"This one," he mused, ironically, "is on the 'against us' side of the ledger."
Hodak appeared at the entry to the command deck and beckoned to Brad. As Brad approached, Scarf rose and sauntered in their direction, seemingly scrutinizing instrument dials and panels along the way. His ears seemed to throb with the effort of eavesdropping.
"I've gone over the maintenance and operations checklists for all ships and technical support committed to this mission, as you told me to," Hodak said, "and then spot-checked them against installed equipment. We've only been on this job a couple of days, so I couldn't probe to any meaningful depth."
He heaved a deep sigh. "From what I've seen so far, Brad, the systems are not as well-maintained as they should be, and much of the data and crew training are not applicable or out of date.
"My recommendation is that as soon as we get back we conduct a hard-nosed professional inspection of the fleet to pinpoint all the cats-and-dogs these dunderheads have jerry-rigged into the equipment and the software. We gotta give priority to the checklists that need to be updated to correspond with installed equipment. No two ships have the same configuration, so each checklist will have to be tailored. That's only the first step, and it'll be one helluva lotta work."
"Drummer's main concern right now is getting through this operation without using weapons or incurring a technical breakdown," Brad said. "Either one will detract from the image we're trying to build. He should know ASAP what you found. I'll pass it along to him. Stand by with Kumiko in case Drummer needs some technical advice on weapons or engineering."
"Right."
Hodak turned to leave, and his eyes met Scarf's.
Hodak grinned, and gave Scarf a thumbs up. Scarf
glowered and turned away, moving back to the net.
Hodak disappeared down the passageway.
The ship advanced along a rail into a gallery at the mouth of the tunnel. Captain Hyk turned to Drummer.
"The Dragon is at launch station," he said.