Read Battlecruiser Alamo - 7 - Battlecruiser Alamo: Sacred Honor for Free Online Page A

nothing else better to do,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Look, if you see anyone else roaming about with a burning desire to jump the gun on the fabrication schedule, tell them to find another hobby.”
     “I’m not the first?”
     “Sub-Lieutenant Matsumoto was down here an hour ago, asking a lot of stupid questions about processing.”
     “What sort of questions?”
     “Do I look like a tour guide?”
     Leaning forward, Cooper pressed, “What sort of questions?”
     “Something about chemical composition. I told her to look in the ship’s database; I’m just a technician. One who has to get back to work if you ever want this ship to be fixed.”
     “Thanks,” Cooper replied, turning back into the elevator. He paused for a moment before selecting a destination, then glanced down at his watch. Alpha Watch should just be coming on shift; Matsumoto would be settling into her station right now for the next eight hours. It seemed unlikely that Marshall had put her on the same task as he, though not impossible – two people working on the job would be better than one. But why would she not be invited to the meeting?
     He tapped a button for the enlisted mess, and pulled a datapad out of a pocket, calling up a roster of the ship’s company. Tapping in a few parameters relating to known clearance and expertise didn’t take long, but didn’t prove very fruitful, either. More than a dozen names remained who had the knowledge and the means to build such an explosive. He certainly didn’t.
     A thought crossed his mind, and he scanned down the work roster for the fabricators; that Petty Officer wasn’t exaggerating. According to the records, he’d been working for thirteen hours already, his signature attached to every requisition. No chance that he was the suspect, then.
     The doors slid open, and he stepped out into a mostly-empty room; a few technicians were snatching late breakfast snacks from the counters, waiting around impatiently for their food to be prepared. One of them snatched their sandwich from the dispenser, took a bite, and slammed it back onto the counter.
     “What the hell is this? It tastes like metal,” he yelled. 
     “Grin and bear it, Hank. My cereal was the same this morning. Must be something wrong with the food fabricators.”
     Cooper’s eyes widened. The main construction fabricators weren’t the only ones on the ship. He didn’t think for a moment that someone would have been able to access the combat fabricators, devoted to the near-instant manufacture of missiles – they were the closest-monitored piece of equipment on Alamo. The food fabricators, on the other hand, were a different story.
     Waiting for the disgusted group to return to their duty stations, he quietly stepped through a door marked ‘Authorized Personnel’, and heard a siren go off; evidently someone was serious about the security in here. Taking a few seconds to look around, he raced over to the computer and began to type – and mercifully, whoever had used it last was still logged in. Lousy security practice, but he quickly began to download the logs of recent activity into his datapad, stepping back out into the mess area in time to see his new commanding officer, Lieutenant-Major Diego, walk in, gu n in his hand .
     “What the hell is this, Cooper?” Diego said.
     “Food systems seem to be out of whack, boss. I was trying to find someone to fix it.”
     “So you violate a restricted area?”
     “It’s hardly a critical system, sir.”
     With a sigh, Diego pulled out a communicator, “Diego to McGuire. It’s nothing to worry about, just a mix-up. Cancel alert.”
     “How did you get here so quickly, anyway?”
     “Actually, I was coming by to get a sandwich. Is it that bad?”
     “Everything tastes of metal.”
     “Ugh.” He walked over to the terminal. “I’m too hungry to care. Fancy taking a risk with something?”
     “I think I’ll just have