Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer)

by Hechtl, Chris

  “No, not just that,” Irons said to the class.

  “Like women.”

  “Hey, don't hold women to that buster. At least all women. We're not all made of glass,” a tough looking female near the back growled.

  He snorted as some of the ladies nodded grimly while others glared at the males in the class. More than one hapless male raised his hands in surrender. “Actually, in some species the females are bigger and stronger than the males. But there are slim cases where the standards are lowered to get in, but you have to eventually pass the exams.”

  “Ah. Oh,” the kid said, now looking dubious.

  “For instance now, you want to get in, we need the volunteers, but the standard of living and education is so poor we have to take what we can get. We've lowered the bar of entry, but you have to meet it eventually.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Not a nice way of putting it I admit, but it's the truth. I don't believe in pulling punches and lying to people to shield them from the truth. Need to know and all that. No point in leading someone on if they don't have the mental ability needed,” he explained.

  “Oh,” that came out as a thoughtful note.

  “You mean in your time. Not now,” a tech said, looking amused. He looked at his friends around him and then back to the admiral.

  The admiral however shook his head in denial. “No I mean now. The fleet still exists,” he said firmly. The young man's face froze and then congealed in surprise. The admiral sat back in his chair. This was going about where he wanted it. Disbelief echoed in a few, others had eyes widen at that. “You can go to Pyrax or Agnosta and apply to join up either as active duty or as a reservist. In fact, if you travel on a known ship such as Io 11 or Destiny I can give you a voucher to allow you to travel free at the navy's expense.”

  A few of the more young and adventurous looked eager. “Wow!”

  “Seriously?”

  He nodded, keeping a straight face. “Yes. You'll have to take the exam though, The pretests and study on the way to the system. It's not a cakewalk by any means. Yes they will take just about anyone if they can pass the entrance exams. The academy and boot camps are getting better and better at training people so you have to be highly motivated mentally and physically.”

  “So if we pass the test...” a teen asked, clearly excited by the idea.

  The admiral nodded. “You can get in. We take some even without taking the test if they qualify in other ways, but eventually they have to take the entrance exams.” He paused to study his audience carefully then nodded slightly. “But if you're not mentally prepared, like say a pacifist, or even if you are too aggressive or independent you may be placed in a position that best suits that role. Such as on a station, or in the shipyard. Not a line post. We're not going to put you in a place where you are likely to break and cause havoc.”

  “A... shipyard?” a young Veraxin asked.

  The admiral nodded, not happy about admitting this but he had to strike while the iron was hot. “Yes, there is a growing shipyard in Pyrax.”

  “Seriously?” the young woman said looking doubtful.

  “As a heart attack yes,” he said trying hard to keep a straight face again. “There are six ships under construction right now.”

  “If that's all going there, why are you here?” she demanded. He knew that had been coming and tried hard not to grimace.

  “Er, well... it's complicated,” he sighed. He'd anticipated this but hadn't really nailed down a comfortable response.

  “Politics,” Sprite said tartly.

  “You could say that,” he growled nodding in agreement. They looked at him in confusion. His face twisted in dislike. He was going to have to explain.

  "You see, when I was busy building the fleet and getting people into rebuilding their space colonies and making new ones, some people wanted to take over."

  "Typical," a kid said in disgust.

  "But you squashed them right?" the Veraxin asked.

  The admiral sighed and shook his head. "No, I handed the power to them. Or the people did."

  Faces froze and then some grimaced or scratched their heads. He spread his hands in supplication. "I can't be in charge of a civilian system folks. Not for long. I know, I know, martial law. But I'm not cut out to order people around who aren't mentally prepared for it. The general population didn't all sign up to be in the military after all. You can't give an order that you know won't be obeyed; it just undermines your own authority. So, when things were cleaning up nicely I set up general elections to put the system back onto a democracy. A constitutional democracy."

  "Oh," the Veraxin said with a first level of understanding shrug. Irons hoped they understood what he really meant.

