Ghosts from the Past (The Wandering engineer Book 7)

by Chris Hechtl

  Ghosts from the Past

  The Wandering Engineer 7

  Chris Hechtl

  Copyright 2015 by Chris Hechtl

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book and or portions thereof in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to other people is in parody or is purely coincidental. ;)

  Cover art by Chris Hechtl

  3D models and textures purchased from Daz3d.com or Renderosity.com or made by Chris Hechtl

  Proof Read by: Jory Gray, Mike Kotcher, Tim Brown, Poon Yee, Ulrich Schlegel, Gord Archer, Brandon Bynum, and Joshua Lyon

  Professionally edited by: Rea Myers

  Formatted by Goodlifeguide.com

  Dedication

  Special thanks to Ulrich Schlegel for the tools he created to help me as well as Jory, Mike, and the other betas who have been helping me with story and ship designs. Thank you Poon for bouncing ideas and fixes off me, and Rea for her quick turn around.

  This isn't a one man show, more of a team effort now and I am grateful to everyone involved.

  Table of Contents

  ACT I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  ACT II

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  ACT III

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  Author's Afterward

  Dramatic Personnel

  Appendix

  ACT I

  Chapter 1

  Eleven weeks. Eleven long weeks of transiting through hyperspace in the mid octaves of alpha band the nine light years back to B100 omega. And they still had time to go on the clock, Fleet Admiral John Henry Irons reminded himself. A lot of time, he thought, three more weeks to go before breakout. Too much time. If the ship had been anywhere near what she had been when she'd been commissioned ... he shook his head. But she wasn't; she was a shadow of her former self. At least for now.

  He had several ships this time; for the first time in years, he wasn't just in a single ship; he was the head of a fleet. Okay, perhaps a task force or convoy since he only had seven warships running escort on nine unarmed ships. But he was a flag officer; he was finally getting back where he needed to be, as a flag officer of the Federation Navy.

  His flagship Maine was a battlecruiser; a Newmannn class BC he'd designed just before the start of the war. Bounty and Mary Apple were his two destroyers, Bounty was an Arboth class he'd captured in B100 omega with the other prisoners on board, while Mary Apple was an Antelope class he'd renamed after the late Captain Mary Apple who had died aboard her corvette during the battle of B101a1 a short time ago.

  With them he had a yet to be renamed Manta class frigate currently running point for the convoy along with three Apollo class corvettes. Inside the pocket he had two tankers, the factory ship Andrew Carnegie, and six large freighters of various classes. They were all bumbling along behind the flagship, some were doing well at keeping station while others were doing all they could do to keep up. Since a fleet traveled at the speed of their slowest ship, it was going to be a long run.

  Maine had a cobbled together hyperdrive and power system. Her three main reactors, six small backup reactors along with two unpowered MAM reactors were all either patched together from the civilian reactors that her previous masters had put into her, or in the case of two of the backup reactors, were new construction Irons and his people had put into her in B101a1. Her massive bulk had a lot of fuel bunkerage to power her massive primary reactors ... and to allow her to cross a galactic sector and still have enough fuel to fight when she got to where she was going. Fight or run.

  Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how they looked at it, the Horathians had been forced to cobble together two of her reactors and her hyperdrive from a bulk civilian super freighter as well as a few other donor ships he had yet to identify. Her sensors were a mix of civilian and military grade as well. That made her as slow as the colliers and tankers. Transit time for the convoy was at the best speed of the slowest ship, so they spent a long fourteen weeks in hyper.

  Irons vowed to do something about that in B-100 omega.

  Parts of the ship were still open to space; something he had had a hand in doing during the battle of B101a1. He had no regrets over that, nor of the other damage he'd inflicted on the ship or the damage the AI and their viruses had inflicted. They'd make good on it in time. And right now, they had a lot of time to go around.

  The first order of business, tear her systems apart and rebuild them. That was easier said than done; there were thousands of ship's systems in need of repair or even just basic maintenance. The ship had nearly two billion components in her guts.

  He'd thought it would be good training for her crew. But Admiral Irons had found he had to be on top of the engineering crew at all times, otherwise they plodded or slipped off the schedule he'd set. But if he was there then the bridge started running into issues or something else happened. He had only so many trained officers to go around, to man all the watches. Many were barely trained, if at all. Increasingly he'd had to press Sprite and even Defender and Proteus into officer watch slots. The AIs could handle it of course, they were officers after all, but Defender was a marionette when it came time to man a bridge watch. The security AI was completely unsuited for the task he noted.

