Engineer: A Sigma Sector Story Read online

  Great.

  The code diagnostic tool finished its course through the jump drive control program. One green light lit up to indicate that the code had successfully run. That was good. So now the control circuit was operating. Reeves frowned when a single red indicator flashed on his link’s display. The final device that Melissa had removed must’ve been hiding this warning somehow.

  “The bastard got into the jump drive and left access panel 3B ajar,” he said. With one of the door sensors tripped, the power lines would be physically disconnected from the jump drive, not allowing it to operate at all.

  Both Reeves and Melissa jumped to their feet and headed over to the jump drive. It took only a moment of examination for both to see the problem. Someone had removed the sensor completely.

  “Okay, this isn’t that bad,” Reeves said, already moving.

  He and Melissa ran over to the spare parts chest, where he pulled open the drawer containing all the different jump drive sensors. In his head, he figured that he still had a couple of minutes to spare, and the sensor would only take about ten seconds to install, as long as the saboteur hadn’t burned up the sensor receptacle. With the correct part in hand, he turned to Melissa with a huge grin on his face. They were going to get out of this.

  Then the lights went out with a bang.

  Chapter 3

  Somewhere nearby, something really annoying was vibrating. Reeves slapped his hand in that general direction. Couldn’t he just have two more minutes of sleep? His head hurt like hell and he wasn’t in the mood for an early day. The incessant noise continued to interrupt his slumber, so he forced his eyes open to see a faint glow in a deep blackness.

  Where was he?

  Oh, crap. He was on Engineering Deck 1, working on the jump drive. But why were the lights out? And why, for the love of all that was holy, was that damn stupid thing still vibrating and glowing?

  He rolled over and discovered that damn stupid thing was in fact his link. It must’ve fallen off his wrist in all the excitement. Well, that wasn’t so bad. Reeves picked it up and saw Captain Sturm hailing him. That might be bad. He slapped the link back onto his wrist and tapped it to project Sturm’s face into the air.

  “Engineer, status report.”

  “It’s dark?” he responded, massaging his head. Must’ve been a pretty good knock to hurt this much.

  “I can see that, Engineer,” she growled. “What’s the extent of the damage caused by the EMP?”

  “The lights are out.”

  “Reeves, get your shit together.”

  He got to his feet and took a few steps before tripping over a heavy object on the floor. Using the light of his link, he saw Melissa groggily roused from her own unconscious state.

  An adventurous thought braved the dense fog clouding Reeves’s brain. Why had they both passed out? An EMP wasn’t supposed to affect humans. Based on how they’d been laying next to each other, Reeves wondered if they’d both jumped at the lights exploding and cracked their noggins together. That was pretty funny, but ultimately didn’t really matter. They were both awake and still screwed.

  “You’re welcome,” he said cheerily as she tried to block the glow of the link’s display with her hands.

  “For what?” she asked sleepily.

  “For bringing you back into this freaking nightmare, that’s what.”

  Sturm yelled at him through the link to quit playing grab-ass and check the jump drive. Hers was a valid concern. Jump drives couldn’t operate behind EMP shielding, so most of the time, they had none. Bigger military ships had variable EMP shrouds that could be disengaged prior to using a jump drive. Schumacher would never spring for that kind of luxury, but Reeves suspected their saboteur may have inadvertently saved the drive.

  Despite repeated orders to inspect the jump drive, something else nagged at Reeves. At the touch of a finger, the entire body of his link radiated bright light in every direction. Not very efficient on the batteries, but he needed to work out why he’d passed out or he wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else. This was the curse of all engineers.

  Unless EMP technology had changed recently, the human brain was very resistant to the induced voltages of the weapon, by necessity of some Convention or something. He wasn’t into keeping up with military stuff.

  He rubbed his head, wincing at a certain spot. Randomly clanging heads with Melissa would’ve been a convenient explanation, but that wasn’t exactly a probable root cause of failure here. In the illumination of his link, he scanned the floor and quickly found the culprit. A two-meter-long plastic grate lay nearby where he’d woken up. He recognized the grate from the air circulation system.

  And sure enough, after only a few moments of searching the bottom of the closest wall, he found where the grate had launched from. A quick inspection showed the remains of a roasted circuit module. Damn thing must’ve blown up when the EMP forced a voltage surge into it, flinging the exterior grate across the room and pegging the two engineers in their unsuspecting heads. Reeves made a note not to stand next to Melissa in the future.

  Any modern system should’ve had plenty of surge protectors in there, since most people deemed the air circulation system critical for human survival. For a large corporation, that was apparently a minor concern. Schumacher’s HR department would be receiving a hefty complaint, right after Reeves got everyone out of their current predicament. With a sigh, he went over to the jump drive controls and gave them a once over.

  “The consoles are all out, Captain, but the gravity is still working,” he said. “Did the voltage suppressors dampen the pulse throughout the rest of the ship?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But what about the drive itself?”

  She was as persistent as a space monkey in heat. Not an experience Reeves cared to repeat.

  “I won’t know until we get the control circuits back online, but the door sensor was missing, so we may be okay.”