  “I was laying the ground work for a restoration of the Federation, something I dearly want to do,” he said, face twisting. He shook himself as they looked at each other.

  "The problem was, once the elections were over and these people were in office they still wanted me gone. They saw me as an obstacle, someone who could take over at any time. So they arranged a nasty surprise. I'll leave out the specifics to make a long story shorter, but in the end I was in a hostage situation."

  "Oh?" the kids were suddenly eager for more details.

  He scowled, face bleak in remembered pain. "I was given a choice. I leave or they vent the colony of Vesta, killing twenty thousand men, women, and children," he growled.

  "You're serious?" A man said incredulously. "Why not send in the marines?"

  The admiral shook his head. “Because the people doing this had thought carefully and scrambled my communications. I had gotten the word out before hand, but had ordered them to hold off until I had more information. Had I sent the marines in they would have been caught right along with the colony."

  The man winced. "Ouch."

  "Also, if you'd sent in the marines it would have looked like a military take over," one woman said nodding in understanding. “A coup.”

  The admiral nodded, glad someone understood. "Or construed that way by the wrong people. Which is why I didn't. I was given a choice. Leave quietly, or those people die. They well... I can dump the entire sordid affair on the net for you to view later."

  "If you have the stomach for it," Sprite growled.

  "We'll do it anyway," Irons said.

  "So, getting back to your main point, anyone can join?" the Veraxin asked.

  The admiral nodded, glad and thankful for the young ladies help. "Yes. It doesn't matter if you're male, female, human, or other species, neuter, hermaphrodite, or asexual or multi-sexual. If you can pass the tests and are willing to serve and have the qualifications then we'll welcome you."

  She bobbed a nod. "What qualifications?"

  "A sense of duty, honor, courage, commitment, and a willingness to get the job done are three of the biggest. Sprite can upload the specifics with the tests and tutorials," the admiral replied.

  "Um..."

  "Done and done. I cc'd an e-mail to each of you with the relevant links," Sprite said from the overhead speaker.

  "I think I'll try it, even if I don't want to get in, it'd be a nice fall back, and hell, I know I can measure up!" A lad said. Irons recognized him as the machine shop apprentice. He'd attached himself to the sleeper machinist Ralph.

  "You tell em Bert!" Gus said with a grin. He was even considering signing up. “Wouldn't it be spar to fly a fighter?” he said, eyes wide. Irons snorted.

  "So the ships..." One of the adults asked, ignoring the excited kids.

  "Well, Kiev for one but I believe you're not heading back there. Io 11 and Destiny. Destiny is a navy reserve ship so you'll have no trouble there. Io," he paused. “The captain and purser can be sticky by the AI..."

  "AI?" Bert asked, sitting up straight.

  "Ship AI, yes," Sprite replied. “My first daughter Io,” she said proudly.

  "WOW!"

  "You're talking with one here too remember?" Sprite said with a disdainful sniff.
>
  The group laughed at that.

  He explained structural repair as they did a round of structural inspections. While doing an interior inspection a week before break out they found a spar that had a hairline crack. It was serious. He explained that a weld wouldn't help; it didn't have the depth penetration. It was hard to explain to the group from the tight confines of the compartment. Many of the group were hanging on to pipes or standing on the spar itself. “A plasma weld would just be putting a band aid on a broken leg. Torsional loads would pop the weld anyway.”

  “So what do we do?” O'Mallory asked.

  “Well, a full up repair at a yard is out of the question,” he said.

  “There aren't any.”

  “Pyrax has a yard,” he told them absently. He felt like kicking himself the moment that was out. He shouldn't say things like that. What if the pirates got wind of it? He was remorseful that he'd mentioned it the night before now. It hadn't occurred to him that it was such a dangerous security breach until he'd gone to bed last night.

  “I heard you said something about that before. Scuttlebutt,” a tech said cautiously.

