“Don't ever use a suit man. Sweat will get into stuff, corrode metals, and the water will crystallize when it freezes. Nasty stuff happens,” he said. He shook his head. Greenhorns. The kid was dangerous to everyone around him.
“Thanks.”
“Next time wear a sweat band,” the other tech said, not looking up. He used the towel to dry his blue hair.
“Yeah, I'll remember that. First time,” Everette said shrugging. The others froze and looked at him. “What?”
“You really are a greenhorn?”
“Um... I swapped with Benita, she's got some stomach bug. Besides, I wanted to do it. It's not like it's hard, just plug and play.” He spread his hands helplessly.
“Okay but...”
“It's no big deal.”
“You're a rookie. On...”
“Seriously. No big deal. I didn't get hurt,” the kid said, spreading his hands apart.
“Which isn't the point. You're supposed to be watching their backs as much as they watch yours,” the Admiral sighed. “They and I took it for granted that you knew the routine.”
“Yeah, well, I did this years ago. It's not that hard. Like riding a bicycle, what ever that is.”
“You... Wait you said you didn't..”
“On this tub. I've done it a million times on my home turf as a kid. Come on, Pyrax remember? It's a space colony.”
“Okay. Not everyone went out though.”
“Yeah well, I did,” Everette shrugged. “It's fun to see the stars. I used to do it when I was little when we were done work. We'd sit out on the hull and watch the gas giant, or the debris, or just stared at the stars.”
“Okay...”
“How'd you get a suit?” Irons asked amused.
“I, well, we used rescue balls when we were young. Marsha had a suit because she was a tween. When I was older I rated a suit.”
“Ah,” Irons nodded in understanding.
“I'm going to go eat lunch. I've got to swap the lidar in thirty.”
“Um...” One of the techs blinked.
“It's got a time issue,” Everette said, taking his gloves off.
“Ah,” Irons nodded.
“Not following.”
“Electronics need a time. Sensors do as well. Lidar works by sending a laser out. It hits something then comes back. The computer can get a lot of info from that, like the spectrograph thing. But it can also get a sense of the object's speed, shape, and direction by comparing the time it takes for the signal to go out and come back,” Irons explained.
“Which it can't do when it's clock is screwed up. Which is why I get to go fix it,” Everette grinned.
“Um, you realize it's not as simple as pulling a chip. Not in space.”
“Pull the casing off, pull the equipment rack out, pull the card, swap it for the new one, bag the old, button everything back up.. how hard can it be?” Everette asked turning and spreading his hands apart. “Easy as pie. Speaking of which, I think I'm going to get me some before it's all gone. Meet you there!” He rushed off.
Oh brother,” one of the EVA techs said, shaking his head.
“Yeah. Something tells me... oh boy.”
Everette grimaced as the others worked on their projects. Everyone had somewhere to be and something to do including him. Only he was having problems. He wondered if the others did? He looked around then applied the screw gun to the stubborn bolt. One more try before he resorted to sterner measures... “Come on you...”
“Careful,” a voice said over his radio. He froze. It took him a moment to realize it was female.
He looked up in confusion. “Uh...”
“It's Britney you dolt. Nice. I'm monitoring your camera feed.”
“Oh,” he whacked at the stubborn bolt with the handle of the gun. The head sheered off and then floated off.
“Oh great, now you've done it,” Britney sighed. “Nice one. Now we've got to re-tap that bolt and pull it out.”
“It's out of the way for now though,” Everette said, opening the casing. He looked at the nest of wiring around the equipment cart. “Okay. This I didn't expect.” He noted the octagonal lidar array, with the laser at the center. “Why the hell didn't they use plastic wire ties? This is a mess. There are wires all over the place. Now, how do I go about this...” He looked up, thinking and not coming up with ideas. He reached a hand in and then pulled it back. He really didn't want to snag on something and pull a lead.
“Use bungies. Pull the cables gently to one side, tie them off, then get the cart out. Slowly and carefully. If you pull too hard or off center you'll mess up the drawer alignment and the cart will bind in the track. You don't want that. Believe me,” Britney cautioned.
“Oh. Um...” Everette checked his pockets.
“Don't tell me you don't have any...” Britney sighed with extreme annoyance.
“No,” Everette said in a small voice. He'd seen the others stuff them into their pouches but hadn't followed suit. Now he regretted it.
“I'll get someone or a bot to get them to you. Anything else you need?” she asked. “While I'm at it I mean.” She sounded aggrieved.
“Um...”
“How about the tap to fix that sheered bolt head?” She said suggestively.
“I ah...”
“You break it you fix it. You know the bosses policy on that bub. You're also going to need a different screw gun, the one you've got is for exterior work.”
“There is a difference?” Everette asked puzzled, holding the gun up to examine the tip.
“Yeah. I'd say so. Check the bolts for the equipment cart if you don't believe me. And what ever you do, don't lose one. If you do, or if it gets inside the lidar it could ricochet around and tear it apart.”
“Which is a bad thing,” Bailey growled over the link. Everette froze.
“Uh, hi boss?” he said weakly.
“What the hell are you doing outside?”
“I ah, swapped?”
