Retribution (The Federation Reborn Book 3) (62 page)

“Don't take that tone with me,” a female voice replied, voice cool and reproachful. “I don't care who you sleep with …”

“I never said I'm sleeping with someone, Doc. I have been on my feet for sixty-one hours straight. I'm tired, I'm stressed, and I'm fucking frustrated because some jackass dumped a shitload of work on me when my plate was already full,” the male voice snarled in fury. “Now you come along with your anal retentive, I know better than you because I'm sitting in a sterile office not latched to the fracking hull, trying to calibrate the fracking sensors for the second time because someone wasn't
happy
with the first round we did!”

Catherine glanced at Myron. The tactical officer flushed in anger, turning slowly purple. Someone was ending their career in this rant; she was certain of that.

“They dump this bullshit on us knowing it's their own damn fault
not
ours! Not that anyone's willing to admit a fracking thing! Sensor miscalibration my hairy ass and scrotum!” A comm tech snickered. A few of the sensor techs looked nonplused though. “
They
screwed up, but we get it in the gods-be-damned neck to fix it! Again! So, on top of every fracking thing else I'm supposed to do, plus manage fixing the damn cracks, I'm stuck with this crap! And some asshole tells me to do it again???”

“Now you dump this shit on me. You're fracking lucky I'm on the gods-be-damned
hull
in this fracking stinky ass suit and not in that fracking
office
right now, Lieutenant, or I'd shove your gods-be-damned orders up your anal retentive
ass
!” the voice roared.

“Who is that?” Myron demanded.

“Do you have any idea the level of concentration it takes to get this damn job done? Do you? Well? Trace thousands of wires? Check
every
connection? Check every voltage line, every data line?? How the more we work, the more careful we have to be not to screw something up? How we have to choreograph every move in tight spaces so we don't rip something, and how hard that is when you're tired?” he hissed. “The calories we burn moving gear, moving equipment, moving parts, holding up beams, soaking up radiation in this fracking suit, rewiring shit, pounding pins in, or crawling through Jeffery tubes? And who the hell named them that anyway?” the chief continued to rant, voice rising in octaves as he was close to completely losing it. “What the
frack's
wrong with you, get back to work!” the voice snarled to someone else.

“It's um, Chief Riker, sir, on
Star Mauler
. He's having a bit of a meltdown. It's the fourth this shift actually,” the rating who'd brought it up said in a subdued voice.

“Chief Riker?”

“Chief Engineer Riker, sir,” the hapless rating reported.

“Fourth melt down? This shift?” Admiral De Gaulte said, interrupting the tactical officer. “Turn that down,” he ordered as the voices continued. “In fact, turn it off,” he said. He turned to Catherine. “Why wasn't I told about this?”

“Because I wasn't told either, sir.”

“Who else is doing this?” the admiral demanded, turning to the rating.

She spread her hands apart. “The engineers, sir. We hear them out on the hulls cussing and well, stuff. The ones trying to deal with the damaged ships are the worst. They usually bitch about trying to put their ship together with riggers tape, spit, and hope,” she quoted.

“And this is the fourth one? This shift alone?” Catherine asked. “Why didn't you say something to me?” she asked, crossing her arms.

“They usually get a handle on it. A section chief or someone calls them to order. If they don't buckle down, they get sent inside. I don't know what's going on internally but …”

“This is on
Star Mauler
?” Myron asked.

The rating shook her head. “No, sir, it's everywhere. The whole fleet. All the engineers.”

“Um …,” Myron frowned. “Sounds a bit like a mutiny,” he said. “Should we set an example?” he asked.

“Were the sensors at fault?” the admiral asked.

“No, sir,” a sensor tech admitted. “We've found minor bugs and stuff but … no, sir. He's right; we all fell for it.”

“And then pointed fingers at engineering and dumped the problem on them,” Catherine said as Myron's ears turned red.

“Yes,” the admiral sighed. “Comm, pass on a general order to the fleet. Finish this rotation of calibrations that are already underway but stop blaming them for CIC's failures. All engineers are ordered to get a minimum of six hours sleep,” he ordered.

“Aye aye, sir. I don't know if it will help. I heard that …,” the rating cut herself off when one of her partners glowered in her direction. “Sorry,” she said, ducking her head away from the admiral and her section PO.

“Continue,” the admiral ordered. “You heard?” he prompted.

The rating turned back. “It's just well, once you get that tired, it's hard to shut down. Hard to go to sleep when you've got so much going on, so many things to fix. I've got a boyfriend who is a tech and well …,” she flushed in embarrassment, “they don't know when to quit sometimes, sir,” she said in a small voice.

“They can't be medicated either since they need to be ready to go,” one of the other ratings chipped in.

“Thank you, that will do. Obviously we've been neglecting crew health,” the admiral said, eying Catherine. “Or I should say, the officers involved have. Well, I suppose we're all at fault here,” he said.

Catherine grimaced and then nodded. “We'll do what we can to get it fixed, sir,” she said.

:::{)(}:::

Commander Riker half expected a pair of SPs or orderlies to meet him at the lock and then escort him to the brig. He was so tired he honestly didn't care, as long as he got some food and sleep, not the suit chow he'd been sucking down for hours on end. He so needed a shower too, and he'd love to get the damn plug out of his ass and the catheter gone.

Instead only the usual shift change was there. They were not sensor techs though; they were a work party formed to work on a sticky servo in number seven's shaper grav emitter. “Skipper said to get some chow, shower, and go to bed, boss,” Mallory said from the other side of the hatch. “And if you ever stick your foot in your mouth so deep again, don't bother coming back in. Just stay out there and vent the right way. His words, sir,” she said.

