Chapter 14: Not all holes are equal

-- February - Week 5 --

Lee turned up for her shift on time.

She checked that her crew had work and allocated storage areas to check first. She had to go to the drive room first to make sure the drive maintenance was complete. It had the highest priority. It was nice coming on for a shift and finding the log filled out correctly.

The jobs that Isha wanted her to do were on the maintenance pad. As she had thought, he hadn’t had time to complete the FID’s checks. Lee had been surprised that Ben had put Isha in charge of the afternoonshift. She had a feeling afternoon shift may not be so laid back anymore, going by the log entries.

Lee had to grin to herself, ‘That will shake them up a bit.’

Isha was known to be a little cantankerous. Nevertheless, he was a damn good drive mechanic as far as Lee was concerned. She would miss him since he was now on the other shift. She hadn’t worked with him before this trip.

However, she had found that after the first week on her crew, he had come to respect her knowledge and way of doing things. He had taught her a few new things, and she had taught him some too. They each respected each other’s space, so they found they worked well together.

Lee had no trouble doing the work left for her. As long as she took the readings and did the visual every two hours, she could go do other work.

The drives were monitored by computers. However, regular checks by humans often ensured problems were attended to or identified before they became catastrophic. In particular, cracks, loose components and minor leaks.

Lee finished the checks and went to find Jim. She found him tying down the forklift on level six. “Hi, Jim, how bad was the clean-up tonight?” asked Lee.

Jim gave her a huge grin, “All done!”

Lee looked at him in shock, “All done!”

“Yep!” he looked at the log. “Only three holds were accessed. They had been vac’d out and cleaned when I opened them. I even checked all the rest on this level to make sure everything is still strapped down. They were all ship-shape.”

“What about the other levels?”

“Everyone has reported in the log. All areas are prepped and ready for the jump. So, we are going to do some real work for the rest of the night,” he said with satisfaction.

“That is bloody marvellous,” replied Lee. “Does that mean you can come and do the PLC checks with me on the FID’s? It goes faster and is easier if there are two of us. Plus, I have to keep popping back and checking on the main drive every two hours.”

“At your service, my Lady,” bowed Jim, and they both laughed at his absurdity. Jim had a thing about stories and games with knights, damsels and dragons.

About an hour later, Lee and Jim have nearly finished the PLC checks. “Computer, run diagnostic program 203, on I/O card 435,” requested Lee. She stood and watched the LEDs flick on then off, in a row on the card and Jim watched the primary unit for the associated set of lights.

“Checks okay, Lee,” called out Jim.

“Computer, run diagnostic program, 203 on I/O card 435,” Lee said again. Jim came down to where Lee was, and he watched the card operate again with her.

“Crap, that is not good is it?” asked Jim. “Big Momma flashed all the outputs and inputs as being driven or received,” he then offered.

“Yeah, but this card is not actually driving four of the outputs. The inputs are okay.” Lee looked at the manifest for the card. “Oh, bugger, Jim. This card drives FID4,” said Lee, showing him the manifest.

“And this is bad because?” he asked.

“Because, if the outputs aren’t activated, then the drive won’t be able to get up to the full power required. Even if a wormhole is made, it may not be made to where it should be.”

“Yeah, that could be very bad,” Jim, agreed having worked in engineering long enough, to know the basic operation of the ship.

“Can you go open that cupboard for a spare card please, Jim. Make sure it has the same number as on top of this card,” said Lee pointing out the number.

Lee checked the fuses for the outputs, which had indicated faulty. They were located in the fuse terminal blocks that fed into the card. She flipped the covers and inspected the fuse plugs.

The fuses had an indicator on them. When they blew, the red spot turned black. She found four black-spotted fuses in the slots associated with the outputs that were not working. They were also the wrong size fuse.

The fuse was supposed to protect the isolated outputs on the card. If the fuse was too big, then the short circuit had allowed a lot more current to flow into the card. This excess would have cooked the outputs on the circuit board.

Lee was not happy. “Helm, this is Lee.”

“Morning, Lee, it’s Sung here.”

“Morning Sung. Jim and I are doing the routine PLC checks on the FIDs. We have found a problem with one of the PLC cards for FID4. We plan to replace it; can you make a note for Kyle.”

