When Spruance Del Curtin got Steffi Roderick’s voicemail, he’d assumed that would be the end of it. But about fifteen minutes later, he’d received a call from her: get down to the IT Department ASAP.
So here he was, doing his best to look the part of the hotshot Shep who wasn’t afraid of anything. He didn’t usually go down to IT, and when he did, it was mostly to drop off or pick up stuff related to the station for Lou Corlin.
But tonight it looked like Steffi had assembled most of her division chiefs on pretty much a moment’s notice. Not all of them — he knew from Lou’s descriptions that several of the hardware people weren’t. But the key systems analysts and network security people were all here — hardly surprising given they’d been working around the clock trying to restore Shepardsport’s network connectivity ever since this mess started.
Now he had to explain his theory to the real professionals, when he wasn’t entirely sure whether he was even using the correct terminology. He’d learned some of it in the course of his training on audio streaming technology, but he still wasn’t entirely sure of things like the precise difference between a gateway and an access point, or how a router differed from a hub. Not to mention that he might not even have the right term for the kind of malware he was envisioning.
However, all these people were listening to him with genuine attention. Not just the polite smile and nod he would’ve gotten back on Earth, but actually taking notes.
Of course it probably helped that Captain Waite himself was sitting at the side of the room, looking very much like Alan Shepard himself preparing for his moonshot. Being reminded that they were listening to one of the commandant’s clone-brothers, and that he had the favor of the boss himself, went a long way to keeping the adults from doing the old auto-brushoff.
Which is.a far cry from him calling me on the carpet — when was it? Already that awkward interview felt like another lifetime ago.
And then they were actually asking him questions, sometimes technical enough that he’d have to admit most of his background in networking came from his work with Shepardsport Pirate Radio. But they showed him no condescention for the admission, which truly astonished him.
However, it looked like they weren’t actually going to be pulling him into their team. Steffi reminded everyone that he was already committed to Dr. Doorne’s project, and needed his rest to be ready to meet with her tomorrow.
Oh well, you can’t have everything. Sprue did his best to look genuinely pleased as he thanked everybody. With luck, nobody would be sure whether any stiffness wasn’t just the Icy Commander peeking through.