He shrugged. "Okay, so we have the basic first aid course sorted out and we can look this over to see what to add." He tapped the tablet the Admiral had set in front of him. "Where should we start?" the doctor asked. The doctor looked up stretching and placing his hands behind his head.
"Oh, you could start with the guards, they could use the training," the Admiral indicated the guards.
"You'll have to clear it with the Chief first. Then move on to engineering. I'll try to get some volunteers to you for your first class as well," Irons said as the doctor looked thoughtfully at the gaurds.
He nodded. "I had a few ladies asking if they could learn..." The doctor rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe they could join as well."
The Admiral nodded. "The basic course is just that, the basics of first aide to stabilize the injured so someone with more training..." He indicated the doctor. "Can arrive and assess the situation. Those that show an aptitude could be encouraged for further study," he said.
The doctor nodded. "Yes, that should work. Not everyone has a strong stomach for medicine," he sighed. "My father was a doctor, I learned my bed side patient manner from him, but he was a terror when blood flowed," he shook his head in memory.
"A general practitioner, but not a trauma medic?" Irons asked and then nodded.
"Well, he did okay in the barnyard, but I think his empathy shorted him out when it came to humans," the doctor replied.
The Admiral sat back. "Barnyard?" he asked softly.
The doctor chuckled. "Doctors are rare." He shrugged. "We had to do what we could for all our patients, sentient or otherwise."
The Admiral nodded in sudden understanding. "What ever works. Okay." He got up. "I've got to get back to work, let me know when you've finished reviewing that," he said as he nodded to the tablet. "Thanks for this again." The doctor waved the tablet. He set it down and started to scroll through it. "Basic first aid?” he asked softly as he shook his head. “This is more than the health course!" he looked up awed.
The Admiral shrugged. "I don't like the terminology of doctors, so I took the liberty of adding a dictionary, the rest was built in." He waved as he left.
“We have a week to go until break out. I can't believe we're moving this fast!” Shandra looked bemused. “I've got most of my girls used to the speed; getting them up to handling beta shouldn't be too hard, the Admiral is working on expanding the simulator program.”
The Captain nodded. “And this tank?” she asked indicating the cylinder. She set the tablet down. Shandra grinned. “Oh, that's to make it easier to fly the ship in the higher bands since we don't have implants. It will take a suit to go with it though.” She frowned.
“Virtual reality?” the morale officer asked. “Are you going to need the goggles? I only have so many,” she asked warily.
“Were going to replicate everything from scratch so don't worry about it,” Shandra waved it off. “Here,” she said. She punched in the display in front of her seat. A virtual keyboard appeared.
“When did that happen?” Jen asked intrigued.
“The other day, I saw the Admiral working on it and came to watch before my shift started,” Shandra said. She tapped the controls and an image appeared on the face of the table. “This stop is going to be short according to the flight plan, no more than a week.”
The Captain nodded. “I don't want to stick around for long in case those pirates come looking for us,” she said and then shivered.
“Yeah, good idea,” Kendra drawled. She flushed when the Captain gave her a quelling look.
“I understand the Admiral has been sleeping in the guard’s quarters?” the Captain gave the Chief a long look.
“We're working things out,” the chief looked away.
“Surely we can do better than this Vanessa,” the Captain drawled.
Jen gave the purser a look. “Agreed. It is after all, the least we can do.” She glared.
Tsunade looked up. “Yes, it falls in my purview too, mistreating the Admiral is starting to effect morale,” she said. She caught the chief's glare and flushed.
"Hey look at what I found!" Mindy came in, dancing with a jacket covered in straps around her. She had straps dangling from the ends of the sleeves and around the waist. "Isn't it neat? All the shiny buckles!" She admired them for a moment. "But I can't get my hands through the sleeves!" she said putting words to action.
The Admiral looked up and snorted at the sight of the girl. "That's a straight jacket." He turned and reached behind the machine he was repairing. "Okay doc, try it now," he said.
