Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer) (10 page)

BOOK: Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer)
13.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Intrigued,
the engineer nodded to the Talasian. The Talasians have a broad but flat head,
like a triangle hammer head. The eyes were a meter apart, and had two sets of
eyelids that protected cat like eyes. They walked like unmodified Terran
primates, on all fours in a sort of knuckle walk. Talasians were often mistaken
as someone's pet even when they wore a work belt with tools. It was only when
they sat upright or spoke that ignorant people realized their mistake.

Talasians
were avid spacers, even though they looked like they would be more comfortable
down in the dirt. Unfortunately they didn't have the mental ability to
hyper-navigate or the discipline to handle working in a mixed crew. Or at least
that's what the text books said at any rate. Obviously that was in error, he
thought with a wry twist of his lips as he nodded politely in passing. 
Apparently adversity in such times bred strange compromises.

Amused,
the engineer stepped into the room and felt like he was stepping back into
time. The quarters were neat and tidy, but the walls were covered in holo
prints of warships. The holographic images tended to look like they were
leaping off the wall. It was all a visual illusion of course, all a matter of
the right film, no power required. Two older people motioned at them to come
over and the exec stepped over.

Both
of the elderly people were in rockers, the woman was wearing a knitted brown
shawl and had an afghan in her lap. She smiled, but her green eyes were
distant. The old man however had a sharp glint in his blue eyes. He had a
military hair cut, thin black hair but touched with silver. He was heavily wrinkled
with age. His golden skin had spots all over, a sure sign of excessive UV and
radiation exposure. As the exec started to make his introductions the old man
gasped and froze in shock. Alarmed everyone turned to him as he stood and
saluted shaking.

With
a raised eyebrow the engineer returned the salute. “It's good to see you again
admiral. Very good. Lieutenant jg Taylor Warner sir. I've... we've missed you.”
The admiral felt shock as the old man introduced him to the frail blonde woman
in the chair.

“Dad,
please sit. Before you fall dad. Please.” The exec asked his father. There was
a hint of concern in the exec's voice. Irons nodded as the last name finally
registered. Taylor Warner sank back into his chair with a sigh of relief. His
son followed suit after a moment.

Irons
was still grappling with the mental shock of meeting someone he'd known. He'd
given up on meeting anyone from his time until he'd run into Logan. The
chances... the odds of anyone surviving the war until this time period... let alone
someone who had served under him... He shook his head at the enormity of chance
and how the universe works in such strange ways.

The
engineer took a seat and then listened as the old man told of how the admiral
had saved him as a child, then sponsored him for fleet prep school and the
academy. He went on about how the admiral taught one of his classes, and the
admiral felt a flood of memories wash over him. He smiled fondly as the frail
man told of how he had served under the admiral as an ensign, and how he had
been injured saving his scrawny neck from a plasma breach.

“Twice
you saved my life admiral. My family owes you a debt,” Warner said with a nod.
“I'm glad you're here. We can never repay you for what you've done sir, but...”
he sighed. “Did my son tell you we named him for you sir?” Irons blinked and
looked at the exec. The exec looked stricken and then slowly nodded. The
engineer tried to wave it off, but the frail man insisted.

He
cleared his throat and then cocked his head. “How did you two survive the war?
I mean stasis pod of course...”

Warner
senior sat back with a sigh. “I severed on two ships sir. I was on the
Majestic, a liner turned fleet transport, when it was attacked while exiting
hyper. The captain gave the order to abandon. Seven hundred and eleven years
ago.” Irons winced at that. It was one thing to be in a warship fighting
desperately to survive and failing. Quite another to do it from the decks of a
relatively unarmed transport.

“Rasha,”
Warner reached out and gripped her hand gently. He rubbed his thumb over her
hand gently. “Ensign Scott at the time...” he coughed and then sighed. “She and
I were the only people to get off in an escape pod. Oh other pods got off but
the damn Xeno's hunted them down. We managed to head off to deep space and then
shut down everything.”

