Milk Run (Smuggler's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (26 page)

“I didn’t realize there was another Solomon aboard. Son?”

“Brother. Don’t change the subject.”

“A cargo master. Ship’s rated for one but Mr. Lyons seems a bit stressed.”

“He doesn’t sail well. He’s only in it for the paycheck and he spends most of it on his anesthesia of choice.” Trask nodded. “Cargo master on a Barbell isn’t the most challenging of jobs. One can per trip. Bet wrong and the whole ship hates you for not turning a profit.”

“Bet right and they love you,” Natalya said.

“Odds are a’gin’ ya over the long haul unless you’re lucky, gifted, and fast. Our Mr. Lyons had a lot of bad luck over his relatively short career.” Trask shook his head. “Kondur picks the cargoes and makes all the arrangements. Cargo master is just for show and signs the documents for delivery and pickup.”

“First mate,” Natalya said. “Nothing against Zoya but she’s just out of the academy. Just like me.”

“She’s good,” Trask said. “It comes natural to her, but you’re right. She deserves a little time in grade to work through the rough edges.”

“Chief engineer. A real one.”

“I thought you were the engineering genius.”

“I’m straight aces on the little ships.
Peregrine
has been my second home since I was twelve. I know her systems inside and out. My academy work focused on small ships and small ship systems. Those behemoths you’ve got leashed back there? I know how they all work. I can do the routine maintenance on them. I can run the diagnostics, but I’m no engineering genius to get them working if they break down.”

“You talk a good game.” Trask’s face gave nothing away.

“Talk’s talk. I try not to let my mouth write any checks my butt can’t cover.”

“Engineering. Crew. Knowles?”

“I’ve been nothing but impressed with him. Knows his kit and doesn’t feel the need to take it on parade. I’ve swung though the swamp a couple of times in the last few days. It’s always spot on. He’s tracking his filter and scrubbers. He’s even got some kind of contraption to monitor the acidity in the scrubber sluice.”

“What’s that do for him?”

“Says it tells him if the algae are healthy.” Natalya shrugged. “Knowles is playing on a whole different field than any environmental tech I’ve ever seen.”

“Kondur wouldn’t like to lose him from the station’s life support crew.”

“Don’t blame him.”

“What about Collie on power?”

“Complete cypher. Haven’t interacted with him other than the navigation stations. He seems to know what he’s doing on the console. Beyond that? I’ve gotten no read from him.”

“What about you?”

“What about me? I’m out of my depth, don’t fancy command, but I’m the
de facto
department head on a ship I’m really only qualified to stand watches on.”

Trask nodded. “Give yourself some credit.”

Natalya shrugged. “I’m trying to be realistic.”

“Fair enough.” Trask paused for a moment and pursed his lips. “Where’d all that power go?”

“No idea.”

“What are you doin’ to find out?”

“Mostly talking to you at the moment. It had to go somewhere. I suspect it bled out onto the hull.”

“How would you be able to tell?”

“Hull sensors might have picked up an RF spike.” She shook her head. “It’s a long shot, but possible. None of the sensors got fried, did they?”

Trask gave her a lopsided grin. “You’re engineering. You tell me.”

“Nothing threw an alarm, but I haven’t had a chance to dig into the data yet. I only just found out the jump was a normal length from Blanchard.”

“Charlie say anything to you about it?”

“Just noted that he’d seen it on his bridge displays and that it seemed out of line.”

Trask nodded. “Your thoughts?”

“I agree with him. Seems out of line. We had solid by-the-numbers jumps all the way through the Deep Dark. Now, our first jump inside Confederation space and we’re bleeding capacitor charge.” She shook her head. “Something ain’t right.”

Trask nodded again. “So, you’ve got four and half weeks to figure it out. We’ll be parked in Siren Orbital by then, so you’ll be able to order anything you need to fix it.”

“Assuming I can find it.”

“I got faith,” Task said.

“In me?”

He laughed. “In Kondur. He wouldn’t have sent you two High Liners on this trip if he hadn’t thought you’d both do the job. Now git. You got problems to solve and I got reports to write.”

“I’d think being a smuggler you’d have fewer reports, not more.”

He laughed. “I’ve got more and they have to be perfect just in case somebody actually reads one. Now, scoot!” He flexed his fingers over his desk as if flicking away imaginary dust on the surface.

Natalya scooted.

Chapter 27
Siren System: 2363, June 23

Natalya had her head in a Burleson drive when Knowles found her. “You sure you’re supposed to take that apart?” he asked, a silly grin pasted on his face and a cup of coffee in his hand.

Natalya looked up at him and grimaced. “Something ain’t right. We burned way too much capacitor for a short jump.”

“Find anything?” He nodded at the spaghetti of boards and busses inside the casing.

She bit her lip and shook her head. “Nothing yet. I ran a deep probe overnight. Nada.”

“And nothing on the voodoo you do? The laying on of hands?”

She gave him a hard stare. “You making fun of me?”

He held up his free hand, palm out. “Not at all. I actually believe you in that regard. Once you know what it feels like when it’s working, I really do believe that we humans can detect some kinds of variations.” He shrugged. “Nothing on the molecular level, but still.”

Natalya reached for the cover and started putting the drive back together. “It felt fine,” she said. “Diagnostics are clean and there’s nothing obviously out of place in the casing.”

“Man, I hate these kinds of problems.”

She ratcheted the last bolt down and gave them all an extra tap to snug them up. “Me, too. Time to check elsewhere in the chain.”

“Good strategy. You need an extra head to bounce ideas off?”

