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  “Relax, Mr. Wang,” the captain said. “I know you’re just getting off watch but I wanted you to know what we do. You’re going to be mobbed when you leave here and I want you as informed as you can be.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” I said.

  “First, I assume you already know that you’re getting bumped from the environmental section?” she said it like she wanted confirmation, but only as a formality.

  “Yes, sar,” I said. “I’ve been informed.”

  “Second, I hope you understand that I’m not pleased with this unwarranted interference with the smooth operation of my vessel, but that I have a duty to the owners.”

  “Yes, sar, I understand completely, sar.” The hell of it was, I did. It was rock and hard place time. Nobody liked it but getting squished periodically was part of a rating’s job.

  “Third, I need to tell you that your contract with Federated Freight permits them to put you ashore at half pay if no alternate berth is available. If an alternate berth is located on any other Federated Freight ship, but you refuse to take that position, as is your right, you’ll receive no pay.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” I said. “I wasn’t aware of that, but I appreciate the warning. Will that provision be a problem?”

  “We’re still looking into that,” she said. “At the moment, no. There are presently only three other ships in Betrus and only one belongs to Federated Freight and she has no openings for you to turn down. If you have to go ashore, it’ll be at least at half pay.”

  We all knew that half pay wouldn’t go far on the orbital in terms of paying for room and board, but nobody mentioned that.

  “Last, you should be aware that you are eligible to bump any junior crewman from the ship with the proviso that you are qualified to take their position. You are rated at half share in all four divisions and full share in two more. It is your right to bump any quarter share crew aboard which includes most of the deck and engine crews.”

  “So, is what you’re saying is that I could stay, but only at the expense of a shipmate, Captain?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Will you be exercising that right, Mr. Wang?” Mr. Maxwell asked.

  “No, sar,” I replied. “It’s my problem and I’ll deal with it, sar.”

  In my previous dealings with the captain and senior officers, this was the point in the conversation where they did a little look around and nod thing. I found it ominous that they all just stared straight ahead.

  The captain said, “Thank you, Mr. Wang. We’re still working on this, but that’s all for now. You are dismissed.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” I said, and fled the cabin.

  Dinner was well underway by the time I got there and when I stepped onto the mess deck, I thought it got a little quieter. Cookie had made a fish and pasta dish with a spicy cream sauce and peas. Sarah smiled at me, but I was not sure if she understood what was happening. Pip definitely knew and he looked angry. I shot a smile his way and, and he just gave me a little shake of his head. “Later,” I said. Cookie was hovering in the background and I could not read the expression on his face. It looked almost like pride but I could not imagine why that would be.

  Brill and Diane sat together and there was an open seat so I settled there. “Is it a little chilly in here?” I asked.

  “Perhaps a bit,” Diane said.

  Brill hid her mouth in her coffee mug and said, “Half of them think you’re going to bump them and the other half know it could just as easily be them.”

  “Well that’s silly,” I said. “I’m not bumping anyone.” I didn’t intend to make it a general announcement but it just came out. I started eating. I could feel everybody on the mess deck looking at me and I let them. The sauce on the fish was hotter than it looked and it crept up on me just enough to make my nose run. While the conversation picked up around us, Brill and Diane just sat with me in silence. The meal was good, though, and I savored their company as well as the food. After I cleaned my plate, I smiled at them. “I’m going to go lie down and let this settle, I think. I know better than to hit the track with this much food in my belly.”

  Brill winked at me with a sad smile of her own.

  Diane patted me on the back and said, “See you in the morning. Don’t be late.”

  I bussed my dishes and headed for berthing. People seemed a bit more relaxed, even sympathetic now that they knew I wasn’t a threat. Throwing somebody else off the ship was my right for having earned the ratings. It was within the letter of the rules, but was just something I couldn’t do. They did not know that, so it was easy for them to assume that I would claim the rights and privileges of my rank. I found the dolphin in my hand again and smiled. I pulled out my tablet to set an alarm for 21:00. It had just turned 19:00 and I could stand to sleep for a couple of hours. I felt a more than a little wrung out, truth be told.

  I was halfway to my bunk when the ship hit something. It wasn’t like a hard crash, with bodies flying and vacuum sucking us out through holes in the hull or anything like that. I heard a really loud hissing sound—like we were plowing through a veil of sand and a shifting in my inner ear told me we had changed vector. It reminded me of the moving-lift feeling I got just at pull out. I did not have time to think, because the ship went dark and silent. I felt myself floating with the momentum of my last solid step on the deck.

  Dark and silent are two things you never want on a ship. Dark means the power’s out. Silent means no air. Without power, air was going to be an issue. I was shocked into immobility. I froze right there, drifting awkwardly in the passage and trying to remember if I was supposed to do something. It was reflex to pull out the tablet, but there was no signal and a blinking LED on the side told me the network was gone. I flicked it on anyway and the back-lit screen gave me enough light to see up and down the passageway.

  Altogether it only lasted maybe five heartbeats, but it seemed much, much longer. I had just about enough time to think about Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, which would have made my mother proud.

