A door that sticks, fixed

Dan delivered the team to the door, and attempted to open it, showing them how it stuck.  When they just watched him and said nothing, he showed them how he had to push the door to get it open enough to get through, and then showed them that it had trouble closing again.  He stood there, panting a little from the exertion, wondering if the maintenance crew were going to burst into laughter and just walk off.  Instead, Malik started tapping things on his tablet, and the other two guys stood still, looking relaxed but alert.  Dan found himself wondering if they were more than just maintenance, as he’d seen the security staff adopt exactly the same pose.

Just as he was wondering if they’d maybe not understood what he wanted them to do, and trying to think how he could politely ask such a question, Malik’s tablet beeped softly and he looked up.

“The schematics says that this is the quarantine door for Lab-EST,” he said.  It wasn’t a question, and Dan wasn’t even sure that it was addressed to him, but the silence was making him feel edgy.

“I don’t know what that means,” he said.  Malik looked him blankly.

“It’s a quarantine door,” he said, he words sounding carefully chosen.  “It can be locked shut from this side so that it cannot be opened from the other.  Lab-EST has two doors: this one, and the one to Hanger 9.  Hanger 9 can be opened to space.”

The look of shock on Dan’s face was more eloquent than anything he could have said.  Malik paused, and then asked,

“How long have you been working on the Eagalante?”

“Two months, ship,” said Dan.  “I came aboard with Astromeral.”  There were a few murmurs from the other members of the crew, as the quiet guy asked who Astomeral was and was informed.

“You weren’t on a ship before that?” Malik’s voice quieted down the guys behind him.

“Briefly, but I came from High Colotonne as a specialist.”

Malik nodded as though that meant something to him, which Dan rather doubted: High Colotonne was a rather grand sounding name for a small military facility on a worldlet called Yorkten.

“Well,” he said.  “It’s someone else’s job to explain all this to you.  What I need to tell you is that this door not working properly is a serious security breach and I should be reporting you right now for not alerting us sooner and escalating this properly.  It is more important that this door is fixed though, so that report can wait until we’re done.  You might,” and he smiled, thin-lipped, “want to use that time to find someone to shift the blame to.”

He passed his tablet back to the man behind him, the quiet one, and then produced a screwdriver from a pocket and used it to open up a concealed panel beneath the door-open switch.  Tiny readouts and flashing lights became visible, and shortly after that all three men were discussing the problem in low voices, pointing at things on schematics on the tablets, and checking the door, its tracks, and the supporting electronics.  Dan rubbed a hand across his forehead, uncertain if he still had to be stood there acting like a nursemaid or if he could go back to his terminal and worry about what he’d just been told.  Almost as though he’d heard his thoughts, Malik looked up from what he was doing.

“We don’t need you to stand there,” he said.  “But don’t leave this lab without telling us first, please.  That would be another security breach.”

Dan nodded, and retreated to his desk, wondering how in the world he’d managed to find security even more elaborate than in the restricted military facility he’d come from.

Maintenance

The data taken from the biotank readouts consisted of eighteen different measurements, and Dan rapidly saw that it was going to be easiest to assemble them into a data-cube and then slice through it in various directions to assess what patterns there were, and what data wasn’t conforming.  He transferred the data from Dr. Lesjes’s tablet to his own, backing up a copy on the lab’s local computer as part of standard process.  He was just about to turn the lab computer off again when he noticed that a decision box had appeared and overlaid part of the screen.

“Copy data to cloud?” he read out loud.  Strange, he thought, surely backing all the data up to the cloud – the information dense computing structure that laced its way through the entire star-freighter – was also standard process?  He reached out and tapped the Enter key almost automatically, and then noticed that the highlighted option had been Cancel.  The decision box disappeared, leaving the backed-up data visible on the screen.  He cursed softly under his breath and studied the screen, looking for the menu that would allow him to upload the data to the cloud for safe-storage, but before he’d covered more than a quarter of the screen (did Dr. Lesjes store everything on the desktop?) the door to the lab chimed, telling him that someone was requesting entry.