“Sure. Is the card important?”

“Very, ask Kyle about it,” explained Lee.

“Lee, I’ll get back to you, or you tell me when the card is replaced,” said Sung.

“Sure Sung, Lee out.”

Lee stood there for a minute staring at the burnt fuses in her hand. “Shit, Jim, this is what Kyle was worried about earlier,” she said to Jim as he bought a new card over.

Jim looked at her with worry. “Hey Lee, should the cards be sitting loose in the cupboard?”

“No. The cards shouldn’t be out of the boxes at all. Even if the card is damaged, it should be repacked into an anti-static bag, tagged and sent to the workshop to be fixed. Why?”

“Go look in that cupboard,” he said.

Lee opened the cupboard door. It was a disaster inside. Half of the cards were half-sitting in a box, lying exposed on the shelf or even stacked on top of other cards. She could see several broken circuit boards, probably from being bounced up and down during the last two jumps.

“Oh, bloody hell! It’s going to take me a week to check and repair all these cards. Fucking Rodger,” she swore. Going by the mess, he had known there was a problem but hadn’t reported it. Lee was really pissed at the guy. “Is that box still sealed, Jim?”

“Yes. Do you want me to swap them?” he asked.

“Okay,” Lee said, distracted by the devastation in from of her. “No, wait. This was the last card we had to check.” Lee looked at the manifest again. “This card drives relays ninety-one to a hundred in cabinet FID410,” she said. “I think we need to check the relays first.”

Jim looked at her, perplexed, “But it’s the card that is not working.”

“True, but in this case, the damaged card is a symptom of the fault, it’s not the cause,” she explained.

“So, something else caused the little lights to stop working on the card,” said Jim.

“Spot on, my little Pud,” Lee replied. She giggled when Jim looked down to his feet, which was a long way down, then lifted his eyebrow at Lee.

“I’m not fat!” he declared with mock indignation.

“I didn’t say you were. ‘P.U.D.’ stands for, ‘Person under direction’, like an apprentice,” Lee explained with a grin.

“Well, that’s okay then,” Jim said and grinned back at her.

Lee giggled again knowing Jim hadn’t been offended. “Let’s go do a quick check on the main drives, then we’ll grab my tools and a tester,” Lee said, as she walked towards the door.

The inspection of the ARSD that was operating was only cursory with them looking for anything out of the ordinary. Lee also directed Jim to search for specific faults that were always checked for. They only spent about twenty minutes in the engine room.

They collected Lee’s larger toolbox since they needed a set of spanners, a box of the correct size fuses and four new relays, one for each of the LEDs on the card that were not indicating correctly. They headed off to the control room, which held cabinet FID410.

When Lee opened the cabinet, they were greeted by a noxious smell wafting out of it. “Don’t touch anything, Jim,” Lee warned. “I must isolate this cabinet before we can work in it.” Lee activated her minder, “Helm, this is Lee.”

“Yes, Lee.”

“Sung, I have to isolate cabinet FID410, you will get some alarms for FID4.”

“What’s wrong in that cabinet, Lee?”

“Well I can’t tell for sure until I get it isolated but going by the smell, I have burnt out relay coils in here.”

“You’re sure, Lee?”

“As sure as I can be at this point, Sung.”

“Lee, you are fucking awesome,” said a new voice, over the com.

“Kyle?” she queried.

“Yeah, baby. You were fucking right; I redid the calculations.”

Lee looked at Jim, who just shrugged his shoulders at her; it was all ‘gobbledygook’ to him. He was just the TA, as far as he was concerned.

“So, what ship shattering event did I solve now?” she said tongue in cheek, having a good idea.

“You told me it was a fault in control or burnt out coils. It’s why the last two jumps have been off,” Kyle said with excitement in his voice.

“Well, how about I see if I can find out just how many. Then you can tell me if I found them all?”

“I’ll be waiting with bated breath,” he came back.

“Hey Kyle, while I’m doing this, check the bloody code. We should be getting a tonne of alarms if the drive is not getting full power and the code should prevent us from jumping. So, something in there is seriously hinky. Try that passkey I gave you on the last ship we were one, it should get you in.”

“I agree with you, Lee. And yes, your key worked on this ship too. I’m walking back through the code for that drive now.”