Full Share Part 5

"Okay, Ishmael," he said. "I need you to focus, just like this is a test."

I don't know what was more disturbing, seeing him sc.r.a.pe a pile of toasted circuit boards off a console and onto the deck, or the fact that he used my first name.

"Set it up there and get it booted." He handed me a cube. "This is the minimum ShipNet code. I want you to run it."

I let my brain sink into the task at hand. All the stuff going on around me faded out as I focused. I mounted the cube and recognized the language and realized my computer could not read it. "I'll need ten ticks, I have to make some changes," I said without looking up and without waiting for permission.

"You have eight."

I did it in five and booted the ShipNet on my portable. It crashed, but I found the error and tried again. The second time it stayed up. I sat back and watched as displays across the bridge winked to life. I heard people laughing and some cheering before a short word from the captain restored quiet efficiency to the bridge. I looked up and around then, with that feeling like I was surfacing from one of my ratings exams. Mr. von Ickles looked down at me with a big grin.

"Did I pa.s.s?" I asked.

"Congratulations, Mr. w.a.n.g, you are now certified spec two in systems and, if we live, I will so note in your personnel jacket," he said with a laugh.

"If we live-" I started to say and then noticed the forward port. A planet filled the view and the captain's words, "ballistic trajectory," came back to me. I turned back to the portable and took a quick status of the system. The network pushed the portable hard, but without the big databases and other ancillary information it managed the load. With the portable serving as the central routing hub secondary hubs across the ship came online and began distributing the processing.

It seemed to be going well then I noticed the battery status. "Power, sar. I need to plug this in or the battery will go within a stan."

He pointed to a receptacle just inside the console. It looked like somebody had just ripped the panel out. I reached down, plugged in the portable, and watched the indicator shift from drain to charge. The extra power gave the processor another jolt, kicking it out of low power mode and it started to gain ground on the backlog of queued commands.

I pulled out my tablet and brought up my environmental watch stander display. CO2 was up. Particulates were up. O2 was a little low but within parameters. I brought up the sensor overlay used during VSIs and ran an all-node query, watching as they flashed in order. Three of them were out near the port bow section but all the rest were operational.

"Sar? Request permission to report to Brill?" I said to Mr. von Ickles.

He glanced at my tablet and said, "Her tablet should be live too. Bip her with it. Any problems?"

I shook my head, "No, just we have some sensors off-line on the port bow. I want to get them logged so we can add them to the queue. The rest they'll see on the big console down there."

The acknowledgment came back almost instantly.

"Got it!" Mr. Kelley almost shouted from across the bridge.

Mitch Fitzroy crawled out from under a console with a sooty smear across the top of his face and a big smile across the bottom.

I noticed the captain for the first time when she said, "Bring us about, helm. Yaw ninety degrees port, flat."

The helmsman replied with a crisp, "Yaw ninety degrees port, flat, aye, sar," and the big planet outside the front port began to slide off to starboard.

"Mr. Kelley, if you could provide a small vector adjustment so we miss that planet, I'd be grateful," the captain said with a wry smile.

"Aye, aye, Captain. All ahead full and d.a.m.n the red lines," he replied.

There was a slight moving-lift sensation in my inner ear and as it faded so did the tension on the bridge.

"Have we sufficient fuel, Mr. Kelley?" the captain asked.

"Yes, Captain. We'll miss it. Although you may want to straighten the ship as we go by so the stern doesn't b.u.mp," he said.

The way everybody chuckled at that, I a.s.sumed it was a joke.

Mr. von Ickles grabbed a roll of tape and ran a couple of strips across the portable so it wouldn't slide off the console, being careful not to cover any critical heat vents or data ports.

Then he patted me on the shoulder and said, "Come on, Mr. w.a.n.g. I've got another little test for you." Over his shoulder he said, "We're headed over to Systems Main, Captain."

"Thank you, Mr. von Ickles. Carry on."

He left at a near trot and I followed right behind him. Systems Main was right under the bridge. I don't know what I was expecting, but certainly something larger than we ended up at. It was the size of a closet-a walk-in one, but still a closet.

"Follow your nose, Mr. w.a.n.g," he said. "There's at least one burned board down here. We need to find and replace it."

He started opening panels and sniffing on one side, so I started on the other. It was tight but we worked side by side. The fourth door I opened, I didn't need to smell. I saw a puff of smoke get sucked out by the back draft from opening the door. "Found one. Or two," I said.

Mr. von Ickles stepped up beside me and squeezed down to look in. "Yup. Phew. I hate that smell."

He unclipped a couple of latches and the interior of the cabinet rolled out. He showed me where to release the door hinge so it would fold back against the next door and we were able to see the entire rack at once. There were about thirty-five cards mounted in the rack. At least half of them were scorched.

"Looks like it got a little hot in here," he said. "I wonder why. Okay We need to pull all this c.r.a.p out and replace them. It's part of the main ShipNet communication array and probably the reason the net is down. The network routers need these controllers to stay in sync across all the peripheral systems."

"My portable is carrying all this?" I asked.

He laughed. "No, your computer is carrying just enough for the control systems to talk to the instrumentation. There's no supporting databases and half the instruments on the ship are reporting a malfunction just because the data they need for calibration isn't available. Lesson later. Parts now."

"Tell me what to do."

"Move over," he said, and slid on his back under the drawer and out beside my feet. "The power bus is the blue cable in the back. Pull it and that'll take power off this cage."

I found it, released the safety catch, and unplugged it. A sizzling I hadn't been aware of stopped.