  Irons snorted. “It's true.” He shrugged at their looks. He was in for it now. “I can have Sprite show you, but I'd rather keep hard data on the yard under wraps. Security concerns.”

  “Sure.”

  “Whatever.”

  “It doesn't matter anyway. We're too far away. So the next best thing is a thorough scan and then either replacement or a nanite field repair,” the admiral replied, ignoring their skepticism.

  “Nanite??” Quinna stared in disbelief.

  “Right. A nanite repair. We call it a molecular weld too for simplicities sake. It's well, we scan the fracture then program nanites to go in and knit the two sides together on the molecular level. It'll be as good as new.” He laced his fingers together. “A weld so strong it's on the molecular level, even better than before.” They kept staring. “Good as new,” he said knowing the signs.

  “Nanites??” a tech said, shrinking back, eyes wide.

  He tried hard not to roll his eyes. They had come along way, accepted replicators, but still the idea of nanites gave them the heebie jeebies. “Seriously nanites. Not a problem. I'll handle it if you're nervous. They are only alive and active inside the field matrix the welder projects. Outside they explode like molecular fire crackers. They don't reproduce so once they are gone they are gone.”

  “Ookay...”

  He waved a dismissive hand. “Don't worry about it. The real concern is the crack itself. Something caused it. It's also thrown the structure and skin out of alignment. Remember what I said about that? A leads to B leads to C, D, and E? That has to be attended to as well.”

  “The buckled skin around that section of hull you mean? On one side it's buckling, and on the other side it's cracking,” O'Mallory mused thoughtfully.

  “I always thought there was something strange there. Like the metal was brittle in that spot,” a tech said.

  Irons shook his head. “No, from the sound of it the crack has shifted some of the hull plating. Over time the shift has put a strain on the hull plates it's pulling against while relaxing the ones it's not. The relaxed load is odd though, it shouldn't buckle like that. It's metal,” he explained.

  “We might have other issues admiral. That area was plated over a while ago,” O'Mallory said frowning.

  Irons turned his attention to her. “Define a while ago?” Irons asked.

  “Um...” Quinna looked at her notes. She tapped a query. Sprite fed him the data the chief engineer was looking at but he ignored it.

  “I'd say about a century ago. It's iron plate,” she said looking up after a moment.

  “Seriously? Iron? Not even steel? Iron? Pig iron?” he asked in disbelief.

  She grimaced. “Plate iron. Not that much carbon in it.”

  “Which explains why it's buckling,” he said shaking his head. He gave her another disbelieving look. “Seriously though Iron? On a starship hull?”

  “You can accept nanites but can't accept that admiral?” Quinna asked, eyebrow raised.

  “Touché',” Sprite muttered. He snorted and shook his head.

  “It's just...”

  “We have to make do with what you've got admiral,” O'Mallory said gruffly.

  “Nature of the times,” a tech said with a sigh and grimace.

  The admiral shook his head. “Well, times are changing. It's time we did something about that. We can't do hull work while in hyper, but we can see if we have the supplies on hand for a proper replacement job.”

  “I'll check with the purser and stores,” Quinna said nodding. “He'll squeal though.”

  “He'll squeal louder if we get a hull breach and we lose his precious cargo,” the tech muttered.

  “True.”

  The replicator techs were interested in the tray system. When Gwen the Tauren teen asked about the wiring being able to fit, he told them absently it's coiled. He had more important things on his mind, namely the spar and how it affected the ship's superstructure. So far he hadn't been able to model it successfully. Or at least Proteus hadn't. He'd have to switch to the ship's mainframe when they translated down to sublight. If he tried now he might addle something important and that was a big no no.

  “Oh!”

  “See?” he uncoiled a loop from a wiring harness. It's got plug and play adapters on the ends. It has optical fibers for data transfer as well as super conductor fibers for power transmission. He had to replicate it since repairing the spar hadn't been as straightforward as they had thought. When they had pulled sections of the deck up to get at the micro fracture they had found torn wiring to repair.

