Chapter 27: Chapter 26 Getting Ready to Skip Out

My first hire was not going well. The engineer had ordered all new high end conduit wiring and shielding for the nav computer room and bridge. Eve had said the shielding and wiring were good enough to keep but the engineer had pulled them out already. It was 11,000 credits for the new materials and I was sure he was getting some kickbacks from the purchases. I told him I would give him a 1,000 credit bonus if he finished before my deadline and didn’t spend any more credits. This caused problems as he kept trying to pull my engineering bots off their assigned tasks to work on his job. I had given him two of the new engineering bots which should have been more than enough. The sooner I got this guy off the ship the better. I allowed him a 3rd bot and told him adamantly no more!

My experience with the navigation engineer made me reluctant to do any more interviews. Couldn't I just man the entire ship with bots? No, probably not. Most star nations had tight restrictions on bot intelligence. Another interview was due according to my PerCom.

I met with a life support engineer. A man in his mid forties. I started talking with him and he was actually extremely easy to talk with. I liked him almost immediately. He also seemed fairly competent. And he was willing to sign onto the crew! He nearly jumped out of the seat at the generous monthly salary. Then he settled in and asked me for a concession. My eye twitched ready for some absurd request. Thankfully his request was to just let his assistant sign on to the crew too. His assistant was his teenage daughter. I was about to say fine but then decided I should at least meet her. She was young, just 15. And I say young loosely as I was between my 18th and 19th birthday. She was cute too and as I questioned her she had a solid knowledge base. I decided to hire her as well at 300 per month. Since I was installing the university learning center she could get her engineering certs and I would increase her pay accordingly. So that is how Nero and Gabby were added to my crew.

Two hours later they had their personal items on board. They got to work immediately and thankfully they were self sufficient. After they had worked 12 hours Nero asked where were there assigned quarters? That was a very good question.

I spent some time looking at the schematics. The lower decks were still too much of a mess to work with. The command deck had been cleaned but not refurbished and was missing panels, lights and doors. On deck eight there were four crew quarters in good shape. That deck was mostly life support and feeds for maneuvering thrusters but also had the ship's constable quarters and supporting facilities. I decided to use the constable's berthing area for crew for now. The construction bots were reassigned to this area as their new top priority…8 hours for completion. Damn those construction bots were fast! I ordered two mattresses and some simple furnishes and told Nero their cabins would be ready in 8 hours. He reluctantly decided to work until then.

My pilot interviews did not go well. A Sylvan male, although competent and tolerable wanted all the controls to be in the Sylvan language. Then a human woman in her late 20s only had a speck of experience with craft over 20 meters in length. I had given her some thought as my shuttle pilot but my internal warnings bells said to keep her away from the ship. The crew member I needed to hire was a personnel director, commonly known as a first officer. I hated doing interviews and it was eating into my time.

The last crew I had tried to hire was my navigator. Navigating space is important and I learned quite a bit during my shuttle micro jump trip to the station. Yes the navigation computer did most of the work but still there was some skill involved. The biggest part of the job was keeping the nav computer updated with stellar object information. There was a human network that downloaded updates to your navigation computer when you entered a new system where the network was active. The navigator was responsible for filtering this information. So my first interview was with a young boy, about my age. He had passed all the certs and was looking for adventure but had zero experience. Navigators were fairly common and I would need to ask Eve why she had Henry come for an interview.

The second candidate was a middle aged woman. She had worked on number transports and was from the Union and waiting out the war here. She seemed to like the corporations that ran the Union so that was pretty much the end of that interview for me. So Henry it was, he accepted the position and really ridiculous salary for an inexperienced navigator...I forgot to reduce the salary before the offer.

My clock was ticking. I had just 70 hours before I was looking to depart. The FTL drive was assembled and had passed all pre checks. I powered it up and the station commed me at the power increase. After some back and forth I was allowed to run my checks at 30% power. Everything was green. I did a fist pump and silly little dance…maybe I shouldn’t do that…there were other crew members on board now.

