Of course, even the superior performance that quack had worked into his arms when he gave him his strength back, failed to counterbalance the incredible weight of his new legs.
Fingers slipping on the railing, his new legs kicked impotently in the air, servos still making that faint and maddening little whine with each motion of the actuators.
He almost had it, raising his left foot up to hook it on the catwalk for traction, when Parkiny came stumbling over in the near total darkness and gave him a hand up.
“Careful,” Spalding warned, as the other Engineer came over and grabbed his elbow. Just then, his hands slipped, and it was a scramble again. With the arrival of a second pair of hands, the old Engineer was finally able to get over the railing.
“Get your hands off me,” he snarled, furious at the way these well-meaning (but ultimately blunderous), so-called helpers had messed the whole thing up.
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” said the other man, whose name Spalding could not recall right at the moment.
“I could have fallen,” he declared indignantly, and then his eyes snagged back on the fusion reactor. Even as his infrared eye watched, the reactor was getting noticeably hotter. If it was bleeding through the heat shielding that fast…
“No time for that,” he snapped, pushing the pair out of his way with his new strength. Not even noticing the grunts of the men struggling to keep their feet, he hurried up to the reactor.
“Brence,” he hollered.
“Aye, Lieutenant,” called Brence.
“I need you on the other reactor, pronto! The manual cutoff’s failed on this one, and I need a second pair of eyes on number two,” he swore. Grabbing the lever Parkiny had locked into downward position; he undid the latch and with one shove, threw it back into its starting position. Hurrying around the reactor, he started chanting to himself.
“Pay attention,” he instructed the two engineers, “you may need to help Brence later.” Then he paused, trying to remember something.
“Rhyme’ee Dime’ee Pudding…” he trailed off. He was certain the next one was supposed to be Pie, but where his hands found themselves, and where they were supposed to find a manual switch of some nature or another, there was only a junction housing full of wires.
“What are we supposed to be paying attention to,” Parkiny asked stumbling around in the dark.
“Are you daft man? Pay attention to the song; it has to go in a particular order,” then it came to him, “Cake!” he cried triumphantly, “it was Cake!” Quickly, he activated one of his plasma torches, and almost out of even his new, extended, reach was the C-conduit with a nice little breaker box.
“How’s a song supposed to help us…is it some kind of space prayer,” whispered the new guy.
Parkiny thumped him on the shoulder. “Have some respect, you! Can’t you see it’s a pneumonic to help you remember the order?” he scolded, leaning over with his handheld illumination to ensure that he saw labels of the conduits on the outside of the Fusion Generator.
“That’s right lads,” Spalding called, “I only ever studied the tech manuals for these old dwarfs, back in Officer Candidate’s School; never actually worked on them before. So it’s taking awhile for it to all come back to me, but don’t worry—my mind is like a steel trap, nothing gets out,” he said confidently.
The pair of Engineers shared a look of mutual dismay. Unaware of the little interplay going on behind him, the old Engineer continued singing forcefully.
“Okkie, Dokkie, Artichok—” he paused. There was no A conduit anywhere on this side of the reactor, “that’s not good,” he muttered under his breath, looking to either side of where the missing conduit should have been located, then his eyes snagged on a nearby junction box with a T on the outside, and he glanced to either side quickly, before throwing the cover open and looking inside. He stroked his chin, his hand wavering between a white and a blue lever indecisively. Then he shrugged and said, “Tangerine,” pulling the white lever.
Taking a step back, he once again scanned the reactor. Everywhere he looked, it was starting to cool down just as expected. Then he spotted a sudden buildup of heat right beneath the junction box he had just been in.
“Oops,” he exclaimed, and rushed back to the box. By now, the little box was starting to turn a cherry red, and for the first time Spalding was actually grateful for his synth-flesh hands. When he reached in and pushed the white lever back up and the blue lever down, exchanging positions, the smoke rising from his hand (into which was built the multi-tool) didn’t do more than sting, as if he had burnt himself with a match, instead of burning all the way down through the pseudo flesh to reveal the metal and wiring underneath.
