New Dawn (Wandering Engineer) (21 page)

She looked confused. "It
is?" She flicked a clod of dirt off one arm. "Even the computer is
complainin now?" she demanded. He realized suddenly that she couldn't
read.

"Yes ma'am, that smell, is
ammonia. Too much of it poses a hazard," he explained patiently. She
looked confused. He pointed to what looked like a pile of manure. "I am
assuming it's that."

She looked over to the pile.
"That's for the plants. We need to fertilize things. No dirt in a
ship," she said. She gave him a challenging look.

He nodded wisely. "Yes
Ma'am. But on a ship chemicals can cause all sorts of problems. That headache
you’re getting is one of them," he said.

She glared. "Just how did
you know...?"

He smiled. "Ammonia,"
he said.

She nodded, eyes narrowed.
"Well, it wouldn't be such a problem if I could get some help," she
growled. She gave a dark look to the hatch. "Young twerps don't know what
they're missing. Too lazy. Don't want to work. They don't realize this is
needed!" She cradled a blossom.

He nodded. "Yes Ma'am."
She cradled the blossoms from another plant. "The Captain loves these
azaleas," she murmured.

He nodded in understanding.
"Plants supplement the galley supplies, uplifting moral with their bounty
and with their beauty."

She gave him a long searching
look. "You buttering me up son?" she demanded.

He smiled. "No Ma'am. Just
quoting the academy manual," he said truthfully. She glanced away, then
back to him.

"So, how do we fix the
alarms?" she asked, tone softening only a little.

He nodded to the pile.
"Well, first we need to contain that." She looked confused. "We
can get some barrels extruded, and put them in it. There are also tanks
there." He pointed to the sanitation tanks. "That probably could be
cleaned and purged," he said, knowing he was going to be stuck doing it
himself. So much for his clean uniform.

She nodded. "I run the
sludge through the algae tanks and the farm. Cleans the water and feeds the
plants."

He smiled at her with a knowing
nod. "It's a dirty job though, you up for that?" she demanded. She
gave him a long measuring look, noting the smudged coverall. "Guess maybe
you aren't worried about getting yourself dirty," she finally said with a
note of approval in her voice. He chuckled and waved her to the sanitation
tanks. Sludge was dripping down the sides of some; mold was growing around the
seams.  Yup, this was going to get messy he thought.

"Hey! Robot man! COME OVER
HERE!" He looked up to see a brown haired tall woman battering a computer
console. Jennie winced when she took a hard swipe at it. "Piece of crap
won’t work!"

"Well, for one thing hitting
it doesn't help," he grunted. He'd spent all day yesterday with the grumpy
head gardener getting her recycling system sorted out. It had taken a half hour
in the shower to get the stench out. He winced at her behavior. This was a typical
thing for layman; beat a machine when you don't know how to fix it.  Of course
that was also rule one of any engineer, if it doesn't work your not using a big
enough hammer.

"Well robot man, do your
stuff and fix it!" she demanded. He frowned at her tone.

"First off, I am not a
robot, I am a cyborg," he said.

She looked confused, then fished
out a toothpick and stuck the tip in her mouth. "That's so? Not what I
heard," she accused.

He snorted. "I'm human. Just
not with all my original parts."

Jennie giggled behind him.
"What are you trying to do?" he asked.

He flicked a glance to the
computer. "I'm trying to read this here novel. But the infernal machine
won’t work. Kicks it out, says somethin about a virus or some such," she
growled. He nodded.

"I turned the firewall and
antivirus software back on. It's kicking you out because that," he cocked
his head to the crystal data cube she was tossing in her hand. "has a
virus on it."

"I thought only humans could
catch a virus?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Someone,
terrorists, malicious pranksters, con artists, or whatever created them to do
damage or steal information," he explained.

Jennie nodded. "Yeah Taki,
now the network is running much faster ever since the Admiral fixed it,” she
interjected.

"That so?" she asked,
lounging back. "So what do I do about this?" she demanded. He
frowned.

"Well, we could access the
computer and see if we can find the novel in the data banks. I think it'd be
better to read on a tablet or in your quarters however," he suggested.

