Engineer: A Sigma Sector Story Read online

  “The last time I checked, I was a little less stupid than Harring—”

  “Do not dare finish that sentence, Engineer. You found obvious sabotage and left it in place? Are you in on this plot? Do I need to lock you up in the brig?”

  Reeves’s eyes casually roved around the room again. He knew how the technology worked for this little privacy bubble, but still, it would be really hard to tell from the inside if it was actually working properly. The crew around him could potentially hear every word, and he’d have no idea. The possibilities were endless for awkward, embarrassing, or just plain comical results.

  “No, Captain,” he replied, slightly aggravated. She glared at him, obviously wanting a response. “I found something that my link didn’t recognize, but since I don’t know what it is, I don’t know how to program the link to interface with it. I didn’t remove it because I didn’t know if the ship would explode if I did. We have no idea what this device is capable of.”

  She started to interrupt him again, but he cut her off.

  “Look, if you’d just tell me why you were suspicious of the long-range scanners, maybe that would help me troubleshoot this thing. For all I know, we have a family of space monkeys terrorizing the ship.”

  For a moment, Reeves was sure that the captain would leap from her throne on the dais and throttle the life out of him, like a good ol’ fashioned king of yore. The violent sentiment passed quickly and an eerily composed captain spoke clearly and calmly.

  “What I say to you does not leave this room.” Reeves looked around, wondering if she meant the bubble containing the two of them, or the whole bridge. He’d err on the side of caution and only tell the engineering staff downstairs. “A short time ago, some blips, some irregularities popped up at the boundary of the scanners’ range. Just for a fraction of a second. The only reason we found it was because Navigator Mueller got bored and performed a cursory check of the logs.”

  She paused, and Reeves waited for his captain to provide more details, but she didn’t.

  “So, Engineer, that is why I was concerned.”

  “Sounds like shenanigans all right.”

  While Sturm once again looked ready to spectacularly end his life, Reeves weighed what she’d told him. This was one of the best captains around, definitely one of the smartest, so she certainly knew more than she let on. That meant this was actually serious.

  “What did the blips look like to you, Captain?” He had to have more information if she really wanted him to solve this problem quickly. She didn’t answer immediately, obviously considering how much an idiot engineer should know.

  “Irregularities,” she said in a clipped tone.

  “So we’re not talking about someone onboard sabotaging our sensors so that, say, pirates could get in close enough to disable our jump drive before we even knew they were there?”

  Direct hit. Or at least, her facial expression twitched enough for Reeves to know he was swimming in the same waters as her suspicions. Without the captain sharing anything more, the engineer could guess the score here. Nikolina Sturm, ex-military hero looking for a payday in the private sector, captained the Scythe, but realistically her number one, Commander Jon Harrington, controlled the ship. Jon was the company man, and the company determined when and where the ship did pretty much anything. For example, Sturm couldn’t engage the jump drive without Harrington’s approval. No wonder she was so frustrated.

  “Okay, so you need me to fix the sensors, or find a different way to scan deep out there, so that we can convince a certain someone that we need to leave?” he asked, quietly, despite the soundproofing.

  Suddenly the captain looked a decade older, tired of dealing with all the shit in the harvesting industry. She sighed heavily. Having the head scientist for Delta Sector on the ship to perform all of his little pet projects wouldn’t make this any easier. Vendra definitely wouldn’t leave the area on an old war-bird’s hunch.

  “Reeves, whatever’s out there will be here soon. And I want us gone when they get here.”

  ***

  “So what am I looking for?”

  “Melissa, we’ve been through this,” Reeves said, only slightly exasperated with his JE. “The whole point is that you’re not supposed to know what you’re looking for.”

  She grumbled something, but her head was inside one of the navigation system modules, so Reeves couldn’t make it out. Born and bred as a by-the-book engineer, Melissa struggled with vague instructions. She wanted to know the exact requirements and expectations, so being told to just take a look at something had her on edge. It wasn’t a test, but she definitely would see it that way.

  Reeves peeked around her head to see what she was doing in there. The check should’ve only taken a couple of minutes. Her link projected the entire system schematic, clearly indicating an All Clear message, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy Junior Engineer Nguyen. Reeves could tell that Melissa was convinced he was up to something here, and she was determined to find out what that was.

  After another couple of minutes, she sighed and pulled out of the module, allowing the access panel to close. She looked up at him. “We’re wasting time here. There was nothing wrong with that one either.”

  Reeves nodded to the last module. “Just one more. Get on with it.”

  She gave a hmph and marched over to the last module in the row of racks. With one glance she’d already found her first clue.

  “Someone’s messed with this panel.” Despite whatever faults Reeves could find with his protégé, she was damn sharp. “Did you check the access logs?”

  “Yes,” he responded matter-of-factly. Melissa stared at him, anticipation transforming into annoyance as Reeves left her hanging. His smile widened as her brow continued to furrow in frustration.

  “Tell me!” she finally exclaimed.

  After a brief chuckle, Reeves told her, “It was me.”

  “You damaged the panel? Why?” she asked, very puzzled. “Why didn’t you just open it normally?”

