The Apprentice Starship Engineer: Book One The Link Read Online Free PDF

chapters of the power and distribution lesson.
    “We’re having problems with the distribution system and will need your help to fix it,” he said.
    He’d gone on to tell some stories about his own apprenticeship. I guess his journeyman had been meaner than mine. Jack sure had a lot of stories.
    After dinner, I arrived at the gym early. Several other people were there and milling about. I was reading when Sandra entered. She wore a karate-like outfit and looked very professional.
    I left Margret in my bag and walked up to Sandra. She nodded at me, then introduced herself to the class. She had us introduce ourselves. We were quite a collection. First was Mike, who worked in navigation, then Jillian, who was a programmer, Rod and Terri, who were a married couple and, of course, me.
    After introductions, Sandra lined us up and had us begin with some stretching exercises. She continued with sit ups, deep squats and shallow squats. Soon we were all huffing and puffing. She seemed to be just warming up as she had us do fifty pushups. I looked over at her. She pumped them out with ease. At the thirtieth, my form went to hell with my butt sticking up and I didn’t go down all the way. Once we finished with the pushups, she had us all sit and do breathing exercises.
    With our exercises completed, she instructed us on how to make a fist and the basic fighting stance. We finished by shadow boxing with each other as she walked around, telling everyone to keep their hands up and start our punch from all the way back. The lesson was two hours long, and I was tired as I headed back to my dorm. I still needed to finish Jack’s reading assignment.
    I felt weak, but forced myself to stay away from bed and went straight to the study room.  I began reading chapter three. It was dull stuff about safety when working with high voltage DC power systems. It went on and on about forms and how to fill them out. I was pissed. Weren’t we going to work on broken equipment? I never wanted to be a secretary. I hate forms. Fuming, I finished the fourth chapter about making connections to the bus. If Margret hadn’t nagged me, I probably would have read all night. Being tired, I slept well, not even thinking about the small quarters.
    * * * *
    I was a bit groggy, but continued my same routine of bringing donuts and coffee to work. While Bob and I munched our donuts and sipped coffee, Jack started his lecture on the day’s task.
    “It’s like this,” Jack said, drawing a cigar shape on the screen with his finger. “Three power buses go the length of the ship.” He drew three more lines vertically through the ship. “If one fails, another can supply it. They’re automatically switched so if you’re working in an area you have to switch power off and apply your personal lock at least in two locations.” He handed me two locks. “Everyone working on the section has to have their own locks.”
    Bob jumped in. “It’s happened many times. A piece of machinery is down for repairs and a jackass comes along and wants to use the equipment. They see the power is turned off, but they don’t ask anyone. Now you’re working with fifty thousand volts hot and your ass is fried. Kid, that’s why we lock and tag the switches.”
    “This is a simple switch order. Drake, go ahead and fill it out. Show us what you got,” Jack said.
    It takes so long to do anything with all this safety stuff, I thought. On the farm I just hit the switch and changed out the power unit, but not on a ship with a union. We have our rules, and Jack wasn’t going to fudge on them, particularly when teaching an apprentice. Using Margret, I filled out the switch order. The document spelled out which switches we were going to turn off and what bypass switches we’d be using, if any. Shit, I want to work on equipment, not fill out stupid forms. Although, I had to admit it was a complicated switching, and it’d be easy to get the wrong one. That could be a nasty surprise.
    Jack