“You
used the transport as a cover?” Irons asked, imagining the scene. The Warners
nodded in unison. He nodded as well.

“We
waited until the aliens backed off before turning the air back on. Nearly ran
it too long. Co2 was building up to high levels.”

“Ouch.”

“Finally
the Xeno's left when another ship hypered in. We...” He looked at his wife with
what looked like a guilty look. “We wanted to warn them but we didn't. We knew
that by the time they received our warning it would be too late anyway,” he
said, voice trailing off.

Irons
nodded. “I know,” he said quietly.

“Yes
well, we... when the Xeno's were far enough out we programmed the pod and went
into stasis. A little over a century and a half ago our pod was recovered by
this ship.”

“And
you stayed?” Irons asked.

“Nowhere
else to go. The Federation was gone,” Warner said mouth sour. Irons nodded.

 “I
know. The galaxy is a messed up place right now. We're working on it,” Irons
said. Warner's eyes widened and then he slowly nodded.

“If
anyone can bootstrap us back to what it once was, it's you sir,” Taylor said.
His hand shook as he pointed a gnarled hand to the admiral. Life and time had
not been kind to him. To either of them.

“Not
without your help son. You and others like you,” Irons nodded to those in the
room. Warner junior sat up straighter at that.

“Have
you been awake long?” Taylor asked.

“Not
long. Three years. I was picked up by the crew of the Io 11 a... well, a
salvaged fleet tender.” He looked pained. Warner senior nodded.

In
return Irons explained to them some of his travels, and how some other sleepers
were rebuilding Pyrax. The Warner's were interested, and amused that he ran
into Logan there.

The
exec noticed a nurse coming and nodded to the engineer catching his attention.
The old man followed their gaze and then swore bitterly until the engineer
smiled in amusement. “We'll talk again. That I promise,” He told him. “Right
now I'm needed in engineering. We've got to get that reactor up and running,”
he said. He'd kept tabs on the progress while they had talked. Sprite was about
finished with the easy software repairs. Apparently O'Mallory had tied in the
power plants from the ship's two remaining shuttle craft as well as everything
that had an independent power supply to extend the time line. Fortunately for
now it was working.

Nodding
in sudden understanding, Warner senior brusquely told his son to take care of
the engineer. “I mean it junior. The admiral here is a friend. I'll be
watching,” he growled.

“Yes
dad,” Warner Junior said soberly. He shot Irons a look. Irons shrugged. Smiling
politely, the two waved good bye and exited.

“Thank
you for that,” The engineer said quietly as they moved down the corridor. The
lights flickered and then cut by half. He felt the gravity emitters cut out.
Great.

“I
forgot. I'm sorry. I should be the one thanking you. If you hadn't been who you
are, if you hadn't been there for my dad I would never have been born. I owe
you. He's shown more life today then he has in years,” the exec said and then
shook his head. “Dad is right. You're an honorable man and we've treated you
horribly. I'm sorry sir. I'll do my best to fix it,” he vowed meeting the
admiral's gaze with his own steady determination. The engineer nodded and they
went to engineering.

 

“Progress
report chief. Tell me we're getting somewhere with all this.”

O'Mallory
didn't flinch as she heard the captain's strident demand behind her. She kept
pushing the emitter, lifting the bottom edge with a hover pallet and muscling
it through the narrow port and into the corridor beyond. She nodded to Torg,
the Tauren chief of the work party to take it from there before she turned to
address the captain.

“We're
getting there. It's well, hard.”

“Really,”
he said dryly.

She
spread her hands apart in supplication. “We have to tear out all our fixes over
the past seven centuries to plug in new captain. We're working on it.” She
winced at the sound of something metal clattering to the deck. Engineering had
some gravity but not full one Terran standard G right now. She'd toyed with the
idea of shutting it down to conserve power... it would make it easier to move
equipment but it'd be a hassle with people getting zero G sick and with crap
floating around they didn't need something flying around and shorting something
out. Or someone flying around and hitting something and shorting it out.

“Chief
if you can't get this under control I'm going to have to make some hard
decisions.”

