New Dawn (Wandering Engineer) (16 page)

"Great." He saw
something scuttling around. "Was that a rat?" he asked.

She looked inside then snarled,
"get the cats."

He looked at her. She was
blushing. The tall heavy shouldered red head softly called for cats. "I
see they serve a dual purpose," he observed. The chief went into the cargo
bay, gun drawn. She tapped the lights and they came up. She blinked and fired
at a shadow.

A can jumped. "Damn."
She looked around.

"Dorah is on her way,"
the red head called.

"Well, find these damn
things before they eat all the grain!" the chief snarled.

"Okay okay," the red
head sighed, stepping around the Admiral. "Excuse me," she said. She
picked up a crowbar lying on a wooden crate then hefted it. "Here mister
rat..." she said softly. He snorted

"So does this mean I get
different quarters?" he asked.

The chief pointed to a corner.
"There." he grimaced.

"Okay..." He tossed the
bedroll down, and then sat on it. “Defender...”

“Keep an eye out for trouble, no
problem admiral,” Defender responded. “I'm on watch; Sprite is busy rebuilding
the net. Shields are up and nominal.”

He watched as they tried to hunt
the rodents, not succeeding. After a few minutes a sleepy Dorah arrived
carrying Mister Whiskers and a blue cat. "Get those useless hairballs in
here," the chief snarled. The Admiral closed his eyes and listened. One by
one he filtered anything not animal out.

"Okay, there is...”

"SHHH" The guard said
kicking his bedroll. He opened his eyes. The guard was watching as the cats
stalked something. A rat sprang out, bounced off a bulkhead, and then hopped
away.

"Denubian kangaroo rat.
Great," he grunted.

 The little varmint jumped about
crazily, dodging the cats, crowbar, and wild shots from the chief. He watched
as they chased it out the hatch. "Don't let it get away!" The chief
called angrily. They sprang into pursuit. He watched them leave.

"Alone at last," he
sighed, and tapped the light control. As the lights dimmed he heard rustling in
the sacks of grain. "Spoke to soon," he groaned.

"Captain, I'm putting a work
crew together to repair the hover pallets, there were quite a few that were
acting up. We need to put more in service so we can load faster," the
purser said.

The Captain nodded sagely.
"All right Vanessa, if that's okay with Molly." She looked to Molly.
Molly squirmed in her seat.

Jennie leaned over and whispered.
"Say something you dunce! We need those people on more important
projects!"

Molly adjusted her glasses and
took a sip of water. "Um Captain, I mean, that is, we need most of our
people on the repair and maintenance projects we started." She squirmed a
little under the glare of the Purser.

"There's no reason your
people can't do their own maintenance Vanessa, they broke it, they fix
it," Jennie said, meeting glare for glare. "We have enough to worry
about trying to keep the ship running." She shook her head.

The Captain sat back, sipping her
tea. "True, and you were complaining that constant inventories weren't
keeping your people busy Vanessa."

The purser frowned. "We
handle cargo, fixing things is their job," she said. She waved to the
engineer contingent. "

Yes, but we have other
priorities! We'll be in hyper for another three months, there's no need to fix
those pallets, they're not needed now!" The purser glowered.

"She's got you there,"
the chief added.

"We have a full plate of
things to repair and build, like oh say, the number two cargo hold." The
purser's eyes widened at that. She had been after that hold ever since she saw
the specs in the computer. It was a twin to the number one hold, the largest
hold in the ship. Massive hull breeches had left it an airless ruin.

 "Can you really do
that?" she asked breathless, eyes suddenly gleaming.

"Of course we can! With the
Admiral we can fix anything on this ship!" Molly waved her hands. "And
just what do you want to fix? How much power is it going to take from my power
budget? We don't have a lot you know," the ops officer weighed in.

"Well, we're working on that
too. The Admiral is working on the hyper collector right now. He said we may
get another twenty percent out of it if we're lucky," Molly replied
smugly.

The ops officer's eyes widened.
"Well, that'll cover the replicator’s power budget, that thing sucks
energy! It's almost as bad as the drives!" She sat back.

"That bad eh?" the
Captain asked softly.

