“Yes!”
“And how many lines of code?”
There was a pause. “Thirty-seven thousand.”
“Nobody works that fast.” Klaus thought for a moment. “I’ll come down, I want to talk to him.”
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Arriving outside the grav control room, Klaus found the miner standing outside, leaning against the bulkhead. The kid seemed relaxed, even after how quickly he must have been working. Klaus caught himself. The 'kid' looked to be more than just another replacement, might actually be skilled. Maybe he should try being polite to the man. “What's your name, again?”
“James.” The miner's tone was disinterested, bored-sounding.
“James. Nice name.” Civilians liked pleasantries, he had learned. “How did you fix the grav code so fast, James?”
The repairman shrugged. “Was easy. Isolated what the bridge crew changed. Wrote around it.”
“I see.” Made sense, but Klaus suspected that it could not have been that simple. “Out of curiosity, what did they change?”
“Tracking algorithm set to constantly check positions of anybody onboard against list of crew. Written far too quickly – the error-avoidance code was very basic, not useful.” Now the kid – James – was talking more normally, and almost sounded awake. He leaned forward, voice gaining in energy and losing its monotone. He even burred his r's. “See, when the software hiccuped, the grav systems identified everybody onboard as intruders. Only for a fraction of a second, though – the failsafes in the system re-booted it fast enough to keep the glitch from being fatal – but enough of a delay to cause problems.”
“And you fixed this in, what, thirty minutes?”
“Well, closer to thirty-five.” He shrugged, leaning back again. “Problem was right there.”
“Where did you get that good at programming?”
He shook his head “I’m not, plenty of friends are better.”
Good Lord. Klaus studied the miner's face. Was the kid putting him on? If not, if that was normal for miners, well it raised a lot of new questions. At least it might explain how the rebels had managed to mimic Navy transponder signals closely enough to spoof the Overlord and the Tannenberg.
“Come on, follow me,” Klaus stood, checking the time. “We've got an hour for lunch break. There's someone you should meet. I've got a friend who'll be very interested in talking to you.” He turned away from the miner. “Computer, request flight to crewman Antoniy Gureivich. Execute.” The corridors flew past him as he ratcheted his speed up to max. He checked that the miner was following him. Good, the kid not only knew his tech, but he had completely ignored Klaus' '8-gees-only' warning.
Entering the mess hall, Klaus found Antoniy easily enough. The Marine was sitting with his back against one of the walls, with a clear sight of the entry.
Antoniy waved at them, and Klaus wound his way over, motioning for the miner to follow. The kid had been so quiet he'd begun to worry if he'd wandered off. “Antoniy, meet James, one of the new guys assigned to my team. He's a miner, one of the locals.” Behind him, he heard James mutter something, but he couldn't make it out, and so it probably wasn't important. He sat down, leaning forward toward Antoniy. “He just fixed the grav system programming in under half an hour.”
“Thirty-four minutes.” corrected the miner.
Antoniy gave Klaus a blank stare.
"Thirty-four minutes! Did you hear?" Klaus spread his arms. "That's some kind of system record!"
Antoniy raised an eyebrow. “Impressive.” He leaned to the side, looking around Klaus towards James. “How'd you manage that?”
“Was simple. Just a quick check.”
Klaus took a seat at the table next to Antoniy, pulling out a seat for the miner. “Seriously, how'd you learn to work that fast?”
“It's my job.”
“I thought you were a regular tech, not a computer specialist.” Klaus furrowed his brow.
James smiled slightly in response, about the first emotion that Klaus had seen out of him. “We're not exactly working with picks and shovels. I'm a computer-integrity specialist.”
“Computer-integrity specialist?”
“Yes. We work so close to the leading-edge of the heliosphere that our electronics need to be shielded against extrasolar radiation and the System's bow-wave aftershocks. When set-up on an active dig site, they're shielded by grav screens at the site itself, but when moving between sites the computers are unshielded. Keeps scrambling the code, an absolute pain to repair.”
Good God, that was more words than the kid had said since he'd come aboard. Klaus couldn't help grinning in response. “Believe me, I can identify with that sort of pain. I've been having all sorts of trouble with computers being wrecked by—“ right, classified information “—ah, transportation.” That was technically the truth, too. “So you got your experience by re-programming whole computer systems? Sounds rough.”
James shook his head. “Actually, no. My job is to keep the computer code stable during transportation.”
Klaus raised one eyebrow. For the first time since he had boarded the Overlord — in fact, if truth be told, for the first time since he had left Earth years ago — he felt a tingle at the back of his brain. He had to work to remember what it was. Ah, he had it. Intellectual curiosity. “What?” He sat up straighter in his chair, leaning over the table. “How do you manage that?”
“Hard to describe, exactly. We use a custom neural interface to link a specialist — me — to the computer during the trip. I, ah...” James trailed off, frowning. “I guess the best way to say it is that I 'monitor' the computer's software. When any part of it starts to feel...wrong, I guess, I correct it.”
“You can re-write code that fast?” Klaus' eyebrows shot up in astonishment. “For that matter, you can monitor that much software by yourself?”
