New Dawn (Wandering Engineer) (35 page)

He snorted and shut the lights
off. "Night Sprite."

She closed the HUD as he closed
his eyes. "Good night Admiral," she said softly.

"I heard you had quite the
crowd the other night?" Jennie asked as she passed him a drill.

He chuckled. "Yeah, that was
surprising." He tapped the hole, then handed the tool back and set the
screw in.

"Not really, we've always
wanted to learn how things worked, but no one had the time to learn or teach
like you do," she said. He grunted. He wished he had thought of it
earlier. Teaching them one at a time on the job was a pain.

"Yeah there's that," he
admitted. He screwed in the holder, and then clipped it over the pipe.
"There, that should keep it from rattling."

Jennie took the screwdriver and
looked over her shoulder. "Such a simple thing, locking it down to keep it
from vibrating,” she said.

He smiled. "Just takes a
little common sense sometimes," he snorted.

"When I was an ensign an
Admiral kept calling maintenance to fix a rattle in his quarters," he
turned to her, eyes gleaming with mischief. "Turns out he pissed off a
warrant, who retaliated by loosening a bracket. He had the team on his side, so
they always fixed the bracket, and then loosened another." She giggled.
"The Admiral was a real jerk, so the entire staff was enjoying his
discomfort," he shook his head wryly. She giggled.

Jennie buttonholed him again the
next morning. "Can you go beyond the basic theory; most of us have it down
now," she asked.

He nodded. "Yes, but there
are a lot of new faces each night, so I have to start over from the
beginning," he said.

She nodded. "Yeah, but it's
getting boring. I can show the ones who missed out," she perked up at
that.

He nodded. "I can download
my lesson plan and lecture notes for you to study," he said.

She blinked at him. "Lesson
plan? Notes?" she asked, uncertain.

He chuckled. "They're a plan
to teach. I taught at the academy and on ship, so I have them on file," he
explained.

She looked confused. "Why
would you teach on a ship? I would think everyone would have known right?"
she asked. He cocked his head.

"Well, basic stuff like I am
teaching now, yes, that was taught in earlier schools," he said. She
blushed. "But ships always had a class or two going, military personnel
learned early to keep their skills up to date and learn new ones," he
explained and then smiled. “It also offers a change in routine, combating
boredom,” he said.

She nodded. She and the crew had
their own problems with that. "Well, we're certainly learning a lot! Whew!
Sometimes I think my head is going to explode!" she said, clutching at her
head.

That got a chuckle. "I'll
get you the notes tonight. Check your e-mail," he said. She nodded and
tossed off a jaunty salute whistling down the next passage.

He smiled. Inter ship e-mail was
a new thing to the crew; the old one had been compromised by the viruses and
system damage. Sprite had set it up earlier two months ago with his approval.

The grapevine had latched onto it
with ferocious intensity, nearly overloading the server at one point with juicy
gossip. The moral officer had been forced to come to him asking for help. He
had taken the time to show her how to manage the server, and how to set up an
intranet website for news.

Now others were clamoring for
their own department sites and news listings. "She can even set up sites
for classes, and chat rooms for discussions about various subjects. Recommended
reading, all sorts of stuff," Sprite told him later.

The admiral grunted. "Great,
more places for the grapevine gossips to infiltrate and take over." The AI
chuckled.

The moral officer came to him
hours later, asking for help again. "I can't seem to get it right,"
she said. She shook her head ruefully. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
And now I'm getting swamped with people wanting to take classes!" She
threw her hands up in the air exasperated.

Molly chuckled. "It's a good
thing. With all this new equipment, we need to learn how to use it right and
fix it to keep it running!" She fiddled with her glasses for a moment then
gave the moral officer a challenging look.

"Oh all right, I don't have
any qualms about that, it's just that we've never done something like that
before. I mean, before, we learned from others who showed you how to do the job
as she did it," she said and then shrugged. "It was the only way we
knew."

