Fool's Gold (The Wandering Engineer) (18 page)

"Now
now, throwbacks to anarchism is a strictly organic thing I know..." he
smiled.

"No,
I've found it's not just organic, the station AI qualifies as well,"
Sprite sighed. The Admiral laughed.

"What
are you laughing about?" a tech asked coming up behind him.

"I
was... You know what, never mind." He waved it off getting his chuckle
under control. "Let's just say a friend has discovered that she isn't as
superior as she thought." He smiled as Sprite's virtual face stuck out her
tongue then winked off his HUD. He shook his head.

"Where
are we on the repairs to the deck thirty four power bus? If we can get that
sorted out then we can distribute power better without losing so much to shorts
and overloads." He looked at the tech.

"Well,
we've got this section sorted out here..." He leaned forward showing the
Admiral the pad. They spent a few minutes going over the progress before he
nodded seeing the approaching Shelby.

"Right,
keep us updated." He turned just as she stopped.

"Right,
gotta go..." The tech hurried off after catching a look from his boss. She
looked around as if to make sure no one was in ear shot then grimaced.

"We're
still behind on the repairs. Life support has cut out on twelve decks. We're
getting cascade failures. People are fleeing to decks with power and that is
overloading those decks." She sighed.

"Any
word from Io?" he asked.

"Their
last sitrep was forty minutes ago, they still have about two hours to finish
the first parts. I just received word that Sergio is on his way back with a
small load of water ice." She sighed. "I don't think a hundred tons
is going to make much of a difference. We don't have the power to even melt it
right now. We can't spare it." She shook her head.

 "You'd
be surprised. Every little bit helps." He shrugged.

“This
is the central power room for fusion reactor six.” Shelby waved to the room. He
nodded as he looked around. The room was relatively clean and neat. There were
signs of patching, wiring hanging here and there, and carts loaded with tools
or gear hooked into consoles. There were four couches, each manned. The central
one had a young man wearing a civilian grade virtual reality helmet and gloves.
He was motioning in space and talking softly into a boom mike.

“Damn
it, it's like trying to do fine repairs in a suit, there's no feedback, and the
lag is too much,” he muttered. The Admiral shook his head.

“Tactile
as well?” he asked. Shelby shook her head.

“Best
we could do is sight and motion control,” she muttered. Someone shushed them.

“Will
you people just shut up?! I'm trying to concentrate here! One wrong move and
this thing goes nova!” the man in the chair snarled. The Admiral nodded. He
examined the nearby console, taking in the readings, and then blanched.

“Jack
to your right Admiral,” Sprite reported. He looked in the indicated direction
and stepped over to it.

“What
are you...?” Shelby started to ask as his hand morphed. “Oh!” Her eyes were
wide.

“Holy
shit!” the woman sitting at the console reared back in surprise. The Admiral
inserted his probe and closed his eyes.

“I'm
in. Damn.” He sighed at the extensive damage.

“Cascade
failure Admiral, the bottle software can't cope with it. Adjusting now.” Sprite
inserted herself into the code. He felt the flow of data but focused his
attention on the bottle itself.

The
plasma bottle was a toroid, and from the look and feel it was heavily patched
with equipment that was never designed for the load. Several sectors were out,
and the operator was trying to compensate by manipulating the magnetic fields
manually.

Unfortunately
by doing that he started a turbulent reaction. Like skipping a pebble on a pond
the ripples from the changes he was making were interacting, destabilizing the
fields further.

“She's
near a cascade failure. Too much induction manipulation. Working,” Sprite
reported. He grunted.

“Who's
there?” A voice over the link asked. A primitive avatar of the operator was at
the center of the matrix. He was thrashing about, trying to manually manipulate
the plasma stream. “Get out your distracting me,” the man snarled.

“Easy,
I'm here to help. I'll take the left race, you take the right.” He fed the
commands and started easing into the trace.

