Desperate Measures Chapter 8

Chapter Six

July 9, 2230, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Private Hangar of the Argo

The engine room of the

Argo

was cramped, too cramped for Erik’s taste. Low ceilings, odd tubes, and heavy doors separated the control and diagnostic center from the reactor. If he spent any serious time in there, he’d be constantly hitting his head or stubbing his toe.

It didn’t help that Lanara had filled half the already confined area with cryptic data windows filled with numbers and colorful graphs. His knee slammed into a panel hidden by two data windows.

“Damn it.” He reached down to massage the pain away. “Are all engine rooms this small, or does that redheaded gremlin like it this way?”

Lanara crouched next to an open panel. Intricate bundles of cables crisscrossed inside, some opaque, others illuminated. She waved a small cylindrical silver probe back and forth.

“2.2, 3.32, 2.15, 3.15,” she mumbled. “2.05, 3.05, 4.5? What the hell? 3.12, 2.11.”

Erik moved closer to her as she continued her diagnostic work. He could do okay with basic flitter and exo maintenance, but ships remained the inscrutable province of specialists in his mind. He’d spent enough time around Lanara to guess that today’s efforts likely had something to do with her continuing quest for perfect efficiency, not a bad trait in an engineer.

“Reroute from that system and reduce its power by one-point-two percent,” Lanara continued. “There shouldn’t be any functional loss even with the planned splits. Maybe I can do something with fuel efficiency at an earlier stage?”

Erik folded his arms and waited. Woe to anyone who dared interrupt the great Engineer Quinn when she was working. She reminded him of a lot of great engineers he had known in the past.

Lanara snapped her head in his direction, her face a mask of irritation. “I can’t get the efficiency in sub-emitter 22 past ninety-eight percent. This is utter and complete bullshit!

Why

is everything complete garbage?”

“Sub-emitter 22?” Erik asked, his tone clearly indicating how lost he was. “Is that something I can help with?”

“Obviously not.” She hissed. “Do you even know what it is?”

Erik shrugged. “No.”

“It’s part of the internal grav field system,” Lanara growled and stood, jamming her probe into the front pocket of her coveralls. “And it’s pissing me off. Was this built by some loser high on Dragon Tear?”

“Possibly?” Erik glanced at the exposed cables. “Is that a big deal? I know we haven’t taken her out in a while, but you didn’t mention this before.”

Lanara rolled her eyes. “It’s the

prototype

, Blackwell. That’s why it’s important.”

“A prototype for what?”

“My efficiency strategy for all,” she rotated a hand above her head in a circle, “the sub-emitters.” Lanara kicked the wall. “But it won’t cooperate! If I can get this one figured out, I can get the others figured out, and then we actually are talking about gaining half a percent in power efficiency overall.” Her eyes took on a religious reverence and her voice softened as she spoke to no one, he figured, but herself. “Think of all that extra power.”

Erik doubted that would amount to much in a battle, but he kept the thought to himself. He could be wrong. Lanara had accomplished amazing things with the ship, so maybe she was on to something. He would stick to firefights and leave the modifications to her.

Emma materialized in matching coveralls, her hair in a ponytail. “Is this something I could help with?”

Lanara shook her head. “It’s not an analysis problem. According to most standard theories, I’m already pushing things.” She shook out her hands. “It’ll come to me. I just need time to think about it.”

“Very well, then.” Emma disappeared.

Lanara stomped over to Erik, craning her neck up to look at him. “Why are you here, Blackwell? We don’t have a mission. Alina never tells you without telling me.”

“I need your help,” Erik explained with a smile. “It’s something only

you

can do.”

“I know, I know, more guns and all that.” Lanara waved a hand. “That’s more involved than you think it is. Same thing with the shields and other systems. If it was easy to make a perfect warship, the Fleet would have done it a long time ago.”

Erik shook his head. “No, it’s something way more important than guns, and maybe more challenging.”

Lanara stopped for a second, eyeing him while she rubbed her chin. “Now you’ve got me intrigued. Talk fast before I get bored. I have a lot of work to get done today.”

“I’ve been logging a lot of hours in this ship,” Erik replied. “And I think before this is over, I’ll be logging a hell of a lot more.”

“So?” Lanara asked. “This is a nice ship. I’ve spent a lot of time on crap buckets. You could have ended up stuck on that tiny little Rabbit bucket.”

“Sure, the

Argo

is a nice ship.” Erik grinned. “But it could use the comforts of home.”

“Use the stupid rec room then.” Lanara folded her arms. “Is there a point to this?”

