Milk Run (Smuggler's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1)

by Nathan Lowell

  Natalya reached for the cover and started putting the drive back together. “It felt fine,” she said. “Diagnostics are clean and there’s nothing obviously out of place in the casing.”

  “Man, I hate these kinds of problems.”

  She ratcheted the last bolt down and gave them all an extra tap to snug them up. “Me, too. Time to check elsewhere in the chain.”

  “Good strategy. You need an extra head to bounce ideas off?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not out of ideas yet, but I’ll keep you in mind. How’re things in the swamp?”

  “Everything still squishing that supposed to squish. Gas mixes are good. Returns don’t show any additives that shouldn’t be there.”

  She powered the Burleson unit back up and waited for it to finish booting before speaking. “Can I ask why you do this?”

  “Do what? These so-called smuggling runs or the whole environmental thing?”

  “These trips.”

  He shrugged. “Dark Knight has a huge environmental plant. It’s so big, I don’t get my hands wet or dirty that often because I need a crew of thirty to keep up with it.” He looked around the engine room and up at the overhead. “Here? I get a chance to get down in the mud and tinker.”

  “Like with the scrubber sluice?”

  “Well, that’s something we do at the station. I was surprised when I came out here and found ships don’t monitor that.”

  “Any theories?”

  “It’s a tiny improvement. When you’ve got ten acres of algae matrix, even a tiny improvement gives you a lot of scrubbing leverage. With ten square meters, that extra improvement is only about a million molecules.”

  “I can see that. Why do it, then?”

  “It’s a useful predictor of air quality and the overall health of the algae matrix.”

  “So a bellwether?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yeah.”

  She pondered for a moment. “You ever think about doing this full time?”

  He got a sheepish grin. “Actually, I fantasize about it all the time between trips. We no sooner get back and I start looking forward to going again.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Too comfy. Pay’s too good where I am. I get mad money from this, but the station still pays my bills.”

  Natalya nodded. “I can see that. One of the advantages of just starting out, I guess.”

  “No psychological inertia?”

  “Something like that. I need to get my ship fixed so I can get back to what I wanted to do.”

  “Which was?”

  “Fast packet courier trade around Toe-Hold space.”

  “Not much room on those Scouts. You bunking up?”

  “Mostly planning on data and small-mass, high-value cargoes that need to go a long way.”

  He pursed his lips and frowned a little. “Can you make a living at that?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “My overhead is low and the Peregrine has long legs. I can cross almost the whole Western Annex in a couple of days by jumping through the Deep Dark.” She looked at the Burleson unit. “Where would power get eaten up?”

  Knowles shook his head. “If it were me, I’d be looking at the downstream components.”

  She glanced about, mentally tracing the power flows. “Any particular reason?”

  He shrugged. “All my systems have feedback control loops. If they’re not getting enough water, they tell the pumps to send more. Capacitors are like a big tank. If you used more than expected, what would have told the drive to use more?”

  “Throttle, for one,” she said.

  “Was there any activity on the throttle at the time period?”

  She shook her head. “None. Typically there isn’t during the actual jump.”

  “So, downstream you have—what? Emitters on the hull?”

  “Yeah. A couple of big ones in the outward facing curves of her nose.”

  He shrugged. “If they’re out of whack, could that cause it?”

  “Yeah, but …” Natalya’s voice tapered off as she considered.

  Knowles grinned. “My work here is done.” He flourished his coffee cup by way of a wave and strolled off toward environmental.

  “Thank you,” Natalya said.

  He waved his hand but didn’t turn around or stop.

  Natalya pulled up the ship’s schematic on her tablet and began tracing the emitter bus network that carried the massive jolts of energy around the ship. She pocketed the socket wrench and ran up the ladder to her office to get a plate tool. The schematic showed a lot of places to look, and not all of them would be easy to get to. She considered getting Solomon to help since she held the lead slot in that group, but stopped short of asking. If she was right, she’d find out soon enough. If not, then she wouldn’t have a witness to failure. The thought made her laugh.

  Three stans later—covered in grease, sweat, and dirt from crawling around in the inspection tunnels in engineering—she felt like giving it up as a bad job. She’d bashed a knuckle on a sharp edge and the sweat from her hands stung in the abrasion. She lay there on the deck and took a breather. The air in the tunnels carried a metallic tang along with a higher than normal level of humidity. Together it made for an unpleasant experience that had her shipsuit sticking to her in places where it shouldn’t and restricting her movements.

  Her tablet bipped with the first piece of good news she’d had all morning. A diagnostic routine had tripped a warning on a bus control coupling in the spine. She wriggled back out of the tunnel and secured the inspection hatch.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  Her grubby appearance earned her more than a couple of strange looks as she clambered up the ladder toward the spine.

  “What have you been into?” Solomon asked as they crossed paths outside Engineering Control.

  “Inspection tunnels. Trying to find out where the extra power went during that last jump. And why we needed it to begin with.”

  “You noticed that, did you?” Solomon asked.

  “Kinda hard to miss.”

  “Find anything yet?”

  “Nothing I can put a cause to. Drives check out. I’ve had a system diagnostic running for the last three stans and it’s finally pinged me.”

