73 The Hun (1/2)
Spaceman Apprentice Dale from Maintenance and Operations scanned his ID chip from the sensor, updating his timesheet, as he entered the Maintenance locker room in Cargo Bay to start work. Humming to himself, he changed into his work overalls and started up the all-in-one robotic cleaners.
After making sure the cleaning solutions and water tanks were all topped up, Dale using his control tablet and four robotic cleaners the size of a large trash bin, followed docilely behind him, running on their many roller wheels as he led the machines out of the garage of the Maintenance locker.
Wearing a pair of head mufflers and running music in the background, he directed the cleaners to clean and maintain the decks of the Cargo Bay. A short while later, as he was enjoying some hot decaf, an alert on his tablet went off and he went to investigate the problem. These bots tend to get stuck easily or if they detected some tools left behind by the mechanics, they will prompt an alert out.
”What's wrong, R2D4?” He named the four robots one to four after some classic science fiction character from the 2D oldie motion pictures archives. ”What's got into your gears?”
He looped around the half-track and stopped in his tracks, there were two bodies laying on the deck in their own pool of congealed blood. ”Oh, shit.” He pulled his personnel comm device and spoke directly into it, ”Control? Cargo maintenance... We got dead people here...”
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Captain Blake was angry, very angry. He gripped the handrails in the Bridge till his knuckles turned white, as he listened to the reports from Flight Operations. ”Sir, we can't launch the UAV in this storm! The current sustained wind speed is at 73 kilometers per hour and with sudden gusts up to 223 kilometers per hour! No to mention the thick snowfall, our sensors will be totally blind!”
”So you are saying we have to let those traitorous bastards off?” Captain Blake slammed the tactical table plot with his fists. ”How about the tracking devices on the vehicles?”
The Sensors operator shook her head, ”No luck, Sir. It will appear that they disabled the tracker.”
”What? Even the secondary backup? Even the Search and Rescue beacon?” Blake pressed the flustered operator.
”Sir, we got no signal to the SAR beacon at all,” She replied, after checking her console for the eighth time.
”What do we got then?” Blake turned to the officer wearing Security insignia standing at the side of the tactical table plot. ”You better have something for me!”
”Yes, Sir.” 2nd Lieutenant Mike Jacobs gave his report. ”Central cameras along deck 3A, 4B, 4C, 6C, and 7A had motion detected during the time period between 0100 hours to 0200 hours. We eliminated movement from other locations as those have their alibis and accesses checked.”
”In the past hour, we also did a full roll call of all personnel to find out who has not replied.” Lt Mike uploaded his report on the Bridge display, showing a few individual dossiers. ”These are our current suspects, they have not reported in for the past one hour.”
”Spaceman Apprentice Leung, Chun-Kok, born 2109, New Territories, Hong Kong. Maintainance and Operations.”
”Spaceman Apprentice Ramu Garcia, born 2111, Manila, Philipines. Maintainance and Operations.”
”Spaceman Siddarth Kumar, born 2111, Mumbai, India. Engineering.”
”Spaceman Senior Nicolas De Vos, born 2105, Ghent, Belgium. Engineering.”
”Spaceman Senior Aaron Hart, born 2109, San Diego, CA, North America.”
”Spaceman Senior Tony Petrynec, born 2112, Dnipro, Ukraine. Auxiliaries, Cargo Operations.”
”Petty Officer 2nd Class Ivan Pavlo, born 2110, Kursk, Russia. Auxiliaries, Flight Operations.”
”3rd Sergeant Raman Singh, born 2108, New Delhi, India. United Nations of Man Marine Corps.”
”Apparently, our good Sergeant here has hacked into the armory security system which he was in charge of, changing and erasing logs.” Lt Mike said. ”As he was very familiar with armory systems, he fried both the main power and the backup power systems for the armory, which when we opened up, found it totally empty.”