by David Smith
After a pregnant pause, Crewman Pascal Dacre spoke up. She was one of Chief Money’s ‘Locally Recruited Enlisted Persons’ who’d previously worked under the pseudonym of Phillipa Condom. Prior to becoming a working girl, she’d obtained a degree in archaeology and had happily transferred across to the science team.
Despite their being spread amongst all the ships departments, the ex-working girls remained a close knit group.
‘I share a cabin with Rhoda Willey . . . sorry, I mean Crewman McQuarrie. She’s been assigned to work with the propulsion engineers recently. She was saying the other day that they’ve got most jobs in hand, but one they’ve avoided so far is replacing all the plasma transfer conduits.’
O’Mara nodded, encouraging Dacre to elaborate.
‘Apparently, it’s standard practice during a major refit to replace all of the plasma conduits as they wear out over a period of time. We never got around to doing it at the last refit, because the engineers were all tied-up trying to repair the power relays and the propulsion systems, so it’s long overdue. It’s a ball-ache of a job because there are tens of thousands of meters of conduits, all different sizes, right through the ship. They often run through really tight spaces, which makes them awkward to remove and it’s even more awkward to pull the new ones through.’
O’Mara’s forehead wrinkled in familiar fashion as an idea took seed. ‘Does anyone know what these conduits are made of?’
Crewman Louis Marseille had a long background in material technologies and was familiar with the conduits. ‘They’re a composite material with layers of flexible pure carbon that resist heat and pressure, backed-up by woven carbon nano-fibre tubing that give tensile strength, flexibility and provide containment for a cooling medium.’
O’Mara nodded, still deep in thought. ‘So it’s layers of flexible diamond surrounded by tubes of carbon nano-fibres. All carbon.’
Marseille nodded. ‘Yep, pretty much. Over a period of time the diamond structure breaks down, and the tube gets weaker as the diamond lining gets thinner. If you don’t replace them regularly, the side wall will eventually give way releasing high energy plasma into the surroundings. That’s bad Ju-ju.’
O’Mara was listening, but her mind was already moving on. ‘So the outer sheath would be ok as long as you could reinforce the inner layers of diamond?’
‘I guess’ shrugged Marseille ‘but the conduits are up to fifty metres long and may only be ten millimetres in diameter to begin with. How do you get tools inside that space to lay down a few millimetres of diamond?’
O’Mara grinned as the seed of the idea in her head blossomed. ‘You don’t. You get a little friend to shit diamonds.’
--------------------
‘Aisling, are you sure we can do this safely?’ asked Lieutenant Skye L’Amour.
Tiger’s Science Officer was too excited to even consider the prospect of failure. ‘Ah, come on now Skye. You know your team better than I do, so you know full well that between Kanesh, Milano, Jayasuriya and Moon Seong-ran we’ve got a huge amount of genetic and microbiological expertise.’
The tiny Kiwi A&A Officer sounded nervous. ‘Yeah, I get that, but we’re talking about the LOAVEs here. The damn things were completely unknown to science until we literally ran into them. I’m just wary of adjusting the DNA structure of something we have so little understanding of.’
O’Mara’s grin never faltered. ‘I know we had a few problems with the little fellas but they’re so simple their behaviour should be easy to model and by extension, easy to predict.’
‘Aisling, this isn’t just chemistry, it’s a life-form. Its responses will be a product of its unique environment and again, we know very little about that dust cloud. This isn’t “one plus one equals two”. It’s “one plus one might equal two if the conditions perfectly match that of an indefinite environment”.’
O’Mara brushed her concerns off. ‘Look, we’ll build in safe-guards. We’re all clever people and this gives us a chance to show the skipper what we’re capable of!’
L’Amour still looked worried, recognising the signs of O’Mara’s runaway enthusiasm. ‘You’re the boss. But . . . ‘
‘Great! Kanesh, you and Jayasuriya get a sample out of stasis and do a full analysis of the genetic structure. Milano, work with Moon Seong-ran on methods to contain and control them. L’Amour, you and the rest of the team will need to go back through the data from Dark Space and work out everything you can about how the things lived, fed and multiplied.’