Surprised again, he called out “Enter,” looking over at the doors.

“Voice control is not active,” said a greasily smooth voice, too polished and enunciated to be human.

“What?” Dan looked up and around him, as most people did when addressed by the disembodied voice of the ship systems, and then felt a little foolish.  There was no response, and the entry chime sounded again.  He walked over to the door to the lab and pressed the door release pad.  There was a responsiveness to it that made him wonder if it was actually a mechanical switch instead of a touch-pad.  The door opened, and three men in maintenance uniforms stepped through.

“Please identify yourself,” said the first man holding out a tablet.  He was taller than Dan, and taller than the other members of his team, with hair that was greying at the temples and eyes that looked as though they’d frosted over.  His uniform, midnight blue with the maintenance logo sewn on both shoulders and the midriff, across the bellybutton, was tight-fitting, and after a moment Dan realised that the elasticated cuffs meant it was a pressure-suit, intended to keep its wearer alive for minutes in the event of a sudden pressure leak.  There was no sign of the helmet that would complete the suit, and Dan wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.  He looked at the tablet, and laid his palm flat on it, inside the lines drawn on the screen.  The tablet chirped almost immediately, and as he lifted his hand off the man was already pulling the tablet back and reading the instructions on the screen.

“Sticking door in Lab-EST?” he said.  His voice rose slightly at the end of the sentence, but Dan wasn’t completely certain it was a question.

“Yes,” he said.  “Er, who are you?”

“Maintenance,” grunted one of the guys behind the grey-templed man.  “What more do you need to know?  We fix your door, fast as a supernova.”

“I can’t really call you maintenance,” said Dan feeling awkward now.  “That seems a bit impersonal.”

“You can call me Malik,” said the grey-templed man, turning his head slightly towards Dan.  His eyes seemed almost to be hiding behind the curtain of frost, but they didn’t look directly at him, or even indicate that they were focusing.  “Otherwise we’re just the maintenance team.  Where’s your door?”

“It’s on the tablet, boss,” said the third man, who’d not yet spoken.

“Nope,” said Malik.  “This is Lab-EST.  We make no assumptions, and we go nowhere without authorisation.  Not if you want to leave in one piece.  This man here,” he pointed at Dan, “will show us where the door is, and will show us out again.”

“Right,” said Dan, wonderingly.  “It’s this way, just over here in fact.”   He pointed himself, and then realised that he’d gestured so vaguely that he might have been pointing into the corner.  “Er, just follow me.”

The maintenance men, led by Malik, did exactly that, walking behind him in single file, stopping as soon as he did, and generally acting like they expected the whole room to explode at any second.

Calling Facilities

Left alone in the lab Dan looked at the tablet.  Dr. Lesjes – she’d invited him to call her Anna a couple of times, but he always slipped back to Dr. Lesjes, even in the privacy of his own thoughts – had filled in nearly all of the data fields.  He counted three left to do, starting with number 28.  He looked over the biotank he was in front of and finally spotted the number 27 stencilled on it in letters tens of centimetres high.

“How could I have missed that?” he said quietly to himself, and noticed how his voice echoed in the quiet lab.  He pressed his lips together, answering the question only in his mind: he’d been looking for a much smaller number less obviously located.  He walked on to what he hoped was the next biotank and found that it had the number 26 stencilled on the side, so he walked back the other way to number 28.  Then he fussed with it for a minute while he worked out where the data readouts were hidden and how to slide the panel out to see them.  After all that he was pleasantly surprised to find that the stylus worked first time on the tablet with no extra little puzzles or tricks to work through.  He tried peering into the tank, but the shadows in there were confusing and kept moving, so he decided to wait for Dr. Lesjes to explain what he was looking at and what he was looking for.