She gave him a cool look. "I
like it fine here."

He shook his head and pointed to
the console. "Miss that's the computer network node for this deck. All the
computers on the deck interconnect to it and to other computers on other decks.
When you or someone else uses it for stuff it wasn't built for, it slows the
entire network down, which can cause problems,” he explained. She looked over
to  Jennie who nodded in agreement.

"Here you can use
mine," Jennie said. She handed Taki a tablet. "I have a spare,"
she mumbled. Taki took the tablet, flicked a glance at it then nodded to them
and left without a word. The guard stepped aside for her.

"Quite the character,"
the engineer commented as the woman left.

"Oh who miss Taki? She's
good with the girls in the cargo and fuel section," Jennie replied. He
nodded as Jennie started working on a damaged control run.

"So, you’re not a
robot?" the guard asked.

He shook his head. "No,
cyborg," he replied. He turned to smile, and then checked the computer
over. He plugged in and let Sprite go to work. "A cyborg is part organic,
part machine." He patted his right arm with the tips of his left fingers.

"I thought the Feds were
cloning stuff? Why didn't they make you a new arm?"

He nodded. "They were. You
see, I was a Rear Admiral when most of this happened.” He flicked his left hand
to his right arm, then down to his legs. "I was injured in the battle of
P34CV9," he explained as if that meant anything to her. He glanced at the
display for a moment.

"You were hurt?" Jennie
asked, concerned.

"A bulkhead shattered and a
couple spanners ripped me up. It took my legs and arm and chewed up my right
side," he said matter of factly.

He grimaced in painful memory as
the women widened their eyes at the horror he described. "How did you
survive?" the guard asked as Jennie sucked in a breath.

"I was wearing a skin suit.
They have built in tourniquets that cut off areas that are injured to keep you
alive,"  he explained.

"How, I mean, did it
hurt?" Jennie asked. He nodded.

"Yeah, you could say that. I
had to prevent the computer from knocking me out so I could stay coherent and
command," he said and then shrugged.

Her eyes were wide. "You
still commanded, even after that? What happened to the chain of command you
mentioned?" she asked.

He grimaced. "We were hit
hard; I was the only surviving flag officer. I had to stay in command to keep
the fleet together to get them out," he sighed.

"When I was medivacked to a
hospital station they were saturated with wounded. It would have taken months
before I could have new limbs and organs grown." The guard’s lips twisted
in a frown. "The Admiralty offered me a retirement, but I turned it down.
The weapons board came to me and asked if I would volunteer to get bionics. I
did," he shrugged as if that was all there was to the story. “The
artificial bits are woven in with organic, in some places it is hard to tell
where one begins and the other ends.”

"They aren't as good as a
real limb, but they do have their bonuses," he said with a smile. Jennie
and the guard nodded.

"How long did it take for
them to put them together?" a nearby tech asked.

He cocked his head trying to
think of a diplomatic answer. "Not long, but it took a while to get used
to them. I was in rehab, that's rehabilitation for nearly a year learning how
to use them," he replied. Jennie pulled a panel off and used the tip of a
probe to test connections.

"So you were in a hospital
for a year? I thought it took only a week to fix things!" the guard said.
He shook his head. "It wasn't all fun and games; I spent a lot of time on
the engineering board while I was recovering," he said, trying hard not to
stray into areas he wasn't comfortable talking about. Jennie grunted and
reconnected a fiber optic cable. "Try that." Proteus reported the
data bus was back on line.

He nodded and gave her a thumbs
up. "That did it." She nodded looking pleased and closed the panel
up.

"What about your eye?"
the guard asked as Jennie coiled the probe wires.

"Oh this?" He pointed
to the right eye. "I lost that in a terrorist attack at the Vulcan
shipyard when I was a Lieutenant Commander. It's both organic and inorganic,
the medical nanites weaved a cloned eye with the optic nerve and added a few
improvements to let me see better."

She gave him a long look.
"If you say so." She shook her head then tossed it, making her hair
dance. Her smile became urchin like. "So, no way I could get one
huh?"

