Chapter 16

Nonie Cina had a suggestive smile on her face that was hard to turn away from, but I did, leaving her naked in my bed. The muscles of Nonie's shoulders were well defined on her petite frame. She had the day off, but I had to work in engineering. Merritt saw me to the cabin door; her smile had a mischievous glint to it that sent a shiver down my spine. She had the day off too, and she didn't look in a hurry to get dressed. Merritt waved goodbye to me with slow, sensual movements of her brown body.

"Something to think on for tonight," Merritt purred, "Nonie and I expect you for dinner."

I wasn't sure she was referring to food. The door closed.

Yeoman Rogers just shook his head when I went by the security office. The elderly man was standing in the doorway, just killing time.

I shrugged and grinned. It had become part of our private joke, since he couldn't tell anyone about the women cycling through my cabin. He was a true gentleman who understood his steward's role well.

Today, I slid down a series of maintenance ladders to get to the lower levels, the last ladder coming out near an elevator. In a good mood, I felt somehow freed to take an unusual route to engineering. Level after level, I slid down hidden ladders that most of the crew never knew existed. Engineers and damage control teams might use them, if need be, but I didn't run into anyone as I recklessly plummeted floor after floor. Using my tunnel knowledge I entered main Engineering without going through the security entrance.

I passed Lt. Boorman's cousin, who folded her arms when she saw me. When I winked at her, she unfolded her arms, and put her hands squarely on her pressure system's console. With a turn of her head, she banished me from her view. For a fleeting moment I thought I'd unsettled her.

With a little help from Miley I had learned that Nora specialized in tuning synchronization protocols and hardware. She particularly trained on shield systems. However, the chief had her working with waste water systems. I wasn't sure if it was a punishment duty or not, my time in engineering had been relatively limited. The department's politics was not in my realm of experience yet.

Walking, I detached my PDA and reviewed the department's priorities to get a sense of what was going on this week. The action board log showed a full load of inspections for the day.

"Von," Rayz hollered, from across the crowded compartment.

He was oiling some portable equipment, off to the side of a half-wall that hid a workbench from view. He had a steady hand as he oiled the joints, quickly moving through each piece. The chief engineer looked over from a stock room doorway and seemed to take me in for the first time. "Something is on his mind about me," I thought. The chief had an interesting way of mumbling to himself, pursing his lips together and keeping his jaw immobile. It looked odd. When he was in that state, I knew his quietness wasn't a personal affront, it was just his way, much like my father's introspection.

His mind made up, Commander Tarry walked towards me. Quickly, I checked my PDA for engineering directives or messages, making sure I didn't owe him an apology for not looking at the engineering menus since I'd been in training for the bridge.

"Should I be doing something right now?" I thought.

I did have a flagged message, so I scanned its contents. "Oh, that's not good," I whispered.

As the ship's M Series A.I., Miley had done something that was out of character for such a computer. She had both secreted me information and acted on information that had been saved on the crew's data server. The data server was not part of Miley, it was an independent server intended for use outside of the artificial intelligence's realm. The ship's designers wanted back-up processing if anything went wrong with the A.I.

"What's going on, Von," Rayz asked, degreasing his hands with some cleaner.

"You're not going to believe this scan," I prompted, not giving away Miley's work.

Tarry stopped next to me. "What are you going on about? I have work for you two."

I handed the chief my PDA and then pointed at the entry. "This is the first sensor scan from the energy sensor junction boxes we were assigned to review, on the day of my little accident."

"It looks normal to me," the Chief said.

I leaned over and scrolled down to reveal a refined scan that was cleaned up, showing different results. Miley had cleaned it up, but had not passed it to anyone else. She had even scrubbed her involvement from the note.

"Oh Maker, more sabotage," Tarry said, "We didn't rescan the systems you cleared before you got burned up."

Tarry returned my PDA, pulling his own off his belt.

He punched in his call button, and someone answered, "Sir?"

