“So they’re degraded and need to be replaced,” Basquez said.

“So replace them,” Coloma said.

Basquez shook his head. “If it were that easy, I wouldn’t be telling you about it. This engine design is half a century old. This ship was the last of its kind in service. There isn’t another ship out there with this engine design. They haven’t made replacement stock for this engine design in more than a decade.”

“You can’t replace the conduits because the replacement conduits don’t exist,” Coloma said.

“Right,” Basquez said.

“Power conduits are still being made,” Coloma said. “We had them all over the Clarke.”

“Right, but they’re not rated for this sort of power output,” Basquez said. “Trying to use the current standard conduit here would be like stuffing a Great Dane into a Chihuahua sweater.”

Coloma had to stop for a moment to take in the visual Basquez just offered. Then she said, “Would these conduits last through our mission? We’re only skipping to the Rus system and back.”

“There’s two ways of answering that,” Basquez said. “The first one is to say that these conduits probably won’t overload and rupture, or destroy this section of the ship, or rupture the hull, or kill everyone on board, including those important Earth visitors. The second one is that if you decide not to replace them, I hope you don’t mind if I do my work remotely, like from Phoenix Station.”

“What do you suggest?” Coloma asked.

“How much time do we have before we have to be under way?” Basquez asked.

“Twelve days,” Coloma said.

“We have two options,” Basquez said. “We comb through CDF and civilian shipyards looking for this size of conduit and hope they’re not as degraded as these are, or we commission some made from scratch from the shipyards, based on this specification, and hope they arrive in time.”

“Do both,” Coloma said.

“Belt and suspenders, very wise,” said Basquez. “This is the part where you send a note to that Rigney guy telling him to yell at people to get those parts here on time, right? I want a couple of days with them to make sure they have the capacity we’ll need.”

“I’ll do it on my way to my next meeting,” Coloma said.

“This is why I like working with you, Captain,” Basquez said, and then turned his attention to one of his engineers, who evidently needed yelling at.

Rigney promised to get the conduit specialists at the CDF shipyards on Phoenix Station on the job and told Coloma to have Basquez send the specs to him directly. Coloma smiled as she disconnected from her talk with Rigney. Civilian captains and ships were almost always prioritized below Colonial Defense Forces ships when it came time to allot materials and expertise; it was nice to be at the front of the line for once.