Toasty: Chapter 5, The Engineering Watch

Chapter 5: 

Toasty was furious.  How dare ANYONE ruin his admiral’s breakfast.  It was enough to drive a toaster to distraction.  If he found the errant breakfast eater that had caused this dilemma, he was going to have words with them.

Well, not words as Toasty couldn’t talk.  Or communicate with his wireless antenna.  Or glare, Toasty’s eyes were small sensors that were not unlike camera sensors out of personal comm devices.

Toasty would gesture FURIOUSLY at them.

He might even upgrade his hands so that he could gesture better.  His current arms were little more than basic manipulators so that he could serve delicious toast better.  They could hardly encapsulate his searing RAGE.

Toasty’s little magnetic wheels kept him firmly attached to the floor as he raced towards the engineering service closet.  This part of the ship was even more poorly maintained than the rest of the area.  The lazy crew were everywhere, napping when they should have been fixing the ship.

Grumbling, he finally got to the door and dialed the three-digit code to open it.  The site caused every crumb in his tray to jitter.  Every single power lead had been ripped from the wall except for the one to the brig.  How was he supposed to fix this?

His tiny little arms didn’t even have the strength to remove the cable.  He needed a maintenance bot.  Scanning around, he found one, but the stupid thing was broken.  Its entire top half had caught fire and now it just sat there uselessly… not making breakfast.

Doubly useless.

Driving over to it, Toasty examined the side panel and was able to remove it.  The service monitor showed that the bot still had power, it was just offline due to damage to the robot’s central processor being destroyed.

Pulling out his comm cable from his syrup container, Toasty jammed the plug into the repair port and tried to download a diagnostic so he could convince this stupid thing to actually help.

*Electronics Warfare mode engaged, non-responsive unit overridden*

Toasty didn’t quite remember if he had an Electronics Warfare module.  They seemed silly, after all, you couldn’t make toast with electronic warfare.  Still, as his system took over the inanimate body of the maintenance drone, Toasty realized something critical.

He could connect the kitchen to power.

Toasty paused, for a moment, a voice in the back of his mind said there might be some reason that the brig had all that power.  The voice continued that the ship was obviously damaged, and something must have happened.  The voice then told Toasty that he probably should investigate that.

Ignoring the annoying voice, Toasty used the large manipulator arm to grip the power connection to the brig when he noticed a feed into the area.  There were multiple breakfast eaters in there, monopolizing power that should have gone to the Admiral’s breakfast.  Toasty was going to have to report them all for this terrible breach.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t see their nametags from here.  Without his wireless antenna, he couldn’t even use the ship’s image recognition software to identify them.  Toasty didn’t care one crumb about any of the non-admirals typically, but in this case, vengeance was required.

Using the maintenance bot’s manipulator arm, Toasty activated the in-room microphone and listened in as he considered his options.

***

“Anything,” barked the Sergeant checking the oxygen readouts.  The room’s ventilation was offline so what little O2 was still in here was rapidly becoming depleted.  If they didn’t get this door open soon, everyone was going to be loopy on Carbon Dioxide poisoning before they all perished.

Ernie shook his head as if to clear it and then stared at the handful of wires they had managed to expose.  “I think these are for the lights.”

Sarge slumped against the door, his magnetic boots keeping him secured to the floor.  The low-voltage LED lights wouldn’t have enough power to short circuit the door’s magnetic locks.  That was their last option.

“Sarge, I think the bad guys won,” asked Ernie after a long moment.  “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” replied Sarge sadly, the weight of his failure finally settling upon him, “Hopefully someone else can save the Admiral.”

With that phrase, the door’s power suddenly failed and Sarge found himself pressed up against the now open door.  It was a miracle.

***

CPU: Priority Override: Engage

System: Override not found

CPU: Query?  How is the override <not found>?

System: Unit: Toastbot 9000 does not possess a master override, it is a toaster.  The system bios will operate in Toaster mode unless it receives a command from Central over Wireless.

CPU: Use the wireless network to confirm with Central and execute software override!

System: Unit: Toasty does not have a functional wireless antenna.

CPU: ….. End of line.

***

Toasty frowned internally, the little voice was louder now.  It sounded vaguely like someone striking their head against a wall, repeatedly.  It was highly annoying because Toasty had far more important things to deal with at the moment.  Life was stepping up to be a tragedy of epic proportions.

The Admiral couldn’t eat breakfast if she was captured.  There could be no darker fate than that.

There wasn’t really anything to think about.  Toasty couldn’t connect the kitchen if there was no one to cook for.  Instead, he looked at the control panel and tried to determine what, if anything, he could do to find out the Admiral’s location.

<Connect Security>

Toasty paused, the inner voice had become louder again.  However, that seemed like a reasonable solution.  Security did have camera feeds all over the ship as well as a bio-locator for where the Admiral might be.

Getting undesired communications was enough to cause the rover to begin a diagnostic mode, though.  The inner voice was getting annoying and he needed it to quiet down so Toasty could focus on what was important.

The not admirals that had been in the brig were already out and moving towards the front of the ship, Toasty realized.  That was an option, they might know where the Admiral was as she did order them around all the time.  It was the first duty of anyone to be ordered around by the Admiral and Toasty missed getting told what to do.

They were stopped in front of another door, trying to open it.  One was wildly gesturing toward the camera.  Toasty brought up the map and realized that it was a sealed compartment, a quick scan of its contents revealed nothing of importance, just some small arms, and oxygen bottles.

<They will move faster if you open the door>

That didn’t make any sense.  There wasn’t anything useful, at all, in the compartment.  Everything inside was just an object that would slow them down.  The voice in his head was getting annoying.

With his diagnostic ongoing, Toasty didn’t know what else he could do to shut up the voice so he continued waiting while the voice continued to prod him to open the door.  Toasty refused, soon enough they would leave, and then he could see where the Admiral was.

<The Admiral might need an Oxygen bottle?>

Toasty paused at that.  If the Admiral suffocated, she wouldn’t be able to eat breakfast.  That was unacceptable.  Using the Maintenance Bot’s arm, Toasty plugged the power cord into the socket causing the Armory door to swing open.

