The Technician's Fight, Draft 1, CH55

Gralgiran looked over the people seated at the meeting table. The only one he wasn’t used to seeing there was his Heart.

“What caused the problem?” he asked the Supervisor. He had the reports, but he wanted their version first. To smell the air as they explained. See if something there would sway his evaluation of their performance.

“As the technician reported, the caused was a defective power controller that didn’t cut the power when one of the printers faulted and pulled in more power than it normally used. The relays in the printer failed before it overloaded, but by then the controller had overheated beyond its capacity and ignited.”

He looked at Jer. “Technician, what was the cause of your presence in the repair bay?”

“Personal project, Captain. I was off-shift and had obtained permission to use one of their printers for a part too large for the private printers.”

“Was it the printer that faulted?”

“No, Captain.”

He looked around.

“The printer that faulted was printing heat sink component that had been requested by maintenance for one of the shuttles,” the Manager answered.

“How did you become aware of the fault, Technician?”

“It, errr,” Jer looked around. “Blew up? There was an explosion of sparks, probably as part heated and overcame their insulation capacity.” He closed his mouth on the rest, and Gralgiran returned to the Repair Manager.

“Why did the printer fault?”

“That hasn’t been determined yet,” she answered. “The damage is making it difficult to pinpoint why it failed.”

“Theories?”

“It’s one of the older models, so age is a factor.”

“Shouldn’t a potential fault of that magnitude show up when the unit is checked?” he brought up the schedule. “It’s filed as having been done four months ago.”

“Yes, Captain, the odds of something that could cause this going unnoticed during a scheduled check are low. But all the printers have seen high demand since the battle at the Earther station. The extra strain on the components could have taken something that didn’t register four months ago and made it a catastrophic failure possibility.”

He nodded. “Recommendations?”

“Shorten the time between check on the older machines. Either not include them when having high demand, or pause them for extra checks, or invest in ensuring none of the machines are kept past a specific age.”

“Get with maintenance. I want an impact study for the three options. For replacing the machines, get the Quartermaster to tabulate prices on buying new ones, and what we can get for the used models.”

The Supervisor and Manager nodded, making notes on their tablets.

“Technician, you requested power be shutdown. Explain your decision.”

“My printer was closest to the wall, and I felt the heat. The Engineer has had me get familiar with power conduits throughout the ship, so I knew no amount of power pull should have resulted in that. Opening the wall showed me the fires. I apologized to the Engineer for overstepping my rank, Captain.”

“We had a discussion,” the Engineer said. “It will not happen again.”

Gralgiran nodded. “Continue.”

“Once the power was cut, the fire should have diminished as the overload was the behind it and nothing within it should be able to maintain combustion, but if the insulation material is exposed to temperatures higher than two thousands degree Celsius, it breaks down, releasing Pentane, which fueled the fire. It’s when I requested the room be evacuated and sealed. Maintenance removed the oxy, and without that, the fire couldn’t continue.”

“Once we confirmed the fire had been starved,” the Supervisor said, “and that the technician had the required skills, he was allowed to return, instead of waiting for my people to arrive.”

“I followed protocol,” Jer took up. “Once I’d gathered tools and protective equipment, I exposed the entirety of the damaged area and proceeded to remove the damaged components, setting them aside for examination.”

Gralgiran looked at the Supervisor, who was consulting her tablet. “The faulty controller was traced to a batch printed two years, seven months, eight days ago. We are in the process of exchanging all those still installed from that batch, but none we’ve tested at this point have shown flaws that could have led to a similar situation.”

“Shouldn’t prints be tested before being installed?”

“Two years, seven months, and twelve days ago was the start of the refit, Captain. The volume of parts we were printing made testing each of them impractical. As is procedure during those cases, random tests are conducted under the premise that if there is a flaw, it will be within an entire batch.”

“Which doesn’t seem to be the case.”

“Yes Captain. The method isn’t without its own flaws.”

“Recommendations?”

“I’m unsure what changes can be made, Captain. Short of returning to Kelser for the refit to take place at the shipyard, we have to use less than perfect processes.”

“So, swallow my pride and let the military do what they want with my ship?”

“I’d never suggest that, Captain.”

“But if I don’t, I run the risk of something like this happening again.”

“The risk is there even if the refit is performed at the shipyard, if possibly slightly lower. Perfect components, one hundred percent of the time, is an impossibility even with printing.”

Gralgiran recognize Jer’s desire to speak. “You have something to add, technician?”

“I don’t know if it’s going to mean much, but Earthers have perfected making prints as much as it’s possible to do, and even they don’t get more than a ninety-nine point nine, a dozen times over accuracy. It’s almost perfect until there’s a need to print something on the scale of making a ship. It’s an accepted fact of large-scale production that defective prints will be shipped.”

“That seems like an odd piece of knowledge for you to have.”

Jer chuckled. “Some of the components I get for my reactors are so standard they were part of print orders in the billion units. We are taught to never install a part without first running it through all the stress test we can think of. It doesn’t matter all that much when the print that fails causes a drink printer to fault. But when it’s an anti-matter reactor, that fault can take part of a city with it, or a station, in my case. I just mean that you shouldn’t feel too bad about one component failing like it did.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, technician, but just like you have to think of what can happen if your reactor fails, I have to think of the lives that can be lost when a fault happen. If you hadn’t been there, there is no telling what the delay in identifying the problem could have caused.”