“No
I, oh wow! You've done this before?” the man asked.

“A
few times. We need a liquid dynamics simulation to get this sorted out.”

 Sprite
pulled up a HUD. “No joy Admiral, I can't ,I'm barely holding things together
as it is,” she answered.

“Proteus...”

 “Working
Admiral. Processors fully engaged.”

He
watched as vectors were plotted on his HUD. He nodded. “Feed this to the
operator too,” the Admiral ordered.

“What
the hell?” the man asked after a moment. “What the hell are all these arrows?”

“Vectors.
Tweak your side to better match them,” he answered.

“I'm
cutting the fuel now Admiral, scaling back to ten percent until you get a
handle on this,” Sprite reported. He grunted.

“Power
dropping to ten percent. Initializing repairs now,” the Admiral said out loud.
“Shelby let them know.”

“Who
are you?” the operator asked. “You’re not Logan that's for sure.” He chuckled.
“My name is Liam by the way, Liam Kincaid.” Irons smiled.

“John
Irons. I am a sleeper like Logan. I thought I would drop in and lend a hand,”
the Admiral answered. Sprite made some changes and the bottle began to
stabilize.

“Who
did that?” Liam asked.

“My
AI. Don't worry about it. We're sorting things out,” the Admiral answered.

“Admiral,
I've patched a link to the database you brought along. I've refreshed the
intake drivers and thrust vectoring software. Io is with me and lending a hand.
We need more channels open to do this though. I don't have the bandwidth
through your link to sustain both of our efforts,” Sprite reported.

“Shelby
or someone. Open a channel to the Io 11. Data line. Open bandwidth. Give them
full core access. Do it now,” the Admiral ordered out loud.

He
felt a brush along his side and smiled as Io's avatar swirled into focus. “Glad
to help Admiral. I can handle this if you need a break. I was bored anyway.”
She held up her hands. “Sprite and Proteus have the vectors worked out. We're
stepping her back up to eleven percent but I don't think we can get beyond
twenty percent.” The AI shook her head. He stepped back as she took control.

“Liam,
let Io in so you can take a break. She's better suited for this than you or I,”
the Admiral ordered. Liam grunted then stepped back. Io oozed into the void as
he moved.

“This
is a bit trickier then the bottles I have. This hack job is nasty,” Io replied.
The Admiral grunted.

“First
order of business.” He nodded to Liam. Liam nodded back then reached up and
pulled his helmet off. His avatar faded then disappeared.

“Anything
below ten will normally cut ignition. Admiral if you've got a miracle you
better hurry,” Io said. He nodded and logged out.

“Admiral?”
a young woman asked. He opened his eyes to see a tech looking at him.

“Sorry,
I was in the core.” He straightened, and then pulled at the hem of his coverall
instinctively. “Report,” he replied.

 “I
don't know what you did, but it worked. We're at reduced power though,” the
woman replied, automatically falling into a professional demeanor. He nodded.

“The
only way to stop the cascade was to slow the fuel feed and get control.” He
felt Sprite's efforts through his linkage. Even Defender's processing power was
taxed. The nanites were tapped out. “We need a lot of parts in a short period
of time.” He shook his head and looked over to Shelby who was pale.

“That
was close. I didn't realize it was that bad.” She glared at Liam. He had his
helmet off and under his arm.

“Don't
blame me dear, we need as much power as we can get remember? Things just kinda
sorta got away from me all at once,” he retorted. He took a bottle of water
from a nearby tech and took a long drink. He was soaked in sweat.

“Damn,
I hate coming out of virtual, my body feels like crap,” he muttered then
stretched. “How long was I in for?” he asked.

“Five
hours,” the nearby tech answered.

“New
personal record. Cool.” He smiled. Shelby rolled her eyes.

“I
know I know, can't hold a candle to your dad. How is he anyway?” Liam asked.
“He's in the nanite regen tank,” Shelby answered. “We would have lost him if
the Admiral here hadn't intervened.” She motioned to Irons.