He snorted. "I doubt it, but
you can check with doc once he gets up and running more."

She nodded. "I might do
that."

They bundled up their kits and
moved on down the corridor to the next job. "So why are the replicators so
fast at making stuff here but not in the hospital?" The guard asked.
Jennie rolled her eyes.

He smiled a soft smile.
"Inorganic materials are easier to make. All the nanites have to do is
re-arrange the molecules to create what's in the matrix." He explained.

"WHAT? NANITES?" The
guard’s voice rose in terror. He sighed at the typical response, it was
overdue. He had started to wonder if any of them knew what he had been talking
about for the past several months.

"Nanites are robots.
Machines in other words. You program them to do what you want. These are made
to make things," he explained patiently, looking over his shoulder.

She shivered. "Organics are
a lot harder to make. You have to have living cells to use as a substrate, and
then they have to bond to each other and grow into the part you want," he
explained. He dodged a girl playing with a soccer ball then stepped over a knee
knocker. "See, inorganic use a feeder bank of material.”

“The computer feeds the materials
into the matrix and the nanites reshape them on a molecular level according to
what the computer programmed into them," he said, trying to get her to
understand. He nodded to a tech in passing.

"What about the food
replicator you fixed in the galley? That uses organics but makes plates,"
Jennie pointed out. He nodded.

"That's a little more
complex. The base material is a complex mix of things that can simulate
organics or other things."

She looked confused, and then
shrugged. "You say so."

He chuckled softly. “I'll meet
you later. I have to check in with Molly,” he said. He waved her on.

He looked over the shoulder of
Jennie a few hours later. She was playing a card game, ancient, but immediately
recognizable. "Ah, solitaire, the ultimate time suck." He smiled down
at her when she looked up.

She blushed and then looked down,
gathering the cards up. "Sorry, I was waiting and got bored," she
mumbled.

He shrugged it off.
"Everyone has their way with dealing with waiting. That's one of them, and
is fine; don't take my comment as a judgment," he smiled as she looked up
and nodded.

"So, what's on the agenda
for this shift?" she asked as he helped her to her feet.

"Molly wants the life
support repaired in the rear quarters; they've been blowing hair and drawing a
lot of power."

She looked exasperated.
"That was where we had the Talasians." She started off down the deck
aft. "Talasians?" he asked as the guards followed.

"Yeah, we moved a clan two
years ago. They did some work for the Captain." She shouldered her bag and
then stepped on the ladder and looked down. "Coming down," she
called, and then began to step down. He and the guards followed.

"I'm surprised that you had
Talasians on the ship. An entire clan?" he commented as he stepped off the
ladder on the next deck.

"Yeah, about thirty five of
them." He heard the clatter as the guard behind him jumped the last two
steps down.

"Only thirty five?"

Jennie nodded as they continued.
"Yeah, but the kits were cute! Adorable!"

One of the guards sighed.
"Yeah, but we've been picking fur out of the ducts and decks ever
since," she said in disgust.

The Admiral turned and gave her a
look. "Well, they hate enclosed spaces. Claustrophobia. They prefer wide
open spaces. Under stress they shed," he said.

Jennie nodded. "Did they
ever! They were nice though, one of them gave me a ring." She paused at
the next junction and pulled out a piece of wire with the ring on it hanging
from around her neck.

"Mindy kept pestering them
for a ride," she snorted.

"I bet they left more to get
away from her then enclosed spaces," one of the guards chuckled quietly.

He joined in the chuckle.
"Yeah, I can see that, I can just imagine her wanting to decorate them
like Mister Whiskers." The giggles quickly turned into laughter.

"She could never get over
how they walk on all fours, and that giant flat head, and the eyes on the
stalks. I think she named the cat for them, those giant whiskers!" Jennie
shook her head and ducked under a diagonal duct.

"Why were they
migrating?" he asked as he negotiated the duct.

"Huh? Oh, they were worried
about all the nasty things coming out of the empire," she replied
distractedly. She opened a maintenance hatch. "And here we are."