"Good. Now pull the cards. All of them and toss 'em out in the pa.s.sage so they're not underfoot. Don't worry about breaking them. I'm going to get replacements and pray we have the full set." He looked again down into the cage. "We should. Most of these are standard router and comm boards." He smiled at me. "I love standardized parts! Now don't just stand there. The clock is ticking. I need you to keep treating all this like a test and focus."

And with that, he ran out of the closet.

I turned to the rack and took a quick look at the layout in the cage. I found the releases and started pulling them. Some were pretty hot, but I had the cage cleared and even released it from its slides and shook out the residue as best I could. It looked pretty clean except for the scorch marks around three of the sockets and along the upper rails. I was just locking it back down when Mister von Ickles came in with a pile of cards in static-proof envelopes stacked like firewood in his arms. He thrust them at me and slid under the case again.

"Gimme that one right on top, please," he said, and I handed him the card. He had a belt knife that made short work of the protective covers and he mounted it in the middle of the cage. "Nice work clearing away," he muttered as he seated the card and clipped the latch down. "Next card."

I handed him card, after card, after card. Each one he clipped in with precision and efficiency. Slice, position, mount, seat, clip, next. We went through the pile so fast I barely had time to get a grip on one before he called for the next. He reached back, plugged in the power cord, and locked it down. With a nod of his head we grabbed our respective sides and slid the rack back into the bulkhead.

"One down," he said. "See if there are any more."

We found four more cabinets with damaged cards but nothing as extensive as the first. It took less than half a stan to go through the whole closet and we were pretty confident nothing else was toasted. We backed out and he pointed to a big green b.u.t.ton mounted just inside the door with the word reset on it. "You want to do the honors?" he asked.

"Do we need to take the portable down first?"

He shook his head. "The ship's system will detect it. It'll be fine."

I shrugged and pressed the green b.u.t.ton hard.

"Not that one!" Mr. von Ickles yelled.

I jumped about a foot but the b.u.t.ton had already lit and glowed green. I could hear the fans powering up in the closet. I looked at him and I'm sure my expression was just as bad as I felt.

"You're fine, sorry. I was just trying to lighten things up," he said with a grin and we both started laughing. "Come on, let's go see how the folks upstairs are doing."

We returned to the bridge and I could see that things had calmed down. The network displays were all up, and only a couple had blinking red highlights.

"Report, Mr. von Ickles," the captain said.

"Systems Main operational, Captain. There was some serious burning in the network bus cabinet. Best hypothesis is the EMP started a cascade and the network took it the hardest."

"I thought we were hardened against that occurrence, Mr. von Ickles," she said.

"We are but it happened anyway. Either the hardening isn't as hard as we thought, or the EMP was stronger than the rated specs."

"ShipNet status?" she asked.

"Cabinet is hot. Net should be live, but I haven't had a chance to inventory the systems. We may yet find some surprises."

"Carry on, Mr. von Ickles."

"Aye, Captain."

We stepped back to where my portable was taped to the console. I could see in the status display for the ShipNet software that a lot more nodes were up and the main system had taken the load. Almost nothing was being routed through the portable anymore.

I turned to Mr. von Ickles and asked, "Do you want to keep this up here until the repairs are completed, sar?"

He looked at it and then at me. "Actually, I'd feel safer if we shut it down and stowed it in a grounded locker. Say, one in engineering berthing." He raised his eyebrow at me to see if I understood his message.

"In case that wasn't the only stray EMP, sar?"

"Exactly so, Mr. w.a.n.g. Exactly so."

I shut down the portable, removed the program cube, and peeled it off the counter. I tried to hand the cube to Mr. von Ickles but he said, "Why don't you store that with the portable? Just in case."

"Are you certain, sar?" I asked. "This is important code."

He laughed at that. "I think it might be safer with you than me. Just keep it locked up. It can't hurt to have a backup."

I shrugged. "Aye, sar. Anything else I can help you with, sar?"

"I think saving the ship is enough for one day, Mr. w.a.n.g. Why don't you go stow that, and see if you can give Ms. Smith a hand in environmental. You're dismissed, Mr. w.a.n.g."

"Aye, sar. Thank you, sar."

"Thank you, Mr. w.a.n.g," he said.

I headed back to environmental. If nothing else, I would get a few more days aboard while we made the long pa.s.s around the back side of the planet and finished our emergency repairs.

Chapter Seven.

Betrus System

2352-June-04

The ship was settling down. I could feel it as I left the bridge and headed to drop off the portable and program cube in my locker. It was nothing I could put my finger on-more of a general sense. The pa.s.sageways were still using emergency lighting, which meant the main reactors and generators remained offline. Given the burning in the data cabinets, I was hoping they stayed that way until everything could be thoroughly checked. I didn't fancy having a reactor lose containment just two hundred meters away.

I was feeling almost chipper when I stepped back through the hatch into environmental. But the smell hit me the moment I entered.

"What's the matter?" I asked as I opened the hatch.

Brill, Diane and Francis were gathered around the console. It was still running diagnostics. They looked up when I spoke and Brill said, "What do you mean? The ship's had EMP damage."

"No, what smells?" I asked.

Diane laughed. "It's environmental. It's supposed to smell."

Brill frowned and straightened up, testing the air with her nose. "He's right. The smell is off."

Diane said, "Can't be. Most of the smell comes from the scrubbers, and I checked them when I first got here."

"Check them again," Brill ordered.

While Diane and Brill went off to check the scrubber cabinets, I turned to the console. "Something wrong with it?"

Francis shook his head. "Nothing. Just waiting for ShipNet."

"ShipNet is up. I just came from the bridge."

He looked startled and punched the reset to kill the diagnostic run. The console came up with the standard displays. Water was good. Air was good. CO2 was climbing. Not a lot but definitely on the rise.

"Brill?" Francis called.

I heard Diane say, "Uh, oh."