Lt. Reilly and the Phantom Raptor by Matthew Duncan

Author:Matthew Duncan [Duncan, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

~~~

Mitchell collected Benny, who was cuffed to one of the seats in the rear of the shuttle. He smiled up at her as if he could charm her, but only got a scowl in return. She uncuffed him, pulled him to his feet, and picked up her duffle.

“Come on Reilly,” Mitchell said, as she was pulling Benny along by his shackled arms.

“You go ahead,” I said, “I want to make sure this thing is space worthy before we fire it up.”

Looking around at the antique interior of the ship, it looked as if it had come out of a museum’s warehouse. It was dirty, worn, and had various bits of patchwork, making it look like it had never been finished.

“Okay, that sounds good,” she replied, looking at the ship with the same apprehension that I was feeling. She then pushed Benny in the direction she wanted to go.

When I had taken the job as the engineer on the Glacier Runner a couple of years back, I thought it was a mess, but this engine room was frightening. At some point, everything except the engine itself had been ripped out and some newer control systems had recently been installed. What concerned me was that they had only installed one new system for each needed function. All ships, military, government, and civilian are required to have at least two additional redundant systems for every function on a ship because if something like your oxygen pump, heat control, or power system were to fail in the middle of open space, you might not have the time, tools or parts to fix them. You want those backups to keep you alive. A lot of the old systems were still in place but disabled and marked for removal. Like an old-time automobile converted to a hovercar but still had the wheels on it.

“Prepare to get underway,” a voice came over the ship's all address systems.

I stepped over to a wall comm. It was an antiquated unit that didn’t have the typical touch screen interface, instead, there were five buttons that connected it to the five critical parts of the ship. I selected the top button which was marked in a handwritten label ‘bridge’. “Delay that!” I barked. “We’re not going anywhere.”

After a moment, a familiar voice with a Texan accent came on. “Lieutenant, is that you? What’s the problem?”

“You’ve got no engineering team down here. I don’t think it’s wise to power up all of these systems without people at their stations.”

“I told the dockmaster that I had a fleet qualified engineer who could handle the task,” he said without any pause, clearly ready for my objection. “Now I’ll give you five minutes to check on everything, but then we need to be underway. Time's a-wastin,” then he cut off the comm.

I looked around and did a quick mental inventory. The tool locker appeared to be properly stocked, and the cage holding critical spare parts appeared to have one of everything; but without a checklist, I couldn’t be completely certain.

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