“I sure hope you’ve figured out how to fix this thing by now, Chief,” Bill said, flexing his jaw. “Or we’re all going to be breathing off spare O2 by tomorrow morning.”
“If you can tell me what a covalent shear screen is, sir, I can probably fix it,” the chief snapped, holding up the printed out manual for the Hexosehr system. “But since I’ve got no clue how it works, I’m having a hard time even figuring out what’s wrong.”
“This, I think,” Red said, holding up what looked like a wire-mesh screen. Portions of it were a brilliant metal that reflected the overhead with shades of violet. But others were black and apparently covered with a tarry substance.
Three machinists had the failed recycler torn down and scattered across the deck, trying to figure out how to fix it while Red and Sub Dude were inside the guts up to their waists.
“I got more of that stuff,” Sub Dude said in a muffled tone from deep inside the device. “Do we have spare covalent shearing screens in parts?”
“Covalent…” the chief muttered, flipping through the book. “How do you spell that?”
“Polar corpuscle looks fried, too,” Ian said, holding up a metal piece that looked vaguely like a kidney. “What’s going to fry that?”
“Look, we don’t have time to figure this out,” Weaver said, grabbing his remaining hair. “Just pull the thing and put in the spare.”
“What spare?” the Eng asked.
“When we were having problems with it on Earth, I told the chief to pull that one and keep it around,” Bill said. “It was still working, it was just marginal. So where is it, Chief?”
“I had Red and Gants pull it,” the Chief said. “Red, where’d you store the spare recycler?”
“You told us to send it to depot maintenance, Chief,” Red said, back up to his waist in the recycler. “It’s in Norfolk.”
“I told you to store it and work on it in your spare time,” Chief Gestner said.
The clinking from inside the machine stopped and then both machinists slid out as if teleported.
“You told us, Chief, to send it to depot maintenance,” Gants said, gritting his teeth. “Send it to depot. That is what you told us to do, Chief. We sent it to depot. It’s in Norfolk. You didn’t say anything about working on it in our spare time. You said send it to depot.”
“I don’t like your tone, Machinist,” Chief Gestner snapped. “You will jack it up!”
“I don’t like yours, Chief,” Bill snarled. “I gave you a direct order which you, in turn, failed to ensure was carried out! So trying to shift the blame to a couple of petty officers is… Petty beyond belief!”
“Whoa,” the Eng said, holding up his hands. “What we definitely don’t have time for is to get into a he said/he said! The point is, we do not, in fact, have a spare onboard. Is that correct, Chief Gestner?”
“Yes, sir,” the chief said, glaring at the XO. Unable to take out his fury on the officer he rounded on the machinists. “You two, back to work.”
Gants gave him one more fulminating look then slid back into the depths of the alien machinery.
“Then we need to get this one working,” Weaver said. “And we then need to pull the other one down and get it working. And if you cannot figure out how to spell ‘covalent,’ Chief Petty Officer, you had better damned well learn. I’ll sell you a clue: It starts with a C, just like coc… Chief!”
“Eng,” Weaver said as they left the compartment. “I want it reflected on the chief’s evaluation report that he was given an order to maintain a critical component and whether there was a damned miscommunication or not, it was his responsibility to ensure that order was carried out.”
“I don’t think this is the time to be bringing that up, sir,” the Eng said. “When we’re past the crisis we can determine the mistakes that were made. I’ll remind you, sir, that as the person responsible for all aspects of this ship, it reflects poorly upon your own actions that you did not ensure that that order was fulfilled. I, for example, who is responsible for all the engineering aspects of the ship, was unaware of it, sir. Because you dealt with the situation directly, rather than working through the department heads. That is what we’re here for, sir, to ensure that all orders are carried out.”
“Duly noted, Eng,” Weaver said, grimacing. “But that order was given and it was not carried out. And I want that to be reflected in his evaluation report.”
“Also duly noted, XO,” the Eng said. “But on the subject of us running out of air, sir? I would entertain suggestions from my superior in this matter, sir. Because while I can spell covalent, I, too, have no grapping clue what a covalent shearing screen does.”
“Grapp, grapp, grapp…” Gants muttered.
“He’s gone,” Red said from outside the device. “The behanchod.”
“I was actually talking about this grapping Hexosehr piece of maulk,” Gants said, grunting then yelping. “Grapp! Work, you Hexosehr piece of maulk!” he shouted, banging on something in the depths of the machine.
“It’s not going to work with its guts spread all over,” Red said, looking at the system inventory. “Damnit, we don’t have any shearing screens! They’re listed as a capital item! They’re not supposed to break down, apparently.”
“Well, they sure as shit have,” Gants said, sliding out another piece of machinery. “And will you look at that?”
“What is it?” Red asked, picking up what looked like a painting canvas. Like the shearing screen, it was covered in a black tarry substance and holes had apparently been eaten in it in spots. Unless it was supposed to look like chemical moths had been at it.
“I have no grapping clue,” Gants said. “But I’m pretty sure it’s important.”
“We are so grapped,” Red said, slumping back against the recycler. “We have no grapping clue what any of this maulk is or how to fix it. How could we go into space not knowing how any of this maulk worked? Were we grapping nuts?”
“It’s Hexosehr stuff,” Gants said, sliding back out and sitting up. “It’s magic. It’s supposed to work like magic. Magic doesn’t break.”
“Well, if we’re not all going to die of asphyxiation, we’d better figure out how to fix magic,” Red said.
“And who is the most magical person on this ship?”
“It breaks the covalent bonds in ketones and esters,” Miriam said, not looking up from rubbing Tiny on the stomach. The linguist looked terrible. Her skin was gray, hair was frumpy, her tone listless and her eyes bloodshot. She was also wearing glasses, which Gants had only seen a couple of times in all the time he’d known her. “That breaks them down to CO2, nitrogen, oxygen and water. When the covalent shearing screen broke down, you started to get organic acids which ripped up the carbon cracker, that thing that looks like a painting canvas. That breaks CO2 and carbon monoxide down into carbon and oxygen then transports the carbon to a holding compartment. You did check the carbon holding compartment, right?”
“That’s a regular maintenance item,” Gants said. “But I never knew where it came from.”
“So the CO2 and organics detectors recognized the system was broken,” Miriam continued, “and shut it down automatically. Otherwise we’d be breathing that black stuff.”
“Ma’am, we’re hours away from breathing pure carbon dioxide and days away from air,” Gants said gently. “We really need to figure out how to fix this thing.”