“The plasma relays are still overheating, sir. We had to remove them for recalibration.”
Panic and desperation infused the chief engineer’s every word. “Castellano, we ship out in less than three hours.” He pulled his hand down over his hollow-cheeked face, then roughly scratched his crown of shock-cut hair. “Lock down the phaser capacitors at seventy percent of maximum and fix the plasma relays later.”
“Aye, sir. Castellano out.”
Another blinking light captured his attention. He opened another intercom channel. “Engineering to ch’Shonnas.”
“Go ahead, sir,” said Lieutenant Thanashal ch’Shonnas, the ship’s darkly reticent Andorian science officer.
“Your status indicator just went red, Shal. What happened?”
“That fix we talked about? Didn’t take. All the crystals you sent up were burned out.”
“Bloody hell.” Concentrate on my breathing, Judge told himself. Unclench fists. “Hang tight, I’ll see what I can do. Engineering out.” He flipped a switch and opened a line to the bridge. “Engineering to Commander Milonakis.”
“This is Milonakis. What’s up, Kevin?”
“Vondy, we’re in a bind. We need your magic.”
“Name it,” Milonakis said.
The chief engineer relaxed a little. Milonakis knew someone on every base and starship in the fleet, and the XO had a particular knack for trading and bartering. If anyone could find what the Bombay needed on short notice, it would be him.
“Regulator crystals for the sensor array,” Judge said. “All our spares are fried, and our main is cracked…. Mayday.”
“All right, I’m on it. Milonakis out.” The bridge channel clicked off.
For a moment, Judge thought he might have put out the last of the metaphorical fires plaguing his third consecutive shift without a break. Then he turned and found himself chin-to-snout with Lieutenant Loak, one of the more gratingly overeager junior officers on the Bombay engineering staff. Something looked different about him.
“Loak, why is your hair pink?”
“Long story, sir.”
“No doubt. What’s up?”
“Ensign Anderson informs me that you’ve postponed the repairs to the impulse control,” Loak said.
“That’s right,” Judge said. “You got a beef with that?”
“Certainly not a personal one, Commander,” Loak said. “But until we complete these repairs, we will be at less than sixty-three percent efficiency in maneuvers at half-impulse, and strenuous full-impulse maneuvers could overload the system.”
“I appreciate that, Loak, really I do. But you might notice we’re a little short of manpower down here tonight.”
“Sir, we cannot postpone this until after departure. Once the impulse system is engaged, we will be unable to make further repairs to these systems.”
“I’m aware of that,” Judge said. “I do know how engines work, you know. But we’re putting this boat back together with spit and promises right now, so we can ship out on an emergency milk run. We’ll be back in six days. Fix it then.” He shooed Loak away as he would a small animal that had overstayed its welcome. “Off you go.”
The Tellarite sulked as he stomped away. Judge looked around main engineering. At a monitoring station next to his main console, Engineer Donna Ford was cross-checking the warp power readouts against the rated norms listed on a chart in her hand. Ensign Robertson—whose first name, by coincidence, was also Donna—stood next to her, observing but not doing much else that Judge could see.
“Robertson, what are you doing?”
“Supervising,” she said, with a naïveté that Judge found endearing only when he encountered it in attractive young women.
“That’s lovely,” he said. “Why don’t you supervise recalibrating the alignment of the dilithium crystals? And you can do it yourself, to make sure it’s done properly.”
She glared at him with wounded pride, then walked toward the main warp reactor. “Yes, sir.”
He flashed a reassuring smile at the enlisted woman. “Ford, is it?”
She looked afraid, like a small woodland creature in a spotlight. “Yes, sir.”
“Ford, I’d like you to do a favor for me. Find Cargo Chief Hayes and tell him that if he doesn’t find our missing duotronic cables, I can’t guarantee that his quarters will continue to enjoy the benefits of working lights, ventilation, or plumbing.”
“Aye, sir,” the young woman said, and started toward the turbolift.
“Oh, and Ford? On your way back, stop by the mess hall and pick me up a spot of tea and some biscuits.” Remembering the subtle shades of mistranslation between her American dialect and his own, he shouted out a clarification before the turbolift doors closed. “And by biscuits, I mean cookies!”
A shrill voice came from behind him and cut like a knife. “Cookies? Is junk food all you eat?” Judge turned toward the scolding like a skipper steering his boat into a storm wave. Dr. Hua Sun Lee had snuck up on him to deliver one of her patented harangues. “No wonder you skipped your physical again. With a diet like yours, you must be an infarction waiting to happen.”
“I really don’t have time for this.”
“Five! That’s how many times you’ve made an appointment to take your physical and haven’t shown up! Five!” Physically, Dr. Lee was a tiny woman, but she had a temper and a voice that could overpower a charging bull.
Judge handed her his checklist. “It’s on my list, Doctor. Unfortunately, so are four dozen other critical items, all of which need to be resolved before we ship out in”—he checked the chronometer—“two hours and fifty-six minutes.” Despite his inner voice telling him to remain calm, he felt himself grow more hysterical by the moment. “I’ve got a mess hall whose food slots haven’t been restocked. I have a main sensor array that, for no reason I can possibly fathom, is suddenly blind to the element carbon. My engineering team seems committed to disassembling anything that still works, the cargo chief misplaced all my spare parts, and I haven’t slept in over twenty-five hours. I’ve seen naught but this compartment, the inside of that turbolift, and my own quarters for the past eleven months.” His desperation turned to bitter sarcasm. “So I apologize if I’ve inconvenienced you, Doctor, but, as you might have noticed, I have a few petty details to attend to at the moment.”
Dr. Lee frowned up at Judge and shot him the most venomous stink-eye stare he had ever seen. “All I ask is that you cancel appointments you can’t keep.” She turned, walked a few steps, then spun back. “Tomorrow at 1700 hours?”
His smile wasn’t the least bit sincere. “That would be lovely.”
“Show up this time.”
“Understood.”
Lee nodded once, affirming that the discussion was over. She walked away, through a gaggle of junior computer engineers who all were scrambling in a panic toward Judge. “Sir!” shouted Lieutenant Kashuk. “The library computer is offline!”
It was like Judge’s worst nightmare during his Academy days. “What? How?”
“We were running a standard optimization cycle after we installed the database upgrade, and—”
“Upgrade? I didn’t order any bloody upgrade.”
Kashuk and the others traded embarrassed looks. “We downloaded it from Vanguard.”
A sick churning feeling spun through Judge’s gut. “Tell me you didn’t install the Sigma Seven utility with it.”
More downcast eyes told him the worst was true: They had tried to load software that hadn’t yet been backward-engineered for the Bombay’s Mark II computer core. “Let me guess,” he said. “It’s locked in diagnostic mode and isn’t accepting input.” Dismayed nods all around. “Unbelievable! Who do you people work for? I thought we were on the same side. Show of hands: How many of you are paid saboteurs?”
“We’re sorry, sir,” Kashuk said. “We should have read—”
“Forget it,” Judge said, slipping into problem-solving mode. “Pull the plug on the main core, interrupt main power and cut off its backup battery, then do a full restart. Go!”