New Dawn (Wandering Engineer) (30 page)

Molly looked over excited.
"Self sealing? Can we do that?" She bounced in her chair, and then
paused to adjust her glasses.

 "No, that would mean
stripping the hull down, practically unwrapping the ship." He cocked his
head thinking.

The Captain cleared her throat.
"Let’s not do that then shall we? We can make do with what you've done,"
she said. Molly looked a little crestfallen.

"Once the shields and power
plant are overhauled, then not much could penetrate the defenses anyway,"
the engineer replied with a nod to the Captain.

She smiled. "How is the bow
deflector going?"

He grimaced. So did Molly.
"Not well, there are problems fabricating parts and getting things
aligned. I projected five days to do the job, we're two days behind," He
sighed. He hated it when schedules slipped but knew reality usually had a say
in things when planning met reality.

Jennie nodded. "The bow
shields have been battered and abused Captain, some of the emitters have
reached impedance. When they failed others compensated, but that shortened
their life spans. We're looking at a complete rebuild," she said.

The Captain tapped her fingers on
the desk. "That bad huh?" she grunted.

“Are we ready to open the doors?”
Jen asked. Jennie looked over to the tech. “You may want to exit the bay;
vacuum without a suit is hazardous to your health,” she smiled.

The tech look startled. “Wait,
what doors? I was wondering how you were going to get that spar out, it's
bigger than that door!” she pointed to the door they had entered by.

Jennie shook her head. “No, we're
going to EVAC the bay then open those,” she said and then  pointed to the
exterior door.

The girl’s eyes went wide. “Oh
wow. Okay, let me finish up here.” She typed a few more lines, saved her work
then checked something else.

“What's the hold up?” Rodriguez
called over the com. “We're ready and waiting.”

The tech looked up. “Yeah yeah,
almost finished.” She typed in one last sequence and looked up with a nod.
“Okay it's finished,” she said. She followed Jennie out.

“This I have to see.” Jennie
turned as the door closed and turned the LCD panel on. “Okay, let’s see.” She
used her fingers to scroll through the menus. "Okay, got it. Doors
opening.” She hit the air EVAC. Air could be heard hissing. "We have a
minor leak, looks like the door seal isn't holding well.”

 The tech looked concerned and
backed away. “Good idea. We're going to EVAC to another corridor and set up a
secondary lock,” Jennie said. Jennie closed the menu and followed the tech back
to a knee knocker. The tech turned and held her hand at the control. As she
stepped over and cleared the knocker the girl hit the control and they watched
as the emergency door closed.

“Okay. Door closed,” Jennie waved
the girl away who scowled.

“I wanted to do it,” she muttered
softly.

Jennie grinned. “Next time.” She
scrolled through the menu again.

 “Jennie, were getting reports of
air loss on that deck, deck five and deck seven. We're clearing those sections
now,” the bridge reported.

Jennie nodded. “Looks like we
missed a few cracks.”

 She hit the controls and found
the doors. The screen flickered again. “Damn it.” She rapped it smartly. “Not
now.” It stopped flickering. “Sometimes the best way is to smack it,” she
grinned. “Doors opening.”

They could hear and feel a low
vibration. “The doors are opening now, wow, big doors; they're opening out
toward us. Steering clear. Now I know why you wanted us above or below
Admiral,” Rodriguez kept up a running commentary.

“How can we see...? Jennie asked
querulously.

“Oh, camera controls, starboard
frame 301A exterior camera. Or try robot twelve,”  the communication tech
replied.

“Okay, got it thanks,” Jennie
said. Jennie clicked the indicated cameras. “Okay. Damn, kinda grainy. Going to
have to fix that,” she muttered. She watched as the doors finished opening and
the suited crew moved in. In a few minutes the spar began to creep out slowly.

“Okay, well since I'm not going
to be needed, I'm going to go take a lunch break,” the tech nodded. “Can I get
you anything?” She turned to Jennie who looked up.

“Huh oh?” She shut the controls
off. “Yeah, I think I'll join you.”

