The Clockwork Chimera Series Books 1-3 Box Set

by Scott Baron

  “That is a definite possibility; however, at our current speed, it would be not only impractical to attempt to dislodge and reconfigure the pods, but would also be very unsafe. Far beyond mission parameters, in fact.”

  “Well, that settles it, then. We just have to wait until we hit Dark Side base to let the techs there deal with the underlying issue. For now, let’s just jury-rig this thing to work for the next few days until we get there.”

  She popped the cover to the control panel open and began testing the dozens of wires with the pocket-sized voltage meter she carried at pretty much all times.

  “Found what seems to be the problem,” she said a few minutes later. “Looks like the drive coupling has power but somehow jiggled loose. Must’ve been improperly seated, and the vibrations shook it out over time. That’s an easy fix. I’ll just push it back in and—”

  The door hissed open far faster than its safeties should have allowed.

  “Whoa, easy there,” she said, jumping back. “Hey, Mal, it’s working, but I want you to keep an eye on this door until Sarah and I can give it a proper once-over. Something still seems wonky about it.”

  “Very well, Daisy. Thank you for your assistance.”

  “Hey, it’s what I do.”

  She stepped out into the passageway and nearly toppled over Barry, where he stood just outside the doorway.

  “Daisy, my apologies. I did not know you would be there.”

  “Uh, no problem, Barry.”

  “Finn is doing fine.”

  “What?”

  “I thought you would want to know his status. Finnegan is doing fine.”

  “Oh, thanks.” She softened a bit. “You did good, Barry, getting him to medical so quickly. I don’t know how you got to him so fast after the accident, but good work.”

  “I aim to help any way I can. I’m sure Finn will soon be back to work, and better than before.”

  Something about the way he said the word better made Daisy ever so slightly uncomfortable.

  “Wait, you did what now?” Sarah looked at Daisy with a questioning gaze.

  “I said I hacked into his file. Look, I was curious, okay? Besides, it was the absolute lowest level of encryption, so it couldn’t have been that big a deal, right?”

  Her friend did not relent with her disapproving gaze.

  “He’s your boyfriend, Daze. Why didn’t you simply ask him when his birthday is?”

  “Well, yeah, obviously that’s an option, but that’s the boring option. Besides, a surprise isn’t a surprise when the surprisee isn’t surprised by their surprise.”

  “You practiced saying that, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe once or twice,” Daisy replied with a grin.

  “Okay, so let’s just say I’m okay with you hacking into the crew’s files to find out Vince’s birthday—which I’m totally not, by the way—then what do you plan on doing with that information? And hey, you’re a wire-pulling tech monkey, not a code geek. How did you even know how to do that?”

  Daisy blushed and looked away.

  “Jesus, Daze! Another mod to your neuro stim? You’ve gotta stop switching off those inhibitors before you fry your brain.”

  “Hey, I’ve still got nearly all of them left,” she said.

  Technically only four, if you want to be specific, but that’s only a slight exaggeration, Daisy mused to herself.

  “Plenty of redundancies to protect me,” she continued. “And besides, I only added a few relatively simple coding protocols I thought might come in handy, which they have, by the way. It’s really cool, actually. I think I’ve finally figured out how to get all those little neuro-stim upgrades to work.” She paused, a slight look of unease on her face.

  “What? What aren’t you telling me?” Sarah asked.

  “Well, the weird bit is sometimes it feels like there are things in there that I shouldn’t even have in my feed.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, I only get flashes of them. But crazy stuff. Advanced AI design, ship specs, even the medical equipment. Did I mention I think I got that portable scanner working?”

  “But that’s been busted for nearly five months.”

  “I know, and I didn’t even add any new repair protocols to my feed this time. It just happened. Like I said, crazy.”

  “I wonder…” Sarah mused.

  “What?”