For a second, the Engineer’s attention was caught and held, as he watched the hand move back and forth; the metal and wiring jumping and moving to his every command.
“Now, that’s actually kind of neat,” he mused, wondering how he could improve it. He had yet to meet a design that failed to benefit from a few tweaks, here and there.
“Sir, the Reactor,” Parkiny interrupted urgently, laying a hand on the Chief’s arm.
Spalding glanced up at the reactor, and seeing the heat dissipating, nodded.
“Tell Brence it’s the blue lever, not the white one on the Tangerine; if he fouls it up, it’s liable to cause a blowout,” he said sternly.
“Um, Chief, if you could just repeat the pneumonic back to me,” Parkiny urged, looking panicky.
Spalding repeated it again, with the same stern warning at the end…and then a second. By the third time, he threw his hands in the air and just stormed on over to Reactor Two.
A quick scan revealed that it was rapidly growing cold.
“Well done, Brence, me lad. I knew I picked you for a reason, other than your good looks,” he said coming up and slapping his second in command on the shoulder.
“Thanks, Sir, but I didn’t really do anything; the manual system kicked in automatically, as soon as the computers went down.
Spalding looked at him bug-eyed. “I see we’ve still got a long way to go with your education, son,” he said sadly.
“I’ll make sure to study up on the new reactors, first thing,” promised the former Engineering Rating.
Spalding shook his head sadly, as if at the very misbehaving rating this one used to be. “It’s not study I’m talking about, it’s the panache! A Chief Engineer can fix anything, that’s a given,” he explained, making sure to impress the importance of this particular point upon the younger man. “But you can’t go around giving away the trade secrets. If you do, why before you know it, you won’t have time to keep your engines in tune, and the Captain will be all over you with new pet projects that have nothing to do with the betterment of your ship, and everything to do with his personal ego!”
Brence looked like he was actually tracking all of this; of course, sneakery and underhanded maneuvers had been his bread and butter, before one Junior Lieutenant Terrance Spalding had taken him under his wing and straightened the lad out. It was just too sad his mate died in the process, but Spalding knew, you had to break a few bad eggs on the journey to molding a fine engineer.
“You want I should lie, Chief?” Brence asked hesitantly.
Spalding glared at him. “Engineers do not lie,” he seethed, so coldly that the former space hand backed up, his hands in the air.
“The straight and narrow, that’s for me, Sir,” he assured the Chief Engineer.
“Exactly,” Spalding said with satisfaction. “We embellish, we explain, we take credit where it’s most certainly due,” he said, thumping himself in the chest with a thumb, “and we project confidence to the rest of our team, but even more toward the Bridge and other Departments. They’d see our ranks filled with the slackers they don’t want, if we let them. We might even—on occasion, and solely for the purposes of morale, you understand—minimize the danger we were in,” he allowed reluctantly. “But we certainly never lie about it, Brence!”
“Confidence, that’s the key,” Brence stated firmly.
“That’s the ticket. You’ve got it now, lad; we’ll make a Chief Engineer out of you yet!” said Spalding, puffing up with as much pride as, he imagined, a mama bird does the first time her little chick left the safety of the nest and tried to fly.
Brence started to puff up as well, and then rapidly deflated. “I’m still not sure I’ve got ‘it’ yet,” he said.
Lieutenant Spalding shook his head sadly. Now he knew how that same mother bird felt, as she watched her chick crash and burn on the muddy ground beneath her.
“Don’t worry lad, we’ll get you sorted out, time and the Demon Murphy allowing, of course,” Spalding assured him knowingly.
“Of course,” Brence sighed.
The power started coming back on in fits and starts…or maybe that was just the damaged light panels.
Spalding looked around him with consideration. “You know, half our problem is all this old equipment we’ve got in here. Why, I bet you more than half of it’s older than I am,” he declared, looking around with narrowed eyes.