The chief winced. He'd realized he'd crossed a line. His tired mind told him he was in for it, but it was too tired to really care anymore. That wasn't a good sign. It meant he was getting sloppy, and sloppy meant bad mistakes.

“I expect to get my ass chewed for a while,” he sighed.

“Had to be said,” his assistant chief said. “Thanks for taking the flack,” she said, cracking a smile. “Better you than me I suppose.” he snorted, but his head still hung down as he pulled at his gloves. “Don't get hurt anytime soon though. Doc's not happy.”

“Yeah,” the chief sighed shaking his head. “Yeah,” he said in a heavier tone of voice.

:::{)(}:::

The first arrival of Second Fleet's damaged ships in Protodon caused something of an uproar as the fortresses and starships defending the jump point went onto high alert. The unexpected arrival was something of a drill for them once they received the ship's IFFs.

Repair and construction crews were immediately overwhelmed by requests from the ships for parts and repairs. Lieutenant Commander Aren Hardesty shook his head, rolled up his sleeves, and did his best to get into it. As the senior engineer in the star system, he had the unenviable task to make some sense out of the mess—well, he and the Spacebees under his command. What sucked was that they had to drop everything in order to handle the damn gaggle of ships. And gaggle it was, with all sorts of honking and noises coming from the captains, XOs, and engineers. All competing to be the loudest it seemed.

One of the first things they did after receiving a download from each ship was triage. They did their best to ignore the pleading from the various ships. One by one they surveyed and then sent most of the most wounded ships on to Antigua. Anything less than 60 percent capable was sent to Antigua within hours of their arrival. Any ship with major damage such as missing turrets or drives was sent no matter what the crew claimed was their status.

But there were some who flat out refused to go. Some ships with captains who outranked the engineering staff and were being obstinate, which was why the boss got called in to get them sorted out. As if he had time for stroking and hand holding, he thought acidly as he let his current target lay out her case.

Lieutenant Commander and
Questor's
Skipper Drue Januea knew this was her last chance to get her ship patched up for the fight ahead. From the bored expression on her opponent's face, she knew her desperate appeal was going to fall on deaf ears.

Aren was in charge of the triage efforts and repairs for his sins. The gruff officer was a graduate of the first Spacebee class. He'd fallen in love with engineering as a child. He'd spent some time in Horatio Logan's engineering school as a kid before his parents had been taken a job on the upper decks. He'd been one of the first volunteers for the navy, and he'd been in the academy engineering classes from day one. He still treasured the small amount of time he'd had under Admiral Irons and Horatio Logan's tutelage. He'd spent years moving from job to job. His favorite was yard work, but he'd learned long ago that you didn't always get what you want.

At least he wasn't stuck in a ship running her engineering department. That shit was for the birds in his opinion. He'd take his own job with all the hair pulling headaches any day. There was something new, a new challenge to overcome, a new project he'd never done that tickled him and kept him up at night.

“We've got eyes, Captain,” Aren growled. “We're not stupid. Get your ass to Antigua. And don't act all dejected, pout, and shit. I've got enough to worry about. So do you. Grow up.”

“Damn it …”

“No amount of begging, pleading, or bribery … okay,
maybe
bribery,” the engineer quipped. He smiled. “You aren't going to win. I'm not sending you home with your tail between your legs. I'm sending you home so I can focus on the ships I
can
repair in the time we've got while you get your engineers to do what they can en route to Antigua. So when you get there, the yard dogs can finish plugging components back in and get your ass turned around and back here pronto. The sooner you do that, the sooner you get your shot-up ass moving, the faster you get here. So, the more you argue, the more time you waste. Understood?”

“Yes, damn it.” Drue sighed. “I just don't want to lose my ship. You know they are going to have combat reviews and crap. I'll have to face a board and go over every decision I made. That's going to bog us down. They might pull my crew apart for other ships and leave
Questor
high and dry like they did with the smaller ships.” She grimaced. “Breaking in another ship could take me weeks. Time we don't have.”

“It's all possible, I admit.
Not
my problem though, I've got enough on my plate here. I'd say you have my sympathies, but I'm a bit busy. Anything else you want me to listen to while I try to do my job?”

“Frack. Fine,” Captain Januae seethed. She made a note of his name. He had better hope he never crossed paths with her again she thought acidly. “I'm going,” she grumbled. she looked over her shoulder. “Nav, set a course for the B458 jump point at best speed. It looks like we're done here.”

“Aye aye, ma’am,” a voice said in the background.

“Good luck,” the captain growled to the engineer before he cut the circuit.

“Luck, she says,” Aren said shaking his head. “Who's she kidding? This is blood, sweat, tears, and a whole hell of a lot of skin and swearing.”

“Boss, if you're done fracking around we've got a problem with logistics,” a rating said.

“Of course we do,” Aren sighed, stretching and rubbing at the small of his back. “I'm coming. But if this is some minor shit that someone else should be able to figure out don't expect me to be happy or not scream about it,” he growled.

:::{)(}:::

Chief Riker winced as he finished the last round of reports. He sat back with a heavy sigh and rolled his shoulders. One gig down, plenty more to go. But he was getting there, glacially slow, but getting there.

His lips puckered. He was surprised to be sitting at all. Hell, he was surprised to be
breathing
at all. He'd half expected to be keel hauled after that outburst. Instead he'd had his ass singed by Commander Ramses, then he'd had an icy dressing down from Captain Knoll. Both experiences had left him cringing and sweaty. Both had made his ass and pecker pucker inside out. But he'd managed to hang onto both.

And that had been it.

Somehow, he'd expected more—being booted from the ship, getting demoted, court martialed, something. Apparently their hearts hadn't been in it or something. But he'd been just smart enough to not ask a dumb question like if there would be more. He'd held onto one last shred of brain cell and kept that impulsive question in check.