Destiny's Choice (The Wandering Engineer) (37 page)

“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.

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.