Free New Dawn (Wandering Engineer) by Chris Hechtl Page B

do much good
until they bumped up an octave or two though.
    "Navigational sensors,"
she replied over her shoulder. Suddenly she pitched forward and swam in mid
air. "Shit not again!" she wind milled, dropping the case. It
floated. "Damn!" He reached her and grabbed a thrashing ankle.
    "Get this a lot?" he
asked as he reeled her in. He steadied her as her feet hit the ground.
    "Yeah. Too often," she
said breathing hard. One of the guards looked amused. Jennie growled.
"What are you looking at?" She reached for the tool box and failed.
It moved further into the field. "Damn." Suddenly it slammed to the
deck hard. "Awe crap." Jennie shook her head. The deck now had a
toolbox sized dent. "Great," she sighed. "Why me?"
    He grabbed her hand before she
could grab the handle. "Wait." He tapped his implants. "Lets
see." He couldn't get into the net; Sprite was hogging all the bandwidth. "Okay."
He turned and studied a panel. "Nope." He looked over the next.
    "What are you looking
for?" She asked. "Ah...”
    He brushed aside some debris and
then raised his right hand. "This," he said. He sent the mental
signal to his hand, the ring finger morphed into a jack.
     "What the hell?" The
girl asked taken aback.
    He slid the jack home into the
port. "Okay, I'm in." He accessed the deck controls. "Virus
attack, firewalls are up," Defender reported.
    "I have it." In a
moment he sent a signal to the life support node, it cleared and the floating
debris clanged to the deck. "Virus," He reported. "Okay, you can
get your box now." She went over and picked it up.
    "What did you do?" she
asked curious. She stepped around the zero g section carefully then grabbed her
box.
    "I zapped a couple of
viruses in the node and reinitialized its firewall. Then I shut the gravity
module down and did a cold reboot," he replied, removing the jack.
    "Well, whatever you did, it
worked. Think you can do it again?" she asked, hefting the box. "Hope
nothing is broken," she muttered.
    "As often as it takes, but
it would be easier to train people to do it themselves," he said. He shook
his head. "Also, to get the viruses cleared out and restore the
mainframe." He gave her a look. She nodded. "Well, I am into
computers, so we shouldn't have a problem there. I didn't know about viruses
though. How can a computer catch the flu?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.
From her tone she was obviously serious. He sighed.
    Obviously, she didn't know as
much as she thought. "A computer virus is a malicious set of code designed
to damage a system's software or hardware." He waved to the deck.
"Like that did." She nodded. "Some are pranks, some are to steal
information, and some are to leave back doors for hackers to attack a
system," he explained.
    She nodded. "Okay, so how do
we get them out?" she asked. He sighed.
    "I'm working on it,"
Sprite said distantly. He nodded.
    "Working on it,"  he
said out loud.
    She nodded. "Okay, this
way."
     
    "So I hear you’re shaking
things up?" the gravelly voice isn't a surprise to him, but apparently to
the crew members near. He hid a smile and turns. The Captain is seated in a
chair, welded onto a hover pallet.
    "Doing my best Ma'am, We
should have things in better shape soon," he said. He knew things were a
lot better now then before he had come on board of course.
    She gave him a long look, then a
small smile that touched her eyes into a twinkle. "You do that. Carry
on," she said. He nods as she backs up with her guard and turns around.
"Oh," she said. He turns back to her as she looks at him over her
shoulder. "Do make sure you get some food and sleep sometime, you’re
wearing the guards out,"  she said with a malicious smile.
    He smiled wearily. "Aye aye
Captain," he said. She nodded and then left.
    He looked at the tech helping
him. "Does the Captain go everywhere in that?" he asked.
    She nodded, looking a little
uncomfortable. "The Captain is pretty old now and not as spry as she once
was. And that machine can't get her into all the