Space Trippers Book 1: Trippin' (13 page)

“What is it?” the Captain immediately asked, hoping for an explanation to her engine problems at last.

“Uhmm, I'm not sure yet.” the Engineer replied quickly as her hands flew swiftly over the board, her serious eyes darting quickly from one indicator to another. She had detected a problem with the output of the engines but she did not want to admit any difficulties to the Captain. Not that she was afraid or too proud to admit her engines were somehow at fault, she quickly reasoned to herself as she rechecked the controls.

Valesque hit a series of commands and suddenly a screen full of scrolling data sprang up before her. She scanned the information, looking for something in particular, as a series of diagrams flashed by indicating power flow, circuitry loops and energy levels.

The Virrilian Engineer just kept them scrolling by at an amazingly rapid rate, until finally seeming to find what she had been looking for.

Valesque groaned inwardly, just what she needed was another delay. She really had more pressing things to do, but if she wanted to get the Captain off her back so she could get on with her work she had better find a way to fix this as quickly as possible.

“So have you found the problem?” the eager Captain asked again as soon as the Engineer seemed to find what she had been searching for and began to move away from the control panels.

If she could get this engine problem fixed she might still have enough time to get to the Corseccan Galaxy and help her husband before it was too late.

“Uh, maybe.” was all the Virrilian replied, very noncommittally as she moved quickly from the area towards a section of bulkhead wall across the room behind them.

‘Maybe’ was better than ‘no’ the Captain thought as she contemplated the need to follow the Engineer across the room, but decided instead to just sit on one of the control section stools and wait for a progress report as she monitored the situation.

Sanic took Valesque’s place at the engine control panel to see if he could detect what had troubled her. He glanced over the controls she had mentioned last, looking for any discrepancies.

He saw that the engine control was set for a strong pulse thrust, but the output chart showed a much weaker pulse actually being emitted. The control specialist then glanced to where the scrolling information had been stopped.

There was nothing in the information on the screen that seemed to pertain to the problem at hand, Sanic reached out to scroll the data back a few more pages looking for what had finally caught the Engineer’s attention.

All he could see was a circuitry chart, but being unfamiliar with the intimate design of the ship, he could not see what that portion would have to do with the low engine output.

Valesque meanwhile had already removed the access panel to the circuitry she had found questionable in the diagrams.

She looked through the web of cables until she found the dark blue cabling the chart had indicated.

Scanning its length, she found herself staring up at a foreign piece of metal and an apparent addition of looped cables connecting here and there in the circuitry.

Valesque caught a glimpse of some deliberate scratches on the face of the metallic box. She stood on tiptoe to get a better look at the silvery piece in the middle of the cabling. ‘DRW’ it said.

Valesque lowered herself back on her heels. “DRW?” she pondered, what could that mean?

Suddenly her eyes opened wide as she came to an unhappy realization. “Dr. Warner!” she said aloud in alarm, and then quickly turned to look behind her to see if anyone had heard her.

The Captain was sitting quietly, smoothing back her hair as she watched Sanic explaining control functions to the babbling pink twins, while Fazar wandered about mindlessly examining the room and control components as if they were wondrous works of art.

Valesque sighed in relief as she turned back to examine the foreign couplings more carefully.

First, there was the Space Tripper in the Med-room with a tone set for just her Virrilian hearing to detect.

Then, there was the possibility he was one of the ones who had stunned her to make sure she was on the ship when it left, plus the possibility of some flux in the Light Core she had detected and now there was a feed back loop in the circuitry complete with an etching of his initials.

If Dr. Warner had done this, he apparently wanted to be sure she knew it was him. But why would he want to make sure she was on board?

How would he have gotten a hold of the Space Tripper, or know how to set it up?

And why did he mess with the engines and wiring?

Valesque contemplated the silver box and cables once more.

The engine controls showed the setting to be at a strong pulse, which would mean they should be going over ten times the speed they were now.

The output graphs showed the engines output to be quite lower then they were set for.

However, no one unfamiliar with the ship’s circuitry, anyone other than herself, could probably detect any faults in the system.

Therefore, they would not have found this jumble of cables leeching energy from the output of the engines. It was quite a good job of sabotage, because none of the other systems it bled into were producing any noticeable spikes and the leek was not easy to detect in the operational charts.

She studied the job again; why would someone want to hamstring the engines?

She considered the power flow, the energy leeched from the engines output would loop back into the system at various locations and eventually end up back in the power cells because the amount of energy was not used up in the circuit.

This means, the feedback loop was probably not just meant to cause the ship to delay. The delay was just a by-product of the real intent. The feedback of the energy coupled with the presence of the Space Tripper meant only one thing.

Whoever had set this up had not wanted the engines to use up too much power!

They wanted to conserve the energy so it could be used when the Space Tripper was activated!

This was bad, this was very bad.

No matter what you set the engines at they would only output the same paltry amount because the rest was being saved up for the space jump.

This means, if the feedback loop was connected to the Space Tripper and she attempted to undo the loop in order to give the Captain the power she wanted, the Space Tripper would be activated by the change and jump immediately before too much power was used up by the engines.

This was getting to be a very complicated and serious situation. There could be more than one trigger set up on the Space Tripper. It was now extremely imperative she find a way to disconnect it, if any existed, and fast.

Valesque reached down to retrieve the cover for the access panel.

