Fool's Gold (The Wandering Engineer) (54 page)

Logan
nodded. "Good idea. I can bring her in with a crew," he nodded to the
Admiral. Shelby started to protest but Irons waved his fingers where she and
not her father could see. She paused then nodded.

"Okay
dad. I can see that you've made up your mind." She tried to smile but it
didn't seem natural.

Logan
started to chuckle softly until the Admiral turned to him. He tried to sober
but was still smiling.

"What?"
Irons asked.

"Oh
nothing, I was just remembering something my wife used to tell me." He
shook his head again and looked away.

"The
shoe thing dad?" Shelby asked sounding amused and exasperated.

Her
father nodded looking back at the Admiral. "She used to threaten to beat
me to death with her shoe for having such a perverse sense of humor," he
said chuckling. Irons chuckled as well.

"I
miss her, sometimes badly," Logan sighed as they quieted.

"Me
too daddy," Shelby patted his arm. “Me too.”

"I
do too, I wish I had been able to meet such a remarkable woman," Irons
said softly.

Logan
and Shelby nodded. "Yeah, that she was, that she was. But this is no time
to go all maudlin. All right we've got work to do, best get to it." He
smacked his hands together and got up startling others. "Can't be moping
about the past, we've got a ship to fix and pirates to kill. Time's a wasting
folks!" Logan waved as he walked out.

"Don't
worry about him, he's fine," Irons said watching Shelby's concerned look
at the hatch.

"I
know, he's just being dad. He doesn't want to be in my way." She shook her
head. She frowned then turned back to him with a grimace. "I knew I was
going to follow in his footsteps anyway. He tried to get me into other things,
but I'm a little set in my ways. I take after my mom in that," Shelby
chuckled as she followed her dad out.

Irons
chuckled as he looked out the view port. "Quite a family," Firefly
said sounding amused.

"Yeah,"
Irons answered with a smile.

"We're
going to have to move fast to get to the first derelict and get it sorted out
and underway to the station. We've got two in mind, do you think we can get to
them both in time?" Firefly asked. “We have less then ten days before we
need to leave to go to the jump point.”

"Maybe.
It depends on too many variables to quantify. How long the enemy will remain in
Agnosta looting and pillaging now that they know warning is spreading. What
their commander is like, their infrastructure, resistance on Agnosta, too many
things we just don't know," Irons said, grimacing and shaking his head.
He'd kill for adequate intel right now. "We can guess at their maximum
ship speed, maximum hyper bands, minimum transit time here. If they left the
planet within twelve hours of the yacht's escape they should have been here any
time now," he shrugged.

"So
we're on borrowed time?" Firefly asked.

"Yes,
that's right. I don't know how much damage these ships have, how much it will
take to get them into service. I hope we can get crews on them and get them
underway to the station. I've got the station making mines now. That should
come as a surprise," he smiled. “Honestly though? I don't think we're
going to be able to get to Fuentes. She's just too far out. We may have to
focus our efforts on the corvettes.”

“The
destroyer would significantly alter the odds Admiral,” Firefly replied. “But...
I see your point. I am more than a match for most of their fleet.”

Irons
smiled. “You are a bit full of yourself, you know that?” Sprite responded as he
opened his mouth. He closed it then looked up to the ceiling in exasperation.

“When
I've got people like you running around inside of me?” Firefly responded with a
chuckle.

“Touché.”

"So,
we've got the tender running mines to the jump point, we've got Firefly running
training ops and salvage crews out to nearby derelicts, we've got the other
colonies and the station working on repairs and salvaging other ships, what
else can we do?" Enrique asked. He looked around to the staff.

 Several
people mumbled but didn't say anything important. "We've got people
training in basic education, could we set up a sim?" the nervous comm.
tech asked. "What sort of sim?" the Doc asked. She was tired, with
rims under her eyes but she was clearly alert. She felt torn, she really wanted
to be on Firefly but Standish was settling in nicely now.

"Training
sims. Mirror the ones on Firefly. Run as many people through as we can. Let
them see the basics and pick out the ones that pick it up the fastest,"
the tech finished.

Irons
nodded. He was attending the conference virtually, since he was on the bridge
of Firefly. They were less than a light minute out from the station, still in
range for him to attend without too much of a time lag. "Good idea. Set it
up," he nodded to Matilda who grimaced but nodded.

"We
could also set up a comm. net," the communication tech said. "I mean,
something better than what we have currently. That way we could warn the other
colonies or they could warn us if they detect something." She said.

Several
others started to argue but then stopped when Enrique cleared his throat.
"By detect you mean if the enemy come in on another vector?" Irons
asked. She nodded.

"See,
I saw it in a  holo movie once and well..." She shrugged.

 He
nodded. "Okay. Good point. Your department, do it." He nodded to
Enrique. “Next?" he asked. They batted a few more ideas around but no one
had much more to contribute.

"What
about getting the other colonies to build parts?" Sprite asked. "We
can get them to build common parts and assemble them on other places or the
station..." He nodded then echoed the sentiment.

After
two minutes of debate Enrique agreed. "I just thought of something else.
If we use the tender to send loads to a nearby colony, then they could lay the
mines from there," Jorge suggested. He too was attending virtually. He was
running the tender until Captain Guiterez was back on his feet. The Valdez tugs
were being flown by a pair of pilots carefully selected by Jorge. This was his
last run in the tender though, The captain was due to be released next shift.

"How?
What if they don't have the means?" Matilda asked patiently.

"Then
we can transport me and my tug. I can make the run from the colony to the jump
point if it is in range. That way the tender can keep running large loads to
the colony and not have to take the time to set things up," he suggested.
Irons nodded when the idea reached him.