  “Because it wasn’t me.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I was sleepwalking when I did it, so I’m not really to blame.”

  She glared at him, most likely incredulous at his lack of on-the-spot creativity rather than his story.

  “Someone hacked the access history and put my name in there.”

  Melissa’s eyes opened wide as the implications settled in her mind.

  “So you’re saying someone—?”

  “Sabotaged the nav system?” he asked. “You tell me.”

  He indicated to the module and Melissa dove right in, searching fervently for any signs of foul play. Reeves watched her, but kept one eye on his back, feeling a little paranoid that someone had gained access to this room and then screwed with the systems without anyone noticing. Only a few of the crew could get in here, and as far as he could tell, the saboteur wasn’t Melissa. She had the means, but he highly doubted she was a good enough actress to put on the performance he saw now.

  After a few minutes, Melissa squeaked in excitement. Reeves waited impatiently as the excited JE double- and triple-checked her work. There was something to be said for thoroughness, but at some point, redundancy was just plain annoying. He started when Melissa suddenly bounced out of the module and giddily broke down her findings.

  “I found a small device hidden on the circuit for the long-range scanners,” she said, an enormous grin on her face. “I’m not absolutely sure what it is, but it seems to generate a field that pulls some of the nearby data lines on the circuit to zero. My guess is that the bridge is seeing very empty space up there.” She pointed towards the bridge, sort of. “It looks like a rushed job. I’m not sure that it was placed properly.”

  “And why is that?”

  She seemed wary, maybe trying to work out if Reeves knew all of this already, and was testing her, or if he genuinely had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Because small pieces of data are still passing through
the field,” she said cautiously, almost enunciating the statement as a question. Reeves let her wriggle in her uncertainty for a moment before nodding in the affirmative. She was good.

  “So the bridge probably saw some weird data on the nav console and called you to check out the system?” she asked, now speaking faster and more confidently.

  Reeves nodded. They both stood in silence for a sort time, lost in their own thoughts, speculation running rampant. Eventually Melissa broke the lull.

  “So who did this?”

  He didn’t know why they were whispering, but he responded, “Space monkeys.”

  Wang Zhi examined the mysterious device with the fancy eye loupe he’d requisitioned through Reeves last year. The guy was never without that thing, which was good since it cost the engineering department an arm and a leg to get it for him. It whirred quietly as Zhi inspected the circuit board.

  After Melissa had left the computer room a short time ago, Reeves had called Zhi up, partly to watch his reaction to the news, and partly because he needed the technician to remove the device. Could he have done it himself? Sure, but not without doing some real work, and that was a no-no.

  The old man was eternally stoic, and this occasion was no different. Zhi reacted to the news about as much as if Reeves had told him he’d won the lottery, or that his entire family had just died. Not a hint of guilt or surprise. Perhaps this wasn’t the best way to interview suspects.

  “So you think you can remove it?” Reeves asked.

  A nod, accompanied by a long, slow blink.

  “Okay, great,” Reeves said. “Go get your tools.”

  The short, old man hustled out of the room without a sound, leaving Reeves to ponder the strange happenings in the navigation computer. He didn’t have long to wait before his next interruption, as his link beeped and vibrated, indicating an incoming call. It was Alicia.

  “Heya, Ally,” he said cheerily as her concerned face projected out from his link.

  “What’s going on down there?” She looked around furtively, checking for eavesdroppers. Not exactly a super spy, this one.

  “Space monkeys.”

  The captain had told him to keep it a secret, and Sturm probably wouldn’t appreciate that he’d already told two people in Engineering, even if he needed them to fix the problem. Ally stared at him with that look she did so well. That, “I can’t believe I slept with your dumb ass” look.

  “I just overheard Harrington and Vendra,” she said. This wouldn’t be good. “Harrington was pissed because Sturm wants to leave the system immediately, but couldn’t tell him why.”

  She looked really stressed by this revelation, but Reeves couldn’t defy the captain on this one. Feeling sorry for a lover had gotten Reeves into enough trouble in the past. Having said that, this was a perfect opportunity to get some info.

  “Is that right?” he said. “What else did they say?”

  “Not much, but you know those two.” She sighed. “They won’t leave this exploration site unless a Kiranii battleship jumps in right next to us.”

  He wanted to tell her that she might not be far from the truth, but damn it all, he couldn’t. Zhi returned with the tool belt and gracefully slid inside the nav system module, without so much as acknowledging the engineer. Reeves ignored him and walked to the other end of the server room, still on the line with Ally.

  “So his holiness Vendra has some important stuff he wants to do then?” he asked.

  Ally snorted in response. “As usual. I already performed a lot of these tests, but he doesn’t trust my results.”

  While formulating a safe response to that, Reeves glanced over and saw Zhi packing up his tools. The man placed the interference device into a small anti-static container. As he snapped the lid shut, all the lights in the room turned to a dull red and started flashing slowly.

  The intergalactic signal for, “Uh oh!”

  Zhi looked to Reeves for guidance, finally recognizing the engineer’s seniority. The man didn’t look at all worried about the situation. He’d removed an unknown entity from a computer and immediately the emergency system had kicked in. What was there to worry about?