"We may have to dial back on
the repairs until we can get more power," the ops officer replied.
"Oh, like I said, we're working on it,” Molly said.

“We have a priority list. Some
things like the shields, hull, hyperdrive, and fusion reactor we can't work on
for obvious reasons," Jennie waved to the window. The Captain nodded.

"But we can swap out broken
parts here and there, like the port sensors modules, computers, life support,
and interior repairs," Molly spoke up. "We're also working on
patching the EPS conduits."

The ops officer froze with her
cup at her lips. "EPS?" She took a cautious sip. "Will it affect
systems?"

Jennie shook her head.
"We're going after bleeds first; we've spent the past four shifts patching
them," she said. The ops officer nodded. "I noticed there was a spike
in throughput. Will this cause a blow out somewhere else?" she asked
sounding concerned.

Molly looked concerned. "I
don't know for sure. But with the replicators working, the plasma will be
siphoned off."

The chief frowned. "Just
when am I getting my power buss back? I need that for the weapons," she
said. She spread her hands apart. "If we don't have weapons, we're
defenseless," the chief finished her appeal to the Captain.

"I'm sure it's on a list.
You do have a list right?" Molly nodded enthusiastically. She was tired,
having tried to keep up with the Admiral on each of his marathon runs.
"Here it is." She fumbled the tablet, and then passed it over to the
Captain.

The chief intercepted it.
"Where is it...?” She scrolled through the list. "Wow, that's a
lot... Wait, I don't see it." Jennie brought out another tablet and began
to scroll. She frowned and hit the search and typed in the name. "Okay
there it is, it's on the gamma list, item three four one."

The chief looked up alarmed.
"Gamma list?" The Captain reached out an imperious hand. Sheepishly
the chief handed her the tablet.

"There are five lists, Alpha
is the priority list, Beta is secondary things, then Gamma and so on,"
Jennie explained.

"I can't wait for you to get
through all that before you get around to weapons, we need that gun!" the
chief snarled. "There must be thousands of things on that list!"

 Jennie winced. "Over ten
thousand actually, on all the lists," she sighed. Those were the major
systems, not individual items.

"Don't worry; we're working
on what we can from all the lists." Molly forestalled another outburst
from the chief. "As we said before, since we can't work on some systems,
we will automatically fall back to others we can. If a system isn't needed
we'll shut it down until power is available," she said and then shrugged.

"And just where is the
Admiral now?" the chief asked.

"I believe he's sleeping in
cargo bay 5," Molly shook her head.

The purser looked up alarmed.
"Why is he there? We have plenty of empty crew quarters...” The chief
glared.

"My sentiments exactly. But
for some reason, he keeps being placed in odd places to sleep," Molly
glared, now incensed.

"First the brig, then a
malfunctioning airlock, then a corridor, now a cargo bay! What's next the
sewage plant?" She came to her feet, glaring at the chief. "You need
to get off whatever stick you’re riding and leave the man alone so he can do
his job."

Jennie put a restraining hand on
her arm. "That's enough Molly," the Captain's rumble cut through her
anger. Reluctantly Molly sat. "I think it's about time we assigned some
quarters to the Admiral. See to it Vanessa." She waved to the purser who
nodded. "I want to see if he can get us into beta. I am looking forward to
seeing if you can do it."

Jennie smiled suddenly. "Oh,
we'll do it all right, and much more. With his help we can probably make
Gamma!"

Shandra looked up alarmed.
"Gamma?" Sudden excitement made several of the crew protest.
"But we don't have the power, the hull won’t take it!" Molly waved
dismissively.

"People people!" The
Captain waved an arm. "Settle down," her gravelly voice made them
instantly obey. "I believe that's why they have these lists correct?"

Molly and Jennie nodded.
"Yes, with an all out effort we can get into Beta when we leave the next
colony," Molly said as she sat back.

"Are you sure?" Shandra
asked, leaning forward eagerly.

"Can you handle it?"
the chief asked the helms woman dryly. Shandra blushed.

"Oh, I think I can,"
she said. She looked thoughtful. "I've been waiting my whole life to
try." She grinned.

"Well in a couple months;
you'll get your chance," Molly nodded firmly.

