Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) (22 page)

‘Ah, right,’ Mako said, and did as he was asked, establishing that the ‘haka’ blarting only happened when he was using the comp.  Jok Dorlan seemed pleased by that and assured him that he would soon have it fixed.  He took it over to the computer station on the command deck, connecting it to a high tech interface and settling to work on it.  Mako, at Dan’s invitation, sat down at the command deck and resumed working there.  All was quiet for a few minutes, as the Sub was deeply involved in whatever mysterious thing he was doing and Mako was absorbed back into his report. 

‘Er, sir?’  Jok Dorlan got the Sub’s attention with a diffident clearing of his throat.  He looked, Mako was concerned to notice, somewhat alarmed.  If all his notes and reports were damaged…  ‘Sir, this is G39 by-lined.’

‘And?’  Dan Tarrance looked at him enquiringly, pointing out, ‘you’re cleared to work on that, Dorlan.’

‘Yes sir.’  Jok Dorlan swallowed, looking very uncomfortable.  Even Mako had gathered that the highly classified ‘G39 by-line’, whatever it might be, was a very highly advanced skill that only a handful of people could do, even on Minnow.  It was not hard to understand how Jok Dorlan, who’d ended up in the toughest prison in the League for a line-crossing prank, could have some issues with investigating and exposing a shipmate for a similar offence.  That was particularly the case when it was immediately obvious that the most likely suspect was the mischievous Elsa Nordstrom, who was not only his oppo but had very quickly become a friend.  Mako could practically see the war going on in him between duty and loyalty to a mate.  Fleet training won out, though, as he said no more but went back to work.

Mako looked at the Sub, feeling uncomfortable himself at the parolee being put on the spot like that.  Dan Tarrance seemed oblivious to it, though, just quietly getting on with his own work.  Then the skipper arrived, taking his own place at the table with an amicable nod to everyone present.  He had a particular seat at the command table that nobody else sat at, at the head of the table overlooking the command deck.  The watch keeper always had the seat to his right, which also had good overview of the ship’s command centre.  Any third officer who was working there took the seat on the skipper’s left.  The fourth seat, opposite the skipper, had become Mako’s place either to work or to sit observing and chatting with the watch officer.  It meant he had his back to the rest of the command deck, but he knew that he wasn’t in anybody’s way there, and it did give him a good view of people coming and going through the airlock area too.

He did not miss, as the skipper sat down, a silent and almost imperceptible exchange between him and Dan Tarrance.  There was a question in the glance that the skipper gave the young Sub, and assent in Dan Tarrance’s answering look.  Then, as they both went back to work, there was a sense of expectation, subtle but apparent to the observant inspector.

Four minutes later, to the surprise of his shipmates, Jok Dorlan did a double take at the screen he was working on and just exploded with laughter.   

‘
Sir!’
  he exclaimed, in a tone that was a strange blend of admiration and reproach, turning to look at the computer Sub.  As Dan laughed too, Mako gave him a bewildered look.

 ‘Yes, it was me.’  Dan admitted frankly, with a look of laughing apology.  ‘Sorry, Mr Ireson, but you did say you’d be willing to be a casualty for training exercises.’

‘
Oh!’
  Enlightenment dawned, and as he looked at the skipper, Alex nodded confirmation. 

‘Confidence building,’ he explained, and needed to say no more than that.  Mako understood that they’d set up the ‘prank’ to help Jok Dorlan over his understandable fear of having anything to do with pranks after what had happened to him.  It was clear it had worked, too.  The exercise of having to figure out the complex coding and exposing the fact that it had been the computer sub had the rating in fits of mirth, looking happier and more confident than at any time since he’d come aboard.

‘And
may
I, sir?’ he asked, hopefully, ‘have a crack at the crypt?’

‘By all means.  Go to,’ said Dan, with a generous, encouraging wave.  ‘Just take the hiccups off Mr Ireson’s comp, first.’

‘Done, sir.’  Jok assured him, and brought the comp over to the table.  ‘None of your files were accessed, sir,’ he assured him.