Several
of the techs along with Liam seemed to instinctively snarl at the idea of an
Admiral in their midst. “He's the real deal, from dad's time,” Shelby replied
looking around. “Get over it. He's going to shake this station up and get it
sorted out.” She smiled. “Isn't that right Admiral?” she asked smiling sweetly
at him.

He
cleared his throat as all eyes turned on him. “Do my best. But we have a lot of
work ahead of us. Are you folks up for it?” he asked. Some nodded, some looked
confused or reluctant. He shook his head. “You've got to get your head in the
game and focus folks. Otherwise this station is history.” He looked at the ones
on the fence. One by one they nodded.

“Right,
so who was that in the core?” Liam stood, jerking his thumb behind him. “Didn't
feel like a person. A real one.” He looked confused.

The
Admiral chuckled. “That Liam, was the Io 11 core, Io herself. She's lending a
hand until we can get things sorted.” He tried not to snort as Liam's eyes
widened comically.

“Well,
I guess I won’t ask her out for a date then.” Several of the techs chuckled at
that. The Admiral smiled.

“No,
She's a lady in her own way, but she'd run rings around you.” He waved a
dismissive hand. Liam laughed.

“Admiral,
we've finished the software patch job, I'm working on more fixes now. Io has
compiled a repair list and has uploaded it to her fabricators. We're using the
Valdez tab as the down on the first parts. The purser is still arguing with the
exec over them.” Sprite sounded disgusted. He sighed.

“Okay,
sitrep, Io has bypassed her crew and is working on making parts, but we need to
find a way to pay for them or they won’t come out of the ship. I've got a tab
with the Valdez family, and I think we can get a few critical parts but if
we're going to overhaul this beast you’re going to need to dig deep. Any
ideas?” He looked around.

Shelby
held up a tablet. “I've gotten a report; Quasimodo has found a couple air cars
that were slated for the museum upstairs. We're going to use them. Also Benny
found a couple satellite cores that might work.” She shrugged.

“Let
the exec know. Get them to the docks for transfer; the first part should be
ready...” Sprite uploaded a timer on his HUD, “...in twenty minutes. The first
parts are paid for, but we've got to keep ahead of the curve or they will stop
the supply. We also need more materials for them to use. Fabricator's need
them.” He sighed.

The
techs nodded. “Yeah, we know, Logan taught us,” Liam replied. Shelby turned to
look at him then back to the Admiral.

“I'll
need to look at the other reactors, we might be able to get another up with a
few of the parts, and then it can take over while this one is shut down for an
overhaul,” the Admiral told Shelby. She nodded.

“Right,
Okay Mary and Walt, you have the watch, the rest of you get me that status
report on the other reactors, the status on the life support crew outside, and
Sergio's status.” She looked around. “Well? What are you waiting for? Get to
it! Chop chop!” She clapped her hands. Liam and the others jumped and began tapping
at padds and consoles.

“No
rest for the wicked,” Liam muttered.

“Rest
when you’re dead Liam,” Shelby retorted.

“So
when do I get my AI back?” Faith's drawl made him turn to the open doorway. He
shook his head.

“I'm
working on it.” He watched as she moved aside to allow a load of parts on a
gravity pallet to pass by.

“Seriously,
don't you have enough AI's?” she asked. He sighed.

“Faith
honest, we're working on it. Io is the only AI capable of handling the bottle
while we try to repair it.” He motioned to the crew busy frantically working on
a pair of robots.

“Is
it that bad?” Faith asked softly stepping up beside him. He looked at her. She
gauged his look then sighed. “Bloody hell it is. I can tell from your
expression. I'm not too thrilled about helping these blighters after the crap
they've put us through over the years...” Several techs stiffened at that. 
“But I can't hold the rest of the people on this station responsible. They’re
just trying to live.” She waved. Irons nodded.