The doctor looked at Mindy for a moment and then clicked the on button. "Okay, green light. Booting." He looked back at Mindy. She was fumbling with the jacket, buckling the front.
"So what's it for?" he asked casually.
The Admiral snorted. "Confinement. It's a restraint device for people who are a risk of injury to themselves." He got up and checked the status. The ultrasonic machine was up and running normally. "All clear," he said and nodded.
The doctor had a wicked gleam in his eye. "So how does it work?" They both watched as Mindy danced around, trying to buckle the straps.
"You wouldn't would you doc?" the Admiral asked, chuckling softly.
"Oh, just watch me," the doc answered.
"Well, she has it on backwards. The zipper goes in the back. And the arms fold over the chest, the buckles lock together behind her back. The other straps go around the arms, and...” He cleared his throat, "Between her legs to lock the jacket on."
The doctor smiled grimly. "Thanks. Are you going to work on biobed four?"
The engineer shook his head. "Still waiting on parts. I should be going." He walked out, looking over his shoulder as the doctor got up and walked over to Mindy. The guard by the door snorted. "Oh Mindy, let me show you how to put that on," the doctor said with a mischievous tone. He put his hand on her shoulder and turned her about.
She grinned innocently. "Okay doc! Bye mister Admiral! See you later!" She fairly jumped up and down. The Admiral chuckled as the guard led him out.
"Another virus has been uploaded into the net," Sprite reported as he checked the stats. He grunted. Sprite had turned the ship's AI's firewall and antivirus software back on, but someone kept bypassing them to upload crap.
"Great. How bad?" he asked.
Sprite sent him the log. "Not bad, just a phishing Trojan. Easily handled. I took the liberty of inoculating the mainframe and isolating the source for later."
He nodded. He looked up to the guard. "There was another virus infection in the mainframe. I got it,” he explained. He felt Sprite's version of disapproval but ignored it. "We will need to check all external memory devices and isolate viruses," he said. She looked confused.
"A virus is bad, it can do damage to the ship if you don't have your defenses up," he explained. Her face cleared as she nodded. "I turned the antivirus software back on, but someone keeps bypassing it to load...” Sprite fed him the name on his HUD, "Macho men from Ares colony." He shrugged. She blushed. "I'm guessing an off duty person's book or entertainment cube," he said dryly. Her cheeks colored a bit more.
"So, what is antivirus and a fire....wall?" Jennie asked as he flicked through the subroutines. The admiral nodded. "Computers use a lot of terminology...that means words from different things. In this case antivirus software is a computer's version of an immune system. It protects the computer and its data from computer viruses," he explained. She looked even more confused so he smiled.
"A computer virus is a nasty program, designed to breach security and do malicious harm to the computer network or the user," he said. Her face cleared.
The guard looked up, then pulled out a tablet and began typing fast. He glanced at her and shrugged. "How do you spell computer?" she asked him. He gave Jennie an amused look. "C.O.M.P.U.T.E.R," he said, spelling it out for her.
She nodded; typing it in then looked up. "What about Network?" she asked.
He grimaced and obli
ged. "Anyway, a firewall is a piece of software designed to prevent unauthorized access to a computer network." Jennie and the guard looked confused. "Like that," he said pointing. He pointed to the hatch. Jennie nodded.
"Can you spell Un um...That word?" The guard asked confused.
Jennie snorted. He sighed exasperated. "Let me see that." Reluctantly she handed over the tablet. He typed in the word, and then flicked through the menu.
"What are you doing?" She asked suddenly alarmed.
"There," he said finishing. He handed it back to her.
She glanced at it and saw "What are you doing?" on the screen. "What?" She looked up confused. Then back down to see the word on the screen.
"I turned on the speech to text recorder. It'll convert speech into a text file for later editing," the admiral explained.
Jennie's eyebrows arched upward in surprise. "Neat. I thought they were just for stories and games," Jen said. He shook his head and grunted.
"Electronic tablets are much much more then toys,” he said. He nodded to the display. "Shall we?"