"Alpha-Priority Job..." The Chief explained what I discovered hidden on my PDA data notes menu.

After a minute of discussion, Tarry put his PDA away. "You are a lucky charm, Ensign Solon. Working on that on your free time too. Amazing work. Anyone else would claim those excess data lines were just inadequate, nonsensical data—not worth worrying about."

"That's what I've been telling you," Rayz interrupted. "He is lucky."

"Enough bragging about your partner, Rayz," Tarry snapped, stopping Rayz before he got going again.

"Sorry," Rayz answered, looking a little hurt.

The Chief waved his hand, dismissing the errant disruption of his train of thought. He gave a raucous laugh.

"Boys, I have another off-the-board inspection job for you today. You're going to inspect the outer-hull energy accelerator, energy junction boxes, and then anything else that your lucky notions think that might hide a problem," Tarry announced walking away, pleased with himself for some reason.

Rayz finished cleaning his hands. "The Chief knows I hate the heat of the outer-hull. If it weren't for these strange findings and goings on, I'd say he was punishing me."

Rayz rarely whined about meaningful things, but uncomfortable temperatures affected his mood. He was just like the guard I grew up around on Solon, all over again. The wrong sort of feelings on his skin put him on edge. Since there wasn't anything either of us could do about the job assignment, we picked up the appropriate tool kits. Rayz's experience showed when he ducked into the storage room, bringing out two water bottles. I should have thought of it, but my mind was spinning, thinking about the scan Miley had sent me. She wanted me to get credit for the find, which bothered me. I concluded she wasn't sure who was involved in the plot to harm the ship, making me a safe bet to reveal her nugget of information. My implant was like a tracking device; Miley would have definitive data showing I'd never been in the affected areas before.

For all of Rayz's mumbling while we were in the tunnel network, by the time we were faced with entering the outer hull compartments he had a wistful tone of excitement. He had resigned himself to his tasks with "Lucky." We decided not to activate our skinsuits just for comfort. It was best not to drain their limited resources when we had an entire shift ahead of us. Knowing he could have comfort from the suit's environmental system was part of the emotional discomfort that irritated Rayz. Yet his safety sense overrode his comfort concerns.

We went through an especially thick door into the outer hull's network of compartments. The heat wave felt like a wet tropical jungle since the cooling systems in the outer shell of the ship weren't very powerful. No one lived in the outer hull that ringed the inner hull, thus the designers didn't see a reason to tax the power grid for the luxury of lower temperatures. The ship's engines and equipment heated the compartments; the ship's heat-displacement fins bled most of the excess heat out into space.

The first short corridor looked like any other normal corridor on the ship. It was when we went through the next, thick metal door that I got a sense of the expanse of the ship. Repetitive grated panels of flooring extended as far as I could see. The empty hold was enormous.

"Cargo Hold G," my partner explained. "It's empty on this mission."

A low handrail with built in lights was my only clue to the location of the service catwalk that would take us to the electrical monitoring station. There were few lights on in the bulk-cargo hold. Perhaps it was nothing more than an overactive imagination, but I thought I heard mechanical footsteps in the distance.

Rayz read my mind and said, "You are hearing one of Miley's robotic repair units. We always hear their feet when we come through here. They look like metal spiders. Kind of spooky to hear them and not see them, isn't it? Those units are creepy."

"Yeah," I said, not really bothered by repair bots. I was just glad to know my hearing wasn't playing tricks on me.

"Somewhere down there is a door that leads to one of the spider nests. No one really goes down there. Miley takes care of all the robotic repair and maintenance," he added, distaste was apparent on his features. "Those spiders are powerful enough to rip out damaged hull plates, after the construction grade laser in their mouth frees the metal from the ship."

Rayz led the way as we walked to the end of the hold, and he pointed out various moisture collectors below the catwalk. I knew the ship designers added them for both climate control and water gathering purposes. He proceeded to talk about how happy Dorothy was when she returned from my happy hour celebration. My partner was going on about how special I'd made his girlfriend feel, when I tuned him out.

