Ghosts from the Past (The Wandering engineer Book 7)

by Chris Hechtl

  “I see,” the admiral murmured absently.

  “And ... you don't care,” Sprite said.

  “If it isn't broke commander, don't fix it. Zen's a good department head like you said. I think the cruise out should convince him to take a commission.”

  “I believe he wants to be a warrant, sir. Something about being the first of his species to be a warrant officer in seven centuries,” Sprite said.

  “Well, we'll see,” the admiral replied. He frowned thoughtfully. Technically a warrant could be a sensor department head right? The same for the helm ... “Hmmm ...” he rubbed his jaw.

  “I know that sound. You are thinking again.”

  “You know me well. We can't bump him that high though,” the admiral said.

  “From an E-6 to a W-1 sir? That's a bit extreme, but we've, or I should say you've done other things. Most notably with Bounty,” Sprite said.

  “Was that disapproval in your voice, Commander?” Irons asked.

  “No sir, needs must,” Sprite replied formally. “We have a lot of vacancies; I understand that. But no matter the amount of training, it doesn't make up for seasoned time in the chair sir. And it can open up charges of favoritism down the road admiral,” she reminded him.

  “I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, we're under establishment as you pointed out, and we need it. Put the idea on my to do list to explore more later,” he said. “For now, we've got a sim to concentrate on and repairs to complete,” he said.

  “Aye aye, Admiral.”

  ...*...*...*...*...

  “Okay, let's see if this one goes a bit differently,” Sprite said as the bridge crew settled in for what would be their last exercise before they jumped. Admiral Irons nodded. The exercise would also be their first major one since Ensign Williamson's breakdown, sort of another test for the ship's AI and crew.

  They were going to simulate a hyper emergence, and a possible engagement afterward. The potential for an ambush had a few of the bridge crew on edge. They liked the idea of combat, but the idea of an ambush brought up some nasty memories. The admiral expected this engagement to go very differently however. In fact, once they saw just what their ship was capable of, what damage it could take and dish out, he expected them to start coming around and be able to handle a bit more. This was then a wake-up call he thought.

  He had considered doing another fleet exercise with the crew but had decided against it in the end. He had to be careful on how much stress he put onto them at the time being.

  From what he'd heard and seen Meia and Nobeki had been quietly working with Mia to improve her performance as well as their own. Nobeki would be sitting the sim out; she was going to play in DCC responding to simulated ship damage while the bridge crew worked out some of the kinks once more.

  CPO Zen was happy and in his element. The alien sat on his bridge couch and tapped at his controls or waved a hand as he controlled and fine-tuned the ship's sensors. Only the AI and the admiral could pronounce the alien's name; his language was in frequencies most species couldn't hear.

  Admiral Irons and Sprite had argued about the alien for some time. Sprite had been right, but he didn't like admitting it. They had come to a compromise; they had frocked him to a chief petty officer's slot. It was still not enough rank for the position, but it would allow them time to evaluate his performance longer and give him a bit more rank to deal with the new recruits.

  From reading his biography, the admiral had learned Zen had apparently been another victim of the pirates. He'd been a member of a clan of mechanics and engineers on his home planet of Proxima. It had been raided by pirates looking for people like him as well as industrial tools and equipment. When the pirates had realized his clan were nonhuman his family had been slaughtered. Some had scattered; others had buried their dead and then moved to the mountains once the pirates had departed the system.

  A few like Zen had left the planet, spoiling to hit back somehow, someway. It was impossible; everyone knew it. He'd dreamed of finding a ship and rebuilding it into some sort of warship. Then he'd gotten word of the Admiral and the battle of Pyrax. He had resolutely set out for Pyrax to join the fight, catching rides on various ships and working for his passage. It had taken time for his lumbering freighter to get to the star system; by that time the admiral had been long gone. Zen had been unphased; he had immediately signed up with the navy. He'd spent some time in the yard as an electronics tech before he'd managed to get a ship slot. He'd bounced around to various ships briefly, even holding a short tour on the ancient Tauren battleship Bismark before he'd gone on leave. He'd cut the leave short when Firefly had returned, and somehow wangled a slot on board. He was damn good at his job the AI reflected, which didn't explain why he hadn't been promoted or even eased into an officer's commission. Apparently he was serious about remaining a techie.