He flicked through the menu, pointing out and explaining each icon, its purpose, and sub menu. "You see, a computer is in many ways the electronic version of a living thing." He typed a bit more. "We have the immune system, antivirus and firewall programs like I explained before... right here." He pointed. "This displays their status."
“Then we have the network, and its maintenance," he said. He pointed that out, bringing up the stats. Jennie nodded excited.
A tiny hand darted in and touched a control. "What does this do?" a small girl asked. He looked at the hand, and then followed it to the young woman.
"That is the life support controls for this section," he said. He clicked the icon, and a status screen came up. "You see here are the temperature data, fan speeds, and atmospheric levels." He frowned. "It seems we still have work to do, some of the fans and sensors are off line." He looked over to the girl who blushed. "You see, sometimes the life support systems can sniff out a problem before the diagnostics in engineering can."
She looked confused. "How?"
He pointed to the screen. "Well you see if there was a temperature variance we could track it to localize it, to find its cause. It might be a short, or a breach," he explained.
She shivered. "We lost Tasha to a breech," she said shivering.
He nodded. "Alarms sound if that is imminent, but only if the sensors are working," he said. She nodded.
“I heard that the replicator can make plants?” Kess asked, eating a leaf of lettuce.
“Where did you hear that?” Molly asked.
“Oh here and there. So is it true?”
Molly shook her head. “No, according to the Admiral, and the records he found for us, no, they only change things around, they don't make it.”
Kess looked confused. “Come again?” Molly sighed.
“Okay, what the replicator does is take matter, like metal, and re-arrange it into the shape you want, say this fork.” She held the fork up. “Now it can't make the individual atoms, it can only take what we supply and move them around to get the right shape,” she explained.
Kess nodded. “But what about the food replicators? And the sickbay ones?” She sat back triumphant. Molly smiled.
“Well, the food replicators take a substrate, the stuff in that tank and use it to make the food and plastic items.” She pointed to the sandwich spread. “It takes let’s say, algae, and re-arranges them into the thing you want. It resembles the original. Taste, texture... But it isn't perfect.” She took a bite. “But it is nutritious.”
Kess smiled. “So I guess I won’t be out of a job huh?” she asked.
Molly looked up alarmed. “What ever gave you that idea?” she demanded. She shook her head vehemently. “No! We need fresh food! We need the raw materials to feed into the replicators, and also to feed the animals. I couldn't live without your fruit salad!”
Kess smiled. “So it doesn't make life?” she asked. Molly shook her head.
“Nope, it just takes cells and re-arranges things,” Jennie butted in, setting her tray down. “This seat taken?” she asked. She turned the chair, and then straddled it. “The Admiral said that when something organic needs to be made, we take a cutting, like you do in the greenhouse, then clone it and grow it into the shape the doc wants.”
Kess cocked her head. Her eyes had a distant look in them. “I think I understand. Thanks ladies.” She nodded politely and left.
“Something I said?” Jen asked, spearing an olive.
"I hesitate to ask..." Irons said. He turned to Molly.
"Ask away," she said flippantly.
He shrugged deciding to dive in. "Okay, I was wondering how you deal with um...feminine needs. And contraceptives."
She blushed furiously. "Um, that is kind of a personal subject," she said clearly uncomfortable. She squirmed a bit.
"Admiral, from her reaction there has been a social regression of body taboos." Sprite observed, sounding amused.
"Okay, I'm guessing you use old school methods," he said. She squirmed looking away. "So, how about those Nicks?" She looked over to him suddenly confused. "Sorry," he said. He felt a small wash of regret. "Old joke. Anyway, let’s get this emitter aligned."
"What's this about a website?" the morale officer asked. The Admiral nodded to Tsunade the moral officer as she came over and leaned against a bulkhead. A work crew was wrestling with a plasma conduit nearby. He was letting them do it so they would gain confidence in performing the task themselves.
"I set up a place in the computer network with my lectures on repairs and notes on other things for the crew to look at," he explained.
