{"id":33,"date":"2012-08-03T15:45:45","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T15:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/?p=33"},"modified":"2014-08-17T15:57:02","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T15:57:02","slug":"ten-things-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Ten Things at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jet “Jet” Spiegel looked wearily up from his parts requisition as his two senior technicians burst into the room.\u00a0 He could smell the rank combination of old lubricant and sweat that lack of decent sanitation facilities caused.\u00a0 Dammit<\/em>, he thought, I never remember to bring up showers when I’m with the group, where all we talk about are contracts, and tonnage, and drop costs.\u00a0<\/em> These people are going to bolt if we don’t improve the situation here.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This damn planet.<\/em>\u00a0 Most of it is so beautiful<\/em>.\u00a0 Excepting the 50 acres they had carved out of the Lendon battlefield, re-tasking as much of the non-radioactive metal as they could.\u00a0 Still, sometimes Jet felt Last Chance was more backward than the lawless frontier where he grew up.<\/p>\n

“Things in the bay are getting dire, sir,” the lead mechanic of team 1 said.\u00a0 “We’re working 80 hours a week, but with the missions you’ve been going on, it’s still not enough.”\u00a0 Bill Ramsbottom was a good base tech, fresh out of school, but Jet often wished he had some veteran staff.\u00a0 Everything took twice as long as it should due to patching and repatching work that occurred regularly.<\/p>\n

“You know we should have at least one maintenance team per mech, and that’s not counting battle damage.” Arline interjected.\u00a0 Short hanks of greasy hair fell from her tec-helm.\u00a0 Waifish, barely 1.5 meters, and probably cute under the layer of grime on her face.\u00a0 At least he thought so when he hired her, but it had been so long since any of them had been really<\/em> clean.\u00a0 “And now you brought in that prima donna Salvatore, who won’t leave us alone.\u00a0 It’s like we’ve never patched a piece of armor before, him always looking over our shoulders.”<\/p>\n

Ramsbottom hated letting the little tech get a word in, and started talking over her.\u00a0 “Look, somethings gonna happen out there if we don’t get the maintenance schedule back on track.\u00a0 An actuator could freeze up in the middle of a gunfight, or a misdirected jump jet could spew plasma and melt a layer of armor straight off.”<\/p>\n

The Karolo’s don’t get walked on, Arline thought before whacking Bill in the gut with her mag-wrench, leaving him wheezing.\u00a0 “And that damn Liam wants to take up half the bay to work on that stupid Skulker.\u00a0 Heck, that hunk of junk hasn’t been off the yard in 2 months, he doesn’t need the space.\u00a0 We’d be better off selling it and transferring his team to Mech-maint.\u00a0 Plus, the bay can barely accommodate the 4 robots we’ve got, let alone a vehicle.\u00a0 You’re going to need a bigger facility and soon if you bring any more on.”<\/p>\n

Ramsbottom raised his hands in peace as Arline prepared to give him another slug.\u00a0 “Look sir, Arl’s right and we’re in real trouble here.\u00a0 I’ll never leave you, and I think she feels the same, but our secondaries are all exhausted and at the breaking point.\u00a0 I’d be surprised if several don’t bolt to the drop pad in town when we get our supplies next week.\u00a0 At least at the mining colonies they can get some sleep, buy a beer, and carouse a little.\u00a0 The fragging mayor shut down the saloon again last week, claiming we were a bad influence on the local pop.”<\/p>\n

Jet nodded at the two techs, letting them know he understood, before holding up the requisition for parts they had requested.\u00a0 It was only half finished and needed to get transmitted today if the supplies were to get on that drop ship next week.\u00a0 Ten things at a time<\/em>, Jet thought, as the techs let themselves out.<\/p>\n

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Jet “Jet” Spiegel looked wearily up from his parts requisition as his two senior technicians burst into the room.\u00a0 He could smell the rank combination of old lubricant and sweat that lack of decent sanitation facilities caused.\u00a0 Dammit, he thought, I never remember to bring up showers when I’m with the group, where all we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/63"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}