Engineer: A Sigma Sector Story

  ENGINEER

  A SIGMA SECTOR STORY

  by

  Alistair McIntyre

  Kom Nevoje System – Delta Sector

  Chapter 1

  “Engineer Reeves, report to ED3 immediately.”

  Graham Reeves grimaced and grabbed his link off the nightstand. His boss’s ever-angry face greeted him, hovering in the air above the small device. A forced smile reluctantly worked its way onto his mouth.

  “Commander, so glad to hear from you,” he said. “I’m totally not in the middle of something important right now.”

  Commander Jon Harrington rolled his eyes in disgust.

  “Reeves, get off of Moore and remind the good scientist that her antimatter density report is due on Captain Sturm’s link in less than five minutes.”

  Before Reeves could respond, the link went blank. He looked down at Alicia Moore’s flushed face and grinned.

  “You heard the man. We’ve got five—”

  “Get off me, idiot,” she snapped, pushing against Reeves’s chest.

  That wasn’t exactly the response he’d been looking for. He sighed as the love of his life rolled out of bed and padded naked across his cramped quarters. The Sanitation and Dress module, or just plain SAD module, hissed gently as the frosted pane encapsulated Scientist Moore, hiding her smooth curves and reinforcing Reeves’s state of abject frustration.

  “You know, Ally, you’ve still got four minutes. I can be done in less than one.”

  “Why don’t you wait until I’m gone before you finish up that little exercise then?” she replied, her voice muffled by the SAD enclosure.

  He lay back down on the bed and put both hands behind his head.

  “It’s rude to use the word little in regard to anything involving my crotch, dear.”

  “Whatever, Graham.”

  The tone of the hissing emanating from the SAD changed ever so slightly as the machine clothed its female occupant. Schumacher, Incorporated hadn’t sprung for every amenity known to the human race, but the spray-on jumpsuits administered by the SAD were a nice touch. It was always nice to know that the company cared.

  With a quiet whoosh, the SAD door slid open, revealing a fully covered, and particularly harried, scientist. She stepped out and grabbed her lab coat off a peg on the wall. A bit of an anachronism, but the scientists were a weird breed, insisting the white coats lent credibility to their occupation. Or something like that.

  In Reeves’s opinion, the archaic coat did nothing other than completely mask Ally’s amazing figure. Ah well, whatever. It wasn’t his problem that her fellow geeks couldn’t enjoy her body as much as he had. Actually, in that moment, he didn’t feel like he’d enjoyed it quite enough. He stood up from the bed, but she stopped him with a flick of the wrist.

  “I don’t have time for this, Graham,” she said, buttoning her coat shut. “I’m late as it is, and it’s even worse that the science officer for the sector is visiting today.”

  In response, he pointed to the bed. “Last chance. The offer still stands.”

  She gave him one of her most incredulous looks and shook her head as she stepped in front of the door. With one of those blithe smiles that only she could pull off, Ally rejected him again. “Looks like the offer’s the only thing still standing.”

  With a touch of the pad on the wall, Alicia slipped from Reeves’s view, leaving him with nothing but the image of her smiling face in his mind. He looked down and saw what she meant.

  “Come on, man. Whose team are you on here anyway?”

  ***

  Reeves found the rest of his team huddled around a schematic on the largest table Engineering Deck 3 had to offer. Calling this part of his kingdom a “deck” did it far more justice than it deserved. Because of the enormous section of the engine room that protruded into the engineering space, ED3 consisted of a mostly tan-colored work space with a few tables, and the Engineer’s office. The décor stood in contrast to the preferred stark white of everything on the science decks above.

  Curious as to why Harrington wanted him down here in the first place, Reeves went to talk to the local know-it-all, or Junior Engineer Melissa Nguyen, as she preferred to be called. She always knew what the hell was going on. Before saying hello, he noted a new member in the group. That was probably what had the ol’ commander all bent out of shape.

