Orphans - Kevin Killiany [27]
“Understood.”There was a hint of chuckle to Haznedl’s acknowledgment. Then she broke the formal protocols of the open-mike comm system:“Hang on a sec.”
Corsi retrieved her spanner and secured the cover of the junction box while she waited.
Who thought sixteen-sided nuts made sense?
People who think exposed junction boxes on hundred-kilometer-long colony ships make sense think sixteen-sided nuts make sense,she answered herself. She had her tools packed by the time Haznedl got back to her.
“Commander Gomez has consulted with the Klingon engineers.”The lieutenant was once again the model of bureaucratic propriety. “Your diversion has been approved, Commander.”
Corsi snorted at the lieutenant’s choice of words, imagining Faulwell’s—or even Fabe’s—turning it into a quip. She double-checked the coordinates for booster seven-two-nine and jumped clear of the hull.
She used her steering jets to move toward the left as her gravimetrics kept her lightly in touch with the ship spinning beneath her. In normal circumstances, she would have looked ahead for her destination, but motion sickness inside an environmental suit was no joke. She kept her eyes off the horizon and watched the blue metal plane slide by directly below.
When the rocket vent appeared, she toggled her gravimetrics, pulling herself down to the hull. She landed beyond it, of course, and had to walk back. She saw the problem while she was still a dozen meters away.
“Bridge, this is Corsi,” she said. “Looks like it took a rock. Half the junction box is missing.”
* * *
“Tell her to let that one go,” Sonya Gomez told Lieutenant Haznedl. “The structural integrity field will cover it.”
She glanced over at Klath as she closed the connection. The Klingon engineer nodded his agreement. The two turned their attention back to the schematic diagram on the display screen.
The reconstruction command center was a standard Federation environmental hut that had been beamed piecemeal to the colony ship’s hull at the edge of what the S.C.E. team had dubbed the Dancidii Trench. Designed to house a dozen Spacedock workers and their equipment, it gave Gomez and Klath plenty of room to work.
They were fine-tuning the network of field generators that would act as stitches, holding the damaged section of ship steady when thrust was applied. She would have liked about a dozen more generators, but as Klath pointed out possible alternatives, Gomez had to admit they’d done an excellent job with what they had.
At first she had been irritated by the Klingon habit of rigging whatever was immediately available to do a job even when the parts they needed could be easily gotten from stores or fabricated on a replicator. But now she had to admit the Federation practice of using the best available first, then devising alternatives as those ran out would have left them farther behind at this point. As it was they were coming in ahead of schedule. She thought even Captain Scott would be impressed.
Probably surprised as well, Gomez thought; she had been. The Klingon engineers had proven to be remarkably adept and patient: craftsmen who took pride in quality workmanship. Not at all what she had expected.
Some things ran true to form, of course. Like Klingon workers not mentioning dangerous situations, or staying on the job until the last reserves of their environmental suits were exhausted. One technician had finished his shift without informing anyone he had been injured. If Gomez had not noticed the field repair to his environmental suit, he would never have reported it.
She had also had her entire team model complete and redundant communication for every action or change of plan, such as the multistep conversation she’d just had with Domenica. The Klingon practice of each individual simply moving on to the next task that caught his or her eye without informing anyone else had led to some confusion—and one potentially explosive confrontation—in the first day of combined operations.
Despite this, or perhaps