Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer) (25 page)

“This
close to a hyper event I don't want to distract anyone and jog their elbow,”
the admiral said coming over to them.

“Then
why are you here?” The captain asked looking him up and down. He'd heard about
Irons marathon sessions on the hull. The man was incredible. Not that he was
going to admit it. He'd been sarcastic before with the chief. He took another
look at her as the thought of Irons marathon ran through his head once more.
The chief looked wiped out. Her eyes were bloodshot. She was pale and her hair
was a limp sweaty tangled mess. He could smell the sweat. He realized she'd
been defensive but had been too tired to hold her tongue. He'd overlook her
little peccadillo now.

“Checking
in captain. I heard the chief was here. I wanted to see if there was anything
else that needed to be done,” Irons replied looking attentively her way.
O'Mallory blew her cheeks in and out, glad of the distraction. It didn't stop
the inevitable probably, but Irons distraction did take some of the heat off
and let them retreat before anger got the best of either of them.

“Admiral,
you realize the bridge crew hasn't run a sim right? This is new hardware. Well,
some of it.” Sprite informed Irons from the overhead. The admiral turned to her
projection on the plot and then to O'Mallory. The chief shrugged helplessly.
Irons turned to the captain.

“Don't
tell me how to run
my
ship Irons,” the captain growled, eyes flashing.
“You or your damn AI.”

“I
wouldn't dream of it sir. I do
suggest
that you consider a sim to see
how well the hardware works together and if there are any bugs that you need to
be aware of. Integration can be tricky. There are always teething issues to
deal with. I have also come to understand that your crew has
no
experience with higher octaves let alone beta band. That's also an issue.”

The
captain started to retort but O'Mallory glared at him. “It's actually a good
idea. I had expected your people to be doing that already Captain,” she said
with a slight bite in her tone. “Not sitting on their collective
asses
looking for something to do.” While people did real work was left hanging in
the air. Some of the bridge crew simmered over that. She didn't care.

The
captain turned away, trying to rein in his temper again. Irons and O'Mallory
had a way of getting under his skin. O'Mallory was damn close to
insubordination again. He'd can her if he could, but she knew the systems
inside and out and her people worshiped her. She knew how to draw the best out
of all of them. He caught Hir'ruk's look. The Veraxin turned to him and his
upper arms showed consent and first level emphasis over commitment to action.
He turned to the exec who was also nodding.

“Very
well. Make it so,” he said with a grudging nod. The helmsman looked confused.

“Simulation
loading now. Captain, can you please set the parameters of the exercise?”
Sprite asked. The captain paused on his way to his chair and then continued.
When he got to his chair he stopped.

The
captain turned a look on Irons. He tried to hide his confusion but Irons had
been prepared for it. “It's customary for you to guide the sim. You want to
test the crew but you don't want to undermine their confidence either sir.
Usually you work from a curve, starting with something simple then throwing
harder tasked in as the team progresses.”

“Oh?”

Irons
tried hard not to grit his teeth about the obvious cluelessness in that
response. “Yes. You can also throw in disaster scenarios to train the crew on
how to respond to them as they get better, or if they get too cocky. It also
serves to work out the procedures and even program them into the computer,” he
said.

“Ah,”
the captain said with a nod. He was clearly digesting that.

“It's
a good idea. We could take the extra time to tune the emitters and feed the
data into the simulation captain,” O'Mallory said. “As well as feed in
simulations of the different octaves and how the system will respond. I
understand it's different the higher you go.”

“Yes,”
Irons said with a nod. “The compression ratio increases as you move up the
octaves. That shortens your response time. It all comes at you faster and you
have to react correctly or you will get into trouble quickly. You get patches
of turbulence in between transitions and that can affect the nodes if you
aren't careful. Since we've got the nodes up to forty percent on the bow and
lower on other areas it will get interesting.”

“Okay,
Chief,” the captain turned to O'Mallory. “Put your figures into the computer
and sketch out a couple of scenarios. We'll try a basic one first. While we're
running a few I'll think of some of my own twists. I want this done by
mid-shift so we can enter hyper before we tire ourselves out.”

“Wise,”
Irons said with a nod. The captain ignored him as he turned to his crew and
settled into his chair.

“Let's
be about it then,” the captain said.

“With
your permission we'll watch from engineering captain,” O'Mallory murmured. The
captain made a brushing motion but didn't look away from the main display as
the sim came up. O'Mallory cocked her head to the door and caught Irons
attention. Irons nodded and followed her out.

“That
should buy you a couple more hours to tune things chief,” Irons said.

“Yeah
think?” she asked amused. She looked back the way they had come and snorted.
“I'm betting two hours before he loses patience and orders us into hyper.”

“That's
a couple of more hours. Let's not waste them then.”

“Good
point,” she said, picking up her stride.

Kiev
was the polar opposite of most Terran ship designs. Most Terran ships had an
egg shaped field that englobed the ship. The point of the field was at the bow,
breaking space ahead of the ship and minimized drag.

Kiev
however was laid out differently due to her structural design. She was bow
heavy, with most of her mass in front of her normal center of gravity. She also
had a broad bow instead of a pointed tapered bow of other ships. She didn't so
much slip through space like a knife as she did plow through it.

Using
the fields, other ships were about finesse. Kiev was about brute uncaring
power. Unfortunately for her crew the ship was underpowered. That tended to
matter when you were trying to get around a star system, let alone enter
hyperspace.

Now
however the ship was a little more than a ghost of her former dubious glory.
For the first time in centuries she had half her nominal power and tuned
emitters. The tuning was still rough, but it was better than the slap together
hash she had before.