  “Good morning, everyone,” he announced loudly, scaring Melissa half to death as he snuck up behind her. “Glad to see our new technician arrived. Finally.”

  “This is Antonio Fabregas, sir,” Melissa told him. She leaned in close and whispered hotly, “Junior Engineer Antonio Fabregas.”

  What was her problem? Reeves was sure that he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.

  “Right. Welcome to Kerubi’s Scythe and her lowly engineering department,” Reeves said, and then promptly headed to his office.

  As soon as the door slid shut behind him, it hissed open again, allowing his irate subordinate into his domain.

  “You’re late, Graham.”

  “The boss is never late.” He settled himself into his seat. “You’re just early.”

  She glared at him.

  “I’ve been here for over an hour, trying to entertain this random JE who showed up out of nowhere, and you can’t even get here on time.” The short woman packed a whole lot of anger when Alicia was the next topic of conversation. “What was it this time? She tied you to the bed and refused to let you leave?”

  Despite the sarcasm dripping from the question, Reeves answered her absently as he poked through his link to check his agenda. “She left far earlier than I’d have liked.”

  “Poor you.”

  After a few moments of awkward silence, awkward for Melissa, not Reeves, who was busy on his link, the junior engineer cooled off a bit. They did have work to do, after all, and she was all about work.

  “I thought you said that you were going to requisition another tech?” she asked innocently. Reeves wasn’t dumb and could read the underlying question: Why did you hire another JE when you already have a JE?

  “I did put in a req for another experienced tech, but as usual, our glorious leaders know better than their employees do.”

  He was more pissed off about it than she was. What good was another green JE, fresh off a science shuttle? He’d have to teach this idiot all the same material he’d spent three years force-feeding to Melissa. Someone in a very expensive office would think that an engineer would have ample use for two JEs, but realistically their first year was a complete loss and, more importantly, a complete pain in the ass for Reeves.

  The poor kids didn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground. Well, hopefully they’d know which holes in the ground were okay, and which ones were serious problems. That had led to a few situations in the past. Captain Sturm still hadn’t forgiven Reeves for the Boiling Antimatter Incident, as it would be known in future textbooks in the United Terran Federation’s Engineering education system.

  As funny as that had been, the cleanup sucked, and the tongue lashing he’d received had been moderately over the top, even for their ex-military captain. Reeves was pretty sure that the woman spent her days brewing over the injustice of a decorated military veteran toting around a group of self-absorbed asshole scientists and dealing with the monkeys in Engineering who seemed hell-bent on destroying her ship. At the slightest provocation, the pressure valve failed, and the captain went ballistic, usually aiming her pent-up fury in Reeves’s general direction. Blowing gigantic holes in decks would count as “the slightest provocation.”

  “So he hitched a ride with the science dorks who showed up today?” he asked.

  “I guess so. But I
’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to call the senior science officer for the sector a dork.”

  “What? Me? I’d never make such a derogatory remark against His Holy Highness Vendra.”

  In truth, only yesterday Reeves had ventured on a heated, twenty-minute diatribe to no one in particular on the unfairness of Senior Officer Nehru Vendra showing up to make his life a living hell for the next month. The well-to-do science types liked to make appearances on a whim in any new exploration. They’d demand all sorts of ridiculous experiments that usually involved Engineering designing and building a hugely complicated and expensive mechanism or device that wouldn’t actually end up getting used. Or, if the scientists did use it, they’d claim that it failed during operation, and it was all Reeves’s fault.

  Bullshit.

  Melissa put a hand on his desk. “Please promise me you won’t tell Science Officer Vendra where he can stick his deflector shield… again?”

  She looked genuinely concerned, and so she should be. He’d forgotten that Vendra was that scientist. The bastard had given a spec for some ridiculous array that Reeves swore up and down wouldn’t work. Of course, it didn’t, and that was fine until Vendra called Reeves some bad names.