  The emergency power came online and with it the emergency lights, the klaxon alarm, and gravity. I was grateful for the light, could have passed on the klaxon, and the gravity, while useful, reintroduced me abruptly to the deck. I lay there for a few moments to gather my wits and make sure I hadn’t done any damage. Then I scrambled to my feet and headed for environmental as fast as I could. I passed several people on the way who all shared the same dazed expression. We did not stop to talk. If we lived, we could talk later. I made it through the hatch just as the klaxon cut off.

  “All hands to General Quarters. All hands to General Quarters. Section leaders report via radio to the bridge.”

  Brill and Diane stumbled in behind me and Frances was in the chair running diagnostics on the console. Brill began barking, “What’ve we got, Francis?”

  “Complete power loss for five seconds: emergency power online, operational status unknown, ShipNet offline, data feeds to all systems not available. Blowers are on, but whether they’re moving anything useful. I can’t tell.”

  “Diane, Ish, grab portable sniffers and make sure nothing nasty is in here. Then stick one into the main air intake and see what we’re sucking in. Watch the O2 and CO2 levels. We can add oxygen but if the CO2 starts to build, getting rid of it will be a challenge.”

  She went to her office, pulled out a rack of radio communicators, and started passing them out while calling the bridge and giving her status report.

  Three tics later we gathered at the largely useless console.

  “Report,” she said.

  “Nothing in the sniffers. Air mixture is good for now,” Diane said. “Scrubbers look okay. Nothing in a power fluctuation should damage them.”

  “Same here on the sniffer. Nothing unusual coming in the main intake stream. I left mine taped up with the audible on. If it picks up something out of range, we should hear it,” I said.

  “Console
seems operational,” Francis added. “But without the ShipNet, there’s nothing it can do. I can’t tell if the sensors are even alive.”

  “Immediate danger?” Brill asked.

  We all shook our heads.

  She got on the radio to talk to the bridge while we settled down to wait. Diane stuck her head in every scrubber cabinet again looking for problems. Francis and I took another inspection tour around the section but found nothing amiss.

  At 19:15 the overhead speakers piped on. “This is the captain speaking. Here’s what we have people. We ran through the residue of an unreported coronal mass ejection with an associated EMP. The high speed mass took off some paint but the EMP toasted our sail generators and knocked down the ShipNet. We’ve notified Betrus Orbital. We are in no immediate danger. We’re just going to be a bit delayed getting into port. We’re on a ballistic trajectory inbound, but going too fast for the tugs to snag so we’re going to have to do a fly by and come back on the other side. Repeat. We are in no immediate danger. If the condition changes, I’ll let you all know. That is all.”

  We were still in the look-at-each-other-and-shrug mode, just before shifting into the now-what-do-we-do stage when Brill’s radio bipped and Mr. Maxwell’s voice came over the little speaker.

  “Brill, Is Engineman Wang there?” he asked.

  “Yes, sar, standing right here.”

  “Have him collect his portable and report to the bridge right away.”

  “Aye, aye, sar,” she said.

  “Maxwell, out.”

  “Beats me,” I said without waiting for the question. “I’ll let ya know as soon as I can.” I raced for the hatch, my locker, and the bridge, in that order. I climbed to the top of the ladder in less than a tick and gave a breathless “Engineman Wang reporting as ordered.”

  Mr. von Ickles waited at the top of the ladder. “You brought it?”

  I held up my portable computer.

  “Okay, Ishmael,” he said. “I need you to focus, just like this is a test.”

  I don’t know what was more disturbing, seeing him scrape a pile of toasted circuit boards off a console and onto the deck, or the fact that he used my first name.

  “Set it up there and get it booted.” He handed me a cube. “This is the minimum ShipNet code. I want you to run it.”

  I let my brain sink into the task at hand. All the stuff going on around me faded out as I focused. I mounted the cube and recognized the language and realized my computer could not read it. “I’ll need ten ticks, I have to make some changes,” I said without looking up and without waiting for permission.

  “You have eight.”

  I did it in five and booted the ShipNet on my portable. It crashed, but I found the error and tried again. The second time it stayed up. I sat back and watched as displays across the bridge winked to life. I heard people laughing and some cheering before a short word from the captain restored quiet efficiency to the bridge. I looked up and around then, with that feeling like I was surfacing from one of my ratings exams. Mr. von Ickles looked down at me with a big grin.

  “Did I pass?” I asked.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Wang, you are now certified spec two in systems and, if we live, I will so note in your personnel jacket,” he said with a laugh.

  “If we live—” I started to say and then noticed the forward port. A planet filled the view and the captain’s words, “ballistic trajectory,” came back to me. I turned back to the portable and took a quick status of the system. The network pushed the portable hard, but without the big databases and other ancillary information it managed the load. With the portable serving as the central routing hub secondary hubs across the ship came online and began distributing the processing.

  It seemed to be going well then I noticed the battery status. “Power, sar. I need to plug this in or the battery will go within a stan.”

  He pointed to a receptacle just inside the console. It looked like somebody had just ripped the panel out. I reached down, plugged in the portable, and watched the indicator shift from drain to charge. The extra power gave the processor another jolt, kicking it out of low power mode and it started to gain ground on the backlog of queued commands.

