Milk Run (Smuggler's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (27 page)

The captain peered into the hatch. “What am I looking at?”

“Emitter bus coupling for the Burleson drives. This one channels most of the energy from the drives aft to the emitters forward.”

“That’s not supposed to look like that, is it?”

“No, Captain. It’s not. That one’s almost burned through.”

“That what caused the power drain?”

“I believe so. There’s a feedback circuit to keep the Burlesons from cutting out too soon. If the bus coupling doesn’t have enough juice, it tells the drive to give more.”

“You think the extra juice killed this one?”

“No, Captain. I think it was on its way out, when it called for help. I think it must have lasted long enough to complete the jump into Siren but that’s where it all stopped.”

“Recommendations?”

She nodded at the crispy coupling in the overhead. “That’ll have to be replaced. We can do it when we get to Siren but we can’t jump again until it’s replaced.”

“What’s the end game here, Ms. Regyri?”

“I don’t know, Captain. If this had failed even one jump earlier, we’d have been pretty badly stuck.”

He sighed. “We’d have been in Albert, at least.” He looked at the coupling again. “You think it’s deliberate?”

“It’s possible. It’s also possible that it’s not up to handling the load those oversized Origamis are punching through it over time. I’d have to check the specs on that unit to be sure.”

“Odd time for it to happen,” Trask said.

Natalya gazed up at the burned unit. “Maybe.” She looked at Trask. “Or maybe the ship doesn’t get used as much as we think.”

Trask sighed and glanced at her before looking back into the inspection hatch. “Can you fix it?”

“Should be able to.” Natalya shrugged. “It’ll be a while before we need it again.”

“Make it a priority, if you would, Ms. Regyri. I don’t like not being able to jump.”

“Aye, aye, Skipper,” she said. “Don’t blame ya.”

Chapter 28
Siren System: 2363, June 23

Natalya returned to engineering and pulled up the spares inventory. Emitter bus couplings showed up right where she expected them to be. The system identified a full complement of a dozen on hand. She scrolled through the pages to see what had been used and what had been aboard the longest. Nothing jumped out at her. None of the items that might have had a limited shelf life, like algae cartridges for the scrubbers, showed even marginal dates. The normal consumables, like water and fuel filters, all looked fine.

On a whim, she pulled up the bus replacement protocol to see if it held any gotchas. The procedure looked familiar. She’d never done a live one herself, but they’d been given instruction on it during her third-year Burleson drive rotation. Emitter bus couplers, capacitor charge fuses, even emitter array maintenance. She remembered that last one vividly. The emitters needed to be on the outside of the hull with an airtight bushing that provided the signal from inside the ship. The array itself consisted of a cross-hatched set of parallel emitters simply plugged into the emitter housing on the hull with a zero-gee fitting. Maintenance consisted of walking—or jetting—over to them outside the ship and replacing the emitter with a new one. Woe be to the cadet who stepped out without locking down her safety line.

She’d never been in any danger. She had more hours of EVA than the instructors, but they’d acted like she’d stabbed her own suit and bled out. She sighed and kept digging.

The procedure itself seemed simple enough. Pull the old one out. Plug the new one in. Use the coupling balance tool to bring both ends of the bus into proper alignment. The process shouldn’t take more than a few ticks. She kicked herself on that and mentally added a couple of stans.

As long as the drives were off line, the replacement could be done underway.

“Good enough,” she said to herself, and headed for the spares locker.

She flipped the light on, scanning the shelves for the bus couplers. As she did so, something kept nagging at her attention. She was about to give up when she realized most of the parts bins were empty or nearly so. She pulled out her tablet and accessed the spares inventory. She added a quick sort by location and put her hand on the bin that should have held a dozen pristine bus couplers.

What she found was a collection of half a dozen bent pieces of metal covered in some kind of oily grease.

The cold knot in her stomach came back full force. She tamped it down and started spot-checking the various bins against what was in the system. A good deal of it matched, but mostly spares with a low unit cost. Anything of value wasn’t just missing. It had been replaced with a similar mass of metal—or in one case, bottles of water. Burleson bus connectors would have been worth twelve thousand credits. The case of spare water filters wouldn’t have been worth twelve.

She left the spares locker and dropped down to the environmental department. She found Sheddon and Eloranta changing out scrubber cartridges. “Seen Mr. Knowles lately?” she asked.

Sheddon looked up and wiped the end of his nose with the back of his wrist. “He’s off until 1800. Might find him in engineering berthing.”

Eloranta shook her head. “He was headed for the mess deck for coffee. Maybe half a stan ago. If he got involved in reading, he’s probably still there.”

Sheddon grinned. “True. I’d try the mess deck first.”

“Anything we can help with?” Eloranta asked.

“You got plenty of cartridges for that sucker?” Natalya asked.

Eloranta shrugged and looked at Sheddon.

“Three cases in the spares locker. We just opened a fresh case for this.” He waved a mucky hand at the open scrubber.

“I’m putting together a replenishment order for when we dock. If you think of anything, lemme know?”

“Aye, aye,” Eloranta said with a crooked grin.

Natalya found Knowles leaning against a bulkhead on the mess deck, his tablet open to dense text and an empty cup in his hand. “Did you drink it already or haven’t you filled it yet?” she asked.

He looked up at her and blinked a couple of times as if reorienting his reality. “Oh. No. Not filled.”

“Interesting reading?”

He hefted the tablet as if weighing it in his hand. “Interesting research in some new higher-yield algae. They produce almost twice as much oxygen for the same amount of carbon dioxide absorption.”

“What’s the down side?”

“What to do with excess oxygen in closed ecosystems.”

Natalya felt her eyebrows climbing her forehead. “Is that a problem?”