The Admiral nodded. "Jennie
is doing the basic introduction to gravity emitter class as well as the basic
intro to computers class. We can set up others."

Sprite pulled up his academy
course listings. "Hmm, we could do a mix of material, from grade school
level to college," he said looking the list over. Sprite added that.
"Not everyone needs to learn the same things, so they can pick and choose
what they need, and take them when they're available," he suggested. He
turned to the moral officer who was taking notes with the tablet.

"Does that sound about
right?" he asked.

She nodded. "I have a few
people trying to learn how to read and write," she said cautiously.

He nodded. "Basic math,
basic reading and writing, basic ship knowledge... We can get teachers for
each."

Molly looked up and smiled.
"A space going college! I like it!" she smirked. He felt a start. In
his time there had been space going college campuses, both on stations and even
starships. It sometimes dismayed him to see how far they had fallen.

"Something like that. All
ships have them; it keeps people from getting bored fast. Even the liners had
them," Irons said, recovering. He turned and plugged the fiber optic
cables into the junction box. "All set on my end."

She looked up. "I'm almost
done here," she reported.

The moral officer nodded.
"I'll go look for volunteers for the basic courses. See you at
lunch?" she asked. They nodded. She waved. They chuckled as she left.

"Has anyone pieced together
how the ship was damaged and became a derelict?" the admiral asked. The
Admiral looked over the class.

Molly tentatively raised her
hand. "It hit a mine," she said.

He smiled. “Right, but there's a
sequence of events.”

He initialized the projector.
Behind him the ship appeared, then a tangle of hyperspace around it. "The
ship hit a hyper mine while in transit. Actually, it hit the maximum threshold
of the mine's detonation field." The sequence played out. "The ship's
navigator detected the mine and tried to dodge it, but the mine's AI locked on
and followed. It detonated when it decided it was going to lose the ship."

The detonation sequence played
out in slow motion, and then the projector brought up a ship schematic.
"When the mine detonated the ship's crew and AI tried to buffer the
shields. That helped, but it overloaded them. When they did a crash translation
out of hyper they were lost," he explained. He shook his head. "The
ship reentered in the Oort cloud of the system. It was chewed up."

He played the sequence. “In
seconds the ship was breached here, here, here and here. Each of these breaches
cut off supplies and did significant spawling damage to the interior," he
explained grimly. Molly nodded.

"So why's this
important?" Trisha asked querulously.

He sighed. "To repair the
ship you need to know what's damaged, or is likely to break down. For instance,
these emitters are down, and this EPS conduit was overloaded.”

He tapped the controls and fed
the next sequence. "And this is the other side of the coin, areas that
weren't damaged by the mine or asteroids, but were overtaxed," he added.

Molly suddenly froze and then
slowly nodded. "I get it," she said.

One of the other girls nodded as
well. "So, you’re pointing out systems we'll need to overhaul soon,"
she said.

He nodded. “It's like running a
yearling Dasha bird too hard," one of the girls muttered. The class looked
over to her. She scrunched down into her seat. "Sorry, old habit,"
she said.

He nodded. "Farm bred?"
he asked. She gave a choppy nod. "No problem," he said and smiled.

"Okay, that's what we're
going to work on this trip, check each system and subsystem for problems. A
power spike could have fried electronics or addled them," he said. He
nodded to Molly.

"Did you hear about that
brawl on deck four after the game last night?" one of the techs asked
another.

Jennie looked up alarmed.
"What brawl?" She looked from one to the other, each were suddenly
quiet. "Okay, spill it," she demanded. She tapped her foot, hands on
her hips.

"There was a brawl on deck
four, some of the cargo haulers, fuel girls, and a couple of the off duty
security got into it pretty bad, sickbay has its hands full," the first
girl admitted.

Trisha shrugged then grimaced.
"Two of our people from graveyard got mixed up in the mess; Molly is
trying to spring them now," she said with a grimace. She shook her head.
"Good luck, the way the Chief is foaming at the mouth, she wants all of
them to walk the plank!" she growled. She smacked the cart.

