by SF Edwards
The chief dropped down to eye level with Blazer. He blew his putrid breath in his face. It no longer left Blazer shocked or fearful. Instead, it left him wondering if that smell was something the chief was eating or if Rimdooks naturally smelled that bad. “Then find the time. You’re mine until that trainer is flightworthy again.”
“Yes, sir,” Blazer replied and realized in that moment what the secret was. I need to create the time to work on the trainer and not wait for the chief. So, this cycle, instead of reporting to the chief, Blazer headed straight to the alcove to commence the dismantling process of his trainer. He informed one of the other deck chiefs while on his way as to where he was going.
He entered the alcove and grabbed the aircraft jacks. Setting them under the fuselage jacking points, he raised them, taking the weight off the wing and engine assembly. He watched the wing lift off the jack and placed it on the floor, He straightened up and turned around to find the Chief waiting for him.
“You failed to report in.”
“Actually, sir, I informed Chief Klorik that I arrived and would be here working.”
The chief scowled back at him and looked up at the holographic chrono patch Blazer stuck to the wall. “I have a task for you. It should take about a hect. If you’re efficient you can get it done and not miss another class.”
The chief never let Blazer forget how he had missed a class his first cycle or any subsequent tardiness he had earned coming from his deck work.
“Yes, sir,” Blazer replied and accepted the job. He did finish it in time for his first class.
Later that cycle, after finishing his mandatory PT, Blazer arrived back on the maintenance deck. He had learned not to wear his good uniform but kept it packed in his bag for when he returned to class. He found himself going through his uniforms too fast. He had started cleaning his garments cyclically but that left him with only two that were fit for inspection. For now, he stepped onto the hangar deck in his winter PT uniform consisting of long pants and sleeves to keep him covered. A tactical vest over that allowed him to keep his tools and equipment on hand. It was similar to what the other maintenance techs wore while allowing him to stand out as a cadet.
Blazer started for the alcove but one of the techs intercepted him, handing him a macomm. “The chief wanted you to report to him as soon as you arrived.”
Blazer gritted his teeth. Frag it all, should he have waited until now to do work on the trainer without reporting in first? “Where is the chief?”
“Recovery Area Three. One of the flights just got back.”
Blazer nodded and headed over to the recovery area. His last flight had taken his squadron on an atmospheric dive into Optimus Teg. I really hope this squadron has just come from there too.
It was an intense flight, since Optimus Teg’s atmosphere was anything but uniform with voids, eddies, strong winds and hydrogen clouds. The clouds also had a nasty habit of combusting when hit with a plasma rocket’s exhaust.
He approached and noticed the same smell from his flight. The nose-assaulting stench of hydrogen chloride and hydrogen sulfide were thick in the air. Since cadets dove without shields, pockets of the gasses formed throughout the trainers especially in the open intakes. All the craft would have to be decontaminated and that could take the rest of the cycle.
The smell of sulfur almost overpowered him before he spotted the chief. He now knew what part of the planet’s atmosphere this squadron had spent most of their flight in. Approaching, Blazer noticed a large pair of nose plugs rammed into the chief’s nostrils and wished that he had thought to carry some along. Before Blazer could reach the chief, a cringeworthy voice called out his name and he wished for a set of earplugs as well.
“Vaughnt! So good to see you,” Chertsin’s voice grated on him worse than the smell that assaulted his nose.
Slowly Blazer turned.
Still dressed in his flight suit, Chertsin waited beside his trainer with the rest of his squadron milling about behind him.
Blazer made no move towards Chertsin and stole a look over his shoulder, noting how engaged the chief was. Blazer decided to see just what it was Chertsin wanted. I’m sure it’s nothing good.
Chertsin advanced quickly when he realized that Blazer wasn’t coming, helmet tucked under his arm. “Look, uh, I’m not exactly sure how much Chief Flind has entrusted you to do but do you see my trainer over there?”
He motioned towards a trainer three slots over from the one they stood beside.
“It was sluggish on the rolls in the atmosphere. I think the control surfaces might need to be recalibrated.”