He looked at a male. “Manager. What is being changed to ensure a situation like this doesn’t happen again? My understanding is that even under optimal condition, your printers draw a large amount of power.”

“We’re redesigning the printer bay to give each printer it’s on controller set as a value below its maximum draw.”

“Won’t that interfere with the larger prints?”

“We’ll have a manual bypass in place that requires constant attention. We don’t get those kinds of prints often enough it’ll get in the way of regular work.”

Gralgiran nodded. “Alright. As far as I can tell, everyone is agreed this is an unfortunate accident, and you are taking steps to limit the odds of it happening again. I’ll thank the gods for Meddling as they did and end this meeting. Engineer, technician, if you can stay behind.”

“What arrangement did you reach, Alix?” he asked once it was only the three of them.

“That not really any of your business.”

“It isn’t the first time Jer went outside of Rank. His beta assured me it wouldn’t happen again, and yet….”

Alix nodded, but didn’t reply immediately. “Do give the technician the credit he’s due in this case, technicians are always contacting each other while at their boards. Everything responds to everything else. I expect that any of them, in the situation he found himself, would have done what they he did.”

“And you would have chastised them.”

“And you wouldn’t have cared how.”

Gralgiran nodded, and he had to consider where his concern came from. By the time Jer looked at him, he still hadn’t worked out if what had happened during the hunt was why he was concerned.

“Go ahead.”

“I don’t know if how I feel matters, but I’m okay with the Engineer telling you. He’s right, I didn’t even think to contact him.”

“And you have apologized,” Alix said, annoyed. “And I have enacted safeguards to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

“And I’m okay with you telling the Captain. If you want,” Jer added.

“If I want,” Alix replied, ears canted in restrained anger. “You and acting like you’re giving me a choice. That Heart of yours could be a Halan for the ways he’ll say what he wants and then claim it’s my choice.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Oh, stop it,” Alix said. “You’re just like your Heart with that. You should hear some of the ways he’s given me the choice to let those Tutecamongartin lovers of military technician touch my reactor the last time he let the Leadership talk him into returning to Kelser for repairs.”

“I don’t remember saying all that much,” Gralgiran said, grinning.

“Your body was talking loud enough, fucking me while whispering that this might be the last time, but hey, it was my choice if I let them sully my work.”

“You’d have stopped having sex with him?” Jer asked, surprised.

“We’ll never know,” Gralgiran grinned. “And he made me pay for it. A year, was it, before you let me into your bed again?”

“One year, three months, seven days, and the only reason I did is because none of my friends were available that day. Someone was Meddling,” he grumbled.

“So, be careful how you piss him off. He will make you regret it.” Gralgiran stood. “Meeting’s over.”

“Really? Just like that?” Alix said.

“You’ve made your position clear, Engineer, and Jer said it’s your choice.”

“Oh, I hate the two of you. I removed the access to the technician’s comm from his tablet. He doesn’t need it anyway since he works in my office. There, happy?”

Gralgiran nodded. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, my ass,” Alix said, heading for the door. “You better be in my bed tonight and make this up to me, or a year is going to seem like a second for how long it’ll be until I let you in there again.”

“I guess I’m going to be busy,” he told Jer as they exited.

“I’ll have Toom over, that way, if he kicks you out because you didn’t please him, we’ll be able to comfort you.”

Gralgiran rubbed his muzzle against Jer cheeks. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

*

“Go,” he said, cube of grilled spiced meat on a claw.

“We’re getting a transmission, Captain. It’s…odd.”

“On my way.” He leaned over the table and kissed Jer. “Sorry, duty.”

“You can take this with you.”

“Things aren’t bad enough yet I have to eat on the move.” He popped the meat in his mouth and licked his claw as he exited.

*

“Update,” he said, stepping onto the bridge.

“This reads like a Iristan poem,” the beta said, looking at the screen over the comm hunter’s shoulder. “Seven lines, eighteen syllables each. Only it’s meaningless.”

“How likely is it transmission distortion could cause this?”

“Highly unlikely.”

“Alpha,” the comm hunter said, sounding perplexed. “The system returned a forty-six percent probability it’s halan, but the known algorithm aren’t giving me anything that make sense.”

“Send it to the Quartermaster. He’s our expert. Provenance?”

The screen showed a representation of their territory, with the Bane in green, and a blue dot flashing. Distance meant nothing on such representations since they were flat.

“What’s there?”

“Relay buoy,” the comm hunter answered.

“Which means we won’t be able to tell where it came from if it’s really halan,” the beta said.

“Captain, the Quartermaster is asking to speak with you.”

He put his earpiece in. “Sent him to me.”

“Xenial er Tal’halan, what can you tell me.”

“Am I on bridge comms, Captain?”

“No, I figured you’d want this only between us.”

“Thank you. The message is a set of coordinates with a message.”

“Send the coordinates to the pilot.”

Toom nodded acknowledgment.

“What is the message?”

“Just two words. ‘It’s worse’.”