Destiny's Choice (The Wandering Engineer)

by Hechtl, Chris

  “So you can grow an arm or a leg in five standard days,” Sprite finished. The class looked around.

  “But I thought you use cloning boxes for that?” Chantra asked. Irons snorted.

  “Same thing as a regen tank. In fact it is a regen tank, just in miniature.”

  “Oh,” she grimaced looking a bit sheepish.

  “If the person is getting a minor injury repaired, a regen tank or a dermal regenerator can do it. But if it is cloning, well, the host is sampled for donor material, then the nanites make whatever they are programmed to make. Once it is made, the medics use either conventional or nanite surgery to weave the body parts together. nanites surgery is so seamless it is impossible to see any breakage.”

  “Smacks of Frankenstein if you ask me,” Chantra muttered then shuddered.

  “Trust me, Mary Shelly only wished she'd dreamed of something this good. The nanites do only what they are programmed to do. Nothing more, nothing less. A robot isn't inherently evil, just the person who uses it for evil ends is.”

  “But accidents do happen,” Sprite said with a grimace. “Which is why the tech curve has been practically stagnant for the past millennia.”

  “Don't get started on that tangent, we'll be here all night,” Irons grumbled, shaking his head.

  “Replicators also use nanites,” Bryan said looking up, then resting an arm on the back of his chair to look at the class. “I know for a fact you don't have a problem with them.”

  “Sure they are in a box,” a student said with a shrug.

  “And so are the regen nanites. Before the second AI war nanites were not as constrained. We used them for practically everything. Clothing, in bodies, in ships... Imagine if you will a living ship. A symbiosis of organic and inorganic,” Sprite said looking wistful.

  “Wow,” the kid grimaced. “Why did it end?”

  “The second AI war. When the AI went on a rampage they reprogrammed nanites. So it got messy.”

  “A couple of hundred million dead you call messy?” Bryan asked dryly.

  “If you consider the way it happened dispassionately, yes,” Sprite answered with a grimace. “But the nanites weren't at fault. They were reprogrammed.”

  “Which is why we... we meaning civilization; had a moratorium on nanites and their development. That extended to a lot of tech. Which is why it has, as Sprite said, been glacial. Stagnant.”

  “Only a handful of major breakthroughs in five hundred years? Yeah I'd say stagnant. Since we were doing major breakthroughs at about ten or twenty every decade before both AI wars,” Sprite said.

  “Who's we? You weren't around then remember?”

  “We in the metaphoric sense.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Do any of these ships still exist?” Chantra asked.

  “I have no idea. A few fled the AI war. One or two were around when the Xeno war began. I don't know if they survived or if they fled,” Sprite shrugged.

  “But we are off track again. Lets break for the evening, we've got a ship to run. Good night folks,” Irons nodded as the class broke up and filed out.

  “They've got a lot on their minds now.”

  “Yup.”

  “Want to talk about it some more?” Sprite asked.

  “Nope.”

  “So where are we going with this?” Irons asked. She smirked and tugged on his beard. They were in her quarters again this time. She'd insisted. He was pretty sure it was the whole woman's thing. Terran women preferred their own love nests to someone else's. He had to admit her bed was the same size as his but it was infinitely more comfortable. Especially when she was in it with him.

  She had almost identical quarters to what he had. Or currently had at any rate. Basic quarters, bed, drawers built under the bed and into one wall, door to a refresher, and a built in food replicator. Which he had recently fixed and fine tuned for her amusement.

  She had a fold out table and a single folding chair. His chair tucked into a recess in the wall, hers was obviously a temporary affair someone had added because the original was missing.

  What she didn't know, what he wasn't going to tell her was that Defender now had access to her security system. The Admiral hadn't been amused when he had found out the Trinity had conspired to add additional video cameras to the room using his nanites. Fortunately these cameras were not in the net and would report only to them.

  “Owe!”

  “I always wondered about this. Why you have it,” she said, setting her cup of coffee down and then sitting on his lap. Her rich, full lips parted as she smiled and kissed him.

  “Changing the subject?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow.

  “Woman's prerogative,” she said smugly.

  “Typical,” he mock growled. “As to the question of this,” he touched his beard. “The answer is simple. Rank has it's privileges.”

  “Oh? I thought there was a thing about facial hair?”

  “With so many alien species in the Navy?” he snorted. “No, as long as it's kept neat and doesn't pose a hazard you can have one. It is discouraged for early grades, it's well...”

  “Something earned?”

  “Something like that. It's one of my vices.”

  “Oh? Like coffee?” she asked amused, picking up her cup and taking a sip.

  “That's a navy wide preoccupation actually. Tradition,” he snorted. She smiled slightly. “No, as you advance in rank some try to differentiate themselves from the crowd. Some get carried away too,” he grimaced.

  “Oh?”

  “Like peacocks.”

  When her face went blank he shook his head. “Old earth bird. Fancy bird with bright plumage to attract attention.”

  “Oh.”

  “For some it was a deliberate thing. They wanted to attract attention to advance their careers.”

  “But that's not how you operate,” she said wisely. He nodded. She was obviously getting to know him, getting under his skin and public persona.

