Starflight (Stealing the Sun Book 1) by Ron Collins

Author:Ron Collins [Collins, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction - Space Opera
Publisher: Skyfox Publishing
Published: 2016-11-29T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

UGIS Everguard

Ship Local Date: January 13, 2205

Ship Local Time: 0722

Torrance stood in Systems Command, taking in the main status panel and feeling the weight of everyday work pressing in on him. It was going to be a busy day. On top of all the routine stuff, C Deck was reporting an issue with their hydraulic lifter, and the control panel showed that the laundry bot hadn’t been updated as planned. He had to follow up with Yarrow about that. Or maybe give it to Kitchell.

The boy was good—a hell of a lot better than Torrance thought he would be. He was energetic, and active.

And he was good on the deck, too. The team liked having someone around who could ask the obvious dumb question that often turned out to not be so dumb after all. Torrance had to face the fact that the kid’s brash act was really just that—a defense mechanism made necessary because he was quicker than the kids around him, and quicker than most of the adults around him, too.

His standard response to any challenge was “Hey, take a chance, right?”

Sure, there were times Torrance would prefer the kid was a little less daring. The day Kitchell screwed up and had to reset the entire power feed for the Rearward janitorial bots would be legend among Systems Command for the rest of the trip, but Torrance had come to realize that half the time he wasn’t taking a chance at all—that half the time, Thomas Kitchell knew what the answer was, and that he was just buffering the situation for the idiots around him who didn’t understand the system.

Of course, the other 50 percent he was actually taking a chance.

Either way, the fact was that Torrance liked working with Thomas Kitchell, and he figured the kid could probably handle this one as it was. Maybe it would be a good one to let him run solo on.

But none of that was very interesting right now.

His brain was loaded with a question.

An idea.

A flame of thought about his latest run through the Eden files had been rattling though his brain all morning, screwing with his thoughts so hard that Marisa had tossed a fit at him for not listening as she ran through her day’s calendar. It had grabbed hold of his mind so firmly that he couldn’t concentrate on anything else long enough to be productive.

The game was afoot, as it were.

He was wondering if he could split the signal and triangulate multiple positions—that perhaps the signal wasn’t actually a single entity, but had been created from different sources, two or three or even more, and that those sources had somehow interfered with each other.

He wanted to know if his theory was possible, but the start of the day was closing in on him.

“Are you okay?”

It was Yarrow. She was bright-faced and ready for the day. Like always.

“Yes, thank you,” Torrance replied. “If you see Kitchell, tell him to come to my post, will you?”

“He’ll be a little later, I think.

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