  “Need a hand?”

  “I got it.” She grimaced. “Although if this doesn’t pan out, I’m not looking forward to continuing my tour of the inner workings of the Barbell.”

  Solomon laughed and waved as she headed up the spine toward the bow.

  Natalya stopped by the head on the way and rinsed the worst of the grime off her hands and face. She’d need a shower before she’d be able to go to the wardroom for lunch, but first she wanted a look at that bus coupling.

  She fired up her tablet and followed the map laid out on her screen. About two-thirds of the way toward the bow, she found the inspection hatch and pulled it. Looking around with a pen light, she saw the problem a split second before the evidence met her nose. As she surveyed the damage, she got a cold knot in the pit of her stomach. Being careful not to touch anything, she levered the hatch closed and rubbed her hands on the thighs of her shipsuit before heading forward to find the captain.

  The captain peered into the hatch. “What am I looking at?”

  “Emitter bus coupling for the Burleson drives. This one channels most of the energy from the drives aft to the emitters forward.”

  “That’s not supposed to look like that, is it?”

  “No, Captain. It’s not. That one’s almost burned through.”

  “That what caused the power drain?”

  “I believe so. There’s a feedback circuit to keep the Burlesons from cutting out too soon. If the bus coupling doesn’t have enough juice, it tells the drive to give more.”

  “You think the extra juice killed this one?”

  “No, Captain. I think it was on its way out, when it called for help. I think it must have lasted long enough to complete the jump into Siren bu
t that’s where it all stopped.”

  “Recommendations?”

  She nodded at the crispy coupling in the overhead. “That’ll have to be replaced. We can do it when we get to Siren but we can’t jump again until it’s replaced.”

  “What’s the end game here, Ms. Regyri?”

  “I don’t know, Captain. If this had failed even one jump earlier, we’d have been pretty badly stuck.”

  He sighed. “We’d have been in Albert, at least.” He looked at the coupling again. “You think it’s deliberate?”

  “It’s possible. It’s also possible that it’s not up to handling the load those oversized Origamis are punching through it over time. I’d have to check the specs on that unit to be sure.”

  “Odd time for it to happen,” Trask said.

  Natalya gazed up at the burned unit. “Maybe.” She looked at Trask. “Or maybe the ship doesn’t get used as much as we think.”

  Trask sighed and glanced at her before looking back into the inspection hatch. “Can you fix it?”

  “Should be able to.” Natalya shrugged. “It’ll be a while before we need it again.”

  “Make it a priority, if you would, Ms. Regyri. I don’t like not being able to jump.”

  “Aye, aye, Skipper,” she said. “Don’t blame ya.”

  Chapter 28

  Siren System: 2363, June 23

  Natalya returned to engineering and pulled up the spares inventory. Emitter bus couplings showed up right where she expected them to be. The system identified a full complement of a dozen on hand. She scrolled through the pages to see what had been used and what had been aboard the longest. Nothing jumped out at her. None of the items that might have had a limited shelf life, like algae cartridges for the scrubbers, showed even marginal dates. The normal consumables, like water and fuel filters, all looked fine.

  On a whim, she pulled up the bus replacement protocol to see if it held any gotchas. The procedure looked familiar. She’d never done a live one herself, but they’d been given instruction on it during her third-year Burleson drive rotation. Emitter bus couplers, capacitor charge fuses, even emitter array maintenance. She remembered that last one vividly. The emitters needed to be on the outside of the hull with an airtight bushing that provided the signal from inside the ship. The array itself consisted of a cross-hatched set of parallel emitters simply plugged into the emitter housing on the hull with a zero-gee fitting. Maintenance consisted of walking—or jetting—over to them outside the ship and replacing the emitter with a new one. Woe be to the cadet who stepped out without locking down her safety line.

  She’d never been in any danger. She had more hours of EVA than the instructors, but they’d acted like she’d stabbed her own suit and bled out. She sighed and kept digging.

  The procedure itself seemed simple enough. Pull the old one out. Plug the new one in. Use the coupling balance tool to bring both ends of the bus into proper alignment. The process shouldn’t take more than a few ticks. She kicked herself on that and mentally added a couple of stans.

  As long as the drives were off line, the replacement could be done underway.

  “Good enough,” she said to herself, and headed for the spares locker.

  She flipped the light on, scanning the shelves for the bus couplers. As she did so, something kept nagging at her attention. She was about to give up when she realized most of the parts bins were empty or nearly so. She pulled out her tablet and accessed the spares inventory. She added a quick sort by location and put her hand on the bin that should have held a dozen pristine bus couplers.

  What she found was a collection of half a dozen bent pieces of metal covered in some kind of oily grease.

  The cold knot in her stomach came back full force. She tamped it down and started spot-checking the various bins against what was in the system. A good deal of it matched, but mostly spares with a low unit cost. Anything of value wasn’t just missing. It had been replaced with a similar mass of metal—or in one case, bottles of water. Burleson bus connectors would have been worth twelve thousand credits. The case of spare water filters wouldn’t have been worth twelve.