‘Thanks,’ Mako smiled.

As Jok hurried back to the computer station with a spring in his step and a look of happy purpose on his face, Dan looked at the skipper.  Alex von Strada gave him a nod of approval and it was the young officer’s turn to look delighted.

Clever, Mako thought, looking at the skipper too, and understanding how he had managed this to give the Sub experience of managing microsteps rehab as well as the confidence boost that would get Jok Dorlan back into programming. 
Very
clever.  But then, he mused, Alex von Strada would not be one of the highest flying officers in the Fleet unless he was something remarkable even for them.  Tagged and flagged, he remembered.  Widely tipped to be First Lord himself one day. 

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ the skipper said, seeing his scrutiny.  ‘We
wouldn’t
access your files, you know.’

‘No, I know, and no, I don’t mind at all.  My pleasure, in fact,’ Mako said.  It did not need to be explained to him why he had not been told about this beforehand.  His reaction had to be entirely natural and convincing or Jok Dorlan would certainly have suspected a set up and the exercise wouldn’t have worked nearly so well.  ‘But what did you do that was so funny, if it’s not too classified to tell me?’ he asked Dan, and the Sub chuckled.

‘Nothing much – just encrypted the subroutine in such a way that, when he eventually cracked it, it would pop up with my ID and a message saying ‘Very good, now have a crack at the crypt.’  That’s our programming challenge game.  It’s nothing, really, just a certificate for “Best hacker on the ship, the ace, the one, the only…” and space for a name.  The challenge is to hack into it, put your name on it, and lay the best encryption you can on it to prevent anyone else getting into it.  It’s just a bit of fun, but it does hone your skills and every now and again, someone comes up with something new that raises the game in computer security.  And it is good,’ he observed, with a look across the command deck to where Jok Dorlan was now working on six screens at once, with data tumbling down them in madly encrypted waterfalls and a look of pure bliss on his face, ‘to see him get back in the game.’

It certainly was.  Mako had a sense of happy accomplishment in that himself even though his own role in it had been nothing more than that of unwitting victim.  He would write that up with great pleasure as an example of microsteps rehab.

Though even he was puzzled, when he came to write up an experience a few days later that defied being put into any official language.

He’d been in engineering, having accepted an invitation from the engineer, Morry Morelle, to have more of a look round in there than his previous brief visits.  Truth to tell, Mako found the engine room just a little unnerving.  It wasn’t just that it was so densely packed with alarmingly incomprehensible hyper-powered tech, it was the
noise
.  It wasn’t loud, even when the ship was going at high speed, but it had harmonics that seemed almost to shimmer in the air, and a disquieting sense of energies beyond his comprehension. 

It was, he had become aware, also one of the few places on the ship where the skipper could by Fleet tradition sit down and have a cuppa with crew, chatting informally with them.  Being aware of how much of an imposition he was being on them, Mako was trying to be sensitive about giving everyone some space where they didn’t have him watching them, asking questions and making notes.  Today, however, Morry had been so insistent that it had been clear that refusal would disappoint, so he had come along to be suitably impressed.

He was, too, as Morry had given him a civilian-friendly tour, pointing out features he felt might be of interest even to a non-technician.  Mako had been genuinely amazed to discover that all the cores had, as part of their support tech, their own hydrogen fusion reactors, producing enough power to supply a moderate sized city.  

This, Morry assured him, was nothing at all impressive for starships, which frequently found themselves with so much surplus energy that they had to release it through discharge units outside the hull.  As far as they were concerned, he explained, the reactors were no more important than battery-backup for the cores, which were producing orders of magnitude more power,
millions
of times more power than a fusion reactor.

The really astounding thing, though, was when Morry encouraged him to lay his hand on the casing of a core, putting his own hand on one to show him it was safe.  Then he laughed helplessly as Mako yelped and jumped back with an astounded look on his face, feeling his jaw, which was aching, and his chest, which felt like he’d just been thumped by an invisible wall.

