Chapter 4 - The Faulty Pressure Readings
Eleanor looked toward the communications station.
“Petty Officer Nolan Briggs.”
A young sailor went rigid.
Vance immediately turned toward him.
Briggs looked barely old enough to hide the fear on his face.
Eleanor spoke gently.
“You reported faulty pressure readings in Compartment C-7.”
Briggs swallowed.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You were ordered to ignore them before the readiness drill.”
Vance interrupted.
“That sailor misunderstood an operational directive.”
Briggs’s hands tightened at his sides.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then he lifted his head.
“No, sir.”
The words were quiet.
They still changed the bridge.
Vance turned slowly.
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t misunderstand.”
Briggs’s voice grew stronger.
“The readings showed the pressure regulator was failing. I refused to clear the compartment.”
“You were not qualified to make that determination.”
“I was the technician assigned to it.”
Lieutenant Mara Sloan stepped away from the navigation table.
“Petty Officer Briggs was right.”
Vance stared at her.
Sloan’s voice shook, but she continued.
“You ordered me to revise the maintenance report and describe the readings as sensor instability.”
“That is not what happened.”
“Yes, sir. It is.”
Another officer stepped forward.
Then another sailor.
One by one, the crew members stopped pretending not to know.
The pressure fault had been serious.
If the regulator failed under full operational load, the compartment could flood with superheated steam.
Vance knew.
He delayed the repair because taking the system offline would lower the ship’s readiness score before a fleet evaluation.
The evaluation mattered to his pending promotion.
The sailors inside that compartment did not.
Eleanor had spent three weeks repairing the very system Vance ordered them to ignore.
May you like
The scattered tools at his feet were not evidence of disorder.
They were evidence that someone else had finally begun correcting what his ambition left dangerous.