She
was actually surprised he hadn't by now. Chambers could and normally was a hard
ass. Something had held him back, possibly Cora his wife. “Cap we're working on
it. I think we're about ready for the admiral again.”

“I'm
here,” Irons said nodding. He made his way to the controls. They were looking a
little better than they had been. The cleaner bot had finished with the control
room and apparently O'Mallory had plugged in a lot of the parts they had sent
in. Good.

The
captain looked at him but ignored his presence. “I'm serious O'Mallory. You've
got to get main power back in an hour or I'm going to have to sacrifice the
sleepers.”

“Cap!
You can't do that!” Warner said aghast.

The
captain turned on his exec with narrowed eyes. His face was set in stone as
work around them slowed and then stopped. “I can and I will Mister Warner. My
duty
is to the living. To the ship as a whole. We have got to have power to
maneuver. To survive.”

“We're
working on it,” Irons said taking a seat and jacking in.

“We'll
get it done cap, just... just give us a little more time,” O'Mallory said,
glancing at Irons.

“You've
run out. We've run out.”

Warner
turned to glare at the audience. “Get to work people,” he growled. “We've got a
miracle to perform.”

“I'll
be with Mister Hir'ruk and doctor Numiria working on how best to disconnect the
stasis pods. You've got your hour. If I can't maneuver by then I'll take steps.
Get it done,” the captain said and then stalked out.

“Shit,”
O'Mallory breathed looking at the others.

 

In
engineering he tapped the robot controls and took stock. They had managed to
repair one emitter, but were going too slow with the install of the newly built
ones. They had just finished clearing out the jury rigged bits that had been in
place and restored the control lines back to stock.

A
big problem was that the emitters were so large and cumbersome. Replacing an
emitter was usually a chore for a yard, not something you did in the spur of
the moment. Normally a yard would pull the skin off, rip the reactor open and
rebuild it. Here they were trying to muscle the emitters through the tiny
maintenance lock and into the chamber. A lock not really built to handle the
size of a main line emitter. He really didn't want to think about the radiation
exposure the crew doing that chore were exposing themselves too.

Then
of course there was the gear. Ancient gear that had seen better days. Constant
use and abuse had forced the on board firmware to adapt as parts of the systems
failed. The VR gear jury rigged into the system was just too cumbersome to use
in haste. He signaled the users to stop, then flipped his implants on and
linked with the robots as they wearily complied. The latest batch of parts had
arrived from his shuttle, and he tasked one robot to begin installing them as
he used the other to set up the next emitter. The third robot was tasked to
clean and repair the plasma siphons, so he left it alone for now and fed all
his concentration on the work. Bot four was almost useless. He set it to mirror
bot two and then got down to work.

 

O'Mallory
glanced at the admiral. He was frozen, a peaceful almost Zen like look on his
face, sitting back into the chair. Wires ran from his arm and legs to ports in
the reactor controls. The man was his namesake, Iron. It bothered her a little
to see manipulators moving about on the board, clearing and repairing it. Some
of the repairs seemed to happen on their own. She was pretty sure Irons was
using nanites. She didn't want to panic her crew though so she kept the observation
to herself.

 

Proteus
informed him his shuttle robots had completed some of the bay repairs and were
recharging. He set them up to work on the plasma conduits and corridors to the
critical ship systems, and then got back to work. Things were finally starting
to come together.

The
captain's deadline had come and gone an hour ago. Fortunately he'd tapped the
reserves to give them a minimum RCS capability. Most of the reserves were
capacitors in the RCS pods themselves, designed to hold a charge in case of an
emergency and main power was cut off. Exactly this situation.

BOOK: Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer)
13.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

October's Ghost by Ryne Douglas Pearson
Honeymoon by James Patterson, Howard Roughan
Touch of Heaven by Maureen Smith
Nightwatcher by Wendy Corsi Staub
Foreign Tongue by Vanina Marsot
Paranormal Curves (BBW Collection) by Curvy Love Publishing
The Druid Gene by Jennifer Foehner Wells