  “If he implies that all engineers are just ‘science students who couldn’t hack theory’ again, I’ll make that deflector shield a permanent fixture in his colon,” Reeves said. “I’m sure Zhi hid that piece of crap with all the other stuff he refuses to get rid of.”

  “Probably.”

  “So who else accompanied our illustrious science officer?”

  “Murray Banion,” she spat, with more than a hint of malice.

  Reeves seemed to recall a certain problem with a drunken scientist not wanting to leave a very disgusted junior engineer alone. Had an equally inebriated engineer decked Banion in one punch? That did ring a bell. Maybe they could set up Round Two while the asshole was back in town.

  “That’s it?”

  “Oh, no. Matt’s back, too.”

  “Awesome. I like Matt,” Reeves said. “And Tilda’s probably over the moon, too.”

  “Ugh. Have you been reading those ancient books again?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “We’re all over the moon, Graham. Plus, that doesn’t even specify which moo—”

  “Whatever,” he interrupted, waving a hand at her.

  Matt and Tilda London were a husband and wife science technician team who never caught a break. Tilda had been stationed on Kerubi’s Scythe for the last few years, while Matt had been dragged halfway around the sector by the compassionate, giant corporate entity that employed them all, to the point that Tilda hadn’t seen Matt this time for six months straight. Fortunately, Reeves’s quarters weren’t next door to Tilda’s.

  According to his link, the science team had already put down six line items for Engineering to address. Brilliant. There went any chance of a fun morning.

  “Okay, Melissa,” he said, standing up and heading to the door. “We better get started on this nonsense before Vendra sends Banion down for a status update.”

  ***

  After a couple of hours filled with mindless assemblies and constructs for the science dorks, Reeves left his team on autopilot and headed to his office to check his link. The new JE seemed to be catching on pretty quick, but Zhi was showing signs of cracking. Technician Wang Zhi had worked on Harvester-class ships for twenty years. As such, he knew more about the Scythe than anyone else onboard. Except for Reeves, but bringing that up never ended well. The wiry old man was awfully sensitive.

  Finally alone with his thoughts for a moment, Reeves sat back in the Engineer’s chair that he’d occupied for the last three years, ever since Kerubi’s Scythe’s commission. His peers had thought him under-qualified and a complete tool, so he hadn’t exactly kept up with his old associates. Now his whole world existed inside a mostly automated vessel designed solely to harvest and analyze antimatter particles from the outer orbits of large celestial bodies.

  Not particularly exciting, most of the time, but now the Scythe was freshly stationed in a new pay-zone, within pissing distance of the magnetar half of the binary Kom Nevoje system. The neutron star had a magnetic field so powerful that the space around it tore and ripped constantly, spewing antimatter around for an intrepid harvester to reap. Unfortunately, Kom Nevoje Prime, the local space station, was still under construction and of little use in case of emergencies. Setting up shop so far from assistance led Captain Sturm to leave Reeves inane messages every morning asking that the Bashan engine technician check the compensator thrusters. Again.

  Reeves wasn’t sure about what Sturm thought Malk did for a job, but the Bashan’s entire purpose in life was to service the damn engines, except when Reeves threw a random task his way that Reeves didn’t want to do himself. The little guy always acquiesced silently, but would look over his shoulder suspiciously every minute, as if he could see the inner workings of the engines failing through multiple blast walls. Hailing from a culture that enslaved a builder to his creation would do that to a guy.

  As usual, Sturm’s regularly scheduled thruster diagnostic request awaited Reeves on his link. The message was an hour old. She’d probably yell at him again for not carrying the link on his person at all times, but when he was working on the tables, he didn’t like distractions, middle management being one of them. Mostly he just didn’t want to talk to Harrington. The guy was wound up tighter than a Taltec’s asshole.

  Right below the expected message, another awaited Reeves, also from the captain.

  Engineer Reeves, manually check the long-range scanner arrays for any malfunctions in the last hour.

