Status Quo: The Chronicle of Jane Doe

by Chris Kuhn

  Status Quo

  The Chronicle of Jane Doe

  Written by:

  Chris Kuhn & James “Cheshire” Clayton

  Log 002: A Day In The Life...

  The valve should never have blown.

  It was less than halfway through its design life, and I'd checked it just a few hours before during periodic maintenance. It had looked fine at the time.

  Guess it wasn't.

  I found myself suiting up, preparing to climb into the reactor for the second time in one day. Reactors were bad places to be - particularly the ones aboard experimental warships. You couldn't turn the thing off without leaving the ship vulnerable, and installing two reactors per vessel was out of sync with budgetary reality.

  If there was a reactor problem while underway, there were two choices. The first was for the captain to request relief from the vessel's duties and be towed home. The second was to find the lowest-ranking reactor technician aboard and provide her with an opportunity to excel.

  Guess which option they went with.

  "You ready?" A voice called from behind me.

  I turned to find Petty Officer Coates strolling into the reactor control room. He was late, which wasn't exactly out of character.

  "Almost." I told him.

  He nodded and plopped his heavy frame down at the reactor console. Reaching into his cargo pocket, he withdrew a sealed container of orange juice.

  "You know," He said, waving the juice around, "There is one positive aspect to all of this."

  "And that would be?" I asked.

  "You get to skip the briefing." He said, and then glanced at the clock. "As long as this takes at least forty-six minutes."

  "I'll make sure that it does." I informed him.

  I pulled my helmet on, leaving the faceplate up for the moment. Before donning my gloves, I walked to the reactor's access panel and stuck my thumb against the touch-pad.

  "Good morning, technician." The reactor's AI responded.

  "Morning Anna." I responded, snorting as an image of my face appeared next to my credentials on the screen. "But you need to do something about that picture."

  The photo had been taken in basic training, the day dozens of us had been shuffled through a poorly lit room to have ID cards made. My face looked both paler and bonier than usual, and my hair had been shaved to within millimeters of my scalp. My obvious exhaustion and lack of makeup really brought the whole thing together.

  I shook my head and triggered the hatch. The meter-wide door slid aside, revealing a long access tunnel I'd have to crawl down. I tossed Coates a fake salute and jumped inside. The door slid shut behind me.

  I put my gloves on, sealed the faceplate, and turned on the suit's environmental control unit (ECU). The suit protected against EM radiation, not a loss of pressure, and the ECU wasn't strictly necessary. It provided moderately effective heating and cooling, though, and came with a nifty oxygen supply. If I got tired, I could always turn it up a little.

  "Comm check." I said into the suit.

  "Lima Charlie." Coates responded immediately.

  "Wait," I asked playfully, making my way down the tunnel to the reactor compartment. "What kind of a Charlie is it?"

  "Come on," He replied, his exasperation evident over the radio. "It means loud and clear-"

  "I know what it means." I interrupted. "But I'm the only one on this channel, so let's keep the infantile jargon to a minimum."

  "Copy all." He responded.

  Ass.

  I reached the inner door and slid it open.

  I entered the reactor compartment, a cavernous space that ran vertically through six full decks of the ship. Its walls were hidden beneath layers of technological spaghetti. A circular catwalk ran around the perimeter, and a small walkway ran out to the reaction chamber in the middle. The space was illuminated by dozens of red lighting strips. The light came from the walls and the ceiling high above, intersecting with various structures and casting intricate shadows across the space.

  The effect wasn't subtle.

  Red means danger. Red is bad.

  But the reactor wasn't bad, just a little testy. According to Chief Engineer Abeen, the reactor preferred to be known as “Anna”. Despite the fact that I was human (and thus incapable of mentally bonding with machines), Anna and I had developed a relationship of our own. I almost thought of Anna as a living thing... and like other living things, she could be a royal pain in the ass.

  "Okay, sweetheart," I said, running my hand along her coarse brown surface. "Talk to me. Why'd you shit the bed?"

  Anna didn't respond.

  I diverted the coolant, then yanked the blown valve and examined it. It gleamed brightly under the lights of my helmet, green liquid dripping from its nozzle. I frowned. It sure as hell didn't look blown. I grabbed the toolkit mounted to the reactor and withdrew a voltage generator. I touched the valve to the generator's leads, and it popped open exactly as it was supposed to.

  Okay, not the valve.

  The coil pack that generated the 'open' signal was also working perfectly. However, it received it's marching orders from a box that went by the sexy name of Control Module A1A6.

  "Hey Coates," I called over my suit comm, "I need to pull A1A6. Put the other valves on the Secondary."

  "Standby," he said, "I'll get Byers' approval."

  Great.