  Most of the other replicator techs knew about that. They knew to maximize the tray to make things quicker and more efficient. To get more parts out at a time. The Tauren was just starting out. He nodded politely to her and then left them to work it out amongst themselves. Sometimes dropping them in the deep end had its advantages he thought. Nothing taught someone better than a puzzle to figure out on your own. If someone just handed you the answers then you frequently lost the information later.

  Right now though it didn't matter. He had work to do and a project to finish. They were a day out from translating to real space.

  Act II

  ñChapter 15

  One hour prior to break out Sprite gave the admiral a briefing as he laid on his rack. He watched it play out.

  Most of it he already knew, Sprite was highlighting the things she had picked up from the crew over the course of the trip. Of course being an AI, and being thorough she started from the beginning with confirmed background material. He didn't care; it was something to do to pass the time.

  The industry was mostly orbital prior to Xeno war. That was normal; no one really wanted to dirty the air they breathed on a planet. They apparently had quite a lot of orbital industry at one time, including full factory cities at the Lagrange points. The largest Antigua Prime had been over four hundred kilometers in diameter before it had been lost.

  The planet had been settled by steamer punk art colonists who wanted to recreate their own version of a Victorian era. He mused over the thought of that, not really paying attention to any of it. When Sprite had informed him that the orbitals were occupied by a pair of small moons and a ring of debris he'd tuned most of it out. With all the industry taken out there wasn't a whole lot there that interested him now.

  The planet had been lightly terraformed and served as a tourist resort planet for a century before the beginning of the Xeno war. Liners traveled to it and made turnarounds. A couple mega corporations had run the orbital industry and subsidized the planet's tourist attractions. Half of the population of the orbital factories had made weekly commutes to and from the planet.

  “The planet has an extensive ground based defensive energy weapon system. That surprised him. From the sound of it they were class three or four energy systems, mountain top sized energy weapons. It t
ook some major power to punch through an atmosphere to orbit. That spoke of power to spare when it wasn't needed. At one point they were working on installing a planetary shield but when the orbital industry was taken out that seems to have been abandoned. “With no industry on the planet all the resources the population had was devoted to keeping the defense grid up. Fortunately the system protected the planet from Xeno AI nanite and rock bombing runs.”

  “Someone did their homework,” Irons said nodding.

  “Yes well, there is no such thing as being too paranoid for you organics apparently. The system created an effective quarantine of the planet for forty years after the Xeno war. It was even used in the dark times to destroy refugee ships thought to be infected with nano weapons.”

  The admiral winced. “Were there really nanites?” Irons asked.

  Sprite spread her virtual hands. “Who knows?” she said. “It could have been or it could have been someone not taking any chances. The people on the ships were desperate and the people on the planet were as well. Organics do some terrifying things when they are cornered and desperate.”

  “Touché',” Irons murmured.

  “That wasn't a fault, just an observation. I have seen both the dark side and the heroic side in desperate action admiral,” Sprite said.

  “As have I,” he replied with a nod. “Continue.”

  “The apparent lack of ground side industrial investment came back to haunt them over time. Recently they have invested in technology to bootstrap their tech from steam level to early industrial. They don't seem eager to go all the way, but they do want to regain some of what they lost.”

  “Cling to their roots and culture?” Irons asked.

  “Organics?” she asked with a sniff. “What can I say?”

  “It takes all kinds. Okay. They don't want to disassociate their society with too many changes too fast apparently.”

  Sprite nodded. “Apparently. When the Xeno war ended there were quite a few marooned workers on the planet. However without full medical support many died off over time due to age or accident. Some left the planet when the people there made it clear in a referendum that they were not interested in returning to a space age society. The loss of skilled trade’s people added to the backsliding problem in the beginning. For the past several centuries they have slowly up climbed up the tech level back to steam power.”