He then shoved his helmet into Blazer’s gut almost knocking the breath out of him. Blazer grabbed it reflexively.
“Oh and this isn’t syncing properly with my SIS so why don’t you take a look at it and see if you can fix it m’kay?”
Blazer looked down at the helmet then back at Chertsin, swallowing his anger. “If there’s a problem with your helmet take it to the quartermaster’s shop.”
Chertsin scowled back at him. “Well, I think it might have something more to do with what the Phantom Phunny did. Maybe he messed with the electronics and seeing as how you obviously know who he is maybe you ought to fix it.”
Blazer looked back down at the helmet. Sure enough, it was one Datt decorated. When Datt saw who the helmet belonged to, he couldn’t resist painting anything but an unflattering image on it. When looked at from certain angles the picture was downright offensive.
Blazer and several others on the team had to have the joke explained to them. Datt had based the whole image on the work of a comedian from Zel-Tag that always left him and Treb in stitches. It took Chertsin three cycles to understand why so many laughed when he wore the helmet. Now the comedian was all over the academy’s intra-weave. After Chertsin found out, he did his best to remove the cartoon but a faint outline and some paint smudges remained like some ghostly apparition trying to manifest.
“I doubt that the Phantom could have done anything to your helmet,” Blazer replied. “The problem is more likely in the SIS control circuits. Either submit a maintenance write-up or take the helmet to the quartermaster,” Blazer told him, shoving the helmet back into his hands.
Chertsin’s scowl turned angry and he shoved the helmet back at Blazer. “I already checked the write-ups and no one else is having any problems. The problem is in my helmet. Now figure it out, tech,” he spat that last word out like an insult.
Chertsin then stormed off to join the rest of his squadron, leaving Blazer conflicted about how to proceed. Stealing a look over his shoulder, he noted the chief still engaged with the trainer’s crew chief.
He looked back at Chertsin as he thumped the helmet around in his hands. Flipping it over, he noticed something inside the neck ring. Blazer lifted it up to get a closer look and noticed a crude message scrawled inside.
Blazer stared at it for a moment, trying to ignore Chertsin. As he read it rage filled him. When you wash out, I’ll be sure and take care of your little medium girlfriend. I bet she’d like a real man.
Blazer didn’t even finish the message before he drew the helmet back and chucked it at Chertsin. It landed just short of him, pinging off the deck before it bounced up and slammed into the back of Chertsin’s leg. He didn’t even falter and knelt down to pick it up before he turned to Blazer. The smirk on his face was a target so inviting that Blazer had to resist the urge to steal the sidearm of a tech near him and shoot it off his face.
“You know, come to think of it,” Chertsin called across the deck, “I think a few of the others did complain about a SIS problem too. Look into it, tech.” Then the lift platform dropped away leaving Blazer standing there fuming.
He couldn’t believe how much he had let Chertsin get to him. Blazer hadn’t allowed himself to get this angry in a long time and now he wanted nothing more than to dive onto the lift, grab hold of Chertsin and discharge every bit of energy he had into him. How long it would take to fry that b
astard? Memories of Garov 18965 shot back to mind. He possessed at least enough to kill. Their ground combat instructor encouraged Blazer to experiment with his abilities and now he could control them by speeding up or slowing down the discharge. He had learned how to control the amount he could release too. Can I deliver a killing charge without incapacitating myself?
Just then, Blazer realized that the chief stood behind him and spun about to issue a salute.
“You have something for me?” the chief asked before Blazer handed him the macomm. “Try not to let the others get under your skin like that.”
“I know sir; it’s just that he…”
“I know, I’ve met him,” Chief Flind replied with a dismissive wave of the hand. “He seems to think that my title of chief is my actual rank.”
What? Blazer looked up at the chief, noting as he did so that the chief wore no rank insignia. Like most saurian races, he wore only pants and a bandolier, sometimes a vest or jacket. Blazer couldn’t remember ever seeing him wearing anything more than that.
Chief Flind looked down at Blazer, his eyebrow raised in question. “You assumed the same?”
