A Starship Called Starsong

Chapter 3

I made sure I was in the Cargo Bay area after lunch. We had been warned that almost anything that required power was going to lose it while the upgrades were done. The gravity capacitors should remain up, but accidents happened, and zero gravity was a terrible thing in a Cargo Bay or storage area.

In theory, everything was secured in case we lost the artificial gravity, but all it would take is for one strap to come loose. Even Mack was in his office. I sat on a bench in the main loading area, idly kicking my heels as I scanned through my Analyzer just to kill the boredom.

I programmed a few more scripts into the device while keeping an eye on the work tickets. If any emergency ones surfaced, I wanted to know about them immediately.

The main lights went out, leaving us with just the dim backup lights. We had expected this and ignored it. Time passed slowly, and I was grateful to be in such a large room when the ventilation fans were on low backup power. Our air would take a long time to get stale.

It took almost the full scheduled hour before the lights flickered back on and the ventilation fans once more hummed deeply. I already had my tickets lined up, and no new ones had come in during the upgrade, so that was a bonus.

I got to my feet and stretched; it had been a long time since I had sat that much. I was used to being on my feet all day. Mack came out of his office and asked, "Where are you off to first, Rookie?"

My boss is such a jerk at times. How he manages it so casually is beyond me. He didn't make the term sound like an insult, but I had yet to hear him use my actual name or even my true position as Cargo Bay Assistant.

I was used to it by now and kept my expression to polite attentiveness. "I was thinking I would continue where I left off in the electrical room."

He shrugged with disinterest. "Fine by me. Just-"

Beep, Beep, Beep.

I grabbed my Analyzer as it sounded an alert for an emergency ticket. Considering that only my machine was going off, it was certainly something to do with the Maintenance area. Mack didn't bother picking up his machine as he waited for me to relay the information since I was already reading.

"Thrusters are still offline. Steve has already assigned himself to that one."

Mack sighed in disappointment. "So much for finishing our game off before supper."

Beep, Beep, Beep.

I glanced down at the Analyzer still in my hands, and my eyes widened as two tickets appeared at once. "We got two more emergencies. All of the agricultural systems are down, and we only have about an hour to get them online before we start losing the more sensitive plants. The oxygen replenishment machines also did not come back online."

That caught Mack's attention. "Steve won't even glance at the alerts until he fixes the thrusters. I will go take a look at the oxygen machines while you go rescue those plants."

I nodded and started running down the corridor. I was out of breath by the time I got to the agricultural area. All of the agricultural crew were busy either trying to get things working or trying to manually keep the plants from drying out in the hydroponic systems.

Cynthia saw me enter but kept trying to manually fill up a water tray. Her Overseer came over the instant she saw me. "We can't get the computers, the water pumps, or any of the other systems online. We have lighting, but that is it."

I held up my Analyzer. "Let me see what I can do."

She led me to the main control panel for this room, and I plugged my machine into it as I also ran the scanner across the entire console with its hundreds of controls. I watched the display intently as it ran through its diagnostics. The Overseer was also watching the display as she stood beside me.