Emerald Flight: “Human Factors” (continued)

“Didn’t want to miss all the excitement, eh, Cap’n?”

Devereux’s eyed turned toward the Chief. Her expression was solemn and almost haggard. Elizabeth felt a renewed chill wash through her abdomen.

She looks terrible.

Devereux did not speak immediately. Her eyes moved from the Chief to Elizabeth.

“Bad news, huh?” the Chief said, putting the tool that he was holding down before turning around. “Like things have been going so well anyway.”

Devereux’s eyes moved back to the Chief and then over to Xi.

“If you will excuse us, Ensign,” she said quietly, but with polite authority. “Return to your station.”

“Yes, Captain,” the engineer replied, saluting quickly and moving just as quickly out of the hatchway.

Devereux reached over and sealed the hatch.

“What is it, Captain?”

The grim look in Devereux’s expression deepened. “Hawkes has taken a turn for the worse,” she told them. “Hope gives him about thirty hours.”

Elizabeth exchanged a look with Rusty. The Chief’s expression flowed from surprise to determination.

“Well,” he announced, attempting to sound less solemn. “We can’t have that.”

“Does Hope know why?”

Devereux shook her head at Elizabeth’s question. “She’s still trying to find out.” She moved slowly over to the work surface that held the transmitter module. “This may be all that stands between him and death.” She slowly ran her fingertips along the surface of its casing. “But we just don’t know.”

“Do you want us to continue working on it?”

Elizabeth silenced Rusty with a sharp look when he opened his mouth to protest.

“Unless you have a better idea,” Devereux said. “Yes.” She turned back toward them. Elizabeth saw that her left hand was gripped into a fist. “If nothing else, maybe we can find out who did this to him.”

#

Rusty stared at the Captain.

Well, he thought. That puts a different spin on things.

“Nothing motivates like a good deadline . . .” he murmured, earning him sharp and mildly dismayed looks from both Elizabeth and the Captain.

“How soon can you be ready?” Devereux asked.

Rusty glanced at Elizabeth, reviewing how much had already been completed, and then turned back toward Devereux.

“Twenty minutes,” he said. “Give or take. If we can have Xi back. Forty, if we can’t.”

Devereux nodded. Elizabeth quickly tapped out the request for Xi to return to the work room. Rusty wondered how far he had gotten, or whether he lingered around, hoping to find out what the secrecy was all about.

No, Rusty decided. If the Captain told him to “Scat!”, he scat.

“Keep me posted,” Devereux told them, turning to leave.

“Captain?” Elizabeth said, causing her to pause at the hatchway.

“Yes?” Devereux half-turned to face her.

“I’m sorry.”

The Captain gave her a tight, wan smile. “Let’s hope we won’t have to be,” she said. “Carry on.”

They both waited until the Captain had left and was likely out of earshot. Rusty had learned, long ago, not to underestimate Devereux’s hearing. Although sometimes, he thought, it was as much intuition as listening skills.

“What do we tell Xi?” Elizabeth said.

“The same thing we did before,” Rusty answered without humor. “Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing.”

Xi returned less than ten minutes, breathing as though he had sprinted all the way back from wherever he had gone. If he was hoping to be brought into the details of whatever secret project the ship’s senior officers were up to, he hid his disappointment poorly. This elicited a small shared smile between Rusty and Elizabeth, but it helped to boost both their spirits.

They completed the work in twenty-one minutes, losing time because Xi kept dropping tools in his nervousness. Fortunately, none of them damaged the transmitter, but it did slow them down.

“That should do it,” Xi said, closing the transmitter’s casing. “Do you want me to run the diagnostics on it again?”

“No,” Rusty told him, laughing softly. “I think three times is enough.”

Xi frowned slightly. “But,” he protested quietly. “What if--?”

“Then we know where to find you,” the Chief told him with gentle firmness. “No skedaddle.”

“Yes, Chief . . .” Xi glanced toward Elizabeth. “Sir.”