I decided to check my bot orders. The only bots not delivered were the steward bots and it looked like they should be here in 20 hours but the delivery had been pushed back twice already. The two large cargo holds were crammed with parts I had ordered and didn’t have time to install yet. There was a small backlog of parts not delivered. Nothing vital and all of them should be here in less than a day. The good thing about bots is they were diligent in checking in shipments. The station had shorted me on four different orders and the bots had noted it on the digital paperwork. They of course apologized at their oversight and would correct their mistakes.

Fuel tanks were maxed for the FTL drive. That had been a nightmare as well. The first fuel dump didn’t meet the specs. They tried to blame me, saying my holding tanks were dirty. Unfortunately for them I had video of the freshly cleaned tanks before their dump. So they purged the tanks at their expense and refueled. The rest of the reactor, generator and maneuvering fuel was just over 70%. That was the best I was going to get as some storage areas were not ready to receive fuel. I needed to replace too many lines to use all the tanks right now. Life support was all green from decks 8 to 10! Nero and Gabby were a god send. They always sent me requests when they needed parts ordered and I had taken to blindly approving them.

The exterior hull was completely repaired and all modules were installed. We still had some work on the interior of the ship connecting the hull modules but we looked liked a fully functional ship on the outside. I had too many exterior bots, four of the big ones were just overkill. Well, better to have and not need than to need and not have. It was Eve’s idea to get two more and I would needle her about it when appropriate.

All I really needed was the nav computer and I could actually leave. I went to the bridge to see how the navigation engineer was doing and found Henry and the engineer screaming at each other. I go them both to calm down and got their stories. The engineer was angry that the boy was interfering with his work. Henry said the engineer had moved the same cable three times in the last two hours. He indicated the cable in the exposed ceiling and I noticed the engineer looked nervous. I scanned the cable and yes it was the secondary backup to the nav computer feed from the navigator's station.

The navigator's station was installed and clashed with the rest of the bridge. It was brand new and modern while the rest of the bridge was aged. I brought the schematics up and the cable was in the wrong place. I asked Henry where the cable had been installed prior and Henry asked indicated the other two spots the engineer had installed the cable. The first one was the correct placement.

Confused I asked about the three engineering bots I had assigned to him as they could have installed the cable correctly without error. He began to sweat. I checked the bots work record. He was using them…no he wasn’t. He assigned them a task and then they sat idle for a few hours before he assigned another task. Getting a bad feeling I checked on the nav computer. The engineer had pushed the delivery date back twice. It was ready…he could have just stored it in a cargo bay. I overrode his delivery delay and had the nav computer delivered to a shuttle bay.

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I turned my attention to the engineer who was sweating profusely now. I dismissed him and paid his full salary…no point risking legal action. He wasn’t going to make his bonus so at least I didn’t pay him that. Before he could leave I scanned him and found he had my tools and a few small components that were pricey in his tool kit. He pleaded ignorance and I took my things back and escorted him off the ship.

Well damn. The engineer was dragging his feet. I went and talked with Henry and transferred him a 1000 credit bonus for finding out the deception. Henry said he had been bored and was just offering to help out the engineer finish quicker so he could get some practice on the nav system. Ok, I could get the educational computer installed and he could practice in the VR. It was currently in the cargo bay in six crates. The radiation and EMP shielding had been delivered as well. I decided I could squeeze in the university computer toward the back of the command deck. The original ship nav and control computer room was there and all I would have to remove was two storage rooms for officers to make enough space for the large university computer...I programmed the changes to get the construction bots on the remodel.

I paused and asked Henry where he had been sleeping and he indicated the corner of the bridge. I told him to pick a room on Deck 8. I really needed a personnel director to take care of these things.

I sat down and started queuing up the installation of the massive university computer. With enough bots I could get it installed in 19 hours. That should give my navigator a little time to practice. Ok I needed a navigation engineer to install and calibrate the computer. I also wanted all the work the deceitful engineer had completed rechecked.