  “Get back to ED3 with that device and find out what it does and where it came from,” Reeves ordered.

  The technician shuffled quietly out the door, and Reeves turned his attention back to Ally. She’d turned away from her link and was looking around, baffled by the sudden turn of events. Even in the pulsing glow of the emergency lights, Alicia Moore looked gorgeous. Maybe he could somehow lure her back into bed before pirates arrived and murdered them all.

  But before he could say anything, the worried face on the link went fuzzy for a moment and then Captain Sturm’s aggravated visage replaced Ally’s. It looked like Zhi removing the device had precipitated the desired effect.

  “Report to the engine room and get the jump drive back online, Engineer,” she barked. “Now!”

  ***

  This one was a little trickier. Their lovely saboteur had really done a number on the jump drive. Melissa stared at Reeves with a cautiously hopeful expression. Despite his tendencies to slack off, to delegate all of his responsibilities, and to avoid work at all costs, Melissa still inexplicably had faith in him. In this situation, she didn’t really have a choice, as archaic jump drives weren’t her forte.

  “Would be nice if it was built this decade,” she said.

  “The older they are, the more reliable they are,” Reeves replied. Melissa nodded, but Reeves had lied. This drive was a turd to start with. Now it had a few extra pieces that were terrorizing the poor old antique. Schumacher, Inc. really had an interesting way of deciding what ship components needed to be worth a crap.

  “Okay, so we’re going to step through all this code until we see where the breaks are occurring,” Reeves said. “Then we go to the circuit that most closely applies to that piece of code, and search for more of these interference boxes. Then we go find the person responsible and jettison their nuts into space.”

  The junior engineer looked confused by that last part, which was strange, because Reeves felt that was the simplest part. In any case, she agreed to the first task, but Reeves could tell that even she knew this was going to take far too long. Captain Sturm hadn’t given them a specific deadline, but from her last communication, Reeves guessed that their lives would be in serious jeopardy in the very near future. Time to work.

  An hour passed with Reeves manning his link to walk his way through the code, calling out directions to Melissa, who leaned deep inside the jump drive circuitry housing. Every minute or so, the pair would detect and locate yet another tiny device that was playing havoc with the jump control. Someone had taken a lot of time and put a lot of effort into screwing this all up, and Reeves couldn’t wait to meet that person and castrate them with a blunt knife. Based on previous experience, Reeves was sure that the captain would agree to that form of punishment.

  “This is taking too long,” Melissa announced, sweat forming on her brow, probably from a mix of exertion, stress, and hovering over circuits that could bake a pizza.

  “I know, but we don’t really have an option here. We’re getting fairly close to the end. We can only hope the bastard didn’t get into the jump drive machinery, also.” But of course, he knew that the saboteur had painstakingly screwed him to the wall so far, and there wasn’t any reason to think that the nefarious individual hadn’t ripped out some bolts or couplings in the jump drive itself.

  They kept at it for another few minutes before Captain Sturm hailed Reeves on his link.

  “Why aren’t the jump drives up yet?”

  He started to talk, but she cut him off.

  “Don’t say space monkeys, or I’ll come down there and save any intruders the trouble of killing you painfully.”

  She was good.

  “Sounds fun, but I’ll pass,” Reeves said. “Drive is down because some asshole inserted interference bugs all over the circuitry.”

  She didn�
��t look any happier. “Why didn’t the system’s automatic diagnostics find this?”

  “Because of the way it interacts with the circuits.” He kept one eye on the code scrolling by on a separate display to the one projecting Sturm’s face. “Not sure what they call it now, but we used to call it a whisperer. It doesn’t disable the circuits, which we’d notice. It just subtly changes the data and commands so that the circuits are happy, but nonfunctional.”

  “How much longer do you need?”

  “Another hour,” he replied. “We still have to check the actual jump drive itself. All we’ve done is attack the control circuits.”

  She sighed heavily. “You have ten minutes, Engineer.”

  His heart jumped into this throat. “Ten minutes until what, Captain?” Unfortunately, he knew the answer.

  “Ten minutes until the pirates are in EMP range.”

  Reeves didn’t respond. In ten minutes, those bastards would completely disable the unshielded sections of the Scythe, which just happened to include the jump drive. The drive was damn useful, but only when not shielded. A bit of a two-edged sword there. Stuck this deep in the Kom Nevoje system without a jump drive wasn’t very appealing. The captain would’ve already launched the distress beacons, which hopefully hadn’t also been sabotaged. That wasn’t a happy thought.

  “We’re moving as fast as possible, but this is a slow ship,” Sturm stated. “I suggest you get back to work, Engineer.”

  The comm display went blank and Reeves was left with only the scrolling code for company. Oh, and Melissa, who now stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. There were many types of pirates in Delta Sector. Hopefully, for the women’s sake especially, these were the nicer variety who only wanted to hold Kerubi’s Scythe hostage for Schumacher to pay ransom. Reeves didn’t have direct experience with any pirates, but from what he understood, the Marghrali ones weren’t afraid to rape, kill, and eat the crew, and not necessarily in that order. And that was when the ransom was paid, or at least, that’s how the stories went.