Not displaying the haste that he had demonstrated earlier when the Captain had dismissed him, Xi left the chamber, casting several last glances behind him as he went.

“Skedaddle?” Elizabeth asked, looking at the Chief Engineer with bemusement.

“Don’t watch a lot of old flat-dee, do you?” Rusty replied, placing the transmitter module into a padded transportation case.

“No . . .” Elizabeth said, shaking her head, causing her chestnut-tinted ponytail to wave from side to side like its namesake. She gathered the last of the tools that they no longer needed and returned them to the equipment cart.

“Your loss,” Rusty said, placing the transport case on the top of cart. “It’s quite educational,” he added casually, “from an historical perspective.” He raised his arm high and waved it forward with an exaggerated flourish. “Wagons ho!”

Elizabeth looked on as he pushed the heavily loaded cart with ease through the open hatchway, watching the play of the thick and sturdy muscles along his upper arms and shoulders.

“You coming, Lizzie?” Rusty asked, pausing a few meters into the main chamber. “Or are you going inventory all of the stem bolts first to make sure we didn’t miss any?”

“Coming . . .” she called to him without really shouting, and followed him from the work room.

Rusty grinned to himself and headed for the nearest shaft.

Elizabeth had to maintain a trot to keep up with him. Although she tried to suppress it, she was mildly winded by the time they reached Infirmary’s main hatchway. Rusty waited while she opened the hatch and then pushed the laden equipment through cart.

Their arrival earned them stares from both Zee and Bayer, who was apparently awake in order to eat. Elizabeth felt relief at seeing that, knowing that being on solid food again was a definite milestone of recovery.

Rusty waved cheerily, grinning at them as he and Elizabeth pushed the cart through the Infirmary’s main compartment. He felt their eyes, and curiosity, still on them as they disappeared into the short corridor that led to the isolation pod’s antechamber.

Hope was there when they arrived. She looked up from the console where she monitored Hawkes’ condition.

“You are ready?”

Rusty looked down at the transport case and then across the chamber at Hawkes. “I will guess we’ll find out,” he said. “Open ‘er up.”

Hope tapped out a series of commands on the console in front of her. The inner hatchway hissed as the containment seals withdrew and then Rusty heard the lock disengage. Elizabeth opened the hatch, standing aside so that Rusty could enter with the cart. With the two of them, the equipment cart, and the diagnostic bed containing Hawkes, they were would be working in close quarters for a while.

Rusty positioned the cart on the right side of the bed, struggling slightly not to collide with the other pieces of equipment present there.

“Hope,” he called out. “Do you really need all this stuff in here?”

She paused before answering and, for a moment, he thought she might actually admit that she did not.

“Yes.”

“Of course you do,” he murmured.

He considered self-seriously just ramming pieces of it out of his way so that he and Elizabeth had somewhere to stand without bumping elbows with either themselves or the other pieces of medical equipment.

Elizabeth slid in through the hatchway and closed the hatch behind her. The seals slid back into place and the hatch’s lock reengaged.

“Cozy . . .”

“Could be worse,” Elizabeth countered, almost under her breath.

Rusty waited, but she did not elaborate. He looked around, looking for a small empty surface where they place the transmitter. The cart would do, but it would a lot easier if they could put it somewhere else.

He located a small rolling tray that was probably used to hold medical supplies. Pressing down on its surface, he tested it strength. It was tougher than it looked. The transmitter module was not that heavy, but once he added the power supply and—

“You did bring the power supply?” he asked Elizabeth. “Please tell me that you brought the power supply.”

Elizabeth looked unperturbed. “There should be at least one inside the cart.”

There’d better be.

As he leaned down to open the cart’s storage compartment, he eyed the hatchway, figuring that it would be easier to send Elizabeth back out after one if it was not there.

Would serve her right for forgettin’ it.

To his relief and surprise, Rusty found two of them stored inside the cart. They were of different sizes and capacities, but either one, he figured, would work for what they needed. He grabbed the smaller one of the two, opting for that over increased power.

Can always switch ‘em later.