L’Amour was still uncertain and tried to voice her concerns again, ‘We’ll make a start Aisling, but I really think . . . ‘
The Science Officer was already striding towards the turbo-lift, talking aloud to herself as she went. ‘Van der Vaart, Marseille, Dacre, you’re with me. We’ll need to work out how we get them to excrete the carbon in the lattice structure we need and how we get shot of the little buggers when we’re done.’
--------------------
‘Look, it’s perfectly safe! We’ve engineered a kill-switch into their genetic code and have worked up a clearly defined route plan with isolations to ensure they only get into the systems we want them to enter.’
Commander Romanov was singularly unimpressed ‘No! Not now, not ever! There is no way I’m going to release LOAVEs into a high-energy system . . . ‘
O’Mara was insistent. ‘They’re not LOAVEs. They’re an entirely different species genetically engineered specifically for this . . . ‘
‘I don’t care if they’ve been engineered to sing the star-spangled banner, I’m not putting them into my power system!’
O’Mara tried her preferred method of persuasion. ‘Look Olga, this is just a quick, easy way to see off a nasty job that nobody wants, why don’t you meet me in the bar later and I’ll run through the finer points over a couple of pints of Guinness?’
‘Not a chance!’ growled the ship Engineering Officer. ‘I remember very clearly how close we came to losing the ship because of those things.’
‘But they’re not the same!’ pleaded O’Mara. ‘These are the perfect answer to your problem!’
‘The salient point, Commander, is that it’s my problem. It’s my system, my problem and my decision. And my decision is no, we will not be putting LOAVEs into the plasma transfer conduits.’
The tiny engineer turned and stomped off, shouting at her subordinates and waving her two kilo lump hammer is if it was an orchestra conductor’s baton.
O’Mara seethed impotently. Bloody engineers! Always pig-headed and obstinate. Always terrified of anything new.
This could cut months off the refit process! Why couldn’t the dratted woman just admit that the Science team had come up with a brilliant idea?
There was no point going to the skipper. He’d already made it clear that Romanov made the call with regard to engineering matters.
No this called for subtlety, subterfuge and cunning: things the engineers would never understand.
--------------------
She pored over the drawing with Chief Wang Shou. ‘So the drains from the labs can be purged with plasma?’
Her Chief of Physics nodded. ‘Yes Commander. It’s a safety mechanism designed to sterilise a variety of ships systems in the event of contamination by any biological or chemical hazards. The drains from our labs are among the systems connected.’
‘And the purge mechanism is tested every week?’
‘Yes Commander.’
O’Mara turned to her cadre of geneticists. ‘Hmm. Hypothetically speaking, would the introduction of very high temperature plasma sterilise the drains if, just for example, there were some of our little beasties in there?’
Kanesh looked horrified ‘Good grief, no!’
Moon Seong-ran was a cool and collected as ever. ‘The DNA structure is still essentially that of the LOAVEs. They eat and excrete only carbon now, but it’s a certainty that exposure to high levels of energy would trigger the same sort of spontaneous multiplication th
at we observed in Dark Space.’
Kanesh couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You can’t be serious!!? We’ve got no way of quantifying how quickly the damned things would breed! We’d lose control . . . ’
O’Mara smiled knowingly ‘No we wouldn’t. In Dark Space the wee beasties had unlimited access to the organic content of the cloud itself. Within the confines of the conduit systems they’ll only have carbon and a few contaminants. They’ll be hamstrung by the amount of food for them to build new structures with. If there’s ten tonnes of carbon in the system, they can’t build more than ten tonnes of . . . what did we call them again?’
‘Genetically Enhanced Carbon Laying Life-forms’ replied Seong-ran in her usual matter-of-fact manner.