She followed the tech to the
galley. Inside they found two dozen women all avidly watching the giant wall
screen display. “Glad we fixed that,” Jennie muttered. She paused watching the
suited workers maneuvering the spar. “It's a bit of a pain. They have to get
the new one out, and then feed in the old one and other debris.”

Jennie felt a bump. “Excuse me.”
She looked over to the tech and then dismissed her from her thoughts, engrossed
in the view.

“So we're going to do this what?
five more times?” someone nearby asked.

Jennie nodded slowly. “Yeah. For
the big stuff, and a couple more times for the parts to the port shuttle bay
door, and then I don't know how many times for the engine rebuilds,” she sighed
and shook her head.

The waitress at the counter
looked over to her and then busied herself with wiping the counter. “Can I help
you?” she asked as she looked up. She rapped the counter to get Jennie's
attention again.

Jennie nodded, eyes still glued
to the screen. “Sandwich please.” She had her eyes locked to the screen like
everyone else in the compartment. Her breath caught as one of the crew misfired
an OMS pod, going into a tumble.

“Oh crap,” she breathed. She felt
sweat prickle her brow.

“Sorry.” The girl said over the
open channel.

“Be more careful,” Rodriguez
growled.

“My controls are sticky,” she
replied.

“Pull back and let your back up
fill in,” the Admiral ordered.

“I got it,” she replied sounding
testy.

“No, not with sticky controls.
Pull back. Make sure suit maintenance clears that suit before you use it
again,” he dismissed the problem.

"So, how did we do?"
the Captain asked, meeting the purser in the lock.

"Excellent Captain, better
than ever!" the purser was excited. "We've been completely
resupplied, and are in the black, we can even make some luxury materials!"
She brushed her hands down her red velvet dress.

The Captain nodded smiling
slightly. "Good Good!" she chuckled dryly. "I'm glad things are
looking up." She turned to watch some of the crew walk by. Many who passed
nodded politely to the purser and Captain.

“Jennie, when can we get more
hull repairs? We need to finish the bow. The sensors in the bow are almost
repaired.” Molly looked over to Trisha. “We're going to finish minor repairs
and leave the hull open for now. We need to get inside to get some repairs done
anyway. That plasma breech that nearly cooked Nancy's team needs to be fixed.”

“What about all those leaks when
we opened the replicator doors?” Trisha looked over to the controls and pulled
up the life support data. “We have breaches here, here, here, and here. Also
some signs of wind and pressure loss here and here. Some temperature losses
here too,” she said. She indicated each section. They highlighted in red and
blinked.

“Oh, the Admiral sent in robots
to clean and scan the sections,” Jennie said and then nodded. “What good is
that going to be?” Trisha asked. She looked confused.

Molly looked up from her display
and adjusted her glasses. “The robots will find the leaks and seal small ones.
Others they'll log into the computer and mark for us to repair.”

Trisha's face cleared. “Oh, that
may work.” She shrugged.

Jennie chuckled. “I understand
that's how they did it back in the Admiral's time. If it worked then...”

Trisha waved impatiently. “Yeah
yeah, Okay.” She looked down to her deck plan. “So that's the procedure for
breaches? Send in the robots first?” she asked. Molly nodded.

"So, how are we with the
shields?" the Captain looked over to Molly and the engineers.

Molly cleared her throat.
"Shields on the starboard side have been rebuilt as far as we can in the
time we have," she said tiredly. She didn't know she could be this tired.
She looked down at her tablet. "The starboard side is at eighty three
percent." The ops officer gave a small whistle. "Overall the shields
are at fifty six point four percent," Molly finished and set the tablet
down tiredly.

It had been a long two weeks, and
if the engineer kept pushing, they'd be working outside right up until they got
to the hyper limit a few days from now. "Engines on the starboard side are
at thirty three percent. We even managed to get the keel engine working."

Shandra looked over to Jennie and
grinned. "Yeah, we're going to test it on the way out."

Jennie sighed. "Just take it
easy, some of those patches will take time to work in properly," she
urged.

Shandra sobered. "Did any of
you get some rest while we were in orbit?" Miss Tsunade Cortez the moral
officer asked, playing with her stylus.

The girls and Admiral shook their
heads. "Too much to do, we only had a week to get it done."