  “Engineer, explain that.”

  “Oh, right, you’re in middle-management, I forgot.” Before she could rip his head off, he continued. “With the door sensor missing, the power lines to the drive should’ve been disconnected. When the EMP hit, the drive being disconnected from the power grid should’ve lessened the EMP’s ability to induce high voltage.”

  Captain Sturm was still staring at him, no idea what he was talking about.

  “Without all the sensors working properly, the drive wasn’t plugged in,” he stated, knowing that that really didn’t summarize his point at all, but it wouldn’t matter to the captain.

  “Thank you, Engineer.”

  “I’ve got a stash of spare control circuit boards in a shielded lockbox, so I can probably get those replaced pretty quick.”

  He walked around using his link for illumination. Behind him, Melissa surveyed damage in the same manner. It was a good thing the little devices were better shielded than the rest of the room. Who would’ve known that the Scythe was so vulnerable here?

  A thought occurred to Reeves.

  “Captain, can you find out who actually put Antonio Fabregas on the science shuttle to come here? I’d asked for a technician and ended up with a random JE that I’ve never heard of.”

  “I will check into it.” She vanished from his display.

  “She’s really a lovely lady once you get to know her,” he announced to Melissa, who sighed in response.

  He knew that the captain would do her due diligence, but that could take a little while. A little while that they probably didn’t have. Reeves called Zhi on his link.

  “Hey Zhi, any problems with rabid space mammalians up there?” he asked.

  The senior technician stared at his boss implacably.

  “Great, so why don’t you keep an eye on JE Fabregas for me? How does that sound?”

  Zhi nodded imperceptibly and closed the connection on the link. An official complaint wouldn’t do a thing to a guy like Zhi, so Reeves tacked that latest slight onto the growing list of reasons why he�
�d like to punch a senior citizen in the face.

  After another minute of searching, Reeves stumbled upon the lockbox containing his spare boards. Stumbled was the right word because he fell over it and careened into a rack of tools that felt just wonderful as they clattered against his unshielded head. Melissa appeared from the gloom to help him to his feet.

  He popped open the lockbox with the touch of a finger and cursed profusely.

  It was empty. Damn it.

  “Your office!” Melissa yelped.

  “What?”

  “The boards are in your office.” The words fumbled out of her mouth faster than her tongue could process them. “You put them there to run the monthly diagnostic.”

  “Monthly what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “The monthly check of the boards, to make sure they’re still working.”

  “Oh, right. That. I’m not a fan of anything that happens once a month.” True to form, he hadn’t done that check for about four months. He started for the door, skittering some shattered plastic in the dark as he went. “You stay here, Melissa. Lock the door and watch out for space monkeys.”

  A little panicked, she blurted, “What?”

  Reeves paused in the doorway, glad to see it slide open at his approach. At least some mechanisms were properly shielded.

  “You know, just watch out for anything furry that’s playing with its banana.” In response to Melissa’s sudden glower, Reeves held up his hands. “Sounds inappropriate, yes,” he said. “We can talk to Human Resources later if the pirates don’t feed us to the nearest black hole.”

  Moments later, Reeves was back on ED3, staring at an empty work room. He’d never heard the place so quiet. It was eerie. The only sounds emanated from behind the closed engine room door. The captain wasn’t lying; she was giving the engines all they could handle, but how much time would that buy them?

  Trying not to make any noise, Reeves snuck around the small work area, searching for any of his staff. With everything else going on, he hated to admit that he was a little frightened by the stillness. This was usually about the time some bloodthirsty monster leapt out and devoured the unsuspecting engineer. Well, he was definitely suspecting, so he hoped that would grant him a free pass this one time.

  With the chills of fear tensing his muscles and possibly causing a slight shake in his knees, he wondered if he should’ve sent Melissa up here instead. Not because he’d want her to be this scared, but he imagined being left alone in the pitch black recesses of the jump drive was not too fun either, even with the door locked.

  On a whim, he tried the engine room door. Locked. He banged on it for good measure. No response from inside, but his link lit up.

  “Hey Malk, how’s it going?” he asked the Bashan. Malk’s larger-than-human eyes usually expressed all the despondence of a sad puppy, but now they only communicated anxiety.

  “Bad,” came the clipped response. Bashans were so helpfully verbose.

  “Why?”

  “Alarms.”

  “Right,” Reeves said. “You locked yourself inside because of the alarms?”

  “Yes.”

  That sounded reasonable. Reeves walked back to his office, feeling much relieved to have an employee watching his impending demise via video link. Hopefully Malk would get a kick out of it. Reeves didn’t really know much about the Bashan. Maybe his boss’s death would be considered comedic justice for all the crap Reeves had given him.

  Reeves froze at the sound of a soft, dull resonance. He shook off the creepy sensation coming over him. That definitely wasn’t the sound of the dampening thrusters kicking in because someone had forcibly docked with the Scythe. Right? He took a deep breath and got back to work, noticing now that he had a fresh wave of nervous sweat forming.