  A lot of what was about to happen would be dependent on just how good the T'clock was. The giant mantis insect's abilities with sensors were about to be vital. She was curious to see how quickly he would pick out the enemy ships, and what reaction the crew would have. She had gone to great lengths to make the encounter ... interesting and educational.

  “Tactical, are you ready?” The admiral asked. Meia nodded. She glanced at her JTO. Mia nodded as well.

  “This time I'm going to be in this too,” the admiral said.

  “Who is going to run the op force, sir?” Lobsterman asked.

  “I am,” Sprite said. A few of the crew groaned. “Defender is going to lend me a hand. Right, Lieutenant?” She asked with a hint of amused malice in her voice.

  “Yes he is,” the admiral replied before the security AI could argue. The AI's red eyes flared slightly, most likely in suppressed annoyance before he'd turned and nodded to Sprite.

  “Are we ready?” He asked. The bridge crew nodded.

  “All right then. Set the time scale to ten to one and let's get started.”

  “Simulation alert. This is a simulation alert. Flag bridge has the con,” Lobsterman said formally, transferring command protocols to the skeleton watch in the flag bridge. The second watch wasn't thrilled about doing double duty so the officers knew they had to get the simulation done quickly. That way they could be stood down and return to their rest period.

  The main view screen and all of their plots changed abruptly to the simulation. For the moment the time chop was frozen in a pause. That wouldn't last long the admiral knew. He caught Meia cracking her knuckles then rolling her shoulders to get the kinks out. Mia ducked her head, but the Asian girl was grinning. She had wisely put her hair up in a pony tail. She even had a sweat band on. Irons hoped the young woman wouldn't need it.

  “Hyper emergence in three ... two ... one! And ... we're out!” Lobsterman said.

  “Space is clear around us,” Zen reported. “Long range sensors extending their range as local space reasserts itself around us. I have a faint reading on bearing 2.1 by 2 by 4.3 ...”

  “Battle stations,” the admiral said, voice dropping into the cool tones of command.

  “You don't know if it is hostile or not, sir,” Lobsterman reminded him.

  “Humor me,” the admiral said with a bite in his tone. The AI blinked and then nodded. Irons made a note to “remind” the AI about not questioning an order. But later, he thought as CIC painted the tracks on the ship's main view screen and his small plot screen. Much later, he thought.

  Chapter 8

  The small fleet moved out ten days after Bounty had jumped. Carnegie was stuffed with materials to make new parts with while in transit, as were the other ships that had functional replicators. Each of the freighters were stuffed with spare parts as well as a choice selection of semi-processed material for later use by the replicators or the factory ship.

  He had wanted to turn one of the colliers into a missile collier but had run out of time. Besides, Maine's magazines as well as the other warship's magazines were only half full. He hadn't wanted to expend the necessary time t
o gather materials to make additional missiles. Each fusion warhead required trace materials that they had exhausted for Lassie's broad. It all came down to priorities, and some things took precedence. He'd have to do something more about that in each system. Hopefully there wouldn't be a lot of opposition in Kathy's World.

  They took the two gas refineries with them. All of the ships were fully tanked up with fuel and consumables and all three tankers had full loads by the time the fleet was ready to move out. The Admiral made a note for the two colliers carrying the equipment to service the refineries. He wasn't certain they'd get to it with all the ship repairs still in the works. With the fuel they had in the three tankers they could go across the sector. They didn't technically need the refineries again, but it would be nice to have them ready. Besides, old habits die hard.

  He did kick out a trio of spy satellites. Two went out with expendable rockets. They would take up station at the B101a1 and Hidoshi world jump points. Once there they would deploy solar panels and then go dark. They were programmed to observe, and only with the right recognition code, report.

  Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dee were launched once more, Paul Revere would take one of their places. Maine didn't balance well with Echo on the opposite flank. The two ships had different shapes and mass, but the battlecruiser would just have to put up with the change to the slip stream. It wasn't like they could hit the high bands of hyperspace anyway, not with the tankers and factory ship dawdling along behind them to slow them down.

  Lieutenant Nobeki took the chief engineering slot on Mary Apple. The chief there made it clear to Commander Sprite that he was in over his head with the destroyer. She'd resisted the change for some time, but when he put in for the transfer again and Apple's skipper Lieutenant Randolf had backed it, she'd relented. Lieutenant Nobeki would act as the ship's XO as well for the time being. Apparently doing double duty hadn't put her off the change of ships.

  As for Chief Seward Apple's former chief engineer, the Veraxin ensign was transferred to Tweedle Dee. He even sent her a thank you. “This is more my speed anyway ma'am,” he'd said. She understood; the Veraxin was a small plane mechanic and tech who'd served one tour on a corvette before being transferred to Firefly. Apparently small craft were more to his speed and liking.

  They would be traveling the two light years to Beta 99 in the alpha octave of beta band, which was as high as Carnegie could safely travel. That was an improvement over her factory spec of the 4rth octave F in Beta. Gaining two octaves was a major improvement in performance for a ship so old and decrepit. Admiral Irons had hoped for more, but that would have required a complete rebuild of the ship practically from the frame out.

  They would arrived in Beta 99 after a mere two weeks of travel. They would still be behind Bounty by 17 days since the destroyer had a ten day head start and would transiting in the Alpha octave of Gamma band. That increase in speed would cut her transit down by half of what the fleet would, down to a week. But the other ship had a side mission, which would put her behind. By the time they had arrived in the binary star system Bounty would have hopefully already crossed the star system and jumped on for Richalu ahead of them. The fleet would then set course for the Beta 98 jump point, slugging their way through the dense nebula the best they could. It was hoped that Bounty and Le More would catch up with the fleet in the Kathy's World star system.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Sindri and his engineers worked on the battlecruiser's ongoing list of repairs and replacements while in transit using the parts they had stored up for that time period. They couldn't work on critical systems again, but they could get a lot done to return the ships to almost factory new. Each ship had been stuffed with parts and detailed instructions on how to make repairs.

  “They are never ending!” Chief Behr complained during a meeting.

  “It seems that way. But the more we do, the better the ship functions. Unfortunately we can only do internal repairs in hyper,” Lobsterman said. He was getting into the advanced coding Sprite had set him up to learn and explore. He could handle copy and paste easily, anyone could. But coding a module from scratch took a bit more when you only knew what the end product was supposed to be and had little more than a rough guiding outline to get there. Fortunately as an AI his learning curve was steep, exponential as he grew until he fully matured. From there it would plateau out like an organics until his databases were too full, then his curiosity would be the death of him, like many senile AI.

  “Yeah, I know. That sucks,” the enlisted noncom said, making a disgusted face.

  “It's the best we can do. Just be glad we're not out on the hull right now. I know people are tired and cranky,” Sprite said. “But we've done a lot. And we're not making nearly the amount of repairs that we were before,” she said.

  “Actually, we're good or were. The rush to fix the ships and catch up to Bounty, however, undid all the downtime we had. A lot of people were hoping for some sort of celebration to unwind too. Just jumping was a bit of a letdown ma'am,” Sindri said. He eyed the AI avatar then turned a raised bushy eyebrow to the admiral.

  Since it was coming from Sindri, the admiral knew it was serious. The dwarf was headstrong about repairing the ship. Either he thought they had enough of a handle on the ship's functions to let their hair down, or he really saw a need anyway. “I'll ... think of something. Did the rookies from Hidoshi's world ever get their space legs?” Admiral Irons asked, smiling at Sprite.