  “I was just thinkin’, all of our neuro-stims are routed through dedicated servers in our quarters before tying in to the ship’s primary storage banks, but during cryo we all shared that one main hub. I wonder if maybe something glitched and started trickling other people’s feeds into yours. Like medical info. That’s Doctor McClain’s area. Or ship specs. You’d expect the captain or Reggie or even Gus to be downloading that data, not you.”

  “You think that’s a possibility?”

  “Hell if I know. Your guess is as good as mine, but so far as I can tell, you’re the only one it happened to. I just hope you don’t lobotomize yourself fiddling around with the thing. That’s some dangerous tech if used improperly.”

  “Would I ever do that?”

  Sarah didn’t dignify that with a response.

  “So, what’s this surprise you want to do for Vince’s birthday?”

  A huge smile broke free on Daisy’s face. “I’m going to bake him a cake!”

  “Seriously? With what?”

  “Well, Vince baked me cookies. Actual handmade cookies, can you believe it? Anyway, I wanted to one-up him, and Finn said he’d hook me up with some substitutions that should work. It won’t be a totally traditional birthday cake, but it should do the trick.”

  “And would that trick be getting you laid?”

  “Oh, honey, I don’t need a cake for that.”

  Sarah laughed.

  “All right, I’ll help you with the festivities. What else do you need? And don’t say candles. You know how the captain is about fire on board.”

  “I was thinking balloons.”

  “Balloons?”

  “Yeah. Think you can wrangle something up? We have helium in the labs, so…”

  Gears turned in Sarah’s mind.

  “I think I can manage that. All that Mylar we used for long-term packaging. If I tape the seams, I bet I could make a pretty darn nice bunch of balloons.”

  “Sweet! See? I knew I could count on your brain-box to come up with something. I owe ya one!”

  “I’ll hold you to it when we finally get back to Earth.”

  “Less than a week and we’ll be sipping margaritas on the beach. First round is on me. Just you wait and see, it’ll be excellent.”

  Chapter Ten

  Daisy had arrived at the galley a little earlier than usual the following morning, and was surprised to see Finn at his usual spot, playing with his knives, as always. He held up his hand for her to see.

  “Yeah, they’re awesome. Better than new!” he said. “And now I don’t have to worry about chopping them off again!” Finn was obviously over the trauma of the prior day.

  “As a bonus from the whole ordeal, Mal was able to upgrade my arm’s AI linkage, so there should be absolutely no more glitches like there were before. I’m bomb-proof!”

  Finn was showing the others his shiny new fingers. His state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line, bright metal fingers. Daisy’s stomach did a little flip-flop.

  “But why didn’t the medbot re-attach your old ones?” Daisy asked. “Vince brought them to the med pod, and the cuts were clean.”

  “Who cares? Look at how cool these are!” He flexed the metal digits as easily as if they were his real fingers.

  Replacement parts.

  Daisy felt sick.

  Finn was right, though. His fingers were the most modern replacement parts of any crewmember. Mal never stopped designing and re-imagining new attachments. This latest improvement also included an even stronger bond between the bio-engineered flesh and the metal mesh that trailed into the new appendages. It was
human flesh, grown from the patient’s own stem cells, but it was improved in the lab. Stronger. More resilient. Extremely fast healing, and possessing incredible tensile strength. Of course, given the forces a mechanical limb could exert, it was only natural the connecting tissues would have to be ridiculously durable.

  Computers modifying human tissue, Daisy thought, disturbed by the image. Replacement parts are bad enough. Some things should be left to nature. She found herself feeling more than a little uneasy.

  “Hey, are you okay? Tell you what, I’ll whip up some waffles with a strawberry balsamic reduction. Tamara just gave me the first ones picked from the new crop. Sound good?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks, Finn, but I’m not really hungry.”

  “Turning down food? You? You’re not getting sick, are you? ‘Cause we’re in a sealed ship a bazillion miles from the nearest pathogen.”

  “Ha, tell me about it. No, I’m just tired is all.”