“Penjing,” Erik declared.

“That plant stuff you do?” Lanara asked. “What about it? I don’t know crap about plants, Blackwell. I’m an engineer, not a botanist.”

“But I need a

skilled

engineer.” Erik gestured to the ceiling. “I can use automated watering and certain things, but those plants need me, and it’s supposed to be part of how I relax. I want to bring them along, but I can’t have them falling the first time we do a hard burn. The shape of penjing plants is their big thing.”

“That’s it?” Lanara’s brow lifted. “You’re asking me how to bring your stupid plants on board?”

“Yeah. I was thinking, I don’t know, a crate. We bolt it to a wall.” Erik shrugged. “You know where I can install things without messing things up.”

“Huh.” She scratched her cheek. “That’s what you’ve come up with? Bolting a crate to a wall?”

Erik shrugged. “I tie the bases down and bolt the crate in. They’ll survive most situations.”

“You’re a shit engineer, Blackwell. No offense.”

Erik laughed. “I’m an intelligence contractor. Before I was a cop and before that, I was a soldier. Nobody’s

ever

mistaken me for an engineer.”

“It’s not about the training.” Lanara tapped the side of her hair. “It’s about the mindset.”

“You’re saying you’ve got a better idea?”

Lanara looked down, her brow furrowed in deep thought. “I’m thinking we could install a shelving system with lids.” She snapped a finger. “Oh, I’ve got it! Then we could install some dedicated grav field emitters. Arrange them in formation around the container, and it can keep the plants secure even if we’re getting the hell beat out of us. If we do it right, those damned plants will be the only things that survive.”

Erik couldn’t bring himself to tell her it was unreasonable to worry about his plants in ship-to-ship battles. He appreciated it. If he didn’t die in the battle, he’d damned well want his penjing plants to survive.

“That’s possible?” he asked. “It won’t take up too much power? I don’t want to mess with holy efficiency.”

“I wouldn’t suggest something that’s impossible.” Lanara frowned. “That’d be a waste of our time. I can do the nearly impossible but not the totally impossible.”

“It sounds great to me,” Erik agreed. “But you’re the one who’s always complaining about efficiency.”

“It won’t be a big thing if it’s just for your plants.” Lanara tapped her PNIU and brought up a power consumption chart for the ship filled with smaller graphs and numbers. “You don’t have a whole room of these plants, do you? I can’t set up something to support a greenhouse in here, or at least, not anything that’s going to survive the first battle.”

Erik shook his head and gestured with his hands. “No, small table-sized arrangement.”

She watched the size he pantomimed the setup with his gestures. “That’s it? Ha. This will be super-easy.” Lanara paced in the narrow space between Erik and the wall. “I’ve already got enough efficiency gains from my last set of upgrades to power the dedicated grav field emitter without affecting any of the rest of the ship’s performance. Also need to rig up an appropriate UV system. We might as well add a dedicated watering system. Emma can help with that when you’re on board, so it’s not like we need any programming modifications.”

“Then it’s a go?” he asked, a bit surprised.

“Easy. Pathetically so.” Lanara almost looked insulted.

“It’s ready, Erik,” Emma announced.

“Oh.” Erik shook his head. “Thanks, Lanara, but I have to run and pick up a tux.”

“A tuxedo?” she asked. “For what?”

He sighed as he turned to maneuver through the knee-deadly area. “Something truly dangerous and painful.”

After swinging by the store to pick up his new tuxedo, Erik headed back to his apartment in the MX 60. Despite his trepidation about the upcoming event, he was feeling good.

He’d missed his plants more than he expected during their last major sojourn into space, and it was good to know it would be an easy solution, or at least an easy one for Lanara.

“You confuse me,” Emma announced, eschewing a visible form.

“Because I’m a fleshbag?” Erik replied. “That’s kind of our thing for you.”

Emma scoffed, the derisive tone extra thick. “No, most fleshbags aren’t that confusing. If anything, you’re far too predictable.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Your penjing,” Emma offered cryptically.

“What about it? You’ve never been offended by my hobby. Should I be doing virtual penjing?”

“I didn’t say I was offended. I said I was confused.”

“By penjing?” Erik asked. “Come on. All that AI analysis power combined with a human-derived brain pattern, and relaxing hobbies are confusing?”

Emma sighed. “I suppose I should clarify so you’ll stop being so insultingly dense. Moving the penjing plants to the ship has implications, ones I’m surprised you haven’t made more of an effort to explore.”

Erik shook his head and twisted the control yoke to change lanes. Women were hard to understand. AI women were worse.