  Manually check them? What millennium did the captain live in? There was no way he was doing that. Despite a standing order to not directly contact Sturm for any reason other than imminent death of the entire crew, Reeves called her link. And surprise, surprise, Captain Nikolina Sturm wasn’t happy to see him.

  “Where are my reports, Engineer?”

  Right to the point.

  “I’ll get Malk into the thrusters as soon as he’s done with Vendra’s latest pet project.”

  “Wrong. You’ll get my Bashan working on my orders immediately.”

  “Right, that’s what I meant. You know that he has a name—”

  “Did the scanners check out?”

  “Don’t we have an IT department?”

  “You know that we do not. This is Engineering’s responsibility.”

  “I’ll put JE Nguyen on—”

  “Sometimes I wonder if you’re as stupid as you let on, Engineer,” she said. “You will do the check. Right now.”

  And her glowing visage disappeared from the link, leaving Reeves speechless for a moment. He glanced around, making sure no one else in his empty office had heard the exchange.

  The rest of the team would be engaged for at least another hour, which would give him more than enough time to sneak out and crawl into the navigation computer, but he didn’t have to like it. What would his minions think if they actually thought he was doing real work for once? He had a reputation to uphold.

  ***

  The access hatch on one of the modules of the navigation system slid away silently at Reeves’s touch. The engineer couldn’t imagine what kind of annoying fastening mechanisms were used before fingerprint recognition was possible on pretty much any surface. In the very distant past, he’d probably have had to undo ten screws and pop out six awkwardly designed clips just to get this one plastic cover off the side of the computer.

  Sensing his presence, the inside of the enclosure lit up obediently. A thin strip of light wound its way throughout the entire computer, illuminating most of the interesting points as far as inspection and diagnostic were concerned. Reeves’s link made the automatic connection to the computer and displayed nothing unusual. At first glance, nothing in this module looked amiss, just like Reeves suspected he’d find in the other nine modules. He poked his flashlight around into the crevices of intricate circ
uit boards and physically examined all of the connectors. After still finding nothing worth mentioning, he closed up the panel and moved on to the next module.

  Before his finger touched the access panel, he stopped at the sight of something strange: A smudge on the smooth finish, right there for the whole world to see, or at least for an engineer to find. He’d have to check the access history for this module and then smack the idiot who’d scuffed up his computer.

  Satisfied with the thought of getting to yell at someone later, Reeves probed inside the small space. Perhaps if his glorious captain had deigned to tell him what he should be looking for, this inane manual check might not have frustrated him quite so much. His eyes passed over the top of a circuit board, into a dark space beyond the built-in illumination of the module. What the hell was he supposed to be looking for any—?

  Reeves stopped and backtracked a couple of centimeters.

  What in the hell?

  That was definitely not supposed to be in there. Someone had definitely tampered with this module. He quickly pulled his head out of the enclosure.

  A little uncertain now, Reeves glanced around the computer room, but only saw the motionless racks and banks of dark modules much like the one he crouched beside now. The only movement came in the form of blinking lights and data displays updating with new information. Other than the gentle hum of electronics, no noise of a lurking asshole met his ears.

  That didn’t mean there wasn’t one though, and if not here in this room, somewhere else on the ship. Reeves glanced down at the access panel as it noiselessly slid shut, revealing the incriminating smudge once more.

  It was time to check the access history of that panel.

  Chapter 2

  “Just how stupid are you, Engineer?”

  Was he supposed to answer that question?

  Reeves stood before his captain, and glanced around the bridge. Nobody was looking, or at least, everybody made an effort to appear like they weren’t looking. Outside of the soundproof bubble created by the device built into the captain’s chair, the rest of the bridge staff could see Reeves and Sturm, but couldn’t hear what was going on. Captain Nikolina Sturm was in rare form and even the briefest of glances would tell any observer everything they needed to know.