As she bent over she heard a sudden low growl and placed her hand over her stomach.

It was then she remembered she had not eaten for the past three days.

Her high protein, Virrilian metabolism had gone into hibernation stage while she was unconscious and her body repaired from the electrical shock.

However, after Lola’s treatment, her metabolism had been rebalanced and now she was in desperate need of food. If she neglected it any longer she could go into an uncontrollable hunting mode until she had filled up on protein. And with a ship full of protein based crew mates, that was not a good thing to let happen.

Valesque resealed the circuitry in the sleek, metallic wall as she mentally made a new priority list.

First she needed to get food, and then figure out a way to disable the Space Tripper while delaying the Captain in getting the engines fixed.

She had to come up with a plausible story otherwise someone like Sanic, who seemed quite adept at technical things, might start snooping around and find the feedback loop and sort it out, causing her more problems.

Valesque took her Vid- screen out of her hip pouch again. The ship’s wall access panels had a pressure locking system to prevent unauthorized access; it just had never been implemented during construction. The Engineer quickly accessed the command for the ship’s panel lock down and initiated it, adding in an encrypted opening code only she could know. She clicked the 'Apply' button in the program and suddenly all the panels in the walls shifted and pressure sealed with a low hiss.

Lockdown was initiated, now no curious ‘helpers’ could inadvertently cause her more trouble by messing with the crippled circuitry.

If only she had done this before, she thought, but then it is a little difficult to have the cable panels on lockdown when you have teams working on them for installations.

The Captain rapidly started receiving urgent calls from all of her Department Commanders on the sudden and very unexpected hissing all over the ship.

Captain Fairbanks had one hand on her ear to shield out external noise as she listened to one after another of these calls, as she herself could only reply, “Yes, I know, we heard it down here too. I will find out what it was, I am sure it is a minor thing, no reason to panic.” she tried to assure the uneasy crewmembers. They were already on edge, not understanding anything on the ship, and now they unexpectedly hear strange hissing noises. Those cannot be good in space. Is the ship’s problem getting worse?

She looked up as the Virrilian Engineer returned.

“We just heard the sound of a lot of things abruptly shift and then a low hissing all over the ship. Do you know what that could have been?” she queried quickly, with more than a little concern.

Valesque reddened a little at the fuss she had caused. “Yes, when I finished with my inspection I just sealed all of the ship’s panels. They should have been locked down before we launched, but someone must have overlooked that.” she fumbled. “They are pressure sealed, so that was the hissing sound you all heard.” she finished still trying to think up a plausible story for the inevitable question she would surely ask next.

The Captain let out a slight sigh of relief as she smoothed back her hair and tapped the communicator in her right ear. “Crew broadcast.” she said, informing the inter-ship communication computer of her desired contacts. “To all personnel on the I.P.A Vortex,” she began, as her voice now came over everyone’s ear piece in the entire ship, including Valesque’s, “this is Captain Fairbanks speaking. The sudden hissing noise that was heard earlier was from the sealing of the wall access panels. All crewmembers are to return to their duties, there is no reason for alarm. That is all.”

When she had finished her announcement the Captain turned her red head once again towards the Virrilian Engineer. “In the future, inform me before you do anything that might cause general panic amongst the crew.”

“Have you fixed the problem with the Engines yet?” she then asked, not letting a second more slip by in finding the underlying cause of that problem.

“Uhhmm… not fixed it yet, no.” Valesque evaded, trying to formulate her convincing story of why the engines could not be fixed at the moment. Besides the explanation where the Space Tripper was involved.

“But you have figured out what the problem is right? Something to do with that control panel and the wiring in the wall over there?” the Captain prodded hopefully.

“Y-Yes.” the Engineer replied slowly, guarding her words. “I did find a slight…problem, with the, uhm, relay…between the control panel, the engines and the output.” she said vaguely.

Sanic looked a little intrigued by this but said nothing.

He had come up with some ideas of his own, from looking at the engine read outs and the information the Virrilian Engineer had been looking at, as to what the problem might be.

Sanic knew from their previous discussion that some things were wrong with the ship and the Captain needed to be made aware of them before they got involved in a war.

But if Valesque thought it best not to tell her, or not to fix the problem, he just had to trust her judgment on that. He knew she was not trying to get them all killed, she just wanted to save her ship.

“But, this problem can be fixed?” the Captain urged.

Valesque thought for a moment. “It can be fixed.” she finally said.

The Captain looked very relieved, until the Engineer continued. “But, it will take some time. If the problem is fixed too soon it will cause a…backlash in the other systems of the ship and could cause even more problems. You see, during construction, the output from the engines was... diverted, to prevent accidental overpowering during system testing.” she continued, almost believing her own story. It could happen.

“You mean they hamstrung the engines.” the Captain observed bluntly.

“Sort of, like that.” the Virrilian agreed, surprised she had actually caught on to something so quickly.

“So how long will it take you to undo this… bypass thing?” Captain Fairbanks asked her, hoping to be full speed to the Corseccan Galaxy right away.

“Well, it could take some time, I have a few things to do first and then I need to study the problem a little more. Releasing that energy too quickly or in the wrong way could permanently damage the engines, or the ship.” Valesque replied ominously.

“First things first, Ensign, I expect you to get to work right away on fixing this problem your team has caused.” the Captain returned curtly, not wanting anyone wasting time on other things besides getting this ship up to speed.