  Control Module A1A6 was fairly important. It regulated the overall cooling of the reaction chamber. Before we switched to backups on a live system, we needed approval from the chief of maintenance - an unpleasant man named Michael Byers.

  "Request sent." Coates said momentarily. "On another note, are you still doing burritos on Wednesday?"

  Burritos. I snorted. Right.

  I was supposed to cook burritos for our so-called Morale Day the following week. I wasn't sure if that was a testament to my culinary skills or case of overt sexism. I kind of suspected it was the latter. Either way, it would be a lot of work.

  "Don't think I have a choice." I said to Coates. "Why do you ask?"

  Aside from the obvious fact that you're distracting me while I wait around in here.

  "Well, I've been giving this a lot of thought." He said. "I don't think Johnson deserves any burritos. He's kind of been an asshole lately."

  "He broke up with his girlfriend." I said, an octave higher than normal. "Probably has something to do with it."

  "Oh... I didn't know that," Coates replied thoughtfully. "But after careful consideration, I still don't think he gets a burrito."

  "Uh-huh," I said absently. "Neither does Byers, if he doesn't hurry up and approve-"

  "Hang on." Coates interrupted. He paused. "Um. Okay..."

  "Yes?" I demanded.

  "My request to remove the control module was denied."

  "Oh," I said, not expecting that. "Well, the guy definitely doesn't get a burrito now. What would he like us to do instead?"

  "He advises that we troubleshoot further. He doesn't think the control module is the problem."

  "And I think his ass isn't down here." I snapped.

  "It is pretty unlikely," Coates advised carefully. "There are...what? Two or three backups within the module itself?"

  "Three." I confirmed. "If you count the automatic fail-over. I get where you're coming from, but I don't have a better theory. If swapping it doesn't fix the problem, then we'll know it's something else."

  "But we can't swap it without approval."

  "Fine." I replied wearily. "But as your on-site tech, I've provided my recommendation. It's been rejected. Give me an order, sir."

  Coates was an E-4. He had only two more stripes than I di
d, which didn't really mean anything. Except for when it did.

  "I... don't know." He said awkwardly.

  "Not an option, jackass." He couldn't see me, but I was lightly banging my head on one of the coolant pipes.

  "Right." He said, apparently coming to his senses. "Okay. What coolant temp are you showing in there?"

  "Uh," I said, glancing at the panel, "Two-hundred and six degrees."

  "That's what I've got, too." He confirmed. "It's still within tolerance."

  "What's your point?"

  "That the repair can wait." He said. "I need to have a discussion with Byers and Chief Abeen. Come on out of there."

  I made my way back out of Anna's core, through the maintenance hatch, and stepped into the control room with Coates. A minute later I was out of my suit and hanging it back on the rack.

  Coates was shaking his head.

  "What?" I said to him. "Anna's okay. We just need to-"

  "No," He said solemnly, pointing at the clock. "That only took you twelve minutes. Now you've got to go to the briefing."

  "I'm not going to the briefing." I snapped.

  "Yeah, I didn't figure." He replied with a grin.

  The grin vanished.

  "Hey, where the hell is Johnson?" He asked, looking back up at the clock. "He should be here by now."

  It was true.

  "Don't know." I said with a shrug. "I can stick around if you want, until he shows up."

  Coates rocked his head back and forth, apparently thinking it over.

  "Nah." He decided. "I'll hold it down for now. Go ahead and get out of here."

  --------------------------------------------------------

  If I wanted to skip the briefing, the best place to do it was in my quarters. That worked out; it was where I wanted to be anyway.

  I made a quick stop by the Class Six first, which was the only place on board where you could actually buy booze. Supposedly, alcohol had been designated as 'class six cargo' under some old shipping system, and the store had appropriated the name. The explanation sounded fishy to me, but I'd never bothered to look into it.

  I nodded a quick hello to the clerk, who was preoccupied with some type of mobile gadget. Walking past him, I made my way to the store's limited selection of whiskey. Most people on the Pridemore seemed content to drink beer, but that wasn't really my thing. Whiskey had been the only type of liquor my dad had ever kept in the house. I think he'd actually hated the stuff, but as a Russian emigrant, he'd hated stereotypes more. My dad wasn't allowed to drink whiskey anymore, but I was certain he'd be proud of my beverage selection.

  I grabbed a bottle, then made my way to the register and slid my ID across the scanner.

  The dissatisfied beep suggested my night wouldn't be going as planned.

  "You can't buy that," The clerk informed me. "You've maxed out your rations for this month."

  "Seriously?" I demanded, thinking back.

  "Seriously." He replied. "You can come back on Tuesday."

  "If you think about it," I attempted. "The concept of a month doesn't make much sense outside of Earth's solar system."

  "Tuesday." He said again.

  "Fine." I replied.