“Can be. Half the reason we use the algae in the scrubbers is to pull the carbon dioxide out. I’d like to see something that can take twice as much carbon dioxide for the same amount of oxygen exchanged. That would be more useful, I think.” He shrugged. “We’ve got some very good mixes now with exchange at near-parity. We only supplement the mix with the barest whiff of oxygen. If we used these strains, we’d have to figure out a way to keep the oxygen levels under control. We just haven’t faced that before.”

Natalya gave him a wry smile. “Cut down the number of scrubbers?”

“Possibly. I’d like to see how that scaled.” He looked up at her. “Sorry,” he said, flipping the screen off. “You didn’t hunt me down to ask me about algae.”

“Spares.”

His eyebrows raised slightly. “Spares?”

“You noticed anything odd in the spares locker?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “No. I only go in there for filters and cartridges and we’ve only just had to change out the scrubber.”

“I saw. Sheddon and Elantora were up to their elbows in it.”

“Eloranta,” he said.

Natalya winced. “Sorry. I’m usually better with names.”

“It’s an odd one and she gets a lot of strange takes on it.”

“Got a minute?”

“You’re the boss.”

Natalya took him back to engineering and led him into the spares locker. She pulled out her tablet. “What’s a part you might need? Other than the consumables.”

He scratched his chin and pursed his lips. “Eight-centimeter stainless valve.”

Natalya entered it into the inventory. “System says we have six. Bin D-12-6.”

He shrugged. “Six is probably enough. We don’t break that many of them.”

“Do me a favor and look in D-12-6.”

He scanned the racks until he found the right bin. He pulled it open and peered inside. He frowned. “Did you say D or B.”

“D as in delta.”

He checked the label again and shrugged. “That looks like scrap metal.”

“Any idea how much six of those valves would mass?”

His eyes widened a bit and he blinked. He hefted the bin a couple of times. “Not offhand.”

“They valuable?”

“Eh, maybe a hundred credits each. They’re precision-machined to medical tolerances.”

“Gimme a cheap part. Something plastic.”

“Ten-millimeter neoprene hose.”

She consulted her tablet. “Bin Charlie-15-23. A ten-meter roll.”

“Sounds right,” he said. He rummaged around for a bit and pulled open a bin. “Looks like this one is here.”

“What’s it cost?”

“Probably four credits for the roll.”

“So, cheap, lightweight stuff and things we might notice right away?”

Knowles nodded. “Consumables like the filters and scrubber cartridges. There’s some filter papers and titration reagents we use to test water. Some cheap chemicals we use to suppress biological activity in gray water tanks.”

“We’d need to run a full inventory, but I’d guess anything with a significant value has been replaced with dross.”

“Anything we’d be unlikely to notice,” Knowles said. “We test all the waters about three times a week with this.” He pulled out a bin near the door. It contained row upon row of brown plastic bottles, all lying on their side with the label up. “Phenol red. It’s for testing water’s acidity. We don’t use much of it at a time, but we use it a lot and it’s not always easy to come by in commercial quantities in Toe-Hold space.”

“Expensive?”

Knowles shrugged. “This bin’s probably a couple thousand credits worth.”

“But you’d notice if it were missing.”

He nodded. “Most definitely.”

“Will you use all that this trip?”

“This trip? Doubtful. Probably only a half-dozen bottles. Depends on how long we’re out.”

Natalya reached into the bin and pulled out the top bottle and held it up to the light. “This is the stuff?”

“We can check it by running some water tests with it, but it should be.”

She pulled the bin out and flipped it over so the bottles rolled across the deck.

“What the—?” Knowles said jumping back from the scattering containers.

Natalya corralled them with her feet until they rolled more or less together in a line across the deck. “Notice anything?”

“What? They’re bottles of phenol red.”

“Really?”

Knowles frowned and leaned down, his head turning slowly as his gaze picked out each of the two dozen bottles spread out in the light. “What are you seeing that I’m not?”

Natalya held up the original bottle. “This was the top one.” She nodded at the lineup. “About a third of them have a different colored bottle.”

“That’s not unusual. Different supplier has a different batch of bottles. Those might be a different shipment. Leftover stock that didn’t get rotated. Or the new stock that got rotated to the bottom.”

“Care to place a little wager?” she asked.

Knowles’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the bottles on the deck again. “No, but we can check it fast enough.” He snagged one of the odd-colored bottles from the deck and set it aside. Natalya helped him reload the bin.

They took the two bottles down to the small lab Knowles used in the environmental services department. Knowles drew one sample of water from a vat and split it between two beakers.

“This should be relatively neutral,” Knowles said. “The reagent should show a yellowy-orange color in both.”

He used a clear pipette to dip a measured amount from the first bottle and held it up to the light. “This looks all right. Good color and consistency.” He released it into the sample water beaker and they watched as the swirling liquid turned a delicate yellow-orange. “Looks about right. Very close to what we tested it at yesterday. High six, low seven maybe.”

“So that’s what you’d expect to see?”

“Well, depending on the sample either more yellow or more orange all the way up to fuchsia.”

He pulled a clean pipette and sampled the second bottle. He held the sample up to the light. “This doesn’t look right. Color’s too pink and the consistency is too loose.” He released the pipette into the other water sample and the watched as the pink liquid swirled around in the beaker.

Knowles stared at the two beakers and then lifted the offending bottle to look at it more closely. He sniffed it before screwing the lid back on. “Not phenol red. The opaque bottle masked the contents. I can’t tell what it is without more tests, but it’s not phenol red.”

“Water and food coloring,” Natalya said.

Knowles hefted the bottle as if weighing it in his hand. “Might be. Why do you say that?”

“Cheap dross. Easy to come by. Impossible to trace.”

Knowles grinned at that. “If that’s the case, we’ve just caught a break.”