He placed it on the cart next to the transmitter and starting sorting through the leads that ran from the transmitter module.

“Is it the yellow or the red one that causes it to blow up?”

“The black one,” Elizabeth replied flatly.

“Of course.”

Rusty finished gathering the leads that he needed, making a mental note to keep any attempts at humor to himself for now.

He finished connected the leads and, with a silent plea to the Morris, switched on the power supply. The indicator light on its status panel glowed green, which he took as a promising sign. It showed a full charge, which pleased him, as it meant he would not need to scold his team again for not leaving the carts properly stocked.

“Ready?” he asked Elizabeth without looking up.

She nodded, standing ready with her tablet to remotely configure the transmitter.

Rusty found the manual test switch. Usually, it was operated from the torpedo’s internal computer. A series of indicator lights flashed in a variety of colors. He glanced up at Elizabeth, whose eyebrows rose in the equivalent of a shrug.

We can always call Xi . . .

The blinking of indicator lights settled into a steady cadence. While not all the same hue, Rusty guessed that it meant that the transmitter was ready for accept instructions. He looked up at Elizabeth.

“Well?”

She tapped the controls on her tablet and then nodded, smiling. “We have control.” Her smile faded. “Now what?”

Rusty stared back at her. “You mean you don’t know?”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened with a clear threat. Rusty grinned.

“Hope,” he called through the chamber’s intercom. “Which one of these things can we monitor a transmitter frequency through?”

He watched through the transparent panel as she worked the controls of her console. One of the displays toward the top right of the bed went blank.

“Got it?”

Elizabeth nodded and began tapping out commands on her tablet. A few seconds later, data from the transmitter appeared on the display. Elizabeth grinned.

Rusty joined her, feeling as though something was finally going right.

“I assume you have a plan?”

Elizabeth stared back at him, her grin fading.

“This was your idea.”

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed.

“Yes,” she said, sounding confident again. “We’ll start running a range of frequencies to see whether we get any response.” She tapped at her tablet. “We’ll skip any of the commonly used ones, as I suspect they wouldn’t want any accidental interference.”

Rusty nodded in agreement. “Also any that are close to the operating frequencies of any of the equipment.”

Elizabeth nodded slowly as she continued to enter instructions to the transmitter on her tablet. “Good idea.” After several long seconds, she looked up. “That should do it,” she said. “I think.”

“How long will it take?” Rusty asked her.

Elizabeth blinked and then checked her tablet. “Several hours, probably,” she replied, frowning.

Rusty looked down at Hawkes. “He might not have many left.”

“I know,” Elizabeth agreed solemnly. “I told it to skip the multiples,” she added. “That might help.”

“It might,” Rusty agreed. His eyes turned toward the transmitter. “What else can we do now—besides wait?”

“Lunch?” Elizabeth asked tentatively.

Rusty eyed her questioningly.

“I haven’t eaten since breakfast,” she explained with deliberate calmness. “And I need to . . . take care of something else.”

Rusty opened his mouth, but his stomach chose that moment to announce its agreement with Elizabeth’s proposal.

“I hate to leave him, though,” she said. “Minutes could count.”

“They could,” Rusty agreed, not wholly willing to admit that he felt the same way. “Hope’s here, though.”

“I know,” Elizabeth said. “Still . . .”

“I will watch.”

Hope’s voice surprised Rusty and, from what he could see, completely startled Elizabeth. They both turned toward the transparent viewing panel. Hope stared in at them. He had forgotten that she probably monitored everything that was said and done in the isolation pod.

Elizabeth exchanged a glance with Rusty. He nodded.

“Go.”

“I think we’re being kicked out,” Elizabeth said. Her lips formed a slight smile.

“It does sound like that,” Rusty agreed. “Doctor’s orders, even.”

Elizabeth laughed softly. “All right,” she conceded. “Let’s go.”

She reached down and tapped out the code to unseal the hatch. As the hatch unlocked, she turned toward Rusty.

“But you’re buying.”