Milk Run (Smuggler's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (38 page)

“It won’t have to stand up in a court of law,” Trask said, lowering his voice and glancing down the passage.

“No, but it has to survive the trip back so we can give it to Kondur.”

He grinned. “Excellent point. Carry on. Let me know if you need anything.”

She paused. “Has Mr. Lyons come back yet?”

The captain frowned and shook his head. “Neither has Charlie.”

“Think they’re related?”

He shrugged. “Not like either of them, but I’ve got no reason to think there’s trouble. Charlie has OD in the morning. If he misses that, then we have a problem.”

Natalya nodded and waved the tablet. “If you’ll excuse me, Skipper, I need to get this moving.”

He grinned and waved her away. “Go, go.”

Natalya strode down the passage and knocked on Zoya’s door.

“Who is it?”

“Nats, Zee. Got a tick?”

Natalya heard the lock thrown before Zoya opened the door. “Sure, come on in.”

Natalya scooted in past Zoya and waited while she rebolted the door. “You having problems?”

Zoya shook her head. “Not as such, no. Mr. Pritchard seems to be a regular in the passageway. It makes me a little nervous.”

Natalya shrugged. “Can’t blame you there. I spend so little time in my stateroom, I’m not sure I’ve noticed.” She held up her tablet. “I got a blank spares list from TIC.”

Zoya tilted her head to port a few degrees. “You what?”

“I got a blank spares list from TIC.” Natalya paused. “How much do you know about the spares problem?”

“You’ve got a lot of junk instead of the spares you need.”

“Right. We pushed a replenishment order to the chandlery from Moe’s.”

“I remember that. The skipper initialed it and it went through Moe’s relay.”

“Right. Then it gets weird.”

Zoya’s laugh carried more than a hint of desperation. “Really? I’m shocked. Shocked.” She sat on her bunk and nodded at the fold-out chair. “Fill me in.”

Natalya took the seat and perched on the edge of it. “I got the faulty emitter bus coupling out of the bus array in the spine. Checked the part number on it and it’s different from the one we ordered.”

“Uh oh. What did you order?”

“An emitter bus coupling rated for the new Burleson Kyoryokuna drives.”

Zoya sat up at that and her eyes all but bugged out of her head. “A Zeta? They’re real? I thought they were just academy scuttlebutt.”

“Nobody’s seen one yet, but the spares are already in circulation, apparently.”

“Manchester must be close to shipping one of the new megas.”

“Or already has,” Natalya said.

Zoya grinned. “That’s not possible. If they had, it would have been on every newsie in Confederation space.”

Natalya pursed her lips and waited for Zoya.

“What?” Zoya asked.

Natalya waited.

Zoya’s eyes got even bigger. “No.”

Natalya shrugged. “Makes an odd kind of sense.”

“Somebody in Toe-Hold space has a mega?”

“Somebody in Toe-Hold space has had a mega for rather a long time. Months, maybe.”

Zoya frowned. “No, that makes zero sense. Why?”

“Prototype? They needed someplace to shake out the bugs in the design before they rolled it out to the big guns?”

“Why would they do that? I’d think the PR they got from putting a few of them out in the public eye would be huge.”

“What if the design’s not solid?” Natalya asked. “This is new stuff. The Kyoryokunas are completely new technology. Manchester’s been trying to beat that five-hundred-metric-kiloton threshold for decades. They develop a new tech that does it but they keep the lid on it.”

“Not a very tight lid.”

Natalya shook her head. “We don’t know that. We don’t know when they might have developed it and if there’s a working prototype out there? That kind of work takes a lot of time and a massive yard. Manchester’s yards are all very public. Where would you build these?”

Zoya started to shake her head but stopped and stared at Natalya. “Toe-Hold.”

“Right, and you’d have to keep it quiet there. You’d almost need a new Toe-Hold to do it in to keep the chatter down.”

“You think that’s where those clowns that kept stinking up Odin’s Outpost came from?”

“I don’t know. That’s certainly a possibility. You’d think an outfit like Manchester wouldn’t be flying faulty ships around running errands.”

