Breakthrough (Breakthrough, #1)

by Michael C. Grumley

anything that stuck out. By pure instinct, from the corner of his eye, he noticed his Navigation Officer repeatedly looking at the instruments and then back to the table and his digital map. “Something wrong, Willie?” Willie Mendez didn’t reply for a long moment. Reporting a problem to the XO wasn’t something you did without triple checking. “Mmm…” Sykes turned slowly, still reluctant to take his eye off the report which was now blurring into a

Test

malfunction they’d had, far from it. He knew that software written by some geek hyped up on Jolt was far more fallible than traditional mechanical or electrical systems. Hell, even the cooks knew that by now. “Anything else acting buggy?” “No, sir.” “Run integrity checks on both systems.” “Already started, sir.” All eyes turned to the monitor now displaying the results. “Systems report no consistency errors.” Great, broken software that doesn’t even

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not sure. At first I thought it may have been thermal vents, but that wasn’t it.” He watched Sykes look back at Willie and return to the table. After a long silence and with forced control, he put his mug down. Stepping from the room over the lip of the hatch, he continued down the long gray, metal corridor. “Of all the damn timing.” *** Captain Ashman replied to the knock on his door with a simple “Enter”. Sykes stepped in, his head barely