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“All right, Lieutenant, we’ll message when we need you to unlock a gate. Maintain radio silence otherwise. Should be back in about 48 hours.”
“Roger that, sir. Good hunting,” Pirra replied.
Didn’t want to go blasting signals into a place as messed up as Terris, she knew. As much as she hated being left behind, she also felt dread at the very thought of heading in.
The line went dead, and she let out a deep breath.
“Beginning diagnostics on the maintenance systems,” Tred said. “Expected time; five hours.”
Pirra glanced to him. “We’re supposed to be checking the fusion generator, right? Not the maintenance systems. Those were checked only . . .” she brought up the logs. “Two months ago.”
“It’s procedure, ma’am. Sir. I mean, if you want to order me to go against procedure, I can, but-“
“No, no,” she sighed. “Sky forbid we violate procedure.”
A scandalized look went across Tred’s face, but he said nothing.
Pirra checked the readouts from each of the dashgates still operating within the system. They were kept locked down at all times, to prevent people from entering, and only a signal from this station could turn them back on.
If she was with the team, she’d be sleeping in her seat, taking food pills, relying on a suit for everything and barely able to move. Heading into the heart of the most corrupt place known to the Sapient Union.
She should feel lucky.
Tred was tapping on a key nervously; the sound was just in a range to be annoying to her, but just as she opened her mouth to speak, Tred said something.
“Do you ever think about all that ordinance that went astray at big battles in space?” he asked.
She was thrown for a loop by the topic change. “What?”
“You know, like at the Battle of Terris. How many millions of rounds must have been fired? And some went astray. They’re just going to keep flying for . . . well, forever.”
He frowned. “Until they hit something.”
“Yes, I know how space works,” she replied dryly. “Keep your focus on your work.”
“It’s all going – I got the system enough resources to run two scans at once, should cut our total work time in half!”
That did sound impressive, but it raised a more important question in her mind. “Were you unsure if we could get the work done in less than forty-eight hours?”
“Well, no,” he admitted, looking surprised.
“Is there any advantage to it?”
“We’ll be done faster in case the Lt. Commander decides to leave early?” Tred replied. It sounded like a question.
“Are you asking me that?” Pirra said.
“No, no! I’m just stating it.”
She lapsed into silence and decided to look into sleeping arrangements. Part of her was tempted to assign him a bunk as far as possible from hers.
“There could be a shell heading at us right now,” Tred suddenly said. “We’d never even see it coming, not at that speed.”
“Tred!” she snapped.
He jumped in his seat. “Yeah? I mean, yes ma’am?”
“Let’s . . . there’s a lot of other things we should be thinking about rather than stray ordinance, all right? Is there anything else you could be doing now to prepare for when your current tests are done?”
“I . . . suppose. But like you said, we’ve got forty-eight hours. I was going to kind of pace myself . . .” he replied, nervously.
She was pushing him out of what little remained of his comfort zone. The man loved planning his schedules and then keeping them, she had learned that very quickly about him . . .
“All right, keep to your schedule, then. But why not go take a look at the reactor? Just do a . . . spot check. Make sure there are no obvious major visual problems.”
“Visual problems? Like cracked screens or peeling paint?” he looked very troubled at the prospect.
“Anything,” she suggested.
“All right . . .” the man muttered, standing and walking off the bridge.
Pirra sipped her drink and ordered the drone launches from the station.
Wonderful, job done. They’d been here . . .
She looked at her timer. Fifteen minutes.
And she was pretty much done with her work.
Leaning back in her seat, she stared at the ceiling. She wasn’t going to be annoyed, she wasn’t going to be annoyed . . .
A voice came over her comm. “Lieutenant Pirra, I have a question . . .”
She held her breath a long moment. Too much air always made her get more aggressive.
“Yes, Tred?”
“In looking over the fusion reactor and the history of its maitenance, I saw a discrepancy. No team has apparently stayed here longer than 24 hours,” he said.
“Okay,” she replied, unsure what she was supposed to make of this.
“That means they can’t have run a full Level 12 diagnostic on the system – those take at least 30 hours!”
“Okay,” she continued. “Does that need to be done?”
“It’s not usually listed to be done for at least two more years, but in my experience such a test is important for finding early issues and preventing them from-“
“Will this throw off your main schedule or interfere with my duties?”
“No, ma’am, this will only be using the engine core’s AI. I’ll be down here all day working on it while my other tests run in the main system.” He sounded so gleeful.
And she liked the sound of that, too. He’d be happy in his environment, and she could . . . well, she didn’t come out ahead except she didn’t have to deal with him when he was nervous.
“That sounds like a good plan,” she said. “Execute it.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Pirra had almost touched the button to disconnect when Tred spoke again.
“There’s just one other thing, ma’am.”
“Yes?”
“Well, I found something else when I was looking through these maintenance logs.”
She waited for the man to continue, but realized after a moment that he was waiting for her.
“Go ahead, Tred. Just tell me the whole thing.”
“Okay, ma’am. So, in these logs the techs, well – they wrote that everything started out fine, but then . . .” he trailed off, and she was about to prompt him on again when he finally spoke.
“They get a bit weird. These guys say they were seeing ghosts.”
Pirra couldn’t think of anything to reply to that. The concept of ghosts were a very . . . sticky one among her kind, though she’d never even believed in them. Still, part of her wondered if the man was poking fun at her.
“It’s just really kinda spooky is all,” he said, his voice going a bit quieter.
No, she realized. He was just being nervous.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts, Tred,” she told him evenly.
He was quiet for a long moment.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
Other Terrestrial 