“Aye, Chief.” Peters was resigned as he pushed through to face the Chief. He figured he knew what was coming.
He was right. “Peters, you know the language,” Warnocki started out. “You go get all cleaned up and snappy and get your ass up to the bridge. Tell those cuntfaces we are pulling maintenance on that thing.”
“They might not go along, Chief,” Peters warned. “They done said they ain’t too happy at the idea of us workin’ on the ship systems.”
“I-did-not-tell-you-to-ask-for-per-mis-sion, Pe-ters,” Warnocki ground out in distinct syllables. “And I didn’t tell you say we are gonna be doing it. I told you to tell them we are doing it, and that’s exactly what’s about to happen.” He tore his gaze away from Peters and searched the group, focusing on an Electrician’s Mate. “Laval, go find Schott and tell him to get up there and disconnect the power to that piece of crap. Hendricks, you and Morales start putting the LIG together and get it over here. Bring the crackerbox too, we don’t have enough cable to LIG in the overhead, so we’ll have to weld brackets and haul the thing up there.” He shook his head. “Peters, you still standing there with your thumb up your ass? Get it in gear, sailor.”
Peters shook his head and headed off to his quarters for a shower, looking back as Warnocki continued, “Jereboam, as soon as Schott’s got the thing safed, you get up there and take a tooth profile. Aliano, my compliments to Chief Gross, how much number-two moly grease did we bring, and he’s to issue a couple of kilos of it and grease guns…”
When he passed back through the bay the LIG welder was sitting by the cherrypicker, a Second Class was bending a snatch block onto the lifting eye with a short piece of chain, and a crew in helmets, flak jackets, and knee pads was faking a piece of half-inch hemp down in long loops. The basket was up, and although he couldn’t see who was occupying it, the comments from overhead (This motherfucker’s got over four hundred volts on it! Any of you assholes got any ideas about where the goddam cutoff might be?) made it Schott, more than likely. Warnocki was supervising with folded arms and a set jaw.
Elevator, corridor, stairs, more corridors, more stairs; the watchstander at the entrance to the ship’s offices recognized him. “Hello, Peters, I haven’t seen you in a little while. What do you need?”
“Hello. I need to speak to Dhuvenig.”
The Grallt frowned. “Dhuvenig’s not on duty. It’s his sleeping time. Is it immediately important? Can someone else help you?”
“It’s fairly important, yes. We have found a problem with the ship’s equipment and have begun to repair it. My superior told me to inform the proper people.”
“A problem with the ship’s equipment.” The Grallt—Peters had the name now: Leffin—passed his hand down his facial cleft in a thinking motion. “Almost all the bridge crew are sleeping. You should talk to Heelinig. She’s the only one on duty who is responsible for such things.”
“Heelinig is the second person of the ship, do I have that correct?”
Leffin nodded. “Yes, that’s correct. Go on in. Just sign the book and look for Heelinig. Tell Kheef I told you to go ahead.”
“Thank you, Leffin.” Peters gave the man a nod and pushed the door open. The office doors were closed, and the other watchstander—Kheef?—sat near-dozing at the bridge entry. Peters signed in, carefully forming the loops of his name in Grallt characters. He mentioned his business and Leffin’s instruction to Kheef, who shrugged and stood aside without comment.
Heelinig was the only person on the bridge; she turned away from the forward windows when he entered. “Yes? You’re Peters, if I recall correctly,” she noted, tone brisk but not disapproving. “What do you want?”
“Yes, I’m Peters,” he told her. “Our group has found a problem with the machine that opens and closes the aft bay door. We are repairing it, but the door cannot be operated for some time.”
“This is not normal procedure,” Heelinig said with a frown. “The ship’s crew should do such repairs when they are necessary.”
“Yes, they should, but it has not been done, and my superior decided to repair it.”
“Ssth.” Heelinig strode to the bridge access. “Kheef, go wake Dhuvenig and tell him to go immediately to the operations bay. The human are doing something with the ship’s equipment.” She watched the junior Grallt disappear down the corridor and turned to Peters. “Go back and tell your people to stop work until Dhuvenig arrives.”
“I’ll tell them what you said,” Peters promised. “But I don’t have the status to order them to stop work.”
“Ssth. I do, and you are carrying word from me,” Heelinig told him with some heat. “Go now.”
“Yes, Heelinig,” Peters said with a nod. She responded with a sharp nod of her own, and Peters turned and left, keeping his head up and his back straight until he was halfway down the first staircase.
Warnocki’s teeth were set. “Down tools and wait? Not a chance.” He waved Peters off. “Yes, well, you told me and I didn’t do it. That makes it my problem.” A sailor was in the bucket, dropping sparks on the deck as he welded a stout hook onto the flange of a beam, and the line handling crew was standing by, the line passing from their formation, over a block attached somewhere in the overhead, through the snatch block on the LIG welder, and back to the eye on the upper block.
“On belay, Chief,” the sailor up above shouted. He started the cherrypicker bucket down, and the line handlers took a strain and began to heave. The welder moved smoothly upward, trailing its power cord, and Tollison climbed into the bucket and took it up beside the welder.
At that point Dhuvenig popped out of the elevator. “Stop that!” he shouted, and followed it with words Peters didn’t understand, although he was familiar with the general tone.
Warnocki spared him a glance. “Who’s this?” he asked, then turned back to watch.
“This here’s Dhuvenig,” Peters advised. “I reckon you’d call him the Engineering Officer.”
“What did he say?”
“He said ‘stop that,’ pretty sharp, and followed it up with some words I don’t know.”
“I’ll bet.” Tollison was working the welder over to where he could hang it and start working. “Tell him who I am,” Warnocki advised without looking away. “He’ll want to know what’s going on. Tell him everything you know.”
“Aye, Chief,” Peters sighed. “Dhuvenig, this is Warnocki. He is our, ah, first for repairs and general work.”
“What are you people doing?” Dhuvenig wanted to know, sharpish.
“We are repairing the equipment that opens and closes the bay door,” Peters explained. “We were cleaning the upper part, and found that the machine was in bad condition. Warnocki decided to repair it.”
“The equipment works,” Dhuvenig objected. His face was pale. “You should let it alone. What if you make it worse? What is that man doing?”
Peters filed that expression away: fear. Tollison had the welder attached to the hook, and had donned his mask and struck a preliminary spark. “One of the teeth on a toothwheel is broken. He is repairing it.”
“Toothwheel? What do you mean?”
“Like this.” Peters sketched jags in the air.
“Oh, a gear.” That had to be the word. “How can you repair a gear?”
Peters shrugged. “The machine he is using adds metal a little at a time. When he has added enough metal, he will use another machine to make it the same shape as the others.” The bay was being illuminated in electric strobes as Tollison began to do what Peters was describing.