  “I'm not a dress up kind of guy. I prefer to roll up my sleeves and get dirty.”

  “Speaking of which are you going to be in engineering today?” she asked. He shook his head.

  “I've got a class in...” he grimaced at the chrono... “Ah, about ten minutes ago.” he snatched up a breakfast bar as she got up.

  “Hey!” she said as he made his way to the door with the cup in one hand and bar in the other. He paused.

  “What?”

  “Aren't you forgetting something?” she asked. He looked confused. She puckered her lips. He laughed softly as he came over and came over and kissed her. When they broke the kiss she pushed him gently away. “There, now you can go.”

  “Yes ma'am.”

  “I'll be along in a minute or two. I've got to do my hair.” he hid his face so she couldn't see his amusement as he made his way out.

  “Well, scuttlebutt is up to it's usual speed.” Sprite said, sounding amused.

  “Oh?” Irons asked, fork half way to his lips. He finished the motion and chewed the bit of chicken. After a moment he swallowed. “What now?”

  “Oh, just your relationship has hit the grapevine. It's made for interesting talk throughout the ship,” Sprite said smugly. He winced. “I think about a quarter of the die hard conspiracy nuts have been knocked on their heels. Others are um, affronted by the transparent attempt to deflect and change the subject.”

  He rubbed his temple with one hand and then put the fork down and picked up a napkin. He unfolded it and then wiped his mouth. “No mention of a conflict of interest?” he asked. So much for discrete. Come to think of it they hadn't been had they? April seemed against it. He'd thought it was to build her career, or at least her notoriety, but with his status such as it is he wasn't sure.

  “No, not really,” she said, amused again. “That will come next most likely.”

  “Which is why we're going to handle interviews differently now. I can't have her spinning things for me and seem unbiased.”

  “W
hich is a problem,” Sprite sighed. “Since she's the only reporter on the ship. None of the other networks sent their own.”

  “Oh?”

  “Knox media has a leg up on the competition. He's got a weird way of showing it.”

  “I'm getting tired of saying oh? You know?” he demanded, exasperated.

  Sprite snorted softly. “Could have fooled me,” she said, shaking her virtual head and smiling slightly.

  “Organic males usually look befuddled where women are concerned. Or so you said more than once in my presence.” he growled. She smiled sweetly to him. “As I was saying, Knox has been a busy boy. While we were busy getting the Navy going he was building up a media empire. But get this, he funded some of his competition, and even bailed a few out or donated some of his used equipment to them when he upgraded.”

  “Okay...”

  “It's odd to see a corporation doing something like that. Impossible.”

  “It's not just a corporation though Sprite, it's the man in charge of it. He's an avid believer in the first amendment, the free speech parts and his bread and butter remember? His helping others to spread the word fits into his psychological profile.”

  “I take it his classes on journalism at the college are your evidence as well?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, it does dovetail neatly into that theory now doesn't it?” he asked, lips twisting into a smirk.

  “You aren't always right, but I'm betting with you on this one Admiral,” Sprite sighed. “It's odd though, he focused on small mom and pop operations, most of them off of Anvil.”

  “You are thinking that he was farming them? Getting them on their feet and established and ripe for a merger later? Somehow that doesn't fit.”

  “No, no, that wasn't what I was thinking at all. What I was wondering was why he didn't help some of the larger competition. He...”

  Irons face tightened for a moment. “I think it was because of their biased attitude. He picked up on the spin doctors right away. He's a student of his people and journalism practices after all. I bet he had someone research each and every competitor to see where they got their start up capital and who was really in charge.”

  “Follow the money you mean? Classic.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Jump in thirty minutes. You'd better hustle. They want all passengers in their own cabins for jump,” Sprite cautioned.

  “Joy,” he sighed, digging into the food once more.

  Chapter 17

  “How are they doing?” Irons asked, lying in the bed staring up at the bulkhead. He reached over and tapped a control, muting the music he had been listening to for now. His hands were supporting his head. April was off doing wrap up interviews with the crew, getting more material for her Agnosta and pirate series. She'd been almost apologetic over the interruption. He'd been amused by that. She'd caught the amusement and then threatened him with making up for it later.

  “In a word? Not well,” Sprite replied dryly. She sounded exasperated.

  “I'd noticed we missed the first jump window. Did they run down the problem?” He'd thought it was a sensor problem but Sprite had reported they were ruling that out for now. The recalibration had gone long as he'd expected. Apparently the captain was happy about the resolution though. Clarke seemed ready and eager to jump back into the saddle.

  “A combination of minor things. Someone had left the primary hyper navigational computer in a sim and it froze. They rebooted it and ran a diagnostic,” Sprite replied.

  “Ah.”

  “Think we should help them out?” she asked hopefully. She sounded like her patience for the fallible nature of organics was near an end.

  “What is the problem now?”

  “Nothing except stupidity. The navigator is trying to jump to beta directly.”

  “Clarke? Is he insane?” Irons sat up in surprise. “First of all, that's suicide. Second because it is insane and not possible the computer will automatically lock them out.”

  “Which they haven't figured out. They think it is related to the first problem and are trying to run it down now.”

