Destiny's Choice (The Wandering Engineer) (43 page)

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.”

“Which
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.

“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.

“Oh
I'll take that,” the chief said with a growl making a gimme motion with one
hand. “Oh hell yeah.” He put the communicator down after he triggered the
speaker phone.

“Aye
captain?” he asked sitting back and putting his feet up.

“So
what's you're excuse this time?” the captain asked tiredly. Ferguson had gone
from annoyed to exasperated over the constant delays. He'd twisted Bailey's
tail about it a few times. Bailey had been nettled and chewing the paint off
the bulkhead now for hours on end.

“My
excuse is we got to the root of the problem. It's your fault,” he finished
sweetly, voice hoarse from screaming so much. He lifted his feet up onto the
console and crossed his legs before netting his fingers together in front of
him and stretching, cracking the knuckles. Then he tucked the hands behind his
head to support it better.

In
that time he heard plenty of sputtering and then silence on the other end.
After a moment the captain's throat cleared. “What?” the captain asked
surprised.

“Yup.
Your end. Mister high and mighty screwed the pooch. It seems Mister Clarke is a
bit too eager this go around. He's been trying to jump us directly into Beta
all this time.”

“Into
Beta? Did I hear that right?” the captain asked suddenly surprised and angry for
a different reason. “Are you serious?”

“Yup.
The ship's computer has a lock out. Since it's obviously suicide to go from
subspace to Beta band. Apparently that's what we've been tripping over this
entire time. And the helm and navigator's been getting the report but ignoring
it.”

“I'll
say,” the captain glared at the navigator. Clarke was hunching his shoulders,
feeling his ears burn. “Thank you chief. We'll get this sorted out. I commend
you and your people for discovering this.”