The pilot nodded. "We have a
few missions planned on the way out too, so we can snag more asteroids to build
more parts while in hyper," she said. She grinned. "We have the
technique down, so it should go off smooth as a baby’s behind," she said
smugly. Everyone chuckled.

A few of the women gossiped for a
few minutes before the Captain tapped her stylus. The room quieted. "And
the hull?" she gave the Admiral a knowing look.

He nodded. "We sealed most
of the breaches on the port side and half on the starboard. We even managed to
clean up and patch that plasma burst section," he replied as the holo
highlighted each zone. Molly nodded.

"I want to get some robots
built to help with the exterior repairs while we're in hyper," he said.
She gave him a look and he nodded.

"Good idea," the
Captain nodded. "Make it so. What about the frame? You had some concerns
about it?" she asked. She looked at the Admiral.

He sobered. "Not good,
there's frame damage around the engines, as to be expected. Structural cracks
on frames fifty through fifty four, with a radial crack growing along the
starboard rib," he explained. She nodded.

"What do you want to do
about it?" she asked.

He grimaced. "It's a
dockside job normally, but we don’t have that luxury. We've already replaced
several of the spars in the bow." He looked around. "We'll have to
cut out the weakened sections and remake them inside. It'll take time, and
we'll be dead in space until the repairs are completed," he said knowing
she wouldn't like that. The Captain nodded.

"Why?" the Chief asked
quietly.

"We can't use the engines
without the frame supports; if we did they would tear apart the ship,"
Molly responded. She pulled up a diagram on the holo but the Chief waved it
aside.

"So why bother doing
it?"

Molly looked over to the engineer.
He nodded to her. "Because it's important. Eventually the supports will
fail without repair, most likely when the ship is under thrust," Molly
replied. Shandra and the pilot turned pale.

"Not good," Shandra
sucked in a breath.

"Bad," the pilot added.

"Did any of the engineering
staff get some downtime?" the purser asked.

The moral officer looked up. She
checked her notes for a moment. "Now that you mention it...not many, maybe
one or two," she said. She drawled looking over to Molly and the others.
"Didn't want to see the sites?"

Molly looked over a little
bleary. "Huh?" she asked stupidly. The Admiral flipped his hand.

"We had a heavy schedule in
a short time window. We managed to get a lot accomplished in that time,"
Irons said.  Jennie leaned back and pursed her lips. "But not as much as I
was hoping," he said. Molly gushed a sigh and nodded. "Small steps
remember."

"We can get into Beta band
now Captain," he finished. He turned and nodded to her.

Shandra smiled. "That means
we'll be at our next port ten times faster!"

The purser looked startled.
"Really?" 

Shandra and the ops officer
nodded enthusiastically, grinning. "We'll get as many parts replicated for
the next time in subspace as we can in the meantime," Molly said, nodding
to the Admiral.

"Actually, you three and
your teams are going to get some rest," the Captain gave the trio a long
look.

"Oh but Captain, there's so
much to do!" Molly protested.

 "But me no buts, you all
need some downtime. One full rotation," the captain ordered. She locked
eyes with each of them One by one until they reluctantly nodded. "I think
the people who got some downtime can cover for you while you rest," the
captain said. Jennie tried to stifle a yawn. "See, you do need rest."
The moral officer looked concerned.

"I remember an old saying;
Rome wasn't built in a day," the purser commented, smiling.

Molly slumped. "Aye
aye." The Captain snorted.

"Captain, we're ready for
transit," Shandra looked at her station then over to the Captain. She was
nervous, but the Captain just nodded sagely. "All right, let’s go."
She had just the right amount of excitement in her voice she judged. She knew
she needed to project confidence, the poor girl was nervous enough as it is.
Shandra gave the ops tech a smile and hit the button.

The field in front began to
elongate, and then flash as they entered hyper. "Alpha band, transiting
....C......D...E...F....G....A.....B.... Here we go! Beta band threshold,"
Shandra said. They had flashed through Alpha remarkably fast. Usually each
transition took hours! The ship trembled with turbulence. "Adjusting...got
it." The ride smoothed.

 "Breakthrough! We're in the
Beta band!" Shandra grinned as she checked the readouts.