Now that he understood the task the other two biotanks were quick to finish off, and he left the lab quickly, his feet ringing the steel floor panels in his haste.  The door he’d struggled with to enter the lab was another struggle to leave again, and then on the other side he found that it wouldn’t close properly either.  With no way to gain enough leverage to force the smooth, polished metal of the doors together he was forced to leave a five centimetre gap there, something that would have worried him a lot less before he knew that they were growing Empirical Storm Troopers in the other lab.  That thought galvanized him back to his desk, where he put through a call to Facilities and Maintenance.  A bored-sounding voice answered after two rings: “Facilities.  Make it quick.”

“Uh, I contacted you about a sticking door in our lab,” said Dan, feeling as though he were interrupting something.  “Uh, a couple of times, I think.”

There was a pause and the rattle of a keyboard, and then, “Yes.  Priority 146.  Expect it done in about six weeks, unless anything else urgent comes up in that time.”

“Uh,” said Dan quickly.  He wished briefly that he sounded more elegant, more in control.  “Uh, actually it’s in Lab-EST?”  He tried not to make it sound like a question, but the words slipped out on an ascending tone anyway.

“Why the hell didn’t you say so before?”  The voice on the other end was suddenly waspish and angry.  There was another rattle of the keyboard.  “Priority level raised.  There will be an engineering team out to you within the half-hour, ship.  If they do not arrive in that time you are to contact me again; ask for Chris personally and I will find out what the delay is.”

“Thank-you,” said Dan, a little bewildered at the sudden and complete change of attitude.

“And next time,” said Chris, emphasizing the word next, “please state the nature of the fault clearly.  We’re not mind-readers, you know.”  The call cut-off, but the display showed a 30 minute countdown.

“Right,” said Dan, still bewildered.  “Why is Lab-EST so important?”  Well, he knew part of the reason: they were growing Empirical Storm Troopers in there, but that didn’t tell him why he could get Facilities and Maintenance to drop their pretence that they’d do anything about his problem and actually resolve it by dropping Lab-EST into the conversation.

“I hope you’re having fun, tonight, Dr. Lesjes,” he said under his breath.  “Because tomorrow I really need some answers about what we’re doing here.”

He looked down at his desk, wondering what to do next, and saw her tablet lying in front of him.  Right.  Analyse the data from the biotanks and write a preliminary report on it.

Lab-EST

The lab was quiet except for the occasional gurgle as blue fluid was exchanged in the biotanks.  There were a total of thirty biotanks, upright cylinders made of treated titanium with a quarter-panel of toughened glass so that visual inspection of their contents could be carried out.  The titanium was treated to prevent the build-up of biofilms, and a further five biotanks were currently empty, being re-treated.  Low-powered lights were set into the top cap of the biotanks, weakly illuminating the fluid and its contents, and casting odd shadows across the floor of the lab.  Unlike the other labs in this end of the starfreighter the ceiling lights in here, harsh fluorescent tubes capable of producing a blinding white light and irradiative UV-rays, were turned off and recessed, filtered LEDs produced something closer to moonglow.

Dr. Anna Lesjes walked from one occupied biotank to the next, her pace slow and even.  At each tank she paused, checking the contents by sight and then sliding back a titanium plate to reveal a set of digital displays and readouts.  She carried a clipboard-like tablet, with a pen-like stylus attached to one corner by a long, flexible cord, and she copied down the values from the displays before closing up the panel and moving on the next.  She was wearing a white lab-coat with the Cobaxia logo emblazoned on both breast pockets, but underneath the lab coat she was wearing a short black dress that was a little too tight for comfort, sheer black stockings and high-heeled shoes.  She had reached the twenty-fifth tank before a door at the far end of the lab shuddered and tried to open.  It stopped, closed up, and tried again, getting a little further this time.  A hand, golden skin and hairy, seized the side of the one of the halves of the door and pushed.  She turned and watched now, a faint smile playing across her lips, as the door sighed and groaned and eventually gave in and opened enough to let a man through.

“Dr. Lesjes!” called the man, his voice booming through the quiet lab and drowning out the latest gurgle.  He looked a little startled, and spoke next instead of shouting.  “How long has that door been like that?”

