Something still troubled him and it took a moment before he realized what it was. The readouts that should provide him with the transponder signals from navigational buoys and other vessels alternated between blank and cascades of static. Abrupt departures from slipstream were known to interfere with many of a ship’s operations, sometimes for several hours after event. It was not uncommon to even require complete resets of the supporting hardware systems in order to restore them functioning condition. Still, he took nothing for granted.
“Captain,” he called out again. “Our communications system appear to behaving erratically. While expected, I thought you should be aware.”
Devereux paused and then looked down toward Pyrafox. The navigator checked several displays before nodding affirmation.
“Confirmed, Captain,” Pyrafox reported. “We’re not receiving the usual navigational data stream. Most of the frequencies are either empty or filled with some kind of interference.”
Devereux frowned slightly, but did not appear overly concerned. “Have an Engineering team take a look.”
“Aye, Captain,” Hawkes acknowledged and entered the request. After a moment’s consideration, he raised its priority over that of the tactical systems inspection.
“Hold position here, Ensign,” Devereux said, her gaze once again fixed on the screen. “I want us to stay put until we know what happened and we can make repairs.”
“Yes, Captain,” Pyrafox replied. “Setting all thrusters to standby.”
Devereux nodded slowly. After a moment, her eyes finally left the main displays as she turned and headed toward the command deck.
#
It was hardly the assignment that Roberta Janusae had hoped for. Certainly, a possibly faster and more efficient starship was news, perhaps even of significant importance in a way that Roberta could not quite grasp. To her mind such interest extended chiefly to an audience of technicians and space travel enthusiasts—not quite the broad media exposure she sought. Careers were made by one’s popularity with the general media audience, not by reporting to a select group who undoubtedly knew more than she did about the subject.
Now, amidst the klaxons that continued to sound through the main Engineering deck, she wished she had selected a quieter location to report from. She has specifically chosen it based on her experience on other assignments onboard starships. While the bridge might be where all of the command-level personnel were, it tended to make for extremely dull live reporting. Audiences tended to switch away after more than a few minutes of uniformed officers relaying routine orders. She knew that the key places to be, depending on the mission, were either whatever served as the medical center or the main engineering level. Because this was a mission focused on the test of an experimental upgrade to the starship drive, she had opted for the latter. If anything even remotely worthy was reporting was going to happen, it was going to happen there. She had been right—spectacularly so.
Before their flight began, the Chief Engineer (she thought she had heard someone refer to him in passing as “Rusty”, but had not been certain whether in fact they had actually been referring to him) had treated her with an almost mischievous respect. She could see that there was a certain charm beneath his rough and brawny exterior, and there was little doubt that he knew his stuff.
At that moment, though, she felt very much in the way. So far, no one had snarled at her to get the hell out. Despite her earlier impressions of him, she could imagine the Chief Engineer doing so. In any case, he seemed far too busy calling out to nearly everyone else in the vicinity. Members of the crew darted around her hurriedly, engaged in a multitude of tasks that she was certain that she would barely understand. She desperately wanted to get off the deck before someone put a tool in her hand and told her to get to work.
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