“Well, sir, based on how everyone here addresses you, I knew you were the head of the whole launch facility and that you had to be an officer.”
The chief nodded. Digging into one of his pockets he pulled out his rank bar. Sure enough, he was an O-40. “When you’re the deck chief, you’re the chief no matter your rank.”
Blazer understood. “Of course, sir. Titles are not a given rank. So where do you need me?”
“Splicer 5000 deck. Come on.”
Blazer complied and both headed over to the lift platform. The chief hailed the lift with his macomm as they approached and the doors in the deck opened, revealing the pad. They stepped on and a moment later rose into the air towards the centerline. Blazer felt himself getting lighter as they rose, counterintuitive to what he would normally have felt. He was going to work on the big boy fighters and did his best to mask his anticipation before the platform halted at the Splicer 5000 level. The chief rarely brought Blazer to this deck, and when he did it was always to do the lowest of grunt work, but he didn’t care. To get any time working on a Splicer 5000, even if it meant cleaning up a crewmember’s sick, made even Gavit jealous.
“This way!” Chief Flind called as they stepped off the pad towards a waiting cart.
They climbed aboard and sped off across the deck towards a parking spot on the opposite side of the level. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the carts in use before. Usually they sat parked on the Splicer 1000 deck and he assumed they were only for moving around heavy ordnance or equipment, not for personnel transport. Even in the light gravity the moving of massive objects could be cumbersome.
“I didn’t know we could ride these.”
The chief looked down at Blazer. “You can’t. I can.”
Blazer nodded and said no more as they arrived at their destination. A lone Splicer 5000 sat parked away from all the others. Blazer looked on at the craft with eager eyes. He wanted to fly one of these space superiority fighters more than anything else. However, this one was different.
Instead of the normal medium blue tone the craft was painted in a dark midnight blue with silver-white highlights. The insignia on the wing was that of a hominid skull, possibly human or Anulian. The picture was too crude to tell but on the other wing he realized was painted a Lodran skull. Blazer marveled at the sleek deadly beauty of it.
As he looked up at the cockpit he noticed something odd. The canopy opened immediately behind the pilot’s seat and not behind the weapon systems officer as was normal. Adding to that, there was no WSO seat. Instead, a maintenance hatch stood open to reveal a massive black box computer taking up the space where the WSO normally resided.
Blazer heard a harrumph and turned. “Impressive, isn’t it?” the chief stated with pride.
“Yes, sir. What is it?”
Chief Flind walked up and placed a proud hand on it. “It's something that a few of us here designed. It’s a heuristic computer.”
“A learning computer?”
“Exactly. It’s an AI.”
Blazer jumped back like the chief had just told him it was an unstable antimatter matrix ready to explode. “Wait, it’s not, you didn’t make it sentient did….”
The chief held up a hand to quiet him. “It’s a limited AI based on the personality of an instructor here and fed all of the combat data from every WSO to pass through.”
“I don’t understand, sir. Isn’t this thing’s existence a violation of the Cynial Treaty? Combat AIs are banned in all Confed space.”
The chief scratched an area near his earhole, his lips wavering in thought. “Correct. Having a combat AI, well, that wouldn’t be right. Think of this one as more of an administrator. It manages the fighter’s systems and reacts to the pilot’s inputs. It can only control navigation routes and it can’t engage in combat or use the weapons even though it does manage them. Built in hardware and software fetters prevent that.”
Blazer breathed a sigh of relief. “So wait, what about the Shark Torpedoes? How are they controlled?” he asked indicating the two launch tubes for the light torpedoes under the cockpit.
“They fly on their own built in SI suites as they would if a WSO wasn’t wrangling them.”
Blazer didn’t falter there. Synthetic Intelligences could not achieve sentience. The bases for most SIs, like in the shark torpedoes, were animal brains, driving them more by an artificial hunting instinct than anything else. Anything more complex was usually used in a limited fashion. The most common were interweave hunters which were essential for searching the uncounted number of interweave stitches for information.
“Aren’t you even going to ask whose fighter this is?” the chief asked with a grin.