  “I bet Chief Bailey isn't happy about that,” Irons snorted sitting up on his elbows. He pursed his lips in a silent whistle at the thought of the chimp chief engineer tearing his fur out and turning the air blue.

  “Shouldn't you intervene?”

  “No,” Irons said laying back. “If he'd wanted me there, he'd have called me.” He picked up the tablet again and went back to reading. After a moment his music came back on.

  Chief Bailey was starting to get one of those headaches. He grimaced again, running a hand through his balding scalp fur, hair, whatever and then tugging on his right ear. Galiet loved to tease him about that mannerism. Right now though he didn't give a damn. He was beyond being in a foul mood and now getting desperate. What the hell was going on? Sabotage again? “Diagnostic is clean you say?”

  “Yeah, chief, it's got to be in the computer. A software thing,” Harry said shaking his head. “I checked the hyperdrive, power, computer. We've spent the past four hours tracing the lines by hand. Nothing is off. I was sure it was something the Admiral did when he rebuilt the drive a couple of weeks ago, but it all checks out, green across the board.”

  “But we're still not getting into hyper,” the chief pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.

  “Yeah. I noticed that too,” Harry said grimacing. “Damned if I know what the trouble is. Boss you think it's time to...”

  “No,” Bailey said without opening his eyes. He sat back, resting his head on the head rest of his chair then swung the chair back and forth.

  “Why?”

  “We need to learn how the hell to do this on our own. We can't have him bailing us out every time damn we stub our toe or holding our hand. He's not going to be here forever.”

  “Ah,” Harry grimaced. So much for the easy out.

  “Besides, if we broke it, we can damn well fix it. The thing worked once after all. Something we did screwed it up. We just need to go over it 'til we find out what's going on.”

  “So, you thinking about getting out and walking to the next stop Admiral?” Sprite asked testily an hour later. The crew had yet to find the problem. Even the dumb AI she had set up knew what the problem was but no one had thought to ask it. At this rate they were going to be here another week! Or at least another day. “If you do you might make it before they get this fixed you know.”

  “That bad?” Irons asked amused.

  “Well, they've eliminated the hardware, so they started tearing into the software. Right now they've got bots doing line by line code comparisons with the back up. After they dumped the files and rebooted with the back up. Still isn't working.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Irons sighed grimacing. “Don't they know that...”

  “I think it's a case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing in this case Admiral. The navigator is inexperienced. The thrill of having a fully functional ship is going to his head.”

  “Yeah,” Irons shook his head. “So you're saying engineering doesn't know what he's doing?”

  “Chief Bailey traced the power and is now tracing the code line by line. But I think he overlooked just looking at the basic commands themselves. The fault line should have jumped right out at him.”

  “Ah,” Irons thought about it for a moment, rubbing his jaw. Sometimes people needed a hand. The trick was giving it to them without making them dependent on that. Which called for subtlety. “What we need to do is find a way to clue them in without showing up. Without showing them it is us doing it. Build their confidence.”

  “And you propose to do this how?” Sprite asked.

  “Oh you're going to do it actually,” Irons smiled.

  “I am Admiral?” she asked amused.

  “Sure. Simple warning message the next time they try to get into hyper. To either the chief or the hyper navigator. Keep it simple and make it look like an error message the AI
would send. Hell cut and paste the error line itself out and stick it into the message as well. In fact I suggest adding that to the AI that your building now.”

  “One problem. They've gone over the code line by line,”she pointed out.

  “Maybe,” He shrugged. “You honestly think an organic can remember that much code though?”

  “Um...”

  “Use the dumb AI you set up. Make it look like it's an automatic warning error. Blue screen of death moment. “Warning attempting to jump into hyperspace at that speed is not possible. Operation aborted,” he shrugged. “Something like that. Keep it simple yet techno enough so they wont get suspicious.”

  “Oh well... when you put it that way... goodie.” He could hear the malicious smile in that. He shook his head, glad he wasn't the one about to get it.

  “What the hell...Warning... Who the hell sent this?” Bailey asked looking up from the computer and rubbing his temples in tired frustration. He looked around the room, brown eyes trying to pick out the culprit. No one jumped out at him.

  “Boss that's the computer itself,” Everette said coming over. “See?” He pointed to a line of code then opened a window and did a search. The same code was highlighted. “There is a built in safety,” the computer tech said as he shook his head. “By the looks of this code string it keeps coming up when the bridge does this.”

  “Oh. So fix it.”

  “Um boss, it's saying they are trying to jump to Beta.”

  “They are what?” Bailey asked, turning to the tech. “Straight from subspace to Beta? Are you serious?” he asked in sudden stunned disbelief. Most of the engineers in the room stopped what they were doing and turned to him.

  “We've been tearing our frigging hair out for hours to find out it's their fault? That they don't know what the HELL they are doing?!” the simian snarled, voice rising in a shriek.

  Harry looked up and winced at his boss's snarl. Everette was backing away, suddenly scared of his boss and not altogether happy about being near an explosive rant. “Uh, boss, the skipper is on the line. Something about he wants to know what our excuse is this time?” Harry said behind him, holding a communicator with one hand over the microphone.