  In truth, she wasn’t fine, but that was entirely beside the point. She was disturbed. Why had Mal opted to give Finn yet another set of replacement parts rather than simply reattaching his own fingers? The medical technology was there, and would have been quite simple compared to the process of adding artificial appendages.

  People seemed to be having bits of themselves replaced with metal more and more often, but was it all so necessary? At what point, she wondered, would people made of boring-old flesh cease to exist entirely? If Mal had her way, it might be sooner than she was comfortable with.

  Six days. Just tough it out for six more days.

  That was all that stood between her and margaritas on a sandy beach. Not even a week to go until they reached Earth. A mere six days until fresh air, warm sun, and normal people made of simple stuff, like flesh and bone. Daisy found herself smiling at the thought of lazy Sunday afternoons in bed with Vince, no more ship’s duties, just the two of them with all the time in the world.

  It’s less than a week. All I have to do is make it six measly days and I’ll be home. Finally back on Earth after all these years. Easy-peasy. What could possibly go wrong at this point? she mused.

  The cynic in her should have known better than to tempt fate like that.

  “Daisy, get on the environmentals with Sarah on the lower deck. She needs extra hands.” Captain Harkaway’s voice barked at her over the comms.

  The captain sounded calm and in control, as he always did. Hell, the ship could be on fire and decompressing into space and he’d still maintain that tone, but there was a little edge of concern in his voice. Something that hinted at the potential seriousness of the situation.

  Why didn’t I just keep my big mouth shut?

  “Copy that, Captain. Heading there now. Sarah, I’m on my way to you,” she said, switching to direct comms. “What’s your location?”

  “Just exiting the Narrows under Lower Port Ten. Something’s really weird and glitchy with a whole bunch of pods over here.”

  “I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  Daisy stopped at one of her conveniently placed caches of gear stowed on every level and strapped a pair of additional tool pouches to her thighs as she hustled toward the ladder to the lower deck. The unexpected spike in her heart rate left her with a minor headache as she went from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds, and running with tools was never fun.

  Daisy mounted the ladder, opting to let gravity, artificial though it was, do the work. She grabbed the vertical poles and jumped on, pressing her feet to the outsides of the rails. The descent was quick, and she landed with a solid thud on the slightly-cushioned base panel at the bottom of the ladder.

  Something caught her eye. The lights on the lower level seemed a little bit wrong down there. Nothing big, just ever so slightly different. Like they were running on a fractionally different current. Her headache was getting worse.

  Just seeing things, Daze. Get on with it, she told herself.

  She moved toward the peripheral corridor on the port side and saw Sarah hunched over an open control panel. She didn’t look up from the wire she was soldering into place as Daisy approached.

  “Hey, Daze,” she greeted her friend.

  “What’s up, Sarah?”

  “I pulled and re-connected the junction relays in the Narrows and have been swapping out some buggy switches in the control panels. When I get this last one dialed in, I’ll need you to pop the doors between Port Twelve and Eleven, then seal Port Ten and Thirteen. I’m going to equalize the pressure between the two, then re-seal to see if one of them is our culprit. Something isn’t seating properly, and we’re losing air.”

  Daisy became very serious very quickly.

  “Oh, shit. How bad? How much time do we have? Maybe we should grab EVA suits and seal the level.”

  “Sorry, I should have been clearer. It’s a tiny leak. It wasn’t reading on the ship’s main systems, but my portable scanner caught the variance. I’d almost call it inconsequential, but every breath counts in a pressurized can like this one.”

  Sarah had spent the better part of the morning doing everything she could think of to track down and stop the slow leak of air from their ship, but it seemed to be somehow circumventing the airlock system designed to prevent exactly this type of emergency.

  “I had some door-sealing problems when I was leaving Doc McClain’s yesterday. Had to completely power down and reboot the whole pod.”

  “But those doors don’t connect to space, so they wouldn’t affect our O2 levels.”