  “Now there's an idea,” the AI replied with a twinkle. “I'll certainly look into it, sir,” she deadpanned. He nodded. The party was in good hands he thought, or as good as it gets.

  “We're starting to get mistakes. Fortunately everything is plug and play ... but still,” Lobsterman said. He'd been annoyed when a bank of servers had gone down right after he'd finished loading it with software. It had apparently not passed the stress test.

  “We've also gotten a few cases of seizures as well, Admiral,” Doctor Che warned.

  “Oh?” He knew there was always a danger of a seizure if someone tried to download and process too much information too quickly. He hadn't kept track of where everyone was though. He frowned.

  “Too much information being downloaded into fragile over-worked brains,” the doctor explained. “They need a break. Pace it out. You can't learn this fast. You can't just dump an entire field of knowledge into a brain overnight. It takes time to catch up, to organize everything, to build a framework around the knowledge.”

  “I know,” the Admiral sighed. “Okay, half day off to start. Say, tomorrow, that will give us time tonight to work on reorganizing the watch schedules to cover for it. I'll do what I can where I can. Stand down the repair projects for now. Get everyone some downtime.”

  “That would be nice. If they used it for rest and not playing games or fooling around.”

  “Or more virtual time. That's another thing, I've had six cases of implant inflammation due to excessive use. I've had three cases of exhaustion, and one fainting spell.”

  “Okay, Doc, you made your case,” Sindri said.

  Irons nodded. “Okay, we're working on it now. I admit, I'm eager.”

  “So are we all, Admiral. But we're not you. The implants are a big help in keeping us on our feet, but even we have limits.”

  “I know. I'm sorry. We'll see what the downtime does. Eventually, having more systems functioning properly and integrated should cut down on the workload.”

  “Yeah, until the next project,” Sindri grumbled.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Sprite held a belated hyper crossing party for the rookies. A few of the veterans were initially put out over the idea, it was a bit late, but when others reminded them a party was a party, they got into the spirit of things. Besides, it was a great deal of fun to tease and hassle their new shipmates.

  They even managed to drag a bellowing dwarf into the activities. They couldn't induce the stocky man like the noobs but they could make him dress up and play along.
Irons shook his head, watching from a distance. He's stayed on duty to allow as many of the crew to participate as possible. He glanced around. Other than Zen, Lobsterman's avatar, Chief Moore and Re'mon he was the only one on the bridge. He heard a soft clack of amusement from Zen. Apparently the mantis found something funny. Irons flipped his view to the T'clock's station, repeating the feeds in miniature on his HUD. His lips pursed as he caught sight of the video feed from the ship's news net. Apparently the ship's AI was putting out feeds from the various cameras of the events. Most likely the recordings would be brooded about and used as a source of ribbing for the next few weeks and months.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but the T'Clock's hands flashed to enter some minor adjustments. He closed his mouth and then nodded. Apparently the insect could handle his job as well. He nodded.

  “Admiral, I've completed the last parts for the second cobra fighter. Do you wish to move it to the boat bay for final assembly?” Proteus asked.

  “Not now,” the admiral replied, turning inward. He checked on the replicator status that Proteus blinked on his HUD. He nodded as he flipped the T'Clock's feed aside. “Do you think you can handle the initial frame assembly? Or do you want some organic help?” He asked.

  “I can get it started using the mechs and remotes from here, but it would be easier if you were on hand, admiral,” the AI responded.

  “Do what you can with what you have. I'm not going anywhere for a while,” the admiral replied.

  “Aye aye, sir,” the AI replied. He turned a remote on in the boat bay. The admiral watched with mild amusement as a series of droids and mechs started working on the frame. He and the eager pilots had begun building it off and on in their free time in a free bay of the boat bay. The dangling robot arms hanging from the ceilings and bulkhead came to life and swung about, moving parts in and then tacking or bolting them together. Fortunately a lot of the work was sub assemblies, but the fine connections would take a more delicate hands-on approach. He nodded.