My Violent Heart

Part 2

"I want full diagnostics. Systems checks; everything. My Network doesn't just start screaming," Shinfield said, swiping up his mug and stalking about the deck, gesturing about himself as his underlings set to work. Jessup brought up her system screens and started scrolling through the readouts leading up to the emergency stop, looking for anything out of the ordinary. She would have been happier if there had been something, but there wasn't. Everything had apparently been completely fine, at least according to the Network. Nothing was wrong.

 There was the hiss and clunk of the doors opening and in stormed a whirlwind of aggression, condensed into the form of Captain Hamilton. Generally, engineers didn't see much of the Captain or his crew as their job kept them 'below' as it were and out of the loop of the non-technical aspects of shipboard duty. Jessup hadn't actually seen Captain Hamilton for weeks.

 He hadn't been happy then, either.

 "Shinfield! What the hell is going on?!" He bellowed, stomping his way over to the Chief Engineer and standing in front of him. The size difference made Hamilton's quivering, apoplectic rage look rather infantile, not that it stopped him; he was at least two or three heads shorter than Shinfield and probably an eighth the weight, but he had anger enough for ten men contained in his wiry body and only had one way to react to problems. Shinfield, however, was more than used to this.

 "We experienced something of a technical fault and so I ordered an emergency stop so it could be investigated. Safety first, Captain," he said, sipping from his mug. How it had been refilled was a mystery to Jessup. It just seemed to be another of Shinfield's many superpowers.

 "Safety first?! What kind of crap is that? Do you have any idea what kind of deadline we're on? Every second that ticks past takes me one second further away from a bonus. Unless the ship is about to bloody explode we don't stop for anything! You couldn't just fix it in transit? I thought you were competent!" Hamilton snarled. Shinfield took another sip, this time mostly to hide his smirk.

 "And I didn't know you were a trained navigation technician! We could probably use your help down here from time to time. But no, we couldn't fix this in transit, it's a serious problem. We're working on it now and as soon as it's sorted we'll be on our way again. In fact, it would probably be going a lot faster if you weren't standing here angry-ing the place up. Captain," Shinfield gave a little bow and for a moment it looked as if Hamilton's head would pop from his neck like a champagne cork but he just about managed to stop himself.

 "Just...fix it! Quickly! And why are you twitching?!" Hamilton snarled, rounding on Jessup who was sat next to him. Jessup flinched and sat up straight.

 "I thought I saw something, Captain," she said. She thought she had, again. Just in the other corner this time, but again there was nothing there. Had no-one else seen it?

 "Well shut up and get to work. All of you! You're being paid; act like it! Get this problem fixed, Shinfield, and I might just leave the part where you caused an unacceptable delay for vague reasons out of my report," Hamilton sneered. Shinfield was unmoved.

 "Nice of you. I would return the favour by leaving out the part where the ship's captian advocated risking the entire shipment, the ship and the crew by insisting on continuing despite an unspecified and possibly catastrophic technical fault," he said. Hamilton turned redder, raised a finger, made a few sounds that weren't really words and then left. Shinfield shook his head.

 "He's an idiot but he's got some points – let's get this sorted, shall we? Howard! Give me something!" Shinfield slumped his way over to engineer Howard who was looking at the screens in front of him with blank incredulity.

 "Uh, I got nothing. Nothing at all," he said, swiping through readouts with flicks of his hand. Shinfield frowned and leaned in close, squinting.