Athena Lee Chronicles 7: The Martian Inheritance (8 page)

“How do you mean?”

“According to Ensign Ellery, one of my old crew, the Commander only cared about perfect IG inspections. Everything looks really good on the outside. But if you look inside, …it’s scary sir. I’m really surprised that this ship managed to jump. It’s bad! They’ve only been maintaining the outside of things not the inside. When the order came down to ready the ship he must have panicked.”

“Well he is no longer under house arrest. Now he’s now in the brig!”

The captain could barely contain his fury. “Can we trust the rest of the engineering crew?”

“I’m not sure, Sir. I have a meeting at 1000 hours for all the members of engineering. I plan on laying down the law and changing the his rules. Engineering is extremely pretty right now. I’m a woman and even I think it’s not right. We can’t tear into the jump engines in the middle of a jump but we are going to inspect and do full tear-downs on every other piece of equipment we have in the meantime. And by the time we get to Mars everything should be OK. My plan is to have my crew tear down the jump engines as soon as they cool down.”

“Wow, you’re really jumping in with both feet!”

“Pretty much, sir.”

“Commander Huggins here is going to assign a guard to engineering. We’ll use the cover story of needing extra security for the deployment. But his real job will be to help you if you find another saboteur.”

I thought for a moment. “Yes, Sir. We can do that. Have a Marine show up for the meeting in the morning so they can start getting used to him or her being there.”

“That sounds good. Go get some rest commander.”

I felt like one of those Old Earth Vid zombies as I walked back to my quarters. Sleep could not come soon enough.

__

Loud music woke me up. “Goood mooorniiing Athena Lee!”

Great flaming meatballs the little terrorist was at it again! Almost every morning back on my station he did this sort of crap. “I’m up, I’m up! Turn off the frakking music!”

The music volume turned down to low. I missed most of the words but a woman was singing about a ‘groove.’ I could agree with that. When I was in the ‘groove’ I did my best work. Dar was waiting for me in the cafeteria at 0800 for breakfast.

“Hi sweetie,” I gave her a half hug and sat down next to her. I really wanted to give her a big kiss but that was against regs. ‘How is all the training going?”

“So far so good. My guys are the best. Commander Huggins has a few good moves. His crew is top notch, they’ll provide good support if we need them.”

“Good, I’m glad things are working out for you. I assume you know about the state of engineering?”

“Yes, I was briefed. It’s a good thing that you caught him.”

I leaned towards her. “Dar, promise me that you’ll be extra careful on this ship. Chief Erlang did the bare minimum when it came to maintenance. Don’t trust the equipment until I can get a crew to look at everything.”

“Was it really that bad?” She looked concerned.

“It’s pretty bad. The Captain was very luck I was on board for this trip. If he had taken this ship into battle? I doubt it would have survived” My link alerted me that I needed to go.

“I have to go, hon.” Regulations be dammed, I bent down and gave her a kiss. “Take care, I’ll catch up to you later.”

My alarm was set to tell me when it was 0900 hours. I really wanted to be in the office early. Both to start exploring the potential mess this was going to be and to set a standard of good work habits with my new people.

Surprisingly quite a few of my staff were already present when I entered engineering. I smiled at them as I walked into my new office. Everything gleamed a little too much in there. The now former Chief Engineer had what I like to call an ‘I love me wall’ on not one but two of the walls. Plaques, pictures, and certifications were predominant in the mass of self - edification. Many of these sorts of displays are all fiction, the officers legends only in their own minds. Having an underling ‘gin up’ an award in the machine shop was actually fairly common. Basic rule of thumb, take all of it with a block of salt. The desk was new. My old one had been original to the ship and had that nice well worn feeling with all the sharp edges sanded off. This one must have cost a freaking fortune to move up here. Who really needs a marble topped desk on a battle cruiser?

“Wilson, start digging into Erlang’s bank accounts. Some of these office features are not standard and look very expensive.” Looking out my office window, I spotted Ellery and yelling at the too of my lungs, “Ellery! Get in here!”

She had a big smile on her face as she entered the office. Just like old times. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Stop smiling Ellery. We have work to do.” I immediately disregarded my own words and smiled back at her. “Round up a few crew members you can trust and after the meeting get them in here. I need to tear this place apart and box up half of this ‘I love me’ crap. Find my old desk, too. This monstrosity has to go.”

“Yes, Ma’am. Good to have you back, Ma’am.”

By the time it was 1000 hours, I had the old ugly ass desk piled high with useless hard copy reports. Who keeps all this crap? I had Wilson check for me. There were copies in the computer. It was just for some reason the man liked paper. Hydroponics was about to like me when we dropped off all this carbon. Who knew there was this much on board? I got up from the desk and walked out to the main room.

“Ellery, get their attention please.” She stuck her fingers in her mouth and blew a shrieking whistle.

I dragged one of the flat bottomed office chairs over and stood up on it. “Now that I have your attention: My name is Commander Athena Lee. I was the acting - Chief Engineer here when this ship was still in Imperial service. Since then I have been the Chief on the Freedom Station. To answer your questions, before you ask: Yes, I was the one that stopped the asteroid by hitting it with the station. Your former Commander Agnar Erlang has been arrested and charged with deliberate sabotage and disobeying a direct order.”

“I am currently on a mission, but the Captain has asked me to take over this area temporarily. I run a tight ship. Ask Ensign Ellery, she’s served with me before. Take this as a warning: if anyone here had anything to do with or helped Erlang in his sabotage? Forget what the navy will do to you. You better hope I don’t catch you.” I looked the crowd over. Most were paying attention, only a couple were looking around as if to escape. Those were the ones I need to watch.

