Chapter 17

The next morning I woke up and couldn't move. Mari was half on top of one side while Anna was on the other with Katherine spooning her. Sam was at the foot of the bed silently laughing at my predicament.

"Ugh," was my response as I dropped my head back onto my pillow.

That seemed to be enough to wake Mari up. She rolled onto her back and stretched, then moved into a propped up position, blinked sleepily and smiled at Sam. She looked at me, smiled, leaned over and kissed my cheek. She crawled out of bed, walked over to Katherine and Anna's side of the bed and gave each a light smack to the ass.

This jerked Katherine to wakefulness. She looked at Mari through barely open eyes and stuck out her tongue. Anna just curled into me with a whine and burrowed under the sheets. Katherine saw this and pounced, tickling Anna. With squeals and laughter behind me, I pulled myself out of bed and walked out to use one of the other cabin shower closets, it was much quieter.

I finished up, walked back to my cabin and got dressed in work clothes. The women were finishing up in the closets and getting dressed for a morning workout, chatting away. I shook my head. How anyone could be that energetic just out of bed is beyond me.

I stumbled to the galley, grabbed a Red-Eye, and made my way to the bridge. Sam started giving me a rundown of system checks and traffic reports as I sipped my coffee and brought up displays at the command chair. A freighter had come through from the jump point to Denarrus sometime last night, the light reaching our optical scanners an hour ago, putting them approximately 5 light hours away. Nothing had come out of the transit point ahead of us so we were still clear and should reach it in approximately 20 hours. I groaned. I'd be up early and have a long day.

I finished up my wakeup checks in an hour and a half and went to grab breakfast, telling Sam that I'd see her there.

Anna, Katherine, and Mari were just settling into their chairs when I walked in. I waved at them, grabbed my breakfast and joined them. Sam was sitting with us and talking to the women while I ate. I've mentioned I'm not a morning person, right? They seemed to have gotten used to me not talking much in the first couple of hours after I wake up so anything aimed at me could be answered in nods or shakes of my head or short verbal responses.

And thus, started the routine of our trip. I would do my checks on the bridge, walk the ship for a visual inspection, return to the bridge to read or study, eat meals, work out, do some more reading or studying, occasionally I'd watch a movie or play video games, then go to bed. The women did what they wanted to keep occupied. I'd talk with them at meals and occasionally one or two would join me in the gym. We also tried to watch movies together every couple of days. Sometimes things would come up and disrupt that but it just meant a break in the routine.

The day after we entered jump, for example, Sam notified me of a minor problem after breakfast.

"Max, I'm getting sporadic fluctuations in the port aft auxiliary shield generator."

"What are you seeing?" If it was spikes in power, it could mean a bad power distributor or a coupling going bad, and those weren't good.

"It's sporadic dips in the power readings. Nothing major, only .05 to .09 percent, but it's the frequency of the readings. There doesn't seem to be any reason, all power systems are steady."

"OK, I'll take a look."

I went to the lower deck and made my way aft. On my way I passed by the tool locker and grabbed a tool belt with several diagnostic and access tools already in it. I put it on as I walked and made for the access panel to the shield generator. I popped the panel and secured it open and took, put on shielded gloves, and grabbed a multimeter. I checked the generator over and found nothing wrong. I talked to Sam and monitored the generator while she watched for dips. When she informed me of one, I looked at my equipment and saw no fluctuation. We continued this through two more and I still saw nothing. I stood back and tried to think. The generator was fine, no fluctuations noted, so what did that leave.

The communication between the generator and the monitor or the monitor and the interface to Sam could be bad or the monitor itself was bad. I wanted to smack myself, I should have brought up a monitor myself and see if I saw the dip.

"Sam, can you have one of the ladies go to the bridge and bring up the monitor and see if she can see the dips."

"You want to see if the monitor shows it or if it's just me seeing it. Good idea."

A few moments later Sam got back to me saying that Mari had seen the dip on the display and shown it to Sam to verify. "Good, I'll check the connections at the comm relay then."

I buttoned up the generator access and went to the comm panel and relay cabinet. I pulled it open, found the correct connections, and tested them. The cable to the connection was fine but it looked like the physical connector was a little loose. I held the connector to the plug and asked Sam if the reading were steady. After a long pause, "Yes, Max. Looks like the reading are steady now."

"OK, looks like a bad connector. I'll test the panel also, just to be sure." So for the next while I was testing and replacing parts. At some point Sam said something about lunch and I told her I'd be right there. A bit later Sam asked how much longer.

"I'm finishing up now and getting ready to put away the tools. Why?"

"The ladies would like to know when to start preparing dinner."

"Dinner? What happened to lunch?"

"Max, that was six hours ago."

"Whoops. That might explain why I'm kind of hungry."

"Ya think?"

"Let them know I'm on the way up but I need a shower first."

She would and I hurried with my cleanup. I walked into the galley fifteen minutes later and apologized for missing lunch.

Katherine waved it off as she continued to set food on the table. "You were working. Sam told us that you get like this, you keep working until you're done."

Anna walked over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. "We did miss you, though. Did you get your repairs done?"

"Yeah, ended up replacing a comm relay connection and wanted to test the panels while I had it open. Found one that would have needed to be replaced soon."

"I have no idea what you're talking about so I'll take your word for it."

"How about you guys, keeping busy?"

Anna, Mari, and Katherine nodded. Katherine added, "Yeah, but I can see how someone could get bored after a while. I think our longest transit was close to two weeks on one of our trips and that was starting to get kind of old. I don't see how you do this for eight weeks at a time."

We were seated around the table and eating by that time. I took a bite of food before answering, pulling some thoughts together. "It's why the Privateers look for us. We can keep ourselves busy without going nuts for long periods of time."

"How do you do it?"

"You develop various routines and then make them flexible."

"Like what?"

"Well, take my systems checks and interior inspections as an example. I know I have to do them every day. I could do them the same way over and over, and never miss a step. But the problem is that if you do it the same way all the time, you become complacent and you start falling into patterns. You do that you run the risk of missing something."

"So how do you deal with it?" Anna asked.

"By varying the routine. I do the same checks and inspections every day but I do them in different orders where I can. Like my visual inspections, I'll do the walkthrough with the upper deck first, going from fore to aft, then down to the lower deck in reverse. The next day I'll start with the lower deck. And maybe the next day I break it up, upper deck, systems checks, lower deck. I have to think about every step so I don't miss something. It takes time and keeps our brain active." Anna and Katherine continued to look at me, almost but not quite getting it. "Think of it this way, do you do the same exercise routine every day?" Both shook their heads. "No you don't. Mari knows that if you do the same routine over and over again, you stop gaining the benefits of the exercise after a while."