A new voice answered from behind Blazer. It held a cold and icy sound. Blazer spun when he heard it wondering how anyone could sneak up on him here especially in combat boots and gear. “If you have to ask then you aren’t as smart as we have given you credit for.”
Blazer felt ready to jump out of his skin when he gazed up at the hominid skull death mask of Commander Tadeh Qudas before him. It took Blazer a moment to realize that something was different. Instead of his normal combat armor, the fearsome warrior stood dressed in a modified flightsuit. His ever-present death helm converted to serve as a flight helmet.
“No, sir. I guessed it was yours,” Blazer replied, noting that the commander’s uniform matched the fighter’s color scheme.
Commander Tadeh Qudas said nothing more to him and turned to Chief Flind. “Is he ready to fly?”
“He needs a quick jump start but he’s ready otherwise.”
Wait, they don’t mean me, do they? Looking back at the fighter he realized the two meant the ship. Referring to it as a male instead of the usual female was normal for the commander’s species. “Wait a cent. Splicer 5000s are self-starting. The crystallic fusion power system…,” Blazer commented confused.
“Under normal circumstances, yes. However, Commander Tadeh Qudas’ fighter is special,” the chief explained while Tadeh Qudas leapt into the cockpit without even touching the sides. “Now come here.” The chief demanded as he led Blazer around to the rear of the fighter and opened up a panel underneath the tail near the power core. “This is a standard power socket, correct?”
Blazer nodded. He of course recognized it. “Yes, sir. I’ve studied the Firehawk for annura and I’ve never heard of it needing to be…”
The chief held up a hand again to him. “Under normal circumstance, yes, a Splicer 5000 will only receive external power so as not to drain energy or in order to charge the power core.” The chief pulled up a power cable off the deck that plugged into a socket on the edge of the area they were working on and walked over. When he attempted to plug it into the fighter the cable snapped midway down its length. The chief grumbled something under his breath and examined the frayed ends of the cable. “That hap
pens sometimes. Damn lowest bidders!”
“Do the cables break like this often?”
“No. It’s just an old one,” he said flicking off bits of the shielding jacket. He looked around for the supply cart. Blazer helped and just saw it on the far end of the deck as it rose into the reverse horizon of the ceiling.
“They must be using it over there on that 5000 that came in last cycle. It took some nasty damage,” the Chief commented.
Blazer remembered hearing about that. Maintenance had towed the fighter in after the crew had decided to test their skills in the thickest part of the asteroid shell. They’d flown in without shields, doing their best to avoid the asteroids. They’d done an admirable job of avoiding anything large in size, however, plenty of smaller rocks had made it through to ping across the fuselage, cracking panels, jamming ports and just making a general mess. Unfortunately, for the chief and his crew, the pair opted for a temporary grounding instead of maintenance punishment since the damage was not severe enough to mandate it.
“What I wouldn’t give to get those two little idiots in my claws for just a little while,” Chief Flind said clicking his claws together.
Blazer agreed. He had worked late the last cycle alongside the chief, extracting a rock that jammed one of the fighter’s plaser cannons. “You and everyone else on the deck, sir.”
“Glad you understand. Now get over here. Commander Tadeh Qudas will be late if we delay much longer.” Blazer hurried over in response. “Hold this,” the chief said as he handed Blazer the broken ends of the cable. Blazer did as instructed and held the two ends of the cable. “No, hold them together,” the chief instructed. Blazer followed his orders while the chief stepped towards the socket in the deck. “You’re an energy gatherer, right? What level?”
“I’m not sure. Sir, shouldn’t we unplug these cables before we attempt to patch them?”
“No time,” the chief replied as he flicked open the control panel on the floor with his toe, and activated the power flow to the cable. Electricity surged through the cable and Blazer held on tight as the chief used him instead of a coupling. A moment later, Commander Tadeh Qudas’ fighter roared to life. The power subsided a few centipulses later allowing Blazer to release the cable. They fell to the deck as he examined his twitching hands for burns. Sure enough, there was a slight scorch mark on the palm of each.