He was a little shorter than her – most of the men on the starfreighter were shorter than her – but if she hadn’t been wearing high heels they’d have been about the same height.  He had dark hair in a widow’s peak that was definitely starting to recede, and a lined face that made him look about fifteen years older than she knew he was.  His eyes twinkled pretty much all the time, and his lips were constantly curving into a mischievous, boyish smile.

“Dan,” she said, her voice warm but containing a little bit of control.  He was her junior after all.  “As I’ve told you at least three times, that door’s been broken for over eighteen days now.  I keep telling you to contact maintenance about it.”

“I did contact maintenance,” he said, crossing the lab to join her in front of the biotanks.  “Every time you told me to.  They keep telling me that we’re low priority and there are more urgent things on their list to do.  I tried raising that the last time, and they just told me that airlocks are priority over everything else and I would just have to wait.”

Anna closed up the panel on this biotank, and moved on to the next.  Dan followed her.

“What department did you say we were?” she asked, sliding open the readout panel and starting to copy the data onto her tablet.

“Research and Development, Military I,” he said.  He sounded a little puzzled.  “Why should that make a difference?”

“You told them the wrong thing,” said Anna.  The data on the readout was all within normal parameters, but she added a star next to it on the tablet anyway.  Some of the figures were a little higher than she was expecting.  She checked the biotank number: 26.  “You should have told them that it was Lab-EST.”

“I’ve seen that written on some things,” said Dan.  “I don’t know what it means though.”

“Then ask!”  Anna turned to face him, her eyes bright and annoyed.  She pursed her lips.  “You’re my assistant, Dan, and you can’t assist me if you don’t know everything!  Ask when you see something you don’t understand, because by the time you need to know, I might not be here!”

Dan’s face creased a little with shock, and his mouth dropped a little before he controlled himself and closed it again.

“Where are you going?” he said, his voice sounding astonishingly quiet suddenly.

“Nowhere.  No you idiot, I’m not leaving or dying, or any such thing.  But this is a dangerous job and you can’t just assume that you’ll get an education before you’re required to use it.  This isn’t a school, and you’re not going to get things just put in front of you for you to absorb at your own rate.”

He was quiet now, thinking about what she’d just said, and she took the opportunity to move on to the next tank.  Four more and she could hand the data over to Dan for the evening, he could process it, and she could go and attend this ridiculous cocktail party she was all dressed up for.

“What’s Lab-EST mean, please?” he said, and she was pleased that he’d decided to listen and not argue.

“EST are the Empirical Storm Troopers,” she said, peering into the tank.  Something in the shadows caught her eye, but before she could identify what it was a clatter on the floor behind her made her turn her head.  Dan was bending down picking up his tablet.

“We look after the Empirical Storm Troopers?” he said.  “But they’re like… they’re the elite….”

“Yes,” said Anna.  “And since you’ve apparently not realised it, we don’t look after them.  We grow them.  That’s what’s going on in these biotanks right here, and what the data I’m gathering is for.  They’ll be grown in another thirty-five hours, and then–“ she stopped there.  Dan clearly needed to understand a lot more about the job, and it would be better to get that understanding in place before she told him what the ESTs had been grown for this time.

“We grow them?”

“Yes.  Look, Dan, this is not the right time for this conversation.  Make sure you’re here tomorrow at 12ship and we’ll find out what else you don’t already know.”  She looked back at the biotank, but the shadows seemed normal now.  She supposed it must have been a trick of the difficult lighting, and copied down the numbers from the readouts.  Her wrist-assist chimed, telling her she had ten minutes before the cocktail party started.

“Right,” she said.  “There are three biotanks left, you can do them Dan.”  I’ll do the visual tomorrow with you, so you know what you’re looking for, but for now you just copy down the data here and take it and the rest for initial processing.  Got that?”  She passed him her tablet, then took it back from him and tapped in a override password to allow him read-and-write access to the biotank data.  She handed it over once more, and shrugged out of her lab-coat. 

“Have fun,” he said, noting her dress and smiling warmly.

“Hah!”