The min— programming expert grinned in response, a full grin this time. “I didn't say it were easy. And I don't really write repair code. It's more like I...tell it how to correct itself.”
“Right, that neural interface you were talking about.”
“Exactly. Faster that way.”
“And this works?” Klaus could not help himself from doubting. He exchanged glances with Antoniy, who had been watching the two of them silently. He tried to read the Marine's face, but to no avail. Klaus was the senior engineer at the table, and he did not like being proven wrong, especially not by some upstart. Surely, there must be something the man — he had stopped thinking of him as 'the kid' — was not telling him.
“Yes. Keeps the computers alive during transport.”
Amazing. Was the programmer some sort of savant, or might there be some technique here that could be applied to their own issues with the QMP drive? Klaus suddenly felt uncomfortable. For the past several years, people had always been asking him questions. Truth be told, he had always felt that he knew more than others, and that included most of his superiors.
Admittedly, that attitude had led to him being stuck on the Ad Astra in the first place.
He rubbed his brow, hiding the beads of sweat that he feared were forming. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, he could not let on that he felt at all uncertain. Maybe it was a false hope, after all, and the kid — the programmer, he corrected himself — had only diagnosed simple processing units. “What sort of computer systems have you worked with?”
“The largest I've handled was a CQ-37.”
Not bad. The CQ-37 was normally used on near-Earth stations, to plot the courses of the billions of Kessler debris pieces left in the planet's orbit.
More importantly, it was easily as complex as any of the computers aboard the Overlord. “Did you bring one of those neural interfaces with you?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. Kid — I mean, James — the Captain has authorized me to move you to my team. Believe me, better than baking in the reactor rooms.” Klaus would figure out later how to get that one approved retroact
ively. He quickly messaged Johann, telling him that he had a promising idea for fixing the QMP system. Turning back to James, he asked “What work schedule are you on?”
“Third shift.”
“I'll get you up to speed on a project of mine. It's certainly more interesting than any of the other stuff they've got you working on now.” And more important.
Antoniy stood, holding his tray piled with empty dishes. “Well, now that that's settled, I could use some more food. Care to join me?”
As the three men approached the cafeteria line, Klaus' datapad chimed. Message from PO Murphy, who was working with Johann to direct the repair crews that were fixing the damage to the Overlord's internal QMP support latticework.
Testing pipe repair in bulkhead seven-C outside reactor four. Assume you want to be here.
Lunch could wait. He returned his tray and turned to leave. “Sorry, gotta run. Got work to do that just came up.” He looked at James and instructed, “Meet me at auxiliary engine compartment C in twenty — that's minutes. The ship's computer can show you the way. Bring your neural interface.”
As he turned to go, he added, "Oh, and remember, this is the Navy. Our work could be important, so don't mention this to anyone."
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Antoniy and James returned to their table, and Antoniy took the same seat against the wall. He scanned the room once more, out of habit.
He studied the civilian, who was shoveling down his food in silence. Klaus seemed to think that this guy was some sort of computer wizard — and to be fair to Klaus, that meant that he was — but Antoniy was interested in a different aspect of this 'James.'
He knew that the guy had been vetted by Intelligence section, so he certainly wasn't a rebel sympathizer. But he was still a local civilian.
In Antoniy's trade, that made him either an intelligence risk or an intelligence source. “So, 'James. right?”
“Yes.”
Not a talkative fellow. “Sorry about my friend there, Klaus tends to get caught up in his favorite topics.”
“I noticed.”
Well, if this fellow tended towards bluntness, then maybe he'd be open to blunt questions from Antoniy. That would save time if he could jump right in. “If you don't mind my asking, why did you choose to work on a repair ship?”
Across from him, the miner barely glanced up from his plate of pasta, which he was doing his level best to inhale. “Wuff a jov.” He swallowed. “Was a job. Between contracts. Pay lower than hoped, but at least something.” He pointed at himself with a fork. “James O'Rourke, by the way.”
“Of course, where are my manners?” Antoniy held out his hand. “Antoniy Gureivich, Marine Corps.”
The civilian raised his eyebrows, looking directly at his counterpart for the first time. He shook Antoniy's hand. “A Marine?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Antoniy took a small bite out of his sandwich. It was as good as it looked. Was that a real tomato? Amazing. The food here was certainly better than at Andromeda Station. “I’ve always wanted to serve, and they paid my way through college. Good deal, if you ask me.”
“True. M' brother thought it was a good idea, too. He’s Navy now.”
“Really? Which ship?”
“Dunno. Classified.”
“Ah. Still, I didn’t know many people off-Earth served. I don’t think I’ve met anyone in the services who’s not from Earth or the Moon.”
James shrugged. “Well, that’s just statistics, I'd say, a result of unequal population distribution. There’s far more folks on Earth than anywhere else in the system.” He waved a fork in the air to emphasize his point, the large meatball at its end threatening to fly across the room. He popped it into his mouth and swallowed. “I’d wager that a higher percentage of miners join the military than Earthers.”
