Read One Good Soldier for Free Online Page B

for their actions. Both were promoted. The engineer's mate resigned as soon as his four years were up. But Joe stayed on as a career man like his father had been. Benny appreciated that, especially after having put in his thirty years for the Navy. And since that day a couple years before, he had been grooming Joe to be his successor whether Buckley wanted the position or not.
     
    Melissa, he thought to his AIC. Sim a malfunction in the Damage Control Assessment System. With that shut down, he won't know what is working and what isn't.
     
    Aye, Benny, Melissa Four One Four Eight Mike Juliet Oscar replied. Done.
     
    "Okay, Buckley, let's see you get out of this one." The CHENG leaned back in his seat and smiled.
     
     
     
    "Joe! We just lost the DCAS!" Lieutenant Mira Concepcion shouted from her console at the damage control assistant's station.
     
    "Roger that, Mira. Get that thing back up. And get someone visually checking Aux Prop, Main Prop, SIF Generators, DEG power, and catapult-field power systems every thirty seconds until that thing is fixed!" Lieutenant Commander Joe Buckley Jr., acting CHENG, ordered in response. Like the CHENG, Joe had worked by the first-name-basis protocol in engineering. It had originally taken him time to get used to the approach, but after a few years of it he found he liked it. On the other hand, Joe was more likely to slip into official Navy protocol in crisis or heated discussions than Benny was.
     
    "Joe, we've got reports from CDC and the STO that the Blair has popped into realspace and is QMTing troops and mecha dirtside left and right! They want to make sure the SIFs are set to block a teleported boarding party!" Technology Officer Lieutenant Commander Janet Wilbanks barked her report as she frantically typed in commands on her console.
     
    "Yeah, I see that, Janet. Keep the structural-integrity field frequencies shifting on a random pattern. Any structure to it will allow some weisenheimer with a quantum computer to crack it. Set an AIC-to-AIC connection between your station and the air boss to allow any approved boarding to briefly run a standard SIF encryption pattern." Joe thought about it as he replied. As long as the SIFs were allowed to vary in frequency at random, there would be no way anybody could hack the sequence and slip through. The shields would simply be impenetrable as long as they held—theoretically, of course. However, there wasn't any guarantee that the SIFs would prevent a QMT teleport. The quantum-membrane technology used in the teleport projectors was still very new and not well understood. Even though the U.S. Navy hadn't figured out a way to use a QMT teleporter to penetrate a ship when its SIFs were activated didn't mean the Seppies hadn't. And who knew what kind of bug the sim was going to throw at them?
     
    "Roger that, Joe." Janet turned about the work, and Joe didn't give it a second thought.
     
    "Mira! Where are my main systems visual confirmations? Are we sure everything is working?"
     
    "First visuals are coming in now, Joe. Everything is clicking hot! The bells are ringing and the whistles are blowin'."
     
    "All right. Don't make me ask next time. Every thirty seconds until you've got your station fixed!"
     
    "Aye."
     
     
     
    "Aha! I've got you now, Buckley." Benny laughed to himself and tapped in a ship-to-ship personal communications link.
     
    "CHENG Blair . CHENG Madira ."
     
    "Benny?" The Chief Engineer of the USS Anthony Blair 's face popped up on Benny's holoscreen.
     
    "Hey, Susan. How's your second doing?"
     
    "Good, so far. What can I do for you?"
     
    "Tell your captain that if she were to focus on our SIFs, we wouldn't know if they were down or not for about thirty seconds. They might be able to QMT a raiding party through the back door." Benny smiled at his counterpart.
     
    "Really? I'll pass that along. Appreciate the info, Benny."
     
    "Anything I can do for you, as always." Benny leaned back in his chair a bit and