will try, but designing a nuclear power system from scratch is very, very hard." he said.
"I don't want anything impressive, it just needs to generate more power than we lose per second." I said. "You did good so far, I know you can accomplish this. I suggest that you inspect our libraries for information on other RTG designs used throughout history. One of them could fit our needs, perhaps."
"Yes, sir! We will do our best!"