  Every little problem in engineering was reported. Some of them were genuine problems that needed to be addressed immediately. But many of the former slaves had no initiative. They just reported it then waited for him to show up to do something about it. He sighed. This idea of giving them a second chance wasn't turning out the way he had hoped. At least not for now. He reminded himself to keep an open mind.

  He spent a lot of time in transit going from one duty station to the next. Or going from the bridge to some engineering problem. He'd made it clear to the crew that they were not to ask him to report to main engineering when there was a problem with power room 2. That had twice wasted his time and pissed him off.

  Captain Mayweather had been right. He should have taken the entire fleet back with her to Pyrax. He should have sent a runner to round up Collier 2 and the other ships while he escorted his people and the battered ships to port in Pyrax. He could have repaired them or at the very least taken on stores and parts as well as a proper crew and then headed out to Antigua from there.

  But that, as the expression goes, ship had sailed. They were en-route, and hell if he'd turn about and go through the journey again. No, they'd just have to make do somehow, someway.

  There was little they could do about the hyperdrive, reactors, or many o
f the other critical ship's systems while they were underway. But they could tear into other things, and of course they could catalog the list of what needed to be done.

  He frowned. He had thought they'd done a decent patch job in B101a1 and he'd been right. The ship was functional ... to a degree. She could fly, and she could fight, as oh, say a kitten in a wet paper bag. Maybe. If she got in the first couple of licks in early.

  Integrating the old guard from Firefly with his people off Bounty and the other ships as well as the new people, all former slaves freed in B101a1 was proving difficult as well. Nothing ever went as planned he reminded himself. And when it came to people ... they had all sorts of fun ways to muck up a simple plan. He wondered briefly if it was this bad on the other ships. There was reportedly some friction in just about every compartment. Some resentment that veterans reportedly lorded over noobs with disdain and contempt. Then there were reports that some veterans resented the new recruits who were elevated to roles they hadn't in the veteran's eyes earned. He could see that. Some of the vets had busted their asses in training and in the fleet to earn their rank. The new recruits had yet to prove themselves. But the veterans needed to get over it. He made that clear to them.

  On the flip side, the new recruits had to deliver or step aside. He'd give them a second shot, but if they couldn't hack it they were out, plain and simple. Filling their void would be a headache, but one he'd suffer gladly if it meant he was dealing with it now, and not when the ship was in danger.

  Apparently the constant work had brought some of the friction to an explosive surface. There had been several fights and one nervous breakdown. Irons landed on any issues as quickly as he could, but he was finding out it was a big ship and not everything got reported to him. Nor could he be everywhere at once. Sprite and Maine's acting department heads tried to head issues off or nip them in the bud.

  “We've got a long ways to go,” he murmured to himself. But they were going to get there. That he vowed.

  “Admiral, we're still having problems with the computer net. I've got a tech on it, but he's lost,” Chief Behr said, sounding apologetic. “I'm not sure who to send to him to hold his hand. Or claw, or whatever,” he said now sounding disgusted.

  “Where?”

  “Junction 3, missile deck 1, sir. He's working on a subnet for the diagnostics and engineering remotes as well as the flag and CIC. DCC needs that net up, but it's just garbage.”

  “And Damage Control Central can't diagnose the problem?” the admiral asked mildly.

  “Apparently not. Admiral, they are still learning their jobs,” the chief said. “Sam's good but not perfect, sir.”

  The admiral pursed his lips thoughtfully. Chief Behr was learning his job as well. He wasn't an officer; he was a chief petty officer who had recently been promoted off Firefly to take a position on Maine. At the current moment, the chief was the acting chief engineer since every one of the ship's few officers were needed to oversee the bridge and day-to-day running there.

  “They need to do better, Chief. We all do. I'll take a swing by and see what I can see,” he said, accessing the map of the ship on his HUD. He plotted where he needed to go, Sprite was apparently preoccupied, which was becoming normal more and more often lately since she had taken on the XO job as well as a bridge watch, coding, and his chief of staff. When he had the directions down, he nodded again. “Let him know I'm on my way. If you need anything else checked in the area, send me an e-mail. Now,” he said, “not later, Chief.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” the chief replied, chastened as he cut the link. He'd been warned about that before. He had asked the admiral to look into a couple problem areas and had then became distracted and forgotten to send him the e-mail. So the admiral had been left cooling his heels waiting for an e-mail that hadn't come. At least not until he'd had to put a call in to “remind” the chief about it.

  “What a way to run a railroad or a ship,” the admiral muttered.

  Things would go better once the ship's AI was fully online and integrated in the ship's systems. Just adding sections of the computer net, bringing them back up was helping the AI. Right now his development was ... hindered, stagnated by the ship's damaged condition. That had to change, and soon.