‘Yeah, the GECLLs can’t breed without out us injecting the right elements into the system. And don’t forget that we have control of the stasis valves and can limit which systems we let them into. If, heaven forbid . . . ‘ (she rolled her eyes theatrically) ‘ . . . a few of the buggers should find their way into the drains, they’d multiply a little during the purge protocol and in doing so, repair the conduits involved. We’d be in a position to point out their beneficial effect on that system which would give us a case to take to the skipper to over-rule the Event Horizon.’
O’Mara deliberately referred to Commander Romanov by her nick-name: All of the engineers knew that once you were on the wrong side of her there was no coming back.
Kanesh still looked terrified. ‘But . . . ‘
‘Don’t forget that the plasma conduits of the purge mechanism will be sealed with stasis valves that will prevent the GECLLs from accessing any other systems’ noted O’Mara.
Kanesh wasn’t convinced. ‘But . . . ‘
‘And in the event of anything going wrong we can still kill off the GECLLs with the acid formulated by PO Van der Vaart, which will break down their DNA without affecting the diamond lattice of the conduit structure’ mused O’Mara.
Kanesh still looked worried ‘I know that Commander, but . . . ‘
‘And once they’re out in space, the altered DNA will break down under the influence of the gamma radiation from the star, which is something they’ve never had to cope with. After a period of a month or so it’ll just be dissolute organic matter.’
Kanesh tried one last time. ‘I see that, but . . . ‘
‘And anyway, this is all HYPOTHETICAL’ stated O’Mara very, very deliberately. ‘I can’t see how any accident could possibly release the beasties into the drain system.’
Kanesh sighed. It wasn’t an accidental release of the things that worried her.
--------------------
Later that night Lieutenant Callum Taylor was tinkering on the Main Engineering Deck as always. He was aware of his reputation as a habitual meddler and had no problem with being assigned to night shifts. He preferred the solitude, which gave him the chance to really focus on what tasks he’d been given.
In his early days aboard Tiger he’d rotated shifts like most other people, but working with Commander Romanov made him terribly anxious. Her habit of shouting her commands left him a nervous wreck and he’d jumped at the chance to work at night, when things were quieter. More peaceful.
Commander Romanov had left him instructions to check the protocols on the purge system and as was his nature, Callum was experimenting to see if he could make the system more efficient.
The problem with the purge system was that it was very basic. Open a valve to let plasma into a system, the hyper-energetic plasma breaks down accumulated contaminants, then vent the plasma and waste products into space a few seconds later to rid the system of unwanted contaminants.
That wasted of a lot of energy.
If he configured the valve opening and closing sequences differently, he could use the same plasma while it was at high temperature to purge one system, then purge another, and probably another before the plasma cooled so much it would be ineffective.
That would reduce energy consumption used in the purge system by about a third. It wasn’t a lot in the great scheme of things, but who knows? One day those extra few giga-joules of saved energy might be critical.
--------------------
The stasis flask balanced on the edge of the trough inside the sealed glove-box. The beasties were in flask, dormant as long as the stasis field of the flask was operating.
The glove box was a clear glass cube, hermetically sealed and reinforced with force-fields that meant nothing could get in or out of the box, except through a hatch on one side, or through the drains that vented out into space.
The boxes were intended to provide a safe method of working on toxic, pathogenic or radiological substances and once sealed inside a box all objects and materials were handled by two pairs of complex mechanical claws, worked remotely from outside the box.
O’Mara was alone. The Science staff worked day shifts mostly and she’d arranged the roster to have the Chem Lab to herself tonight. She was on her own with just Guinness for company.
She stared at the flask, a solid looking tube of complex materials that was heat-proof, chemical-proof, radiation-proof, bio-hazard-proof . . . at least until you loosened the lid.
The act of loosening the lid would also disable the small built-in stasis-field, a field that limited the transfer of every form of energy within the flask to a few nano-joules.
She thought of the nature of the beasts within the flask, so simple, so beautiful but so terrifying.
She hesitated. If she opened the flask, there’d be no going back. The beasties would be free.