I saw a black spider bot with red rings hanging from the ceiling above us. It seemed to be watching us. Miley's minion did look like a giant spider, but with three additional arms on top of its body. Two arms had metal grappling hands, the third arm contained a laser. Red stripes ran the length of the three tentacles, which were fully bendable and articulated at the ends. The bot's head looked more snake like than a spider, two red eyes were set in silver sockets. It looked menacing in the dull light. I didn't mention my sighting to my partner, nor did I ask him about the additional laser on the arm.

My partner lifted a grating that looked like a castle's portcullis that protected the door. Next, he heaved a metal rod that secured the door and spun the door's wheel that released the latching mechanism. None of the ship's outer hull doors were electronic, except specific blast doors. We stepped inside a large anteroom with damage control gear mounted on the wall and in nooks. Various tool chests lined one of the walls, as we each collected a blast helmet that was a safety device used when working around an energy accelerator.

Ahead on the far wall, a red-framed, triangular door, twice the width of a shuttle, awaited us. This massive blast door was a specially reinforced bulkhead entrance to the section with the jump drive.

"It's a mighty strong door, but the walls around it are stronger," Rayz announced, looking pleased at the engineering that went into the door. "If we have a catastrophic event this door will probably blowout, and the excess energy will vent into the bulk cargo hold behind us. The cargo doors open out, so a massive internal blast would then vent out into space. In theory, a jump drive failure would just take out the interstellar engines, leaving the inner hull intact. However, the designers added this door just in case. We wouldn't want fold-space energy to shoot into the guts of the ship."

Rayz tapped his PDA and found the right menu item, pressing the device to the door reader. The red-lit reader turned green. The massive door's hydraulic gears groaned as the red door was raised above our heads. Energy streams coalesced together into a solid, red light. Without the helmet's shielding I'd have been blinded. Engineering wasn't without risks, carelessness was the main factor in shortening careers of even the most promising. My Uncle Stephen had always ridden my ass about safety on Solon clan ships.

We went to a sensor control panel and recorded the findings, but the real work was to walk the length of the huge force-field containment system to scan for weaknesses. Multiple energy streams went through a special device that allowed the jump engines to accelerate the ship when in folded space. It took an hour to scan each system and it was hot, sweaty work. "Not the sort of place I'd like to work with a woman. I could just see some sweaty pheromone issue develop to make things difficult," I thought.

By the time we were at the far side of the compartment, our mouths were dry. Still, we had one more critical compartment to check, which required us to remove the bolts to open an access panel. I removed the first six bolts while Rayz rested against the wall. The heat had sapped his energy and he needed a few minutes to gather himself up for our task. Whilst I rested, my partner gripped and turned his wrench on the rest of the bolts in a rhythmic manner. With all the bolts removed, together we pulled the panel door off. A great din erupted when we opened the sealed compartment. We could hear the heart of the interstellar engine and even in idle mode it beats loudly. Even though our ears were protected, we felt rippling waves of sounds, like ocean waves crashing on a sandy shore. I couldn't imagine having any eardrums left without our special headgear. Rayz scanned the control panel in front of us, making sure nothing looked out of place. I unclipped my PDA to record the scene and collect data. All that was required was a simple scan to make sure it matched the data on the master control panel in engineering. "Trust not, verify, " I thought. Done, we left the noise behind by resealing the jump engine compartment. Rayz pointed at the triangular bulkhead door and we hurried to it.

We backed out of the accelerator compartment and closed the blast door, only then lifting our shielded helmets off. My partner's face peeked out, red with sweat. His nose was running like mine. We drank all our water and sat down on a couple of boxes for a short break. Both of us filled out a report for Commander Tarry with our data. In short, the energy systems feeding the jump engines looked good, and the access point to the interstellar engine had been untouched.