  I pulled out my tablet and brought up my environmental watch stander display. CO2 was up. Particulates were up. O2 was a little low but within parameters. I brought up the sensor overlay used during VSIs and ran an all-node query, watching as they flashed in order. Three of them were out near the port bow section but all the rest were operational.

  “Sar? Request permission to report to Brill?” I said to Mr. von Ickles.

  He glanced at my tablet and said, “Her tablet should be live too. Bip her with it. Any problems?”

  I shook my head, “No, just we have some sensors off-line on the port bow. I want to get them logged so we can add them to the queue. The rest they’ll see on the big console down there.”

  The acknowledgment came back almost instantly.

  “Got it!” Mr. Kelley almost shouted from across the bridge.

  Mitch Fitzroy crawled out from under a console with a sooty smear across the top of his face and a big smile across the bottom.

  I noticed the captain for the first time when she said, “Bring us about, helm. Yaw ninety degrees port, flat.”

  The helmsman replied with a crisp, “Yaw ninety degrees port, flat, aye, sar,” and the big planet outside the front port began to slide off to starboard.

  “Mr. Kelley, if you could provide a small vector adjustment so we miss that planet, I’d be grateful,” the captain said with a wry smile.

  “Aye, aye, Captain. All ahead full and damn the red lines,” he replied.

  There was a slight moving-lift sensation in my inner ear and as it faded so did the tension on the bridge.

  “Have we sufficient fuel, Mr. Kelley?” the captain asked.

  “Yes, Captain. We’ll miss it. Although you may want to straighten the ship as we go by so the stern doesn’t bump,” he said.

  The way everybody chuckled at that, I assumed it was a joke.

  Mr. von Ickles grabbed a roll of tape and ran a couple of strips across the portable so it wouldn’t slide off the console, being careful not to cover any critical heat vents or data ports.

  Then he patted me on the shoulder and said, “Come on, Mr. Wang. I’ve got another little test for you.” Over his shoulder he said, “We’re headed over to Systems Main, Captain.”

  “Thank you, Mr. von Ickles. Carry on.”

  He left at a near trot and I followed right behind him. Systems Main was right under the bridge. I don’t know what I was expecting, but certainly something larger than we ended up at. It was the size of a closet—a walk-in one, but still a closet.

  “Follow your nose, Mr. Wang,” he said. “There’s at least one burned board down here. We need to find and replace it.”

  He started opening panels and sniffing on one side, so I started on the other. It was tight but we worked side by side. The fourth door I opened, I didn’t need to smell. I saw a puff of smoke get sucked out by the back draft from opening the door. “Found one. Or two,” I said.

  Mr. von Ickles stepped up beside me and squeezed down to look in. “Yup. Phew. I hate that smell.”

  He unclipped a couple of latches and the interior of the cabinet rolled out. He showed me where to release the door hinge so it would fold back against the next door and we were able to see the entire rack at once. There were about thirty-five cards mounted in the rack. At least half of them were scorched.

  “Looks like it got a little hot in here,” he said. “I wonder why. Okay We need to pull all this crap out and replace them. It’s part of the main ShipNet communication array and probably the reason the net is down. The network routers need these controllers to stay in sync across all the peripheral systems.”

  “My portable is carrying all this?” I asked.

  He laughed. “No, your computer is carrying just enough for the control systems to talk to the instrumentation.
There’s no supporting databases and half the instruments on the ship are reporting a malfunction just because the data they need for calibration isn’t available. Lesson later. Parts now.”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “Move over,” he said, and slid on his back under the drawer and out beside my feet. “The power bus is the blue cable in the back. Pull it and that’ll take power off this cage.”

  I found it, released the safety catch, and unplugged it. A sizzling I hadn’t been aware of stopped.

  “Good. Now pull the cards. All of them and toss ’em out in the passage so they’re not underfoot. Don’t worry about breaking them. I’m going to get replacements and pray we have the full set.” He looked again down into the cage. “We should. Most of these are standard router and comm boards.” He smiled at me. “I love standardized parts! Now don’t just stand there. The clock is ticking. I need you to keep treating all this like a test and focus.”

  And with that, he ran out of the closet.

  I turned to the rack and took a quick look at the layout in the cage. I found the releases and started pulling them. Some were pretty hot, but I had the cage cleared and even released it from its slides and shook out the residue as best I could. It looked pretty clean except for the scorch marks around three of the sockets and along the upper rails. I was just locking it back down when Mister von Ickles came in with a pile of cards in static-proof envelopes stacked like firewood in his arms. He thrust them at me and slid under the case again.

  “Gimme that one right on top, please,” he said, and I handed him the card. He had a belt knife that made short work of the protective covers and he mounted it in the middle of the cage. “Nice work clearing away,” he muttered as he seated the card and clipped the latch down. “Next card.”

  I handed him card, after card, after card. Each one he clipped in with precision and efficiency. Slice, position, mount, seat, clip, next. We went through the pile so fast I barely had time to get a grip on one before he called for the next. He reached back, plugged in the power cord, and locked it down. With a nod of his head we grabbed our respective sides and slid the rack back into the bulkhead.