  She left the spares locker and dropped down to the environmental department. She found Sheddon and Eloranta changing out scrubber cartridges. “Seen Mr. Knowles lately?” she asked.

  Sheddon looked up and wiped the end of his nose with the back of his wrist. “He’s off until 1800. Might find him in engineering berthing.”

  Eloranta shook her head. “He was headed for the mess deck for coffee. Maybe half a stan ago. If he got involved in reading, he’s probably still there.”

  Sheddon grinned. “True. I’d try the mess deck first.”

  “Anything we can help with?” Eloranta asked.

  “You got plenty of cartridges for that sucker?” Natalya asked.

  Eloranta shrugged and looked at Sheddon.

  “Three cases in the spares locker. We just opened a fresh case for this.” He waved a mucky hand at the open scrubber.

  “I’m putting together a replenishment order for when we dock. If you think of anything, lemme know?”

  “Aye, aye,” Eloranta said with a crooked grin.

  Natalya found Knowles leaning against a bulkhead on the mess deck, his tablet open to dense text and an empty cup in his hand. “Did you drink it already or haven’t you filled it yet?” she asked.

  He looked up at her and blinked a couple of times as if reorienting his reality. “Oh. No. Not filled.”

  “Interesting reading?”

  He hefted the tablet as if weighing it in his hand. “Interesting research in some new higher-yield algae. They produce almost twice as much oxygen for the same amount of carbon dioxide absorption.”

  “What’s the down side?”

  “What to do with excess oxygen in closed ecosystems.”

  Natalya felt her eyebrows climbing her forehead. “Is that a problem?”

  “Can be. Half the reason we use the algae in the scrubbers is to pull the carbon dioxide out. I’d like to see something that can take twice as much carbon dioxide for the same amount of oxygen exchanged. That would be more useful, I think.” He shrugged. “We’ve got some very good mixes now with exchange at near-parity. We only supplement the mix with the barest whiff of oxygen. If we used these strains, we’d have to figure out a way to keep the oxygen levels under control. We just haven’t faced that before.”

  Natalya gave him a wry smile. “Cut down the number of scrubbers?”

  “Possibly. I’d like to see how that scaled.” He looked up at her. “Sorry,” he said, flipping the screen off. “You didn’t hunt me down to ask me about algae.”

  “Spares.”

  His eyebrows raised slightly. “Spares?”

  “You noticed anything odd in the spares locker?”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “No. I only go in there for filters and cartridges and we’ve only just had to change out the scrubber.”

  “I saw. Sheddon and Elantora were up to their elbows in it.”

  “Eloranta,” he said.

  Natalya winced. “Sorry. I’m usually better with names.”

  “It’s an odd one and she gets a lot of strange takes on it.”

  “Got a minute?”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Natalya took him back to engineering and led him into the spares locker. She pulled out her tablet. “What’s a part you might need? Other than the consumables.”

  He scratched his chin and pursed his lips. “Eight-centimeter stainless valve.”

  Natalya entered it into the inventory. “System says we have six. Bin D-12-6.”

  He shrugged. “Six is probably enough. We don’t break that many of them.”

  “Do me a favor and look in D-12-6.”

  He scanned the racks until he found the right bin. He pulled it open and peered inside. He frowned. “Did you say D or B.”

  “D as in delta.”

  He checked the label again and shrugged. “That looks like scrap metal.
”

  “Any idea how much six of those valves would mass?”

  His eyes widened a bit and he blinked. He hefted the bin a couple of times. “Not offhand.”

  “They valuable?”

  “Eh, maybe a hundred credits each. They’re precision-machined to medical tolerances.”

  “Gimme a cheap part. Something plastic.”

  “Ten-millimeter neoprene hose.”

  She consulted her tablet. “Bin Charlie-15-23. A ten-meter roll.”

  “Sounds right,” he said. He rummaged around for a bit and pulled open a bin. “Looks like this one is here.”

  “What’s it cost?”

  “Probably four credits for the roll.”

  “So, cheap, lightweight stuff and things we might notice right away?”

  Knowles nodded. “Consumables like the filters and scrubber cartridges. There’s some filter papers and titration reagents we use to test water. Some cheap chemicals we use to suppress biological activity in gray water tanks.”

  “We’d need to run a full inventory, but I’d guess anything with a significant value has been replaced with dross.”

  “Anything we’d be unlikely to notice,” Knowles said. “We test all the waters about three times a week with this.” He pulled out a bin near the door. It contained row upon row of brown plastic bottles, all lying on their side with the label up. “Phenol red. It’s for testing water’s acidity. We don’t use much of it at a time, but we use it a lot and it’s not always easy to come by in commercial quantities in Toe-Hold space.”

  “Expensive?”

  Knowles shrugged. “This bin’s probably a couple thousand credits worth.”

  “But you’d notice if it were missing.”

  He nodded. “Most definitely.”

  “Will you use all that this trip?”

  “This trip? Doubtful. Probably only a half-dozen bottles. Depends on how long we’re out.”

  Natalya reached into the bin and pulled out the top bottle and held it up to the light. “This is the stuff?”

  “We can check it by running some water tests with it, but it should be.”

  She pulled the bin out and flipped it over so the bottles rolled across the deck.