  “I know, but that problem was up on the main level, and we’re on the lower one now. You think maybe there’s more to this? It could be a ship-wide issue.”

  “What did Mal have to say?”

  The AI, hearing her name, chimed in.

  “Did you need my assistance, Sarah?”

  “No, Mal, we were just discussing possible anomalies with the pods. Have you noticed anything unusual with connectors or pressurization?”

  “Only what you and Daisy are currently working on.”

  “No variances in oxygen levels? I was manually running some numbers, and they weren’t matching your readouts.”

  Mal was silent a moment. “There’s no need for that, Sarah. I can assure you, consumption levels are exactly within parameters.”

  The women looked at one another, sharing an unspoken thought. That was weird.

  “Okay, thanks, Mal. We’ll keep plugging away at this.”

  There was the slightest of clicks as Mal exited the comm channel.

  “So, could it be a leak through one of the conduit gaps between pods in the Narrows?” Daisy pondered.

  “No, those should all be triple-sealed.” Sarah pulled one of the emergency oxygen rigs from the wall and looped it over her shoulder. “Just in case,” she said, noticing Daisy’s look. “I’m seeing a sort of pattern emerging here, but I can’t quite figure it out. The readings from a pair of Main Level Starboard pods near Tamara’s botanical units were also off.”

  “Wouldn’t want to interrupt her gardening—there’d be hell to pay.”

  “Tell me about it. Thing is, there’s an oxygen deficit in the starboard pods, and if anything, her plants would cause a slight bump in O2, not a drop. It just doesn’t make sense.” A worried look flashed across Sarah’s face. “Unless we somehow missed a slow leak.”

  “But it’s been months since the impact. We evaluated the ship and ran full damage control. It was the first thing we did. Unless it was a weakened spot that took until now.”

  “Yeah, who knows what it is. For now, how about you use that big brain of yours and run a quick airlock seal cycle between the pods down here. I think, I hope, I found the issue, but it’d be good to have another set of eyes confirm it.”

  “Ah, yes, the rare instance where your life-support specialist skills and my grease-monkey training overlap.”

  “There’s no grease on wiring, Daze.”

  “You know what I mean. Get moving. I’ll meet you up starboard side as soon as I
run the diagnostic cycle. Should only take a few minutes.”

  “Sounds good. I’m going to run a basic integrity check through the starboard pods, then, while you’re cycling these.”

  “Meet you up there when I’m done.”

  Sarah headed off at a quick trot, leaving Daisy to her task.

  “Mal, I’m going to power down and reboot the doors in sequence between numbers ten through thirteen, then cycle them individually through their locking phases. Please monitor the air pressure in those pods for any changes.”

  “Very well, Daisy. I shall monitor as you requested.”

  “Okay, starting now.” Daisy began manually powering down and rebooting the door systems. A few minutes later, all of them had flawlessly cycled through their sequences.

  “Any pressure variances?”

  “Negative, Daisy. I believe you have addressed the problem. Perhaps it was just a minor connection seating issue between the pods, resulting in a bad seal and pressure shifting from one pod to another.”

  “Maybe. As long as we’re not losing air, that’s all I care about for now. I’ll let Sarah crunch the numbers later when we’re done. Thanks, Mal. I’m heading up to the main level to give her a hand.”

  Daisy saw the emergency oxygen tube resting against the wall in the corridor when she arrived, but no sign of her friend.

  “Sarah?”

  “Hang on a minute,” a muffled voice called from a tiny open panel. Moments later a pair of feet slid into view. Inch by inch, Sarah backed out of the tight crawlspace between Starboard Six and Seven.

  “Everything good down there?” she asked when she had finally crawled free of the particularly claustrophobic section of Narrows.

  “Taken care of,” Daisy replied. “I cycled the doors, and Mal says there are no leaks. She thinks it may be the sealing boots between the pods that had somehow slipped a bit, making pressure shift from one to the other.”