“Huh. That would be surprising.” Antoniy took a small bite of his sandwich. The culture of the Navy was certainly Earth-centric, based on what he had seen, and he had always assumed that such a culture would have discouraged enlistment from among others. His time at Andromeda Station, including the intel reports he had read, had only reinforced those assumptions, but maybe he had missed something. “Y’know, I’ve never had the opportunity to talk much with the locals out here. What’s your opinion about all this?” He gestured to the ship around them.
“'bout what?”
“The whole issue with the rebels around here. If so many miners are in the armed services, why is there such support for the rebels out here?”
“Huh? Don’t know anybody who supports the rebels, not really. Mind you, the Feds are not exactly popular, either. Wish they would lower the taxes out here – pay enough for fuel imports, already.”
“Oh? I didn’t realize that the taxes were that bad out here.”
“Shit flows downhill.” James smiled at the puzzled look on Antoniy's face. “Well, technically the tax is on the Union, not on us, you see. They just pass the cost right on to us miners. And on top of that, the Union’s enacted a special levy to pay for fighting the rebels. So, all told, we end up paying almost fifty percent of our income.”
“Fifty percent? Why work for the union, then?"
"All there is. Union or starve."
Antoniy studied his sandwich, speaking over the top. "I'd always heard that the miners pay nothing. Didn't they make some big point on that a while back, about no income tax on hazard pay?”
James finished a glass of juice and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He smiled. “In your media, maybe. Just words. Bottom line, we don’t get your Earther single-digit tax rates.”
Antoniy nodded, eyeing his empty plate. He wanted to continue, but lunch was done, and he had work to do. Surprisingly, this was the first he'd personally heard of people from the outer System in the Navy — all of his classmates in the Academy were from Earth or one of the established colonies.
He smiled back, "So why don't you side with the rebels, then? If you don't mind my asking. Don't they promise you everything you want?"
James looked to his left, then his right. He cleared the last bit of pasta from his plate, then leaned back in his chair. "There's promising and then there's doing. Out here, we can't live on words. That will get you dead." He sighed. "Maybe we just want what you want. Peace. Quiet. Nobody watching over our shoulders all the time."
"Hmmph." Antoniy mulled that over, looking again at the walls of the cafeteria. Walls everywhere. For all the empty space in the Cloud, the places where people could live were miniscule and far between. All encased in steel. He had always thought of it as the raw frontier, a rough place with little use for law or order or any other trappings of Earth, but maybe that was just an illusion. He stood to leave, shaking hands with James. "Good to meet you, Mr. O'Rourke. I hope you get what you want."
He left, thinking about what the miner had said. During their conversation, he had looked for telltales in the man, for subtle signs of lying. Everything indicated he was telling the truth. If so, how could intel have been so wrong?
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
A few hours later, Klaus sat in the observer's chair in the QMP control room. In the seat next to him sat James, who was fiddling with his neural interface, a slimmed-down helmet which he was painstakingly fitting onto his head.
A veritable rat's nest of wires connected the interface to the control computer, which James would use to communicate wirelessly with the test computer in the actual rig in the teleport box. They had petabytes of stored gibberish in the files, exact copies of the code that had come through on each failed experiment. Though Johann had wanted to start with fresh teleports and let James fix the code in real-time, Klaus had over-ridden him. Technically, all research on QMP was supposed to be halted, per the Captain's orders, and they weren't even supposed to be in here. He viewed those orders more as guidelines, and they might just get away with ignoring them.
As long as they showed results.
And for that, the
y needed time to experiment. If they requisitioned the ship's precious store of osmium, and tapped into the gigajoules of power the teleport would take, then even some dimwit pencil-pusher in the chain of command was bound to notice and shut them down. And he had no doubt whatsoever who they would blame for this. Not either of the civilians, that was for sure. Better to fly under the radar, at least for now.
Despite his doubts, he hoped James could find patterns in the garbled code which they had not. Something about it didn't sit right with him. His code repairs had been good, his approach very thorough. Yet he had not found the answer. How could some Oort Cloud newbie succeed where he and Johann had failed? He shook his head, reminding himself that it didn't matter, as long as they came up with something that worked. If so, all would be forgiven. He would have his once-promising career back, no more scrap heaps like the Ad Astra.
Probably. But if they were caught before they succeeded, or if they failed, he could kiss any hope of that goodbye.
He shrugged. Better not fail, then. He turned to Johann, who sat at the master-control chair. “Is everything set up? Everything ready?”
Johann nodded in response. “Aye, we're all set here.” He flashed Klaus a quick grin. “Here's hoping all this works, eh?”
He hit the key.
James grunted once, but gave no other outward sign. He sat motionless in his chair, eyes closed, but Klaus could see his eyes moving rapidly back and forth behind his lids. The miner frowned a couple of times, and smiled at others. On the display screen, bits of code spun in circles with larger clouds of gibberish, an entirely incomprehensible mess. Slowly the clouds coalesced, spiraling around the small bits of clear code, and then attaching themselves here and there. The spirals whirled faster and faster, changing colors as they resolved into order.
From Johann's computer, bagpipes played.
"What's that?" asked James, opening his eyes.
"That, my dear boy," beamed Johann, "is success." He checked his display again, and then smiled over at Klaus. "He beat your best time by half!"
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