 "Excellent. Keep me
informed," the Captain replied, then hovered backwards and turned.
"Vanessa, see me later." The stewardess near the door keyed it open.
The Captain hovered through.

 "Well, that was an
interesting meeting, least you didn't sleep through it," Molly teased
Jennie as they packed up. The ops officer snorted.

Shandra bounced up eager.
"Do you really think we can do it?" she asked breathily.

Jennie nodded. "Sure, once
we get things sorted out more. We may even get you into the B note of Alpha in
a couple more days," she said. Shandra looked excited.

"What will the power demands
be?" the ops officer asked sitting on the table edge, arms folded. "I
wasn't kidding about the balancing, we are way into reserves."

Molly shook her head. "We
can use the hyper collector's to power the transition. Once we're up there, the
higher note will provide more power to handle the load and to help rebuild our
reserves," she explained.

The ops officer pursed her lips
in thought. "Could work," she said finally.

Jennie looked over to her.
"You mean it will work."

The ops officer nodded. The
chief, moral officer, and purser exited ignoring their tight knot. The
navigational officer and communication officer hovered around them. "When
do we see some action?" the comm officer asked.

"Oh soon enough. But
exterior communications aren't exactly a priority. That's why they're down the
Gamma list." Jennie handed over a tablet to each of them. They scrolled
through it. “If you want to bump things up, lend us a hand with your people and
we can give it a shot."

Both women nodded as stepped
back, then headed for the door. "Well, that will keep them busy,"
Molly sighed.

"Yeah, gossip mill will be
running overtime," Jennie chuckled.

"See you off shift?"
Shandra asked.

Jennie dimpled and colored.
"I don't know when I'm getting off,” she squirmed a bit. Molly cleared her
throat and gathered her things, trying to make herself small.

Shandra caught Jennie's hand.
"Any time," Shandra said.

Jennie smiled softly. "Okay."

Molly made it to the door.
"Meet you in engineering." She left the two alone.

"Port side, Admiral, get
into the life pod..." He felt the ship jar, then the screech of metal.
"Breach! Hull breaches forward your cut off, use a different pod!"

Sprite quickly directed him to
the ship's exterior. "Here Admiral." He helped an injured crew woman
into a pod. "Damn, core overload, get us out of here!"

He felt Defender come to the fore
and rush him to the pod. "No, we can save some!"

"No time Admiral! Get
in!" an enlisted man said, shoving him into the pod. The hatch hissed
shut. He felt the jar again, then a loud bang and acceleration.

He woke sweating, and tried to
fight off the vestige. Remnant dream he thought. "Hmm from your neural
activity, you just had a nasty dream. Care to talk about it?" Sprite
asked.

"No." He grunted and
checked his chronometer on the HUD. Two more hours.

"You're only delaying the
inevitable, you know you need to talk about this Admiral." Sprite was
nothing if not persistent.

"What's there to talk about?
They died, we lived," he sighed.

"Admiral, the four of us
have been through it all together over the past four years. We need to talk,
you're showing signs of depression. This workload is stressful enough,"
she said. Sprite brought up his stats. He waved them away. "Really it will
help," she insisted.

"Wanna bet? Now if you’re
quite through with the psycho babble, I need to get some rest, we have a shift
in two point four hours.”

"Very well," she
sighed. "I need to finish rebuilding this driver suite anyway..." He
rolled over and went back to sleep.

The next morning he opened the
hatch to find Frie and Tara waiting on either side. "Good morning
ladies," he yawned.

"Heard about your dust up
with the rats," Tara said, toeing the deck. Tara looked into the darkened
bay. Glowing eyes made her shiver. "Damn, are there any more? And you
slept in there?" She gave him a disbelieving look.

"It wasn't easy; I think one
of them tried to take a nibble out of my boot." He wiggled his toes.

She looked down. "Ew!"
She shivered.

"Going to have to do
something about that," she said firmly.

He waved. "Not a problem,”
he said, he already had a plan. The cats weren't around. He tapped the
controls.

"What are you....?” Air
began to suck in as the doors closed. The red light blinked.
"Okay..." He studied the controls.