  Maine's AI was a newborn smart AI called Lobsterman. He had chosen to take human form and wore a yellow slicker with hat over a naval skinsuit of a young midshipman. For the moment some of his physical details were in flux, changing like his mind was changing as it evolved, grew, and went through the various stages of smart AI development.

  Lobsterman has some files and neural net patterns from the late ship's AI Phoenix. Since Lieutenant Phoenix had been a navy AI however, he had managed a partial wipe of his files before his “death” so the memories and some files were missing. Sprite had repaired what she could before combining her own code and donor code from ship's AI Captain Firefly to rebuild the battlecruiser's AI. The patterns were a good substrate for the AI to build off of but had no real world context to latch onto. The copied files and neural patterns from Firefly, Sprite, and Lieutenant Bounty helped more.

  The AI had started as a child, growing slowly into a class 1 smart AI just before they had left B101a1. Over the time for the trip to Beta 100 omega, he had continued to evolve and grow. The ship was his body; its cameras and bots his eyes and senses. Unfortunately much of the ship's systems were still in repair, so the AI had trouble adjusting as he grew. Like any baby he frequently went into downtime for naps to integrate new experiences into his net. He was voracious for attention after his first week, pestering Sprite for information or the crew to move faster on repairs.

  “Lobsterman, is that you messing with the net? Is this a prank or just you flexing your software?” he asked. He was rewarded with a soft snore; a placeholder sound Sprite had cooked up to show that the ship's AI was down for a nap. “Wonderful,” Irons muttered. He was on his own. Well, he'd been there before; he could handle it. Even if he had to train the crew one at a time.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Sprite delved into the computer records amassed from the captured fleet whenever she had a free moment, which was increasingly becoming fewer and farther between now that they were underway. The AI found that many of the records had been destroyed or corrupted, just creating an index for them was a lot of work for the bots she had spun off for the task. Half the time they didn't get it right. Other times they had the same file but with different headers ... or a slightly different version of the same file. Twice they had cataloged viruses into the index.

  They were getting somewhere, albeit slowly. It seemed the databases had been mostly vacuumed before the ship had been returned to service so there was little she could learn about the ship's history. Admiral Rico and his staff had died, as had the flag captain and XO so they couldn't be interrogated. Most of the Horathian officers had perished rather than be captured. But many had also done their best to wreck any computers and files that they could before the boarders could secure them.

  She had to admit that not all the Horathians had survived capture ... or even been allowed to surrender. The Admiral had been firm in ignoring such abuses. She wasn't happy about it, but she understood he had to compromise on some things.

  It was also annoying to recognize her own handiwork in the network. Her viruses had caused some of the damage and deleted or overwritten some of the files. There was nothing she could do about that; she just logged the files if there were no others to compare them too.

  She wasn't alone in her efforts; Defender, Lobsterman, and Lieutenant Nobeki aided her whenever they had free time. They had found some clues in the ship's hard copy backups. Fortunately they had some passwords to use to get in easily; one list had been found taped to the underside of a keyboard at the tactical station. The former slave turned tactical rating had gleefully passed it on to her early in their travels when he had found it. Now she was putting it to good use.

  Sprite found some clues, which once she had enough of, sh
e ran past Lobsterman, Defender, and Lieutenant Nobeki for independent review. Once she had their input and blessing, she put together a briefing to present the new Intel to the Admiral. She didn't quite see it as preening over her work, but she certainly thought it was time well spent. It would have to be confirmed of course, but it was a start.

  The Derfflinger class was a good battle cruiser, larger than a Newmann but slower. They were heavily armored but had lighter shields. They had four fusion reactors to the Newmann's three, but only had one MAM reactor to Maine's two. Not that that currently mattered. They were slower than a Newmann in sublight and hyper however; they also carried a small compliment of parasite craft. They did have a few more grasers turrets than a Newmann but lacked the ability to control a drone swarm. The ship class had more weapon turrets and missile tubes but the turrets weren't as powerful as a Newmann's. Both ships had the same amount of point defense but again the newer BCs were of course modern and therefore faster. The ship class had been in service over a century before the admiral had gotten the Newmann and Resolution class approved.

  From the notes she had found, he'd apparently had to fight a few political battles to go with a new ship design over another cycle of upgrades and updates for the current hardware.

  The class's ship names were named after ancient states that had once been on the core worlds like Earth. Buships had cleared the names for reuse, despite some being still in use by ancient battleships or even head of their own class of warship. That explained how Maine had gotten her name she noted.

  By analyzing the message traffic Sprite had discovered two other BCs in the Horathian's possession, the Nevada, and the Massachusetts. She couldn't wait to tell the admiral. Something told her he wouldn't be as excited by her find though. Not when the full implications hit home.