But they’d be free to do what they’d been created to do: Bathe in the hot plasma of the purge, multiplying and flooding the plasma conduits. Consuming the old, broken down carbon structure and the contaminants trapped within it then laying down in it’s place a fresh, atomically perfect lattice structure of pure carbon. They’d eat crap and shit diamonds.
Working through the medium of the mechanical arms inside the box, she loosened the lid of the flask, but hesitated as the glow indicating the presence of the stasis field faded.
What if she was wrong? She hated to admit it to herself, but she was a hopeless optimist and that was never a good thing in a scientist. The optimists in the world of science loved their work and exuded energy and confidence, but the pessimists were always more objective. Always more careful. Far more often correct.
She began to doubt herself. Had she got carried away again? She knew her biggest personal flaw was letting her enthusiasm get out of control. That was the reason she’d been sent to this ship in the first place.
She’d gone shouting her mouth off about the damage the warp-fields of Federation ships were doing to the fabric of subspace instead of quietly accumulating evidence and checking her facts.
She’d upset so many people so quickly they’d been desperate to get rid of her, and she’d found herself trapped on a broken ship in orbit around the star of least scientific interest in the whole of Federation space.
Trapped with nothing to occupy her effervescent mind. Dying a death of intellectual boredom every day.
Just like she was now, with every day the engineers wasted faffing around with the engines . . . and the plasma conduits. Getting more frustrated and irritable every day. Her IQ being ground down by the glacial progress of the engineers.
Sod it.
She opened the flask.
-------------------
There was a loud beep from the comm-station, startling O’Mara. She jerked upright, spilling the dregs of her pint of Guinness across the work surface.
Bugger! She’d fallen asleep again!
She pressed a button to answer the call while grabbing a rag to try to mop up the stale beer.
‘O’Mara here. What’s up?’
‘It’s Skye, Aisling. You’ve really gone and done it now.’
O’Mara stopped mopping.
Shit.
What had gone wrong?
‘Um. When you say �
��I’ve really gone and done it” . . . er . . . what, exactly, am I supposed to have done?’
‘You know damn well what you’ve done!!’ hissed L’Amour. The little kiwi E&E Officer was as laid back as they come, and O’Mara could tell from her tone that something had really, really upset her.
‘Um. Well. I’m not sure what you think I’ve done, but I think that you might be thinking that . . . er . . . well . . . um . . . Actually can I call you back later?’ O’Mara asked hopefully.
‘I don’t think. I know. You’ve been a prize dick, Aisling. Drop whatever it is you’re doing and get down to the Upper Engineering Deck now’ growled L’Amour before cutting the line.
Aisling slumped. Her and Skye had always got on brilliantly. For her subordinate to be giving her orders like that, something must have gone seriously wrong.
--------------------
She stepped out of the turbo-lift on Deck 18 and made a point of wandering past Commander Romanov’s office. She sneaked a surreptitious look into the office but the Ukrainian time-bomb was nowhere to be seen.
Trying to look unobtrusive and in no way hideously guilty, she strolled nonchalantly along the raised walkway above the Main Engineering Deck to a point where a group of engineers were gathered. At the back of the group she could see Skye L’Amour, arms folded, staring daggers at her.
As she approached, Skye gave a knowing and very angry look, which brought a huge flush of embarrassment to O’Mara’s usually pallid cheeks.
She couldn’t maintain eye contact and instead tried to peek through the throng of Engineers who were muttering in hushed tones while all trying to look through a small aperture in the bulkhead beyond the throng.
‘Hey guys!’ piped O’Mara, doing her best to sound like a completely innocent passer-by. ‘Lovely morning isn’t it? What’s . . . um . . . happening?’
No-one answered.
She stood on tip-toes trying to see past the cluster of taller engineers and as she did, Skye L’Amour gave her a none too gentle shove.
She stumbled forward, bumping into the back of an engineer, then another. They parted before her like a curtain and she stumbled to the front of the cluster, not stopping until she tumbled against the bulkhead.