“Yeah, I see that. Bet you're shitting a brick right about now for getting caught too.”
“Half a one,” he joked.
“What was that?”
“Nothing sir.”
“Get this through your thick head. Take your time, do it right. If you've got a problem ask. Don't break anything.”
“He already did chief,” Britney stage whispered.
“He... I'll kill him. I'll wring his neck. I'll...”
“I'll help,” Irons said looking up from the gravitronic detector. “I mean help him of course. Just as soon as I'm finished here.”
“Thanks Admiral, but he got into this mess with both eyes wide open and he's going to finish it. And he's going to STAY out on the hull till he damn well does. Even if we go into hyper. That clear mister?” Bailey snarled.
“Yes sir,” Everette said in a small voice. All of a sudden the wonder of being outdoors wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.
“Good. Get on it.”
“I'm wondering why that crewman went out with you,” Defender commented. Irons looked over his shoulder to the electronics tech struggling with the wiring harness of the lidar array. The lidar array was one of the ship's critical long range systems. This one was a bit myopic, it needed to be properly tuned. Unfortunately that step had been skipped in the haste of leaving Pyrax.
He couldn't really blame the people back home for that oversight. He hadn't built the rig to handle tuning a lidar array properly after all. Nor had he trained the people. Or had Commander Logan do it for that matter. Hopefully that oversight was being corrected. Lidar was used for more than just a general sense of what was going on. It was a critical piece of the fire control as well. After all, how could you hit something if you didn't know what it's proper place in space was? Range? Course? Size?
In order to properly tune a ship's sensors you needed to build a dry dock with sensor receivers and mirrors on the inside scaffolding. They linked up with the ship's net, allowing it to tune it's sensors to a fine millimeter
level of efficiency.
Of course when he'd done the task on Io he'd been a little pressed for time and materials. He'd settled for using a series of ranging satellites and small disposable targets. It was crude, but it had worked well enough at the time.
“Everette?” He shook his head. “He's a good kid. Most likely he wanted a new challenge. Or wanted to impress a girl.”
“Or both,” Sprite said sarcastically. “I checked the sickbay log. His pal isn't sick. Which makes him a suspect.”
“Possibly,” Defender replied.
The Admiral paused what he was doing and floated there for a moment, thinking. “I'm having my doubts. Though come to think of it, this could be an act, and he did have the technical know how to pull off the last couple of attempts,” Irons replied thoughtfully.
“I know,” Sprite said. “Which is why I recommend you get this done as fast as you can and go in a different air lock. One no one will expect.”
“Hmmm.” He thought about it. Paranoid, but even paranoids had real enemies. And he had a real enemy here. That wasn't such a bad idea.
“And you could take the crew with you.”
“I thought you were monitoring the video feeds?”
“I can't monitor every video on the ship at the same time Admiral. I can only multitask to a certain level. That level is severely reduced when I am with you out of the ship. I can't get the level of access to the ship's net out here that I can when you're jacked in.”
“Oh. Crap,” Irons grimaced, sneaking a look at the kid through his sensors. “Okay, that's bad.”
“Or good. If the person is inside and tries something, there should be a recording.
“No, bad, I'd rather not get caught up in it at all,” Irons grimaced. “And I'd rather not get these kids killed if someone's gunning for me. Getting them caught in the crossfire would truly suck. I think we'll take your advice and return through another lock. Give me an excuse. Flub a sensor. Short the motor. Make it look like the exterior door is stuck or something. I'll go check it out when I'm done and we'll go in that way.”
“Smart Admiral.”
“And squirt an email to Bailey, have him check the lock we just came out carefully.”
“Yes sir.”
“You were right Admiral,” Bailey said as the inner hatch opened. Irons grimaced. He should have known. He wanted to kick the chief though for just blurting it out though. They needed to keep morale up. He was also unhappy about letting the assassin know that they were on to him or her.
“About what?” the blue haired EVA tech asked, clearly annoyed to have been redirected here. Six hours of work and they had had to go to the lock half way around the ship. That hadn't been fun. This lock was the same size, but it had some gear in it that made it a tight squeeze to get in and out of. Something he'd have to bring up and no doubt fix sometime.
“Sabotage. The other lock was rigged. The moment you came in and took off your helmets it would have blown out.”
The blue haired tech sucked in his breath. His partner shook his head, smacking his gloves against one leg. He was cussing softly under his breath.
“Crap,” Everette said, going so pale his freckles stood out brightly. He sat down hard. “Oh my freaking god.” His head went down into his hands. He was shaking pretty badly.
“Breath kid,” the EVA tech said looking a little pale himself. “Sucks though. Go to straight oxy if you have to.”
“Literally.”
“Okay, I gotta know... Anyone hurt? Did you well, I mean... anyone caught?” Everette asked looking up.
Bailey shook his head. When Sprite had called him he'd been skeptical but had checked. He was glad now he'd followed her hunch. If an AI could have hunches. “No. That's what tipped me off. Camera's in that section of the ship went down all at once. I've got programmers looking into it.”
“Convenient,” Irons replied.
“Yeah, someone is good.”
