"Frame Shift Drives and Cheap Shots" Deliverance. Part 1
12 Jul 2016Stryker Aune
Li Chong, Ostrander WorksI was in the gym. My second home, if I could call this dust speck home in the first place. My hatred for my situation had been growing, and with that, resentfulness. This is why I engage in this sport. A more productive outlet then the vandalism I had once engaged in, in my youth. The normal sounds of the gym lingered in the background: plates clinking and the occasional grunt. I was lost in the music I was listening to and the focus required to safely preforming the task. I hadn’t notice Grunt walk in. A tap on the shoulder stole me out of my concentration. I was annoyed.
“What?” I said.
Grunt was a heavy set man with buggy red shot eyes and bags under them to go with it, giving him that baleful look that so accompanies bloodhounds. His name really wasn’t Grunt. It was Robard, but I called him Grunt because of the little grunting noises he made, and he despises it.
“Your needed, Hanger two.” His voice was horse, and he had been smoking.
“Ya? I’m busy.”
“No, your not. Now get you behind over to hanger two. There’s a pilot having trouble with her FSD. She has got to finish out her shipment to who knows where.”
I shrugged. “Ya, well, Joe can fix it. Get him to do it.” I went to turn away and resume my workout, when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder. I turned my head to look at it for a moment, then shrugged it off.
“Joe’s looking at it now, and is in dispute with the pilot. Now get your butt over there.”
The frustration welled up inside of me as a growing knot in my stomach. I so hate this place. I hate this whole forsaken colony and I hate the fact that I’m stuck here. I huffed, and shook my head. “Fine.”
The walk to the hangers was a quiet one; at least on my part, though Grunt yammered the whole way about who knows what. Probably telling me to up sale this fix and whatever. I wasn’t paying attention, nor was I going to give him the courtesy of acting remotely interested in his prattle.
I entered the hanger. The hissing of the environmental jets periodically out-gassing atmosphere punctured the relative calm. I looked up at the ship and rounded my shoulders. It was a type 6 transport and had seen better days. I walked over to the access port, and made my way up into the interior. I had a familiarity with this class of ship, and thus knew where the engine room would be. I hear two voices, talking. One was Joe’s, and the others one was female. I sighed, and knocked on the bulkhead as a courtesy to announce my arrival. They both looked at me.
Joe was slim man, greasy black hair, and wholly unsavory. He had little respect women and often spoke disrespectfully about them behind their backs; even going as far as to referring to them as objects. The woman herself was pretty and a bit non-descript. She was in a jumper, and her fine brown hair was tied back. She looked me over. I was use to this. Women usually thought that bodybuilders were disgusting and narcissistic. I don’t care. It’s not about them anyway.
Joe’s oily voice was first to be heard. “Hey, Alvadar. Got a bad intermix induction servo here.”
The woman shook her head. “No, I don’t think it is. I just replaced that at the last space port. In fact, it’s been replaced twice now.” She huffed and folded her arms.
“If you know what the problem is, why did call me?” I adopted an annoyed exasperated expression.
“Because, -she- thinks it’s something else.” Joe looked smug. “It has to be the servo. There is no other explanation for the symptoms. I’ve seen this before, and it has to be that.”
The woman tapped her foot and narrowed her eyes at Joe. “I have a name. Maria. Use it.”
I looked to Maria and despite her earlier appraisal of me, I offered her my hand to shake. “Sorry, Joe’s an idiot. Alvadar.” She took it and gave it a firm shake.
“Careful now, boy.” Grunt warned. It wasn’t just the insult. He wanted me to agree with Joe’s diagnostic.
“And –his- nephew.” I removed my hand, and thumbed a gesture to Grunt. “Lets take a look.” I ran my hands over the exposed portion of the FTL, and cocked my head listening. Then I peered into the housing. “What’s it been doing?” I asked Maria as I reached further into the housing, with a bit of difficulty. One downside to having thick forearms, I thought. Hard to access tight spaces. I located the servo by touch, and I ran my hand over it. It was cold as ice.
She shifted her weight onto the other foot. “Well, when I go through the preflight checks, it acts as if it’s ready to go online, but when I preform a test diagnostic on it, running it through a simulated jump, it fails to spool.”
I listened to her and then grunted. “It’s not the servo.”
“It’s not the servo? I told you it wasn’t the servo.” Maria shot a look of piercing daggers at Joe.
He folded his arms and snottily rebutted. “Yes, it is.”
“No. It’s not.” I responded.
He questioned me. “Oh, ya? How do –you- know?”
“The servo is ice cold, meaning that the flow of hydrogen gas from the compression tanks into the intermix regulator is unimpeded. When a gas goes from high pressure, to low, it adiabatically expands, which is an endothermic process….” Joe looked even more dumb than usual. It was no use trying to explain the details. I ended up resorting to “It gets cold when it works properly.”
Maria canted her head to the side. “Well then, what is it?”
Joe narrowed his eyes at me. I knew he was pissed, and so was Grunt. They were going to try and swindle as much from this pilot as they could. I wasn’t going to play along even though I was expected to.
“This.” I said. I grabbed onto a small metal housing, and twisted it off. It gave way with a groan of bending metal as the thin retaining clamps gave way. I then took the exposed wiring and twisted it around my fingers, gave it a sharp tug and broke them clean off and handed the box to her. She was a bit surprised and not entirely ready to receive something from me, to which she fumbled. Inwardly I was amused. “It’s an emissions sensor. Not really needed and can be sporadically faulty. Its job is to monitor the unspent hydrogen, and sends a signal to the reclaimer to kick over and recirculate it back into the intermix. Kinda unnecessary and just mucks things up. These drives are pretty efficient anyway. You might see quarter, maybe a half percent increase in fuel consumption.” I then attached the grounding wire to an exposed stud on the drives housing and rewired the circuity to bypass the now missing sensor. “Boot it up.”
Maria hesitantly looked at me. I nodded. “Go ahead, boot it up.” She held the sensor in her hand awkwardly, and then found a place to set it down before scurrying up to the cockpit. I turned, and felt a fist smack me right in the side of my face. Grunt was furious; fists balled and his bright red-face a veritable volcano of rage.
“Boy! Don’t you –ever- make a fool of me or Joe again; especially in front a client.”
I winced, but made no move to strike back. I knew I had pushed it too far. I was testing, and a part of me didn’t care. I didn’t say a word.
The FSD kicked over and started to hum. In the background and through a haze of stars I could see on the diagnostics display that the system was in simulation mode. It had indicated that it was ready to make a jump. My patch job worked. As I knew it would. I turned to egress the ship. Grunt tried to lay a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged him off and walked away.
“Boy! We ain’t done here.” He called after me.
The sad thing is, I know that he will make good on that promise.
Deliverence. Part 2 >>
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