Murphy... part 3
04 May 2017Da5id Weatherwax
After my little "discussion" with those station punks turned wannabe revolutionaries, I managed a whole day where nobody wanted to mess with me. It wasn't until the middle of alterwatch, with most of the station asleep, before I heard Murphy giggling again.I was asleep too, until my compad woke me. Two messages from the repair shop, sent within a minute of each other.
The replacement thruster has just been unloaded. Installation ETA to follow.
That sounded pretty good. I flipped to the next message to check what time I should be able to burn out of here. Unfortunately the second message was an automated one, generated by the shops systems as a result of a station override code.
Station admin has placed a hold on all work in all maintenance bays. Spares inventory impounded for resupply of security forces.
Now, since "spares inventory" - as of a minute before that second message was entered - included the replacement for Noodle's number 2 main which had been wrecked by a screwup in the shop, I'm sure you can imagine my mood at the time. Over the years I've spent in the black I've sort of absorbed enough of five human languages to at least curse in them, simply because that was most of the vocabulary in those languages which I'd heard employed in various engineering spaces or just before the fists and bottles started flying in some dive or other. As I pulled on my clothes, I took a few minutes to review that education.
What I wanted to do was strap on my hardware, head down to the shop and do a little forceful "insisting" that MY engine got mounted in MY ship.If it had been the same one I flew in here with, I'd probably have got away with it. Unfortunately for that approach there was this little legal technicality. The one I flew in here with, the shop had cracked the primary casing by miscalibrating the test rig so they were on teh hook to replace it. All well and good, but until I signed off, the replacement wasn't technically mine, it still belonged to the shop until I accepted the work. I needed an alternative strategy.
My first thought was to tell the shop "ok, forget fixing it. Gimme a credit chip for the cost of a new thruster, a passenger ticket and a delivery charge, I'll have her shipped out as-is and get it done elsewhere" There were three reasons why I didn't like that one. In the first place, since the shop had already paid for their screwup by ordering the new thruster at their expense I was doubtful they'd be willing to go for a solution that cost them the same again and then tacked on the cost of sending both me and my ship elsewhere. The second was that I'd be trusting the station admin not to lock down the shipyard too. The third was that I really didn't like flying as a passenger. When I traveled I'd always much rather I knew and trusted the pilot with their hands on the controls. Preferably it would be the same pilot I saw in the mirror every morning. I spent the time required to punch up something tasty from the breakfast menu thinking about it. There aint many dilemmas that you can't get a little more clarity on with the aid of bacon, waffles and decent coffee. After I'd finished refueling the body, I had the glimmerings of an idea. I pulled out my compad and placed a call to the shop owner.
"Yeah. Sorry to bug you so early. I take it you've seen the latest auto?"
"I have. Not a lot I can do about it though. If I object too loudly they pull my license and shut me down."
"Just hypothetically, what would you do if an audit showed a thruster module missing from your inventory?"
"I'd have to report it, of course. We don't inventory big items like that too often, though. You couldn't transfer anything that size without it showing up in station records or without a ship already docked to fly it out..."
Ha. He was thinking along the same lines I was. I was starting to really like this guy, even though it was one of his socket-jockeys had wrecked my engine. My compad pinged with an encrypted attachment to our conversation.
"I'm sorry, Commander, but if I said I could get you back in flight under the current circumstances I'd be wearing rose colored glasses. My techs are locked out from the dock for at least two days while I get this sorted out."
"Fair enough. I'll offload enough kit from my ship that I won't get in anyone's way later today."
"Appreciate it, Commander."
The thing is, we both knew that when this kind of lockdown was imposed the station was monitoring everything that passed on their internal comnet. The attachment he'd sent me was titled "Revised Maintenance Schedule" - and looked like it if decrypted with my personal key. However, using "rose colored glasses" as the passphrase showed me one additional piece of data. An access code to the maintenance remotes in the bay. I was a pretty good engineer and I'd used this brand of 'bots before, so I was about to steal my own engine. All I needed was enough time in the maintenance bay between security visits.
In every three hours, there were two when no security patrols were close enough to hear the 'bots working. Actual security presence in the bay was only every other patrol, so I had a total of four hours work-time when the plods couldn't see a difference between before and after. I had my plan.
First couple of hours, I'd have the 'bots swap around my dead engine in the spares rack with the good one. Unless they walked up and looked real close, they'd never spot that. At the same time, I'd have the 'bots "clean up" the engine spaces on Noodle ready for an installation. A mechanic might spot that but your average security puke never would. After their next walkthough I'd have four hours to get Noodle flyable. I'd be leaving on one thruster, because four hours was nowhere near enough to complete all the hookups but once I parked myself somewhere out in the black I could hook everything up with the tools I had onboard.
I knew the shop owner would have to cover his arse, though. If I left any traces in his system he'd have to report the engine stolen. All I needed to do was swap the serial numbers of the two modules between the damaged one and the good one in the shop records. After that, the electronic inventory would match the eyeball version. That would take me a while, so I'd get that done before starting the actual swap. All in all I was looking at ten hours in the shop, dodging security patrols.
Walking back into the bay after the same security routine as I'd used to pick up my sidearms I looked around. I was memorizing the positions of every remote. I'd need to command them back to the same places before every security walkthrough. Noodle's power plant was still hot, in maintenance mode, so I used my own resources to establish a link to the remotes. Twenty minutes later the inventory was fixed, the engines had been exchanged in the spares racks and we were ten minutes before the next security walkthrough. I went to the bay console and signed myself out. I opened the bay hatch and left it on autoclose as I walked back to Noodle's access hatch and climbed back aboard. Shutting off the lights on the bridge I looked through the viewport waiting for security to pass through.
Just as well I was watching. Who should show up with a bight and shiny new "security" flash on his shoulder, but Travis. The spotty wrench-jock who had fucked up my engine, tried to cover it up (and, in the process probably kill me out in the black but nothing personal, right?) and here he was trying to save his ass from being blackballed everywhere in the system by signing up for the bloody revolutionary guards.
Right there and then I revised my departure schedule. This piece of shit was not going to be around to snitch on the shop owner. Amazing how "accidents" can happen in space, isn't it?
(to be continued)