“Cobbler’s children?” Zoya asked.

“That’s possible. Even probable, now that I think of it.”

“But why issue the parts if the ships aren’t available yet?”

“I’d bet they’re trying to roll one out in the next few months. Much fanfare. Many oohs. Lots of noise.”

“So they’re seeding the spares early for a ship they’re confident will be sailing in Dunsany Roads?”

“That would be my guess. Can’t fly without spares. Uncle TIC gets all fussy over it.”

Zoya shook her head. “I never really thought about what it would take for a completely new class of vessel.”

“We also don’t know they’d actually fill the order for us, but that’s beside the point,” Natalya said. “When I started comparing parts, a lot of them were not for a Barbell. Like the emitter bus coupling. I pulled it out of the spares database and checked inventory when I found the nearly toasted unit.”

“Right. That’s how you found the junk.”

“So, Lyons and I did the inventory.”

“Good job on him, by the way.”

“He’s missing at the moment, but thanks.”

“Missing?”

“Focus. We did the inventory and placed a replenishment order based on the stock numbers in the spares inventory.”

Zoya’s eyes blinked several times. “Wait.”

Natalya nodded. “Yes. Our spares inventory lists the Kyoryokuna emitter bus couplers, and Kyoryokuna emitter arrays and a ton of other stuff for equipment we don’t even have aboard.”

“Would that coupling even fit?”

Natalya shook her head. “I don’t think it’ll even go through the inspection hatch.”

Zoya stared at Natalya’s tablet for several long moments. “So you got a corrected parts database from TIC. Inspections and Certifications office?”

“Right. Told them we’d gotten corrupted by a stray virus from an entertainment chip that got plugged directly into the console in engineering.”

“They bought it?”

Natalya held up the tablet.

Zoya lifted a hand and laughed behind it. “You amaze me.”

“I need you. I need to get this database installed, but I’m afraid it’ll obscure the existing installation.”

Zoya nodded, her lips pursed. “Probably would.”

“I want to save that database in its current state to see if we can figure out who modified it.”

“Be kinda dumb to leave digital fingerprints, wouldn’t it?” Zoya asked.

“Most engineering officers aren’t really conversant on the inner workings of ships’ systems.” Natalya shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Maybe we’ll find something. Maybe we won’t. If we don’t safeguard it now, we’ll never know.”

Zoya nodded. “Sold. You want this on glass?”

“Yes. I assume we can burn glass?”

“Of course. Most of the official ship’s logs go directly to glass but we’ve got a couple of spare drives for stuff we want to preserve as read-only.” She grinned. “Even
Peregrine
had a couple.”

“Yes, I know
Peregrine
had some, but I thought it was just because my father is a paranoid, anti-social psychopath.”

“I thought you liked him.”

“Love him. Those are his good qualities.”

Zoya laughed behind her hand again.

“How soon can you get the current database burned?”

Zoya pulled out her tablet and began flipping through screens with her index finger. “We have a full system backup at Dark Knight,” she said. “You only need the spares inventory data?”

“And any related maintenance logs.”

Zoya nodded, flipping down through the system menus while Natalya watched. She isolated one section of the system and routed it to a backup drive in the systems’ closet. “Lemme run up and toss a fresh chip in.” She unbolted the door and left the stateroom.

Natalya heard Pritchard’s voice in the passageway, but not what he said. She opened the door and stuck her head out.

Pritchard stood half blocking the passageway. His gaze tracked to stare at Natalya and his eyes widened. “My goodness, Ms. Usoko. Such company you keep.”

“If you’d excuse me, Mr. Pritchard. I need to get by.”

He looked at Zoya and stepped aside after glancing in Natalya’s direction. “Of course.” He held a hand out, palm flat as if in invitation. “Be my guest.”

Zoya glanced over her shoulder and grimaced at Natalya before striding along the passageway to the data closet tucked under the ladder up to the bridge.

Natalya stepped into the passage and leaned against the bulkhead, her arms crossed.