She looked confused. "Okay, I didn't know you could do that," she said slowly. He nodded. "Why are you sharing this?" she asked.
He grimaced. "It will make repairs go faster."
He waved to the girls working on the electrical lighting down the corridor. "Already they've figured out the basics of lighting, and some of the basics of computer tech."
"Yeah the very basics," Sprite commented dryly.
He grunted. "With more time to learn and explore, they should pick things up faster, and move on to more and more complex jobs," he said, sounding hopeful.
The moral officer nodded. "So can you show me how to make one of these, what did you call it? Web signs?"
He chuckled. "Websites. There's a tutorial on the web; I can show you how to access that. It'll walk you through the steps on how to make the site. I'm going to set up an e-mail system, but not right now," he said. He waved to the girls wrestling a plasma conduit section. One of the gravity collars slipped. "I gotta go, bye," he said hastily.
He rushed over and caught the weight before it slipped. "Okay, um, I'll just get back to you when you’re not so busy..." the moral officer said. He grunted as she walked away.
Chapter 5
"Okay, we have here a fan; do you know why we need it?" Irons asked. He turned to Molly who shook her head.
"Cooling?" she asked. He nodded. "But I thought it had heat pumps?" she asked. He nodded again.
"Every electronic device has heat pumps, and heat sinks, but they are only sixty percent efficient. We still need ways to dissipate excess heat in a controlled method."
He tapped the fan. It was stuck. "Most likely this one burned out. Since it was out it couldn't dissipate heat. Heat shortens the life of a component or can cause it to fail," he explained.
Jennie nodded in agreement. "So is that what happened here to that CPU?" she asked as she tapped on the heat sink with her index finger.
"Yes. The net threw a lot of stuff onto this machine, when its fan died it couldn't handle the stress over time and failed." He pulled the CPU and heat sink module, and handed it to Molly. "It's junk now, but you can salvage the heat sink. The fan and CPU can be used as teaching aides or salvage." He plugged in a new CPU, and then spread caulk on the top.
"What's that?" Jennie asked wrinkling her nose.
"Thermal grease, it dissipates the heat, transmitting it to the heat sink and up to the fan," he explained as he smeared it. She nodded. He strapped on the new heat sink fan unit. "Okay, let’s see... Memory is seated; heat sinks are okay, thermal exchange..." He checked. "Okay, looks good," he said with a nod to her. He checked the wires. "Each of these ODN cables can become unseated, or melt if they're exposed to too much heat." He checked each one. "All look okay. Power supply is on...” He flipped a switch. "Booting," he said. “So far so good,” he said. They smiled. A small LCD attached to the board ran through the post.
"Okay, we have a life again.” He waited until it booted to the second stage, then stopped. "Okay, hardware is ready," he said. He inserted his link into the network and then uploaded the software overlay to the blank server. "Okay, loading... all right, drivers are installing now." Fascinated the two girls crowded each other to see the LCD.
"Okay, server is up and running. The net is now a little bigger, and one step closer to being repaired," he said. He let them have a look then pushed the tray back into the server tower.
"Neat. That’s all there is to it?" a girl asked.
He shook his head. "No, that's if everything goes right. If the cards were bad or not inserted right, or a cable was bad or loose, then we would have had to diagnose things." He shrugged.
"Oh! There's some code on this drive! Sprite sounded enthused. "I can use this! Nice! It must have been knocked out when the ship went down but before the purge...hmmm... Yes, operating code okay...”
He ignored her monologue and turned to the students. “Okay, the next tray... this time, Molly you try diagnosing it."
She gulped. "Okay..."
Molly looked up as the speaker crackled, and then a klaxon blared. "Attention, everyone, we have a lot of turbulence ahead, brace." Molly set the toolbox down by her feet and grabbed the strut. The engineer grabbed a nearby strut with his free hand. The ship shuddered for a moment, and then bucked. "Wow! Must be some strong grav sheer!" Jennie called from behind them.
New Dawn (Wandering Engineer) Page 14