Home Inspection

“Well, Lin, what do you think?”

“I think it looks like a fat trader that got its fat ass shot off, Nate.”

“Well, that’s not too far off from the truth,” I said. I nosed the launch through the marked channels of the shipyard and did a slow fly-around of the trader. Normally, I’d let Linda drive, she’s a solid pilot, but it was her engineering experience I needed so she got to ride shotgun.

“The worst part is the rear end. The pirates shot it all to hell. But their gunners were good, they crippled the ship without blowing it wide open.”

“Just what I like, carefully spaced, clean-cut holes in my drive engines.”

“It just means that it’s going to be easier to pull it out and replace it. I think the basic framework is still sound and everything forward looks good.” I rolled the launch and pulled it over the top of the trader. “Here, take a look.”

I did a long slow orbit of the ship to give Lin a chance to see the whole thing from front to back.

“Well, you’re right about the structure,” she said reluctantly. “Everything forward of the engines looks to be in good shape. A couple of blaster gouges, but those will be easy to clean up. But I won’t know for sure how bad it is until we step inside.”

“So start suiting up, I’ll bring us in.”

A few moments later, I docked with the temporary door ring attached to the trader’s side. I went back to join Linda and get my own suit on. Linda Stone was a fellow UFTA employee who’d be let go in the recent downsizings. Aside from being a good pilot, she was a great engineer. Back when I was doing tech work, she’d bring in the electronics that needed fixing to me and we’d get them running again. Whatever skills I lacked in running a spaceship, she could definitely cover. As soon as I came up with this scheme, I knew that Lin had to be my engineer.

Fully suited up, we did our mutual check-overs and stepped through the airlock into the trader. These fat traders were all laid out the same way, so we went downstairs from the crew cabins and into the cavernous cargo hull. Our flashlights were lost along the length of the bay.

“So the shipyard lists this as the C. W. McCall. She got hit a couple of years ago and the backers decided to write it off. The bank’s been looking to get rid of it ever since then. Even after all the repair work, I feel like we can get this thing up and running without spending too much money.”

“We’re not spending any money,” Lin reminded me, “we’re hoping this angel investor of yours can convince the Imperium that we’d make a good spy ship.”

“It won’t be that bad. I’m just playing off all the war scare that’s going around. I seriously doubt the Zhodani will try and get a fleet all the way around the edge of the reach. We’ll make steady, boring, uninteresting reports back home and they’ll be happy. Besides, if they decide to pull the plug on us, then they’re stuck with the ship.”

We reached the far end of the deck. There were disturbing gaps where you could see the stars outside. For an old spacer like myself, you never wanted to see stars except though the windows. Anywhere else was bad, bad news. Lin had already peeled off to check over the engines.

“Yeah, these are pretty much shot. We can slot in some bigger jump drives, but I’ll have to widen the drive wells from here on back and that’ll cut into the cargo space,” said Lin.

“I accounted for that. I also realized while I was talking to Ms. Scolnik that rather than build a hard bulkhead for extra fuel, we could just install a collapsible tank. That’ll save us more cargo space when making smaller jumps. There’s plenty of spots where we can make little jump-1 trips, it’s just reaching those spots that requires the extra fuel.”

“All right, I think I’ve got a handle on things here. Let’s go back upstairs and check out the other drives.”

We made our way back upstairs and squeezed into the small power room at the back of the crew cabins. There were a few lights still working here and Lin hooked a small diagnostics pad in her suit up to the drives.

“Well, these guys didn’t suffer too badly,” she said, “That’s the good news there. The maneuver drives got shot up pretty hard too, but most of that damage is in the electronics, the drive itself appears to be pretty intact. Looks like you’ll get to do some work on your pet project after all.”

“I’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do and rewiring the engines is the least of it. I’ve already checked out the cabin, the controls and computer systems appear to be in good shape. Just dusty and without power. A good cleaning and they’ll be ready to go.”

I took a deep breath, “So. What’s your opinion, Lin? Can we get this bird fixed and flying?”

“All it’s going to take is money, Nate. Money and about 2-3 months to blow it all on this boondoggle. But it’ll fly. It’ll fly like a pig, but it’ll fly.”

“So are you in to be my engineer and 1st Officer?”

“I’ve got nothing better to do. This seems like fun.”

“Great. Thanks, Lin.”

“So, Nate, if you can get the money to buy this bucket, what are you going to call it?”

“No question there. I’m calling it My Other Option.”

“Heh, funny. Well here’s to our other option.”