The Maintenance Man (1) ?

The Maintenance Man (1) ?

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Mark had come a long way. Starting at the bottom he had learned everything that he could. As a child he had been concidered tall and clumsy, many of his classmates had made fun of him when he walked as he wasn’t able to walk in a straight line. Something to do with his inner balance and the fact that it had been thrown off ever since his parents had moved the family to the furtherest corners of hell as he put it. His mother and father were diplomats and went where they were sent by earth’s government.

So Mark suffered in silence, his only solace was the fact that his mother and sister loved he as much as they did, if not for them Mark didn’t feel he would have made it. Moving forward in line he had been surprised when the government of Deplofina had asked for him in particular (he felt his parents had a hand in that.) When he had gone for the interview it had been as he expected the government had only offered him the job as a ploy to get his father to side with them in negotiations they were having with their long time enemy that they were still at war with.

So Mark had politely told them no and then had been threatened that he would never find a job now, how they had laughed at him as he had left the building. He knew though that they would have been begging him had they known what he had seen, hurring away he didn’t want to be near when the main power failed and they would be looking at him as the easiest target to blame for their own incompetence. Mark hopped the fastest shuttle he could find and was at the space port in line to board a freighter out when the news came in that the power grid for the capital building had shut down.

Switching to hyper space, the ship accelerated as Mark sat back and enjoyed the feeling, it was as he had remembered it. Three hours later they were many many days from the planet when the hyper drive shut down and the ship was a drift. The captain came over the loud speaker and informed all the paid passengers that they were having mechanical difficulties. Mark smirked, he knew what was wrong at least what he had felt before the shut down he remained calm for the 4 hours that saw eveyone rushing back and forth. Finally after 10 hours with everyone panicing on board Mark made his way to the captain’s cabin.

Speaking to the engineer that passed him he told him that he wanted to see the captain that he was a maintenance man, the engineer’s eyes got huge as he rushed into the cabin and only moments later the captain came running back to him.
“Are you really a maintenance man? Can you repair or maintain the engines? I really don’t want to die this far from a planet” he whispered to Mark
Mark calmly walked to the engine room with the captain and engineer in tow looked around and reacehed out to tap a panel. the board lit up and Mark stared at the readings. He walked to the other side of the room and grasped a cable that was barley connected and pushed it back in the reactor started to come to life.

Next he moved to the reactor itself and looked at another panel, he noticed that the air purification system was already working again and the heat was back on, as the room became much less stuffy. Looking at the power supply he saw that it was only half way filled that was odd, so he went back to the reactor and then he noticed the REAL problem, half of the fuel had NOT been loaded into the reactor core. Mark started to laugh it wasn’t even that elaborate of a sabotage, ha had learned to fix things like this the first year he started . The captain and the engineer looked at him like he was crazy but they knew that he might be their only hope.


Mark loaded the rest of the energy rods as the reacator started to hum back to life. Mark walked away and looked back at the captain and told him that the ship had been sabotaced. He needed to have it looked into Mark told them that he was a first class maintenance man, his license number and repair coding number. As they scurried away, he shouted that the ship was ready to go and that he wanted to get where he was going as soon as possible.