“You can’t be thinking of trying again; we almost blew a great big hole in the ship and almost as importantly, got ourselves killed,” Brence pleaded, but the resignation was clear in his voice.
“Our fancy new gizmos and hardware just don’t interface like they’re supposed to with all this older equipment; I’ve seen it happen time and again, just like every time the Clover went through a new refit,” Spalding said sourly, as memories—good and bad—of his beloved ship swirled through his metal-capped head.
“What would you do if you were back on the Clover,” Brence asked slowly, as if he could scarcely believe he was asking the question.
“Not really applicable here,” Spalding harrumphed.
“Just tell me, Chief,” Brence pleaded, but the Chief Engineer just started walking away. “I mean, what if I’m back on the Clover, and I have a similar problem, Chief,” Brence pressed.
Spalding glared at him. “You have to promise not to laugh, or let the rest of the Engineering staff know; it’s a trade secret, you see,” he warned.
“Cross my heart,” Brence swore, proceeding to do so.
Spalding hesitated, and then wondered what could be the harm. He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I’d find the buggiest, most malfunctioning grav-cart I could, and jerk her main processor,” he explained, waggling his eyebrows.
“And then,” Brence asked eagerly.
Spalding’s head reared back, and he looked at his second in command, scratching his now balding head.
“What do you mean, ‘and then?’ I’d hook the bloody thing up to whatever was the problem, of course. Software issues solved within a half hour,” he bragged, smacking his hands together with glee at being able to reveal one of the biggest secrets to his miraculous success, “and none of this calling for some System or Data Analyst to come spend half the day sorting out code with my control box all in pieces, either. Works every time,” he bragged.
Brence just managed to stare at his superior.
“I probably shouldn’t even be telling you this,” Spalding confided, knowing he sounded like a kid who got his hand caught in the cookie jar, but unable to help himself. He was getting on in years, and he had precious few decades left to share his great trove of engineering wisdom and insights. He had been hopeful that Gants might take over for him someday, but that lad had been lured to the dark side of the ship with the promise of action and mayhem. Many an otherwise fine and promising Engineer had been lost that way.
“You hooked up a grav-cart main processor, and all your compatibility issues went away? Unbelievable,” Brence said looking let down.
He looked at Brence with suddenly narrowed eyes. This former slacker may not look like much, but he had thrown himself on top of a burning fusion reactor at his Chief Engineer’s hastily shouted orders, and then when his Chief fell performing what should have been his last task on this earthly plane, came to the rescue, snatching him from the Jaws of Murphy himself. Besides, Spalding figured that even if the former Rating blabbed everything he knew, no one would believe a man with his record of misdeeds.
So he leaned close and whispered. “The Caprian grav-cart has one of the most over-powered, under-utilized core processors in the entire Home System. Those things go Droid, faster than I can snap my fingers, always acting up and causing mischief,” Spalding said snapping his fingers for re-emphasis.
Brence’s eyes bulged.
“D-d-droids. They go bad, and turn Droid, and,” he stared at the wily old Chief Engineer, his disbelief turning into outright horror, “you hook them into the ship’s DI!” he all but shouted in protest.
“Not so loud, I warned you it was a secret,” he reminded, grabbing Brence by the neck and hauling him close.
“But if they go Droid, why haven’t we lost more ships!” he stuttered.
“A grav-cart goes buggy, they ship her over to the royal side of the SDF lickety-split,” explained Spalding in a hushed tone. “Eventually, it lands in the Mothball Boneyard—right along with the Lucky Clover—and then, one way or another, old Spalding puts them to rights.” The Old Engineer’s eyes started gleaming, “The tales I could tell you,” he started rubbing his chin, “the battles. Why, I’ll have you know the Automated Underground’s not all that it’s cracked up to be; that peace and harmony among thinking sentients party line that they claim to espouse, half the time it’s nothing but pure hogwash; a disguise to hide their real agenda!”