  My eyes wandered around the store, taking in the three other customers. The first guy I hadn't met, and the second I knew but didn't get along with. The third was a weapons tech named Craig Kingsley.

  Huh.

  I'd slept with Craig a year ago while we were on leave, an unplanned but satisfactory encounter. I'd been content to leave it at that, but Craig hadn't. I'd grown accustomed to the longing stares and occasional awkward flirting. It was possible that he actually liked me, though it probably had more to do with the ship's Human male-female ratio. Either way, I decided, he might help me out if I asked.

  Forget it, I decided, shaking my head. I Don't need to get trashed that badly.

  I turned to leave.

  "Hey, cutie!" Craig called from behind me.

  Crap-tastic.

  I turned around, anticipating an awkward conversation. Craig was grinning from ear-to-ear. He was carrying a case of beer under his left arm, and his hands and uniform were covered in something that reeked of petroleum.

  "You stink." I informed him.

  "Yup." He replied, leaning back against the bulkhead. "Been fueling the RATU. If emergency supplies have to be dispatched, in case we... go down."

  "Wait," I said, ignoring the sexual connotation. "You got your ICC certification?"

  "Sure as hell did." He said, smug satisfaction replacing whatever had been on his face before. "Last week. If we check out any Brood infestations, I'm gonna be on the team."

  "Oh." I said. "Well, good. I mean, congratulations."

  "Thanks!" He said, bumping my shoulder with his own before marching over to the counter. I shook my head. Personally, I had no interest in going down to a planet that had been invaded by hostile and icky things. The Brood were too nasty to even think about, and observing their leftovers didn't sound enticing.

  To each his own.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Log 003: Duty called. We hung out. It was awkward.

  Shipmates kept passing me as I headed to my quarters, undoubtedly on their way to the briefing. That wasn't good; eventually I'd run into someone who cared where I was going.

  I ducked into one of the Pridemore's ubiquitous maintenance lockers, intending to wait out the crowd. I closed the door behind me, turned around, and walked directly into a ladder.

  "Hey!" called a voice above me, "You want to watch where the hell you're going?"

  Yeah, I thought rubbing my forehead. I kind of do now. I looked up to find Crewman Yvans attempting to replace an environmental sensor in the ceiling.

  "Sorry." I said to him. "My fault."

  He shrugged, his attention focused on the device above him. Yvans was a new addition to the crew, and one of the few people on board that I actually outranked. One of the many non-Human crew on board the Pridemore, Yvans was a Firian; essentially a human-sized lizard. Some of them even glowed in the dark. Yvans was trying to wrestle the old sensor out of its bracket now, and it looked like it was kicking his ass.

  A thought occurred to me.

  "What seems to be trouble?" I asked, looking up at him.

  "This... thing," He informed me, "Does not come off the way it's supposed to.” As he fidgeted with the sensor, the spots that ran down his back grew brighter and cast an eerie blue glow on the panel above him.

  " Calm down there glow-stick." I replied. "Mind if I give it a try?"

  "You don't know crap about life support systems,” Yvans scoffed.

  "True," I lied, "But I know about J-12 connectors, which is what you've got there. They were supposed to be tamper-proof and easy to service. They turned out to be neither, but I can show you a trick."

  He nodded grudgingly and descended the ladder in a single hop. He was a little shorter than me, and his big glassy eyes shot me a look that even a human could understand.

  Fucking impress me.

  "Okay," I said, climbing up and grabbing the offending connector. "You've got to pull down on the little collar, then rotate the upper section clockwise and kind of snap it apart." I demonstrated with an easy flick, and Yvans' mouth opened like a Muppet who'd encountered a minor deity.

  "It just takes practice," I said casually. "How many of these things do you have to swap out, anyway?"

  "All of them," he said, clearly not relishing the idea. "Every last one on the ship. Byers' orders."

  "Yeah, well." I said with a shrug, "That guy's kind of an asshole. Did Chief Abeen sign off on that?"

  "Um." Yvans replied awkwardly. "Way above my pay-grade. I just do what Byers tells me. But I mean, dayshift got most of these done already. It's just six more compartments to go."

  "Okay." I said, doing some quick math. It would probably take me about twenty minutes to complete the work. I could live with that.
<
br />   "I've got another question for you." I continued. "Do you drink ethanol?"

  "Ethanol?!" He repeated. "You mean alcohol? Hell, no. That stuff dries us out on the inside. I have no idea how Humans consume it."

  This coming from a species that eats shoe-sized cockroaches.

  "Good," I said, "That means you're a healthy young man... Lizard... Soldier.” Yvans glared at me. “It also means your ration card's full for the month, so I'll make you a deal. You go buy me a nice bottle of whiskey, and I'll swap out the rest of these sensors for you."