"Damn fools, got nothing
better to do then smack each other around!"

"Maybe we should do
something about that," the Admiral said. "But first, let’s get this
shift sorted out. Trish, you have some repairs left over from yesterday?"
he asked.

Trisha nodded. "Yeah, the
heater coils on deck two and three are a pain," she grimaced. "Molly
was supposed to help me with that."

 He shook his head. "Well,
we can't have you shorthanded. Take these two ladies, and get them up to speed.
Jennie and I have to check on a few things, and then we have a meeting at
0900." He waved her off.

"Okay, what meeting?"
Jennie asked as Trisha and her techs departed.

"Ship's council, I have a
feeling it has something to do with the brawl,” he answered her. He shrugged at
her expression.

"You heard about that?"
she demanded.

He smiled. "I caught the
highlights this morning," he said as her face soured.

He shrugged. "Come on, we
need to make the rounds, then get to that meeting, you take decks four and up,
I'll take five to eight."

She nodded picking up her tablet.
"All right, meet you at the meeting." He waved as they left.

"I'm here for the
meeting," he told the guard. His two guards stood behind him.

The door guard curled her lip
slightly. "I don't think you’re invited," she said.

He shrugged. "The Captain
asked me to be here for all meetings, if you don't agree, why don't you take
that up with her," he said suggestively. He reached out and tapped the
controls.

She tried to block him, but the
door opened. "Ah Admiral, why don't you come in here," the Captain
called.

"See?" He cocked an
eyebrow at the guard then entered.

"Sorry I'm late, a little
mix up with security," he said. He sat down at his usual place at the
table. The Chief grunted at the captain's raised eyebrow. "I'll get it
fixed," she muttered. "We have more important things to worry about.
Forty three people were in that brawl that we know about!" She slapped the
table. "Damn loudmouth fools, fighting over a game!" She shook her
head.

"I heard injuries were high
as well, two with internals." The Admiral observed, sitting back.

A girl dressed in a maid's
uniform set a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. He ran a finger along the
side. "My how far we've come," he said and smiled and nodded to her.
"Thanks," he said. He took a sip then set the cafe down to see the
Captain watching him.

"Do you have any ideas
Admiral?" she asked as he set the cup down.

He shrugged. "Well, for one
thing, there's entirely too much free time in some of the departments."

The purser's shoulders hunched.
"What am I supposed to do with them? We need them when we load and unload,
but...” her voice trailed off.

He waved. "Exactly. You
needed them during transfers, but during flight they sat around bored and
caused trouble," the admiral replied.

The Captain and Chief nodded.
"I brigged the lot as soon as they were checked out, took most of the
night," the Chief growled. "We need more medical personnel," she
sighed. "One doctor and one nurse aren't enough," she said looking at
the doctor. The exhausted doctor looked up and nodded.

He sat back and rubbed his right
bicep. "Tell me about it. I had to stitch, patch, and glue them back
together, and this isn't the first time," he said with a grimace and then
shook his head. "

We need sickbay attendants. As
well as extra help in engineering," Jennie tossed her tablet on the table.
"There are over one hundred people in cargo, but only forty in
engineering. We run the ship, we fix it, but we're undermanned, and over
worked," She grumbled.

"And these constant requests
for stupid stuff are driving us to distraction," she waved to the tablet.
"Repairs to the rec deck, making new virtual goggles, we need to focus on
critical ship's functions!" she slammed her fist onto the table.
"Hinata and Sonja are going to be in sickbay for a couple days!" she
snarled. She sat back disgusted.

"Wrong place wrong
time," the Admiral replied.

She nodded. "And we have to
fill in for them," she sighed, running her hands through her hair. The
Captain watched her.

"Captain, I think we need to
rearrange the roster here, and start moving people around," Jennie
commented.

The purser looked up alarmed.
"Now see here, we need those hands when we're loading and unloading! You
can't just take my people!" she said. The Captain waved her off.