8.
Brook should be officially on
duty now, but with the most pressing of the jobs successfully under way by her
drones – the fact that none of which were reporting jammed hatches was a
pleasant surprise - she found herself drawn back to the out of bound corridors
from earlier that day. They covered a fare amount of floorspace considering how
small the crew section was compared to the size of the overall ship.
She went back
to the junction where she'd seen the spyder flash past, but this time went in
the direction it had come from. This meant she was headed towards the edge of
the crew quarters, the final corridor before the ship gave way to the vacuum of
the main-bay and engines. Around here were mainly store rooms with various bits
of tech, equipment or supplies that
didn't respond well to be stored in the cold of the main-bay. The machine shop
was a little further down the corridor, but outside of where the exclusion had
been in force. Nevertheless, Brook wondered if maybe the Sergeant had seen
anything given that cantankerous old bag could often be found pottering in the
machine shop.
Brook was
absent mindedly brushing her hand along the wall of the corridor while the Trax
carried her slowly by. Something wasn't right. She stopped the Trax and
disconnected it while she looked around. There weren't any busted open hatches
or scorch marks that would obviously indicate a spyder at work, but still
something was nagging at her. She drifted back past the wall and closed hatches
she'd been running her hand across. Nothing obvious. She put her hand back on a
hatch, then another, then another. It was warm. Brook lent in close, sniffed.
Fresh polymer. The door was new, Brook scratched a nail along a small section
of it and was able to leave a slight indentation. So it had maybe been fabricated
an hour or two ago. What was it the door to? Brook called up the ship plan
once again.
****misc sanitary supplementary equipment store b4*****
****misc sanitary supplementary equipment store b4*****
Why would
someone want to rip a door off a cleaning product storeroom? Anyone with even
the most basic clearance could enter the room, Brook included. Also, why would
they then go to such an effort to replace it? Try to think like a detective Brook told herself. She then told
herself to grow up and stop playing detectives. But she was also suffering from
an annoying sense of dissatisfaction at not immediately knowing the answer.
That's why she loved her job in engineering. It was a job were problems could
be solved and 99 times out of 100 she could solved them without breaking a
sweat (the other 1 required the crowbar and some sweat). Problem solving came
naturally to her. So could she turn that into something that would help her
here?
She pinged
the unlock request to the door and it opened with that familiar swish. She
pulled herself gently into the store room, lights flicking on, illuminating two
lines of shelves, a variety of products stowed for zero g transportation. This
was the room the cleaning drones would come to restock in for those stains that
just wouldn't shift. She imagined that this room was in frequent use when that
creep Si requested a cabin clean.
A message
icon started blinking at the edge of her vision. With a flare of frustration
she opened it; it had better not be another stuck engineering drone. It wasn't.
Systems AI wanted to know why she'd entered the room she was currently standing
in, to remind her that the room entry request was logged and that any supplies
used had to be properly catalogued with the stock control AI.
A smile
worked its way onto Brook's face. She didn't have the level of authorisation
needed to check out the room entry logs, but she was confident that they would
show no entry requests during the time that the corridors were out of bounds.
You don't need to make an entry request if you've got a freaking spyder. Those
things don't need to knock.
The smile
quickly turned into another frown as Brook realised that this development just
brought with it a fresh set of questions. If you can hack drone control and
Trax management to the extent that you can steal a spyder, mark a quarter of
the crew quarters out of bounds and then rip open a door, why couldn't you just
hack the room entry request log if you want to get into somewhere without
detection? And why the heck would you go to all that effort to enter a cleaning
cupboard?!
Brook drifted
down between the shelves, looking for anything out of place. As if she would
even know that something was out of place, having never been in this flipping
room before. She came against the end wall of the room none the wiser. The
smell of the fresh polymer had drifted down to meet her, almost as if to poke
fun at her inability to solve the mystery. Brook grunted, pushed off the end
wall and floated back to the hatchway. With one last confused look into the
store room she let the door slide shut as she reconnected her Trax for the next
leg of her investigations.