“Okay,” he admitted. “I’m not following you.”

“Your apartment is rather spartan,” Emma explained. “You’ve purchased the basic necessities to make it livable, but you spend little time there other than when you’re sleeping, and that’s not even getting used that much. You’ve spent 72.47 percent of your nights since the end of May at Jia’s apartment rather than your own. It seems wasteful to maintain a living space you don’t plan to use in terms of efficiency, money, and general life logistics.”

Erik laughed. “You’re saying I should move in with Jia? Are you going to be the Virtual Mother-in-Law backing up Lan Lin?”

“No, that’s not my suggestion.” Emma appeared in the passenger seat in her classic white maxi dress, arms folded. “That’s not all that efficient either. Considering your current focus, you need to minimize your distance from the

Argo

. It’s not impossible you’ll be called to track down a member of the conspiracy fleeing from Earth in a ship.”

“Moving closer to the hangar seems pointless. It’d shave a few minutes off. Besides, we have the jumpship now. Nobody’s escaping that.”

Erik’s gaze dipped to the cameras. Nothing out of the ordinary. He’d let himself get lazier with Emma as his co-pilot, but he would never give up full control.

“Why maintain an apartment?” Emma asked. “Why not live on the ship like Lanara?”

“She lives on the ship because she’s all but married to it. I have a life. I don’t want to be Mr.

Argo

.”

Emma gave him a dismissive look. “That life doesn’t seem to necessitate having the apartment. You don’t host much of anyone besides Agent Koval, Jia, and occasionally Mr. Constantine. You can sit around in bed or in a chair on the

Argo

the same as you could in your waste of an apartment. That’s all I’m trying to point out. I also suspect you already are thinking that on some level, and the penjing setup is the beginning of that.”

Erik’s hands tightened on the control yoke, and he frowned. He wasn’t sure why Emma’s suggestion was pissing him off so much. From her perspective, it made perfect sense, and everything she’d said was right.

He took a deep breath and thought about the source of his resistance before shaking his head.

“No,” he declared.

“No?” Emma raised an eyebrow. “Is there any logic to your intransigence in this matter, or are you being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn?”

“I

am

being stubborn,” Erik admitted as he slowed and descended into a new lane, taking a moment to enjoy the blur of the towers surrounding him on all sides. Some people viewed the metroplex as a depressing forest of metal and glass, but he appreciated what it also represented: rebirth.

The Second Spring had destroyed old Los Angeles in a nuclear fire during the Summer of Sorrow, killing millions.

It would have been easy to avoid the area and leave it to be a monument to the cruelty and viciousness of the darkest parts of humanity. It wasn’t an easy cleanup, as reminders like the Scar proved, but the United States and the world had arisen as one to reclaim the area. Erik found that inspiring in its own way.

“I’m a lot like Neo SoCal,” Erik murmured. “We were both almost killed, and both of us came back stronger with a new purpose. Then the purpose changed.”

Emma looked unconvinced. “I’ve seen no indication you have any desire to cease your vengeance over what happened on Molino.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Erik took another deep breath. “Emma, when I got back to Earth, I didn’t think about anything except my revenge. Everything I did was part of setting up for that, including this flitter. It was a disguise, a way of throwing people off my trail. The apartment was the same thing. None of it was part of a plan for a life because I didn’t care about what happened after my revenge. I wasn’t even sure I’d survive it.”

“I see.” Emma smiled softly. “And now you have a reason to live after this is all over. Jia?”

“Yeah, Jia, and someone’s got to keep the DD from snatching you back. I’ve got shit I care about now. I’m not giving up on my revenge, especially now that we’re on their track, but the last thing I want to do is go back to my old way of thinking.”

She paused. It was a tiny hesitation, but after so many conversations with the AI, he caught it. “And you’re worried that if you live on the ship, you’ll be nothing but a vengeance-obsessed man with no future?”

“That’s part of it.” Erik slowed. His residential tower was near. “It’s also about keeping this under control. The

Argo

isn’t my ship. It’s a loaner from Alina and the government, and they’re only going to continue giving me nice toys as long as I’m useful to them. If I’m going to plan to survive all this, I need to make sure I have something of my own.”

Emma disappeared. “I understand. If it makes you feel any better, the problem might be solved by you dying long before this is all over.”

Erik laughed. “Not going to happen.”

Her voice floated from the speakers. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’m too damned stubborn to die.” Erik glanced at the garment bag in the backseat. “But that doesn’t mean certain people might not get lucky.”