“New rules. If it’s dirty, clean it, but not till it gleams. If a piece of machinery is in here, it needs to function more than it needs to be shiny. I took a look inside the impulse engines yesterday. You all should be ashamed or yourselves! The Captain’s door is always open. If you see a safety hazard, freaking tell someone! We are all literally in this ship together. Act like it.”

“Now! Guess what? We have a shit-ton of work ahead of us. I will post a new schedule in a hour, but we are going to tear-down every piece of equipment on this ship, clean it and repair whatever is broken. Personally, if I have to take this ship into battle, I would like to be able to shoot back. Don’t worry I’ll be right in there with you. When we get to Mars we’ll even tear-down the jump engines. I
will
let them cool down first. Now lets get to work.” I hopped down from the chair.

“Ellery, take your people and pack up all the Commander’s crap. Gather up all the hard copies and dump them on hydroponics. They can always use the carbon. If you find anything strange, set it aside for me or if it’s really bad give it to the Marine.” I pointed out the silent shadow standing by the wall.

“He has been assigned to us in case of any trouble. Now let’s get to work!”

Chapter 11

To be a great engineer all you need is the right amount of motivation mixed with confidence in your craft. Many of these crew members had all of that and more. They just needed a firm hand to guide them on their chosen path in life. It’s funny how that statement applies to me, too.

Engineering was starting to look ‘right.’ At least to me. Most of the shiny had worn off as we tore into the equipment. What we found was disgraceful! We all could have been killed. This man had been teaching children! I had to shake my head to clear it. His negligence just boggled my mind.

I was sitting on the edge of ‘MY’ desk staring out the window at the busy bees. Everything was shaping up. Fortunately, some maintenance
had
been done in vital area’s like life support and the water reclamation plant. Wilson had run facial recognition on the people who looked like they might have been in cahoots with Erlang. Security had them under surveillance just in case. Someone had definitely been paying the former chief. Copies of the records had been sent back under our best possible encryption to be turned over to intelligence. Let them figure it out. I was finally starting to feel safe once again. The tear-down of the impulse engines was bad. From the amount of carbon buildup we figured that the last time this had been done properly was at least a year ago.

My desktop communication system suddenly sounded an alarm. There was a call from the bridge: the Captain was calling me to the bridge. We were scheduled to come out of jump any time now. Soon my real mission would begin.

“Captain, you called for me?” The bridge was alive with movement. Officers scurried here and there updating their systems and preparing for entry. According to our computers at any moment now we should be right on the edge of sector one.

“Yes Athena, and thank you again for getting engineering on the road to recovery. I had no idea that it was so bad down there. While you’re gone Commander Blomkvis will supervise engineering for you. Please get any maintenance scheduling to him before your mission starts.”

“Sir, the engines are winding down!” The Captain spun around and joined the XO next to the Navigation station. Even I could hear the whine of the engines. They were about to cut off. The ship began to vibrate slightly; so far everything was normal. Suddenly the vibration grew exponentially as the jump engines failed earlier then expected. There was a sudden jerk that threw several crewmen to the deck. Then silence, as everyone on the ship took a breath in relief.

“Navigation, where are we?”

“Sir, we stopped short but we are at Right Ascension 19.208042 and Declination -20.951198, that puts us about 200 million kilometers from Mars. We should be seeing the dwarf planet of Pluto any time now.”

“Excellent work Lieutenant Behr. How long on impulse to get to Mars orbit?”

“Sir, we should reach Mars orbit in twelve hours.”

“Commander Lee, status of the jump engines?”

I lowered my link.
“Sir, I just got off the comm with Ensign Ellery, as soon as they cool down enough she will begin a full tear down and cleaning. Whatever the problem was, we will repair it. I suspect that the injection system was clogged causing a failure.”

“Tell her good work. Time to get ready for your real mission Commander. Remember it’s dress blues for the landing party. Dismissed.”

I hurried back to engineering. There were schedules to get ready and special orders to give. “Wilson did you check out those four crewmen that we spotted?”

“Yes, Athena. I caught two of them ‘Gun-decking the safety logs’ and the other two asleep on the job.”

I stopped walking abruptly. “What? Who is ‘pencil whipping on my ship?” I’ll have their ass!” Several crewmen in the corridors were just staring at me. Nodding absently at them
,
I resumed walking. “Wilson, please tell me you messaged someone to fix the ‘work’ they did.”

“Of course. I sent Ellery a message in your name.”

“Good. Put all four on report and send the vids to security and the Captain. Tell security I want them out of my section.”

“Yes, Athena.”

It only took a moment to redo the maintenance schedules to exclude the four troublemakers. I gave Ellery careful instructions and told her to contact me with any major issues; everything else should go through the XO, Commander Blomkvis.

Being short has its advantages when your quarters are the size of a small closet. I can’t imagine how someone like Lieutenant Behr could live in one of these. It would be hell. I checked my uniform over carefully, I would be meeting diplomats and wanted to look my best. Embarrassing the Navy would be a bad start to this mission. Reaching into my trouser pocket I removed the archaic data crystal that Dad had given me. I had studied this thing for weeks. Nothing on the ship would play it. Wilson said that the code was something he was not familiar with: he could break it but doing so might erase the information. I returned it to my pocket. It might come in handy.