‘Sorry.’  Morry said, grinning broadly.  ‘
No
engineer can resist that one.  But seriously, honestly – stand sideways to it, okay?  You only get that ‘push’ when you stand facing it because of the structure of your skeleton.  Stand sideways and it’s fine.  Trust me on this!’

Mako, easing his jaw cautiously, did not feel massively inclined to trust him, but he didn’t want to look like a wimp so he took up the stance Morry was showing him.  Standing sideways to the core, he put his hand on it again, rather more cautiously.

‘Oh, that is
weird!’
  he exclaimed with a look of amazement.  It felt as if the energy that had seemed to strike out at him last time was pulsing into him, now, like the vibration you felt in your breastbone from powerful concert speakers. 

‘Good, huh?’  Morry said, with a grin, and demonstrated holding his free hand out at shoulder height.  ‘Try that,’ he suggested.

Mako felt a bit self-conscious, but he copied the engineer and gave him another look of amazement, laughing aloud.  The sense of energy pulsing into him had now turned into a sense of it pulsing
through
him.  It felt as if it was passing through his body and flowing out through his outstretched hand.  He would not have been surprised to see a bright light streaming out from his fingers, and felt sure that if he touched anything, sparks would arc. 

‘Oh, that’s
amazing!’
 he said.  ‘What
is
that?’

‘Twenty four dimensional energy pulsing right through you.’  Morry told him.  ‘The heartbeat of the cosmos.  Cool, huh?’

‘It’s incredible,’ Mako said, his face alight with wonder.  It was so complex.  He could feel that there was some kind of rhythm, but it was as if it was beyond his ability to make it out, ‘I can’t… there’s so much… it’s like an orchestra all playing different music.’ 

‘Hey,’ said Morry, laughing as he saw the awe on the prison inspector’s face.  ‘You think that’s cool, I’ll show you something awesome.  We don’t often do this.  The Fleet frowns on it as bordering on ‘undue familiarity’, but you’re a civilian so it’s okay.  And trust me, I am not after your body.’

Mako cracked up, seeing the twinkle in his eyes, but went along readily enough as the engineer moved him around, going to stand at a nearby core himself. 

‘Check this out,’ he said.  ‘These cores are neighbours but not connected in any way, okay?’ he put one hand flat on the casing, and held the other out, invitingly, at shoulder height.  ‘Take my hand,’ he invited.

Mako did so, carefully, because he was coming to recognise Morry’s sense of humour.  In fact, he could feel very little beyond a slight sense of confusion, as if the pulses from the two different cores were not quite in synch.

‘Right – got that?’  Morry asked.  ‘But we always operate mix cores in pairs, okay?  Every core has its partner – one port, one starboard.  They are connected by nothing more than the simplest of telemetry wires, which does nothing more than to allow one core to detect the other.  So, now you’ve felt what two cores feel like when they’re isolated from each other, have a feel of what happens when we let them become partners,’ he was moving over to another core as he spoke, and with a look of significant anticipation, put his hand on it.

‘Oh,
oh!’
 Mako gasped as his knees went weak.  It was as if every sensory nerve in his body was trembling, a feeling so intense that he couldn’t help but cry out.  He was looking at Morry with a kind of stunned look, gripping his hand white-knuckled tight.

‘Good, huh?’  Said the engineer, grinning happily, and as the rapture went on, and on, remarked, ‘of course, you’ll have to marry me now.’

Mako managed to let go of his hand, bursting out laughing.

‘That is just… well, I’ve run out of words!’  He admitted.  ‘What
is
that?’

‘The cores singing to each other.’  Morry told him.  ‘If you let two cores sense each other, they do that.  They calibrate themselves to each other and sing in harmony.  You can’t join any more than that because they just explode, but they love to be in pairs and they’re much more stable that way.  They have personality traits and moods, too.  Seriously, I am not having you on.  Two identical pairs of cores on the same ship can behave in very different ways to the same stimuli, one pair placid and easy going while the other frets and fusses over any little thing.  Until someone comes up with a better explanation than personality and moods, engineers will continue to describe that in just those terms.