I commed Tora and after a brief conversation hired her. I needed to give Henry something to do. I had 960,110 station credits remaining. I could turn the sum into precious metals at a loss or carry it with me and convert it to other currency at my next port interstellar bank. Instead I asked Henry to spend 100,000 credits on crew provisions and refurbishing the bridge and the officer quarters on deck 9. When he needed more funds all he had to do was ask. I would review his purchases and release another 100,000 credits. He was also to only purchase things that could be delivered immediately. He eagerly started spending my funds.

I spent two hours checking and extending the bots work queues. Tora arrived with the nav computer. My steward bots were also in crates on the platform outside the ship and I had them transferred to a shuttle bay. I explained to Tora my issues with the past engineer and told her she had 20 hours to get the nav computer running and calibrated. She looked about to object but just got to work. I transferred command authority of the three engineering bots to her and relief flooded her face. A bot worked as fast as a human but could work non-stop. So as long as they were given proper commands each one could do the work of three people in a day.

Eve appeared on the bridge. She had been looking for me in engineering. I had turned off my PerCom to focus. We needed ship comms and speakers installed…I added it to my massive to do list. Eve said it was time for an appointed sleep. I had been taking stims and if I had hired a medical officer they would have forced me to take a break by now. Once again Eve forced me into my SLUMBER unit and she had they same program queued up.

This time I made an effort to save the princess who held an uncanny resemblance to Eve. It felt too weird to ravage the princess in the simulation. I needed to talk with Eve about this as she had programmed it. I would have to do it after we got away from the station. On waking I felt much better. Things generally looked good on the progress checks. If I had the nav computer up I could leave.

I checked on Tora’s progress. She was wearing just a body skin suit and tool belt and had nice athletic curves. I started talking to her now that she seemed much more relaxed and could see how people could have a fetish for cat women. The sharp canines would definitely make me hesitant for some intimate acts….

Bringing my mind back to the moment I talked about the ship and it’s progress with her. I mentioned the cleaning bots in passing and she volunteered what the smell was. Apparently there was a lot of issues with the bio waste disposal during their exodus. Teenager Wren and Wren’s in heat produced a pungent pheromone in their urine to attract mates. So both male and female Wren had been leaving markers all over the ship. She found the odor distasteful as well…like a seedy Wren brothel she added. She was happy I was working on eliminating it. She even offered to help the cleaning bots identify spots they had missed since her sense of smell was superior. She then said she said she found my human sweat and stink more appealing than Wren pheromones. She followed up with a low purring sound. I excused myself from the conversation.

Discomforted by the obvious advances of Tora I dove back into my work. Henry had spent 100,000 credits and was asking for another line of credit. I approved with the note this was his last credit release. I decided to spend 700,000 credits on one of the luxury shuttles. I found a slightly used one that I could get delivered immediately. I used the remaining credits to purchase a small hover bike with all the bells and whistles. It was modeled after a bike in some children’s animation. I just thought it looked cool and would be better than my ATV to travel between the alien cities.

A few hours later and nearly an hour before her deadline Tora said the nav computer was functional and calibrated. We would need to move outside the hangar to get the sensors tied into the nav computer after a stellar scan. I checked and we still had 7 hours for all deliveries to be completed. The shuttle would be here in 2 hours and I needed to sign some paperwork. Although we had been scanning all cargo coming into the ship I decided to move everyone on board and all the bots to do a scan for tracking devices and espionage. Maybe I was being paranoid but the navigation engineer had spooked me.

We didn’t find any trackers and I moved to get clearance to leave the dock. After ten minutes they said it would take 30 minutes to cycle out the atmosphere and open the doors. They would begin in 15 minutes. Everything was on board and I was ready to go. I ignored a comm request from Sha’Lua and watched from the bridge as the star scape appeared as the massive doors opened. Henry was there as well as Eve. My life support engineers were sleeping, their loss. Eve pushed the maneuvering thrusters and the Void Phoenix reentered space.

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