  The lockbox sat where it should be, and thankfully was still locked. Even better, Reeves found the container full of control boards for the jump drive, still freshly sealed in their anti-everything bags. Time to go make sure nothing had snuck out of a maintenance shaft and devoured Melissa, like Antonio Fabregas, who was suspiciously absent from ED3, where Reeves had hoped Zhi would keep him.

  “Malk, I’m heading back down to the jump drive to fix it,” he said. “Keep up the good work.”

  “Okay.”

  As annoying as Malk’s behavior was, Reeves could hardly blame the guy. In the Bashan society, when an engineer or technician worked on a project, usually automated systems, one of the project team received the glorious honor of enslaving his or her self to said system. For life. Reeves couldn’t imagine anything he’d designed being worthy of such a distinction. Most of his concoctions were pure, unadulterated crap. Of course, he’d never admit that to anyone, especially not Vendra.

  So in the end, every time there was a ship-wide alert of any kind, Malk would lock himself in the engine room, protecting his precious baby. The last time it had happened during a mock evacuation drill, causing quite a stir when the engine tech refused to evacuate with the rest of them. It took Reeves and Melissa, well mostly Melissa, five hours to get the little Bashan out of there.

  As soon as the link dimmed from the conversation ending, the display lit up bright with the face of Captain Sturm. Reeves answered, setting the device to project her face to a fixed point to the right side of his field of view while he gathered the necessary boards he’d need to fix the jump drive.

  “Engineer, intruders docked and forced their way onboard,” she announced in her proud, determined captain’s voice. “Security Officer Arkady reports that both O’Brien brothers were killed defending the airlock.”

  The blood thumping through Reeves’s veins ran cold at the news. The pirates were onboard. What were they going to do now? Jim and Joe O’Brien were the only security guards on the Scythe, and now they were dead. They’d been a complete pain in the ass to Reeves over the years, but the security team were the only crew members with access to guns. With only the head of security still alive, Reeves didn’t fancy their chances of defending themselves against the aggressors.

  “Wait,” Reeves said, a thought occurring to him. “Captain, how did the pirates get through the airlock?”

  “Our saboteur must’ve provided some assistance. The system doesn’t report that the airlock was breached,” she said. “It was opened, from the inside.”

  Damn it all.

  “But how did they actually dock? Aren’t we moving at full propulsion?”

  Her eyes darkened to a depth that Reeves had never witnessed before. It was actually a bit scary.

  “Their pilot has some skill,” she said evenly, but with a finality that cut off any further questions on the subject.

  “So what now, Captain?”

  “I want everyone secured and safe. Lock yourself in ED3.”

  With the pirates receiving aid from a mole onboard, Reeves wasn’t sure how good of an idea that was. Who could know how much access their traitor had now? What if all the doors just flew open?

  “Where are they now, Captain?” Reeves asked, finally finished packing up the boards.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The video feeds from most of the decks have been disabled since a few minutes before they docked.”

  How convenient. Another reason to hang Fabregas off the starboard bow by his tiny man bits.

  “In addition, Science Officer Vendra is the one who added Fabregas to the shuttle roster,” Sturm said.

  “Vendra? That doesn’t make sense. He’s a company man.”

  “Perhaps Fabregas isn’t our man, then.” After a pause, she added, “Where’s JE Nguyen?”

  “Melissa? I left her down with the jump drive.”

  “Was that wise, Reeves?”

  I’d thought so at the time.

  With no other options, Reeves felt surprisingly calm as he said, “I’m heading back down there to ED1 now.”

  “Be careful,” Sturm said, showing her softer side for only a moment. Part of Reeves had hoped that she’d order him to stand down and stay put.
“The dock is one deck below ED1. The intruders may stop off at the jump drive to make sure it’s out of commission.”

  Great.

  Reeves headed for the exit, but Captain Sturm had one more thing to add in her quest to ruin his day. “And I cannot contact any of the science team on their links.”

  Alicia. She could be in trouble.

  “Get the jump drive back up and running and I can get us out of here and into policed space in the blink of an eye.”

  Reeves thanked the captain insincerely for the information and closed the link. He had a choice to make. Downstairs to the jump drive, where a traitor could be waiting to kill him, or upstairs to the science decks where a traitor could be waiting to kill him and the woman he loved, if she wasn’t dead already.

  For lack of better weaponry options, Reeves grabbed a laser knife off of a work bench and headed out the door.

  ***

  The pitch-black corridor of Engineering Deck 1 absolutely terrified Reeves. Not daring to use his link for light, the engineer kept one hand on the wall to the exterior of the ship. The doors to the various compartments stood on the other side of the corridor, and he was pretty sure he’d defecate himself in fright if something reached out of one of those doors and grabbed him. So it was best to just stick to the other side.

  After a minute of sneaking, he guessed that he’d reached his destination. In futility, he actually looked both ways down the hall before turning on his light. What the hell was he looking for? He couldn’t have seen his hand right in front of his face.

  With the light on, he clearly saw the door to the jump drive room. He’d walked this way so many times that apparently even his petrified feet could still find the door with his eyes closed. He used his link to unlock the door before shutting the light off and proceeding. The door hissed like an exploding reactor in the thick silence of the deck.