The machine
room was the largest of the spaces in the crew section of the ship. About twice
as large as the canteen (and four or five larger than the moribund gym) it was
roughly square with the heavy tools arranged around the perimeter and a few
sparse workbenches in the central section. The walkways between the tools and
benches were about two metres across to enable the larger engineering drones to
manoeuvre around. At the far end of the room was the polymer synthesis
facility. It looked a little bit like a large bath, albeit a bath filled with a
molten greenish polymer; the occasional bubble gave it the feel of some sort of
modern day witch's cauldron. A range of articulated drone arms hung above it,
ready to pull out or manipulate whatever concoction the large computer terminal
next to it had fed in as a design.
Brook's
intention was to investigate the computer terminal, see if she could work out
when the new hatchway had been requested, and even better, who did the
requesting. However, as with so many best laid plans, Sergeant Gumelar got in
the way. Brook was considering turning round and abandoning her quest, but it
was too late; the sergeant had spotted her.
"And
what brings the little grease weasel to my lair?" the Sergeant looked up
from the workbench she had been bent over working, although her boots remained
clamped into the zero g clips at its base.
Although the
Sergeant was an easy couple of decades older than Brook, the two had started
service on this ship at the same time. Their mutual dislike was quickly
established, Brook's stubbornness a deeply unsuitable stable-mate for the
Sergeant's aggressively direct nature. Access to the machine room was an
age-old battleground. Officially it was classified under engineering, but it
was almost a second home for the Sergeant.
"This
is, er, my, er lair, just as much as it is yours" said Brook tentatively
"I need to, er, run some diagnostics"
"Why not
send a drone?" the Sergeant enquired, "like you usually do" the
intimation was pointed
"Effective
drone management is essential for efficiency" Brook could kick herself for
sounding so much like the PR AI. Sergeant Gumelar just smiled.
"I'm
trying to weld a 3.0 gage aluminium rod to a nano-carbonite two ply composite.
The SIG weld is hot enough, so why isn't it taking?"
"Er"
The
Sergeant's grin grew wider, Brook's now almost permanent frown hardened
"Did you
de-ionise the rod? This close to the main engine we get heck of a lot of static"
The
Sergeant's grin turned into a look of understanding; she slowly nodded. Her
eyes flicked down and left, hand dancing
"Good
point, and without accessing the central engineering repository. Maybe you
aren't losing your edge after all" although this was praise by the
Sergeant's standards, it was also designed to rankle Brook
"Why
would I need the central repository for some quite so elementary" Brook retorted, the Sergeant had pushed just a
little too far this time "And stop hacking my access files"
"I'll
hack what the bastard weasel I want to" the Sergeant snarled
Another
retort half formed in Brook's mind, but then another thought promptly
shouldered it out of the way. Someone
capable of high level hacks, familiar with the machine shop for rebuilding
doors, as well as knowing how to run a drone; I think we have a number one
suspect. Brook smiled. This must have unsettled the Sergeant who unclipped
herself and pushed off towards Brook.
"You got
a problem, girl?" the Sergeant
enquired when just half a metre away.
"Quite
the opposite" responded Brook "I just can't help but seem to solve
problems" the smile remained
"Well, the
next problem you're going to have is what to do when you wake up vac-suitless
in an airlock" the Sergeant drifted a little closer, coffee breath washing
over Brook
"When
are you going to understand that you can't intimidate me like you do your
little chump marines" Brook leant towards the Sergeant and whispered
"I'm on to you. I don't know what you're up to, but I will find out. So
you can take your flipping spyder and stuff it right up your saggy old
bum"
"What in
the weasel fucking shit dolphin are you on about girl?" the Sergeant's
look, while still angry now mixed in to puzzlement, but Brook didn't see it as
she'd turned to head back out of the room.
Brook had to
fight the urge to do a celebratory dance at the hatchway, another mystery
solved AND she was going to mess up the Sergeant's plans. She just had to
figure out what those plans were now, but that was a minor issue. The point was
that she'd got to Gumelar - the Sergeant only swore about dolphins when she was
cataclysmicly angry.
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