She shrugged. “I’m not out of ideas yet, but I’ll keep you in mind. How’re things in the swamp?”

“Everything still squishing that supposed to squish. Gas mixes are good. Returns don’t show any additives that shouldn’t be there.”

She powered the Burleson unit back up and waited for it to finish booting before speaking. “Can I ask why you do this?”

“Do what? These so-called smuggling runs or the whole environmental thing?”

“These trips.”

He shrugged. “Dark Knight has a huge environmental plant. It’s so big, I don’t get my hands wet or dirty that often because I need a crew of thirty to keep up with it.” He looked around the engine room and up at the overhead. “Here? I get a chance to get down in the mud and tinker.”

“Like with the scrubber sluice?”

“Well, that’s something we do at the station. I was surprised when I came out here and found ships don’t monitor that.”

“Any theories?”

“It’s a tiny improvement. When you’ve got ten acres of algae matrix, even a tiny improvement gives you a lot of scrubbing leverage. With ten square meters, that extra improvement is only about a million molecules.”

“I can see that. Why do it, then?”

“It’s a useful predictor of air quality and the overall health of the algae matrix.”

“So a bellwether?”

“In a manner of speaking, yeah.”

She pondered for a moment. “You ever think about doing this full time?”

He got a sheepish grin. “Actually, I fantasize about it all the time between trips. We no sooner get back and I start looking forward to going again.”

“Why don’t you?”

He shrugged. “Too comfy. Pay’s too good where I am. I get mad money from this, but the station still pays my bills.”

Natalya nodded. “I can see that. One of the advantages of just starting out, I guess.”

“No psychological inertia?”

“Something like that. I need to get my ship fixed so I can get back to what I wanted to do.”

“Which was?”

“Fast packet courier trade around Toe-Hold space.”

“Not much room on those Scouts. You bunking up?”

“Mostly planning on data and small-mass, high-value cargoes that need to go a long way.”

He pursed his lips and frowned a little. “Can you make a living at that?”

“Maybe,” she said. “My overhead is low and the
Peregrine
has long legs. I can cross almost the whole Western Annex in a couple of days by jumping through the Deep Dark.” She looked at the Burleson unit. “Where would power get eaten up?”

Knowles shook his head. “If it were me, I’d be looking at the downstream components.”

She glanced about, mentally tracing the power flows. “Any particular reason?”

He shrugged. “All my systems have feedback control loops. If they’re not getting enough water, they tell the pumps to send more. Capacitors are like a big tank. If you used more than expected, what would have told the drive to use more?”

“Throttle, for one,” she said.

“Was there any activity on the throttle at the time period?”

She shook her head. “None. Typically there isn’t during the actual jump.”

“So, downstream you have—what? Emitters on the hull?”

“Yeah. A couple of big ones in the outward facing curves of her nose.”

He shrugged. “If they’re out of whack, could that cause it?”

“Yeah, but …” Natalya’s voice tapered off as she considered.

Knowles grinned. “My work here is done.” He flourished his coffee cup by way of a wave and strolled off toward environmental.

“Thank you,” Natalya said.

He waved his hand but didn’t turn around or stop.

Natalya pulled up the ship’s schematic on her tablet and began tracing the emitter bus network that carried the massive jolts of energy around the ship. She pocketed the socket wrench and ran up the ladder to her office to get a plate tool. The schematic showed a lot of places to look, and not all of them would be easy to get to. She considered getting Solomon to help since she held the lead slot in that group, but stopped short of asking. If she was right, she’d find out soon enough. If not, then she wouldn’t have a witness to failure. The thought made her laugh.

Three stans later—covered in grease, sweat, and dirt from crawling around in the inspection tunnels in engineering—she felt like giving it up as a bad job. She’d bashed a knuckle on a sharp edge and the sweat from her hands stung in the abrasion. She lay there on the deck and took a breather. The air in the tunnels carried a metallic tang along with a higher than normal level of humidity. Together it made for an unpleasant experience that had her shipsuit sticking to her in places where it shouldn’t and restricting her movements.

Her tablet bipped with the first piece of good news she’d had all morning. A diagnostic routine had tripped a warning on a bus control coupling in the spine. She wriggled back out of the tunnel and secured the inspection hatch.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Her grubby appearance earned her more than a couple of strange looks as she clambered up the ladder toward the spine.

“What have you been into?” Solomon asked as they crossed paths outside Engineering Control.

“Inspection tunnels. Trying to find out where the extra power went during that last jump. And why we needed it to begin with.”

“You noticed that, did you?” Solomon asked.

“Kinda hard to miss.”

“Find anything yet?”

“Nothing I can put a cause to. Drives check out. I’ve had a system diagnostic running for the last three stans and it’s finally pinged me.”

“Need a hand?”

“I got it.” She grimaced. “Although if this doesn’t pan out, I’m not looking forward to continuing my tour of the inner workings of the Barbell.”

Solomon laughed and waved as she headed up the spine toward the bow.

Natalya stopped by the head on the way and rinsed the worst of the grime off her hands and face. She’d need a shower before she’d be able to go to the wardroom for lunch, but first she wanted a look at that bus coupling.

She fired up her tablet and followed the map laid out on her screen. About two-thirds of the way toward the bow, she found the inspection hatch and pulled it. Looking around with a pen light, she saw the problem a split second before the evidence met her nose. As she surveyed the damage, she got a cold knot in the pit of her stomach. Being careful not to touch anything, she levered the hatch closed and rubbed her hands on the thighs of her shipsuit before heading forward to find the captain.