"Good
idea Jorge, see if it is feasible with Enrique," he nodded. "All
right people, Firefly is getting too far away for this to be practical for me
for much longer. Let me know if anything changes. Irons out." He nodded as
the AI cut the transmission.

"Well,
that went well," Firefly said. He chuckled.

"Better
than expected. They're starting to think, not run around like lemmings.
Hopefully it will stick. Has engineering made any progress with pod
three?" he asked. Pod three had developed a glitch and had been forced
into shut down, unbalancing the wedge.

"It
looked like a control run problem but they've eliminated that. We're looking at
either a firmware glitch or a hardware glitch in either end," Firefly
reported. Irons grunted. The firmware problem should be easy to diagnose.

"Sprite?"
he asked.

"I'm
looking into it. I'm running a line by line comparison diagnostic on the code
Admiral, so far everything checks out, but I only just got started. There are
ten million lines of code to go through. It will take me an hour to
finish," Sprite reported.

He
grimaced then nodded. "Right, let me know how it goes. Unfortunately they
can't run the hardware check with the code check in progress," he said.

"I'm
going as fast as I can Admiral. Oops, found something..." Sprite said.
Lines of code came up in two separate windows. "Looks like something
didn't copy right. I'm looking at a bad firmware chip. I've just tried to flash
it but it's not taking. The ROM is bad."

He
nodded. "I'm cross checking the other new ROM chips now, hopefully this is
a one off that slipped quality control and not an entire run," Firefly
reported. He nodded. "Let Shelby know which ROM. Can they... wait, pod
three is outboard, they can't get to her electronics from in the ship can
they?" he asked.

The
Firefly Avatar shook it's head. "No, it's a dockside job usually. It will
have to be swapped out. We could make it easier and do the entire board but
handling moly circuit connections with EVA gloves..." Firefly shrugged.

"Yeah,
not a good thing. Okay, tell Shelby to lock it down and we'll have to rebuild
the pod when we get back to the station. You can replicate the parts and have
them on hand though right?" he asked.

"Of
course Admiral, I even have some already on hand in stores," Firefly
pulled up an inventory list and showed him.

"Okay,
just as well. Make sure someone double checks them
before
we install
them. I'll ask Shelby to put a crew together assembling the parts when they
can." He nodded as he got up and stretched then yawned.

"Tired?"
Sprite asked.

"No,
just hate meetings. They are boring." The complaint was an old one. They
both knew he was a hands on person.

"Goes
with the job," Firefly observed dryly. He chuckled.

"Yeah,
I know," he waved. "What else do we have?" he asked.

"Not
much, acclimation statistics are about where you would expect for the crew, not
that we have much beyond Federation baseline statistics to use as a meter
stick. I'd say we're about a month or two off from where we would normally be
in this sort of recruiting drive with material we had in my last
deployment," Firefly said.  "Near the end we were catching the dregs
a lot." The AI sounded miffed.

"Couldn't
be helped. With fewer systems, you have less people," Irons replied.
"That's true. You organics can't replicate like we can. Sometimes I pity
you for that," Firefly said. Irons chuckled.

"Yeah,
nature does have its weaknesses. All right, so we're a little behind there, but
they are coming along, I noticed improvements in the last two sims. I don't
want to overdo it with training, I don't want to burn them out, so maybe we
should switch tactics a bit and open up the games and VR lounge..." he
suggested.

 Firefly
looked confused, then the avatar's eyes began to shift back and forth.
“Accessing. Yes, if we give them access during free time it would let them
improve their skills and allow them to be more comfortable with their
cybernetics. I see." The AI looked up and nodded. "It will also let
them get over the rising technophobia and feel more natural to them," he
said.

"I
understand. Lounge is up. I am using the old lounge until it is changed,"
Firefly informed him.

The
Admiral chuckled. "Okay. I'm going to get some downtime before we get to
port, let me know if things change." He waved and left the compartment.

"What's
this about?" Irons asked looking around the party. Enrique had paged him
here since Firefly was in port repairing the drive firmware issue. He was glad
he was in a fresh coverall. Sprite would have been mortified if he'd been seen
in public in a stained one. She'd carp at him for days afterward. He just
didn't need the distraction right now.

"Fund
raiser. We need you to show the flag a little. Put in a brief appearance and
then you can escape," Enrique smiled imploringly. Irons grunted irritably.
He flat out hated parties. And this was not the time to be having one.

"If
I must, I must," he looked around.

"And
here is our host Mr. Montoya. Hans, good to see you," Enrique shook hands
with a portly gentlemen decked out in a classic tuxedo.

"It
is good to see you, and the Admiral. Such an honor," the man's voice was
cultured and refined. He shook hands with the Admiral.

"A
pleasure I'm sure. This is an art museum?" Irons looked around.

"Oh
no, these are all one of a kind originals. Masterpieces all," he waved to
a holo display. In the center of the room was a spring. Around its edges were
dancing holographic images.

Irons
nodded. "That piece isn't original," he pointed to a painting near
the door. His host turned. "Why yes, yes it is. I bought it from a
reputable dealer at auction several years ago," Montoya smiled.

"No,
that's the Mona Lisa. Classic earth painting by Leonardo Da-Vinci, circa
fourteenth century I believe," Irons replied. "I saw a print in the
museum of humanity on Mars oh, seven hundred and fifty years ago." Irons
shrugged turning back to the men.

Montoya
was in shock. His jaw hardened. "Are you sure?" he asked. Irons
nodded.

"You
can see for yourself in the station's historical database," he pointed to
Smithy. The AI looked over.