“How is your evening, Ms. Regyri?” Pritchard asked. He had a half nervous twitch with his hands as if he didn’t know what to do with them. Even his voice sounded shaky.

“I’ve had better. It’s not over yet.”

Pritchard nodded. “Tell me, have you found Mr. Lyons?”

Natalya shook her head. “No. The captain will start looking for him soon.”

The news seemed to take Pritchard by surprise and he stepped back as if slapped. “Soon? Surely not before morning.”

Natalya shrugged, watching him. “Captain doesn’t answer to me. He seems to think it’s not normal for Mr. Lyons to be out so long.”

Pritchard began fiddling with the zipper on his shipsuit. “Surely a drunk like Lyons isn’t reliable when there’s booze to be had so close at hand.”

Natalya shrugged again. “Not my call.”

Pritchard nodded. “Of course. Of course. We still have a couple of days for him to drag himself back aboard.” He made it sound like Lyons might soil the ship somehow by returning.

Natalya sighed but Zoya’s reappearance saved her from additional discussion with Pritchard.

They slipped back into Zoya’s stateroom. Natalya had no problem with Zoya taking extra time with the bolts.

“I see what you mean,” Natalya said. “About Pritchard.”

“He’s normally not so pushy,” Zoya said. “That was a new low for him.”

“Gotta admire a person who lives down to his potential.”

Zoya’s eyes danced a little and she smiled. “Backup done in five ticks. I didn’t feel like waiting in the closet while you parried Pritchard.”

“He seems to have it in for Josh Lyons.”

“I heard him saying some nasty things. I didn’t realize they were at odds.”

“They share a bulkhead.” Natalya shrugged. “Remember when we had Sales and Promotion next door second term?”

Zoya’s face went blank for a minute and then brightened. “What were their names? Seles and Pemberton?”

Natalya nodded. “If there was an award for headboard banging, I’d have nominated them.”

Zoya smiled. “They were bad, but I don’t think Mr. Lyons has been entertaining in his stateroom, do you?”

The thought gave Natalya an odd pang but she shook her head. “No. He’s been too busy with his bottle to fraternize.”

“Until recently,” Zoya said with a sly side-eyed glance.

Natalya sighed and shook her head. “Not my type. Is that backup glassed yet?”

Zoya snorted and pulled up her tablet. “Yeah. You want to merge those or just start over?”

Natalya considered for a moment, staring at her tablet’s blank face. “Most of the existing records show zero on hand. I think the safest course is to delete those and then merge what’s there with what should be there. The non-zero records should be easy enough to reconcile by hand.”

Zoya flipped her displays with her finger and frowned. “Yes,” she said. “That would work. There are fewer than a hundred records with a valid on-hand count.”

Natalya nodded. “What I figured.”

“You want me to load the records for you? I can do it right from here.” She held up her tablet and wiggled it in the air.

Natalya found the TIC files and tossed them to Zoya. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll go get a cuppa and head back to engineering.”

“You want help?”

“Don’t you have OD watch or something?”

“I’m on it,” Zoya said.

“In here?”

Zoya shrugged. “As good as the office. As long as I’m not drinking, sleeping, or otherwise unavailable to the brow watch, I’m fine.”

Natalya thought about it but shook her head. “Thanks, Zee, but you’ve done enough. This will only take a couple of stans to reconcile. If that.” She headed out the door but stopped to look back. “You could see if you can find a valid maintenance trace on those glassed records. If we know who changed them, we might know who replaced all those spares with scrap.”

Zoya grinned and laced her fingers together, pushing her palms out in a stretch before firing up the terminal on her desk. “Something to do to keep me awake,” she said.

Chapter 43
Siren Orbital: 2363, August 2

Natalya swiped her burning eyes with her fingers and drank the last of her cold coffee before standing up from the console. With hands in the small of her back, she rotated her shoulders and leaned back to try to relieve the burning between her shoulders. At least it was done.

The chrono clicked over to 0214. She blinked her eyes and tried to stretch them open a bit. Everything felt gummy.