"Long range transmitters are not coming online." Mei said, with a little hint of anxiety in her voice. She was generally calm and cold-blooded in times of trouble, but this was a little different. She liked doing her own modifications to the shuttle, and if something wasn't working, it was likely her fault, which was a fact she was well aware of.
"We are not broadcasting?" I asked.
"We are indeed not broadcasting." she said, giving a blank stare at the communications panel. "Can you... Can you try rebooting it?"
"Just the long range comms or everything?"
"Just the comms."
I did what she asked, but this time the communications panel didn't start up at all.
"Odd." she said. "This has never happened before. Try a bit more power, maybe it needs a kick."
"More power to comms, okay..."
As I turned the power distributor knob, an electric arc was heard. Smoke started coming out of the power lines behind the control panels.
"Turn it down, quick!" Mei said. I had already done so.
"This doesn't look good, does it?" I asked. "It doesn't smell good either."
"Stop inhaling the smoke."
The shuttle's life support system automatically spun up air circulation pumps to full speed to clean up the smoke.
"What now, admiral?"
"I will have a look at long range comms." she said. "I hope at least the reciever is still working."
"I will open up the cockpit panels and see if any connections are severed." I said, reaching for the repair kit behind the co-pilot's seat. Mei got up and floated away towards the back side of the shuttle in zero-g, presumably in preparation for a spacewalk.
I took a screwdriver and removed some metal panels to see what was going on under the many switches, buttons and levers in the cockpit. Most of the electronics looked fine, but there were trails of molten wiring around. In fact, due to the lack of gravity, some molten metal droplets were now floating around in the cockpit.
"Mei! Some power lines are severed."
She didn't say anything in return, but I did hear a sigh of despair as she came back into the cockpit. I continued talking.
"Also the metal droplets may damage life control fans or clog the filters."
"Vacuum them up." she said. "There is spare wiring in the repair kit. The molten trails are still there, connect them the same way they used to be. Use the largest diameter wire."
"Will that fix it?"
"I can only hope. I'm going on a spacewalk to the antenna."
"Okay. Be careful."
Mei nodded and left me on my own to fix the panel. I first vacuumed up the molten metal droplets hanging in the air by using the vacuum hose connected to the recycling and waste management system of the shuttle. Then I measured and cut some length of wire from the repair box to replace the severed power lines. While I was busy performing the repairs, an ominous shadow appeared in the cockpit. Mei had appeared in front of the cockpit window in her spacesuit, blocking out the sunlight. I waved at her and gave a thumbs up, after which she pulled herself towards the long range transmitters and went out of my field of view.
"Is short range comms working?"
Mei's voice was coming from the cockpit speakers.
"Yes." I replied.
"Good, at least we have that." she said. "I'm next to the long range transmitters."
"How do they look?"
"Messed up."
"What do we do?" I asked.
"We can either go through the shuttle systems' blueprints and try to craft a transmitter with whatever we might have onboard, or we will buy a new system at the next spaceport."
"So it is hopeless right now?"
"Yes." she said. "I'm coming back inside."
Mei came back inside the shuttle through the airlock within a few minutes and removed her spacesuit.
"Now, there was a set of blueprints in the shuttle somewhere..." she said, biting her lips. "Question is, where would I put them?"
We spent the next twenty minutes looking for the blueprints Mei mentioned. Only then, another solution came to my mind.
"Hey, don't the blueprints also exist on the computer?"
"The computer? Oh... Yes, I suppose they do."
I went through the files stored on the shuttle's general purpose computer and eventually located the documents.
"Ah, that one." Mei said. "There we go."
"I wonder what would you do if I wasn't aboard now."
Mei straight up ignored me.
"We don't exactly have the spare parts needed, but we can make it work with what we have." she said. "You were a sensors officer, right? You must be good with signal processing and modulation."
"It's been a while, but-"
"Great. An antenna is just a piece of conductor after all, and I will just make a makeshift antenna for you. You just need to update the software to work with it."
"An antenna is not just a 'piece of conductor'. Do you know how many hours engineers spend on optimizing-"
"Oh god, just trust me for once." she interrupted my argument. "I will make a half-decent one so we won't be hearing static for hours."
"Fine, fine." I gave up. "Let's just start."
And it was about three hours before Mei was out on a spacewalk again, this time to replace the old transmitters with her 'new hardware'.
"I have removed the fasteners and I'm now taking the old assembly out." she reported.
"Copy, be careful not to let it float away into space."
"Well, we have thrusters, we can go get them if they float away." she said.
"Or you could just do a good job and not let that happen in the first place."
"There I go. Now inserting the new antenna into place... Oh, wow, the new geometry doesn't really fit well into the cavity here..."
"Don't tell me-"
"Don't worry, I made it work. It is inserted in the correct orientation now. I just need to... There. The power line and data lines are connected. Are we getting anything in the cockpit?"
"Let me see." I said, and activated long range communications again. "Oh yeah, I think we are still getting something legible on the emergency channel... Wait, that's not even the emergency frequency, this transmission is directed at us!"
"Wait, hold on. I see some... No, nevermind, can you disable the-" was Mei's last transmission just before it cut off abruptly. Accompanying that was a puff of black smoke coming from under the control panel I had just fixed.