“Too good. It's a level playing field right now. Both sides only need to get lucky once. But each time they try something they leave a clue.”
“Which means they are getting desperate,” Bailey said. “They'll make a mistake.”
“And we'll be there to catch them,” Sprite growled.
Chapter 15
Things were looking up Sprite thought, observing the activity on the ship and around it. The Admiral had launched several satellites which were helping out immensely. Already they were learning more about the planet and it's environment.
To her surprise, they had taken on several passengers at Agnosta, though only enough to replace those that got off, the captain had been adamant about that. Also they had to be paying fees, no free rides, the purser had vehemently added. Each of the passengers had paid for their passage in different ways, usually in rare metals. One had paid in a hundred tons of food material. Another had paid with a hundred barrels of whiskey.
One of the passengers was some sort of trouble shooter engineer. He made his living by going from planet to planet fixing things, which intrigued her. He didn't just fix computer systems, he also thought of changes to various macro systems such as designing electrical generation grids from the ground up. He was quite a treasure for this time period.
Of course having the Admiral around had been a bit of a mixed blessing for him. Irons was competition after all, and he didn't charge for it. So far he hadn't crossed paths with the Admiral, choosing to remain in his cabin for now. She was curious about that, but her attempt to peek had been rebuffed. He had disabled the security system in his quarters right away.
Of course that hadn't stopped her AI curiosity. So in the guise of house keeping she'd dropped a rider into a cleaning bot and then sent it in to clean the room. She'd been a little disappointed by what she had found. He'd ignored the robot, choosing to sit and drink a glass of white wine while reading a manual on a tablet.
With a mental snort she'd turned her attention to the ship and the Admiral's plan. He still hadn't fully confided in her but she'd gotten enough of a gist from his actions to understand what he was doing.
He was spreading the wealth, passing on knowledge and technology freely. She wasn't sure if it would work or not. He was also living and working as an example to others, working hard, and giving away these things for no compensation of his own. That had a few people scratching their heads and wondering what his angle really was.
If they only knew, she mused, thinking about it. He'd achieved a few of his goals here, but not all.
The good news was mixed. The planet was now thriving, but it would take decades to get back on track even with their intervention. What they had given to the people on the planet was a drop in the bucket compared to what they really needed.
But what could have been done had been done. That was good. The people of the planet had finally come around. He'd scattered his seed well, and given it enough fertilizer to let it grow. Now he was doing the only thing left available to him, stepping back and letting nature take it's course.
The ship was doing well. They had yet to get the gravity drive online, but every other system was up and running at eighty percent or higher now. The critical ship systems were all above ninety percent across the board.
Bailey had made good on all the repairs, and had even managed to squeeze enough materials out of Charlie to replace a lot of the missing holo projectors and LCD monitors in the ship. That was good since their next jump was a bit longer.
They weren't charged exorbitant port fees, so they had invested in additional fuel beyond what Irons had brought on board. They had nearly a half tank of fuel, despite all of the shuttling up and down and the Admiral's jaunts in the launch. The navigator and sensor officer had tried to collaborate to find a nice icy rock on their course to the next jump point but nothing had turned up before the deadline to move out had expired.
Apparently they had hoped for an extension but the captain had clearly had enough of waiting. Ferguson was ready to move out and his word was law. With
a rumble the ship's engines kicked her into a higher orbit and then the OMS kicked, sending the ship off onto her new course. Slowly the blue and green marble receded in the darkness of space. About a day out, on their way out of the system they received a transmission from Agnosta.
“Destiny, we took a vote, and from now until the end of time your ship is welcome here anytime. No port fees ever. Thank you and goddess speed on your journey. We welcome your return,” the gruff voice of Mrs. Jersey said.
The captain glanced at his exec in surprise. “Well, they have changed,” he said in surprise. He cleared his throat and nodded to the communications tech. She touched a control and then nodded back.
“Agnosta control this is Destiny, captain Ferguson speaking. We humbly thank you for your kind regards and look forward to our next visit. Stay safe and warm. May the spirit of space shine on you. Destiny out.”
As they got closer to the center of the oort cloud several days later the Admiral brought a small comet in for them to use. The sensor tech was a little put out that she hadn't seen the icy rock until the Admiral had already filed a flight plan. Fortunately for her mental well being no one ribbed her about missing the prize.
Irons had a plan and he was still keeping it close to his chest. That was obvious. What wasn't obvious to some was why. Sprite listened to the chatter with mixed emotions. She knew the real reason, the Admiral didn't want whoever the assassin was to be able to plan anything easily. Not unless it was his intention, when he finally laid his trap. Which apparently was still a ways off.
So far the assassin had used indirect methods of attack. Methods that certainly would have worked against a lesser opponent. Sprite laid the odds at just under fifty one percent that the assassin wouldn't stick his or her neck out in a direct confrontation unless the prey was about to leave and slip through their fingers for good.
Which apparently was the Admiral's thinking as well. By keeping moving and keeping everyone off balance about his plans he was a pretty good moving target. They'd even changed quarters once they returned just in case. She'd sent a bot in to check and found nothing. That was frustrating.
Destiny's Choice (The Wandering Engineer) Page 26