After
three and a half hours of sims the captain was confident enough to allow
Blackhawk to go. “We've delayed long enough,” he muttered, looking around the
compartment.

Blackhawk
had gone through the battery of sims and come out with a healthy respect of the
higher bands. He was wary now, not quite to the point of being jumpy, but now
aware that it wouldn't be as easy as he thought it would be. “On your command
captain,” he said.

The
Captain studied that reply, trying to find a hint of overconfidence or fear but
finding none. “Fine then,” he said adjusting the hem of his jacket. “Let's stop
pussy footing around and do this for real. Mr. Blackhawk. Bring up the nodes
and warm up the hyperdrive.”

“Aye
aye captain.”

The
crew began the long preflight check list before entering hyper. The captain
watched them with fresh eyes. He could sense how eager they were. There was a
bit of wariness there, but that was good. Irons was right, he thought
grudgingly. The sims had helped work out some of the kinks he'd been dreading.
It had also given his bridge crew some experience with the new hardware and
helped them learn from it. They were ready. It's a change from the dread they
usually had at entering hyper. A nice change.

O'Mallory
watched the read outs warily, aware that if something went wrong she'd need
every second to get things turned around. She was also aware how tired she was.
How exhausted. She really should have let off on that last mission. Or at least
caught a cat nap in the four precious hours the captain had delayed to run the
sims. But she'd been too busy to consider that. Now there was no time.

Fortunately
things were running smoothly. She was surprised by how smoothly and glanced
over to the admiral. He was jacked in. Could he be helping out with the
transition? It was possible. Certainly his AI had a hand in it. She was sure of
that at least.

The
hyperdrive spun up to full power. She bit her lip as the discharge levels
climbed.

“And
we are at one hundred percent. All stations brace for transition. Drive
initializing.... on my mark. Three. Two... one... Mark!” Blackhawk said
professional decorum forgotten in the heat of the moment.

The
ship leapt into hyper. The transition was a bit bumpy, Irons was concerned but
the crew around him wasn't. He looked over to O'Mallory but she's busy studying
her station readouts. He turned his attention to Jer'uk nearby.

She
caught his look and then indicated a second level shrug of amusement. “This?
This is normal,” she chittered. She had a wary claw on an oh shit bar just in
case though.

“Okay.
If you say so,” he said as the trembling started to taper off.

“Inertial
dampeners are adapting,” a tech told him. He was surprised that the tech didn't
know that would happen. The ride smoothed out over time. They got a bit of
turbulence as they move up the octaves to the sweet spot but the crew took it
well. In fact they seemed elated the higher they went.

Captain
Chambers was surprised by the change. It had taken less than an hour to get up
to C. C, something he had wanted to see his ship do, but thought it would never
do again. “He did it. The crazy son of a bitch did it!” he murmured as they
slipped into the sweet octave and stabilized.

“The
hyper collectors are coming online,” Hir'ruk reported triumphantly. If anything
would get the miserly Veraxin going it was free energy.

“Reactor
is holding steady. Dropping load as we shift to hyper collectors. Twenty
percent. Ten percent. We're at idle with the reactor,” Hir'ruk said, sounding
pleased.

“And
that's that,” Warner said with a grin. The captain caught the edge of it and
snorted softly. “Transit time navigation?” Warner asked, turning to the
navigator.

Esmay
the navigator looked at her readouts and then blinked in astonishment. Mr.
Warner cleared his throat to prompt her, startling her out of her befuddlement.
Esmay blushed a bit.

“Um,
one hundred thirty one point one days,” she said, clearly awed. They had shaved
seven and a half weeks off their normal transit time. With the hyper collectors
online they were also saving a great deal of fuel as well.

“Wow,”
Blackhawk murmured from his couch.

“Doing
okay Mr. Blackhawk?” The captain asked.

“Fine
sir,” Blackhawk said not turning away from his display. “It's coming a bit
faster than before but I think I like it better. It's not as boring.”

“Your
shift ends in three hours. Are you okay until then?” The captain asked. Jeremy
Blackhawk nodded. “Very well then, carry on.”

“Captain
we're getting a concentration of energy off our port side. One hundred thousand
kilometers.”

“Steer
for it,” the captain murmured. “Let's see if we can pick up as much energy as
we can use.”

“Aye
aye captain.”

At
shift change Jeremy explained to his relief how she handled and then handed the
helm off to the secondary station. The helmsman sat there and got used to her
as Blackhawk got up and stretched.

“Don't
get cute and take your hands off the controls even for a moment. You're stuck
in that chair until your shift ends,” he warned Fred.

“Shit,”
Fred said, sounding annoyed. He preferred the senior chair, it was more
comfortable. This chair had a poor patch job. A tape edge was digging into his
side. That was going to be irritating. So much for getting up and jumping over
to the good seat.

“I
am going to pee and then track down that admiral guy and shake his hand. I
think I'll buy him a beer too. Hell, the entire engineering crew deserves one.
She's sweet.” Blackhawk grinned.

“Faster,”
Fred murmured. He was still getting used to her.

“A
lot faster. You've got to be on your toes Fred. Focus.”

“I'm
on it,” Fred said.

“Good.”

“I'll
join you,” Esmay said, looking up from her station. She slid out from behind
the console as her replacement slid in place. “This admiral guy is incredible.
I love my new sensors!” she gushed.

“Girls
and their toys,” Blackhawk murmured, smiling and wrapping one hand around Esmay
to pull her to his hip. She laughed.

“I
think you've got the gender mixed up there bucko,” she said pushing him away
with a smile. “Food. Beer. I could drink a gallon,” she said stretching.