Motherload | Page 3

a transport for one of the mining outfits, and was the company man on board. He was a last-minute replacement, but, to be fair, he was a great pilot and never dumped a lot of rah-rah go-company crap on us -- which is not to say he was easy to work for. He seemed as bored and miserable as we were in his own way, and he even told me once, about three weeks out, that he missed his little shuttle job dreadfully.
Ostensibly, we were pacing Deegman in a solar orbit of our own around Rilltule -- out beyond where that small queasy orange star's gravity shadow extended into extra-dimensional space -- and thus where ships traveling to or from Deegman via starjump had to show up before continuing on. The fact that there was nothing else of any interest here besides the mining town on Deegman that had hired us and a few settlements on space stations further in, made our present general locale the only area worth guarding. Of course, we'd had to weave in and out of many orbital trajectories in the weeks we'd been out here so as to (sort of) keep pace with Deegman, half-a-billion kilometers closer in-system, but all outbound vessels were told to rendezvous with us first before making starjump. That meant any "unconfirmed contacts" (read that: pirates) would have to go through us in order to pick off one of the little freighters with their small but extremely valuable cargoes. Since free-traders had to buy their loads outright instead of getting anything on spec, and Bechels like Dame Minnie had no starjump capabilities whatsoever, everyone was kept fairly honest.
Actually, in my free time that month, I'd developed a scenario wherein a gunboat like ours, doing our job, could waylay the cargo ship it was intended to protect, board her, coldwalk the crew, and then take off with it to parts unknown. This was just professional speculation, of course: you'd need conspiring crew mates without any morals; some rather specific training in shipboard combat techniques; and all the command codes needed to override the target ship's computer. This last was the hardest of all to manage, which was why my little scenario, or any variation thereof, virtually never occurred. Oh, people had tried it before, but only a legendary few had ever succeeded. Studying this sort of thing was my bag, and, lustful fantasies of my shipmates aside, I knew the difference between speculation and reality. Besides, I liked wargames and simulations, but I had admitted to myself long before that I just wasn't cold like that.
"He's a bleeding pile." Sally didn't elaborate because she knew I understood. Instead, she motioned with her hand to wait for something, so I waited.
"There...that's what I'm talking about. See what I mean?"
"Not a clue."
"You didn't feel that? The mags were spiking. It's like a wave passing through you."
I shook my head. "Sorry. It must be one of those educated palate things. You said that even the computer didn't pick it up."
"No, it does register, it's just that diagnostics doesn't rate it highly enough to consider it a problem. Even a well-balanced mag bottle has a range of variance that includes occasional peaks and valleys -- small ones, anyway. If we were involved in combat, or training maneuvers, or really anything at all that could have been a distraction, I doubt I'd have pursued it myself. Most variances are due to outside causes, like power draws elsewhere in the vessel, or even solar flair activity, if you're close enough -- which we're not. This flux is from the magnetic field propagation array, which is in the early stages of failure. Now, with the big boys, like those solid state Kategils or Magnars they use in the Fleet, this would never be a problem. Even their small gunboats use Vlassingweil magnetics -- which do have arrays, but the entire works are external from the power plant itself. You still have to shut everything down, but it's just swaptronics, so you're up and running again in an hour or two."
My eyes must have been glazing over, because she frowned and then waved at the fusion plant.
"Anyway, these cheap Value Power jobs aren't really made to be fixed by the user. You're supposed to sign a service contract with the dealer, and then pay through the colon whenever something goes wrong, because, of course, nothing that's likely to go wrong is ever covered. That's not an option for us. Dame Minnie's gone through a lot of hands, but this power plant is the original unit. It doesn't owe anybody anything, I guess, but that still leaves us with a big stripdown and reassembly."
"Where do we start?" I asked, finishing up my dinner.
"I want to do a full service test on