Brence blinked, clearly having difficulty following Spalding’s foundation-shaking revelations. “I thought all that was just a myth that went viral on the net,” he said, and his jaw hung open as realization dawned in his eyes.
“Careful, you’ll catch flies, you walk around like that,” chided Spalding.
“You’re Captain Moonlight!” Brence cried.
“What?” Spalding asked in surprise, then, “No! Moonlight’s a myth!” he cried. He had not expected this. Why, even Gants had never realized the truth, and he had helped him catch one of those blasted grav-carts back before the Imperials took command and the Clover was sent out on patrol.
“Of the Secret Engineering Arm of the Fraternal Order of the Wrench and Sprocket; of course, why didn’t I see it all along? Of course! I always just thought it was just a live-action, underground holo-vid series,” Brence whispered, looking at the old Lieutenant with awe, like he was staring at a movie star suddenly appearing beside him out of thin air.
“Now-now, it’s not wise to go around spreading rumors and casting aspersions,” Spalding said hastily, looking around uneasily.
“The Moonlight Chronicles had over five hundred million hits. Everyone I know used to watch them,” the younger man said excitedly, “until they stopped coming and we started following Princess-Cadet Maridith and her live-action binge jumping instead!”
Spalding just shook his head. First, that his little home-made recordings had ever become such a hit, and secondly that they had then been upstaged by a binge-drinking young royal, who would wait until she was smashed and then go jump off the tallest thing she could climb. The only question in the mind of the audience was whether she would be too drunk to engage her gravity harness this time around.
“You’re a legend! You’d be famous if people knew you really existed. Destroying bad Droids, disassembling the rest and putting them into storage…are you saying the secret hideout’s real, and it’s—” he stuttered, “somewhere on the Clover? It’s real?!” he demanded, his eyes shining, “Oh man, I’ve wanted to really go there ever since I was a kid.”
“I’d be locked up, and they’d throw away the key, is what,” he snarled, “there is no secret hideout, there is no Captain Moonlight. Moonlight’s a myth I created, to show my son that even though his dad was stuck up in an orbital bone yard most of the time, he was still a hero fighting to save Capria…in his own engineering way.”
“Oh man, he must have been so proud
,” said Brence wistfully.
Spalding shook his head sourly. “He didn’t believe it was real because of the poor pixelated quality, and the fact I had to dub out my face and replace it with that cartoonish Moonlight,” he said gruffly.
“That’s…too bad,” Brence said awkwardly.
“The last time we spoke, he accused me of insulting his intelligence and trying to deceive him as a child with lies about a mythical Automated Underground seeking to bring about a Droid Liberation Movement. Like none of it was real, and I just made myself out to be some kind of cartoon hero, to cover for my failings,” Spalding explained bitterly. “He accused me of being nothing but a dried up SDF career man with no time for his family, who tried to make up for failing to be there for him with lies and distortions. I told him that wasn’t the case, and I’d never lie to him about something as important as the Underground, but then he declared he was going Parliament and…well, we haven’t exchanged two words since.”
“I’m sorry, Sir…more than you can know, I’ll hazard. But just think, maybe if he follows in your footsteps, he’ll find out the truth,” said Brence.
“And how’s that going to happen,” Spalding asked angrily, “they send all the buggy grav-carts on over to the royalist side. If he really went Parliament and joined the SDF, then he’ll never have the chance to find out the truth before they ship his carts off the ship!”
“Well maybe—” Brence began, but Spalding cut him off.
“He takes after his mother’s side anyway, and she poisoned him against me to boot,” the old engineer scowled, “why, there’s not been a Spalding gone Parliament in our entire history up till now, and I’ve got no use for any son of mine that would sully the family name like that,” he said, rubbing his moistened eye with the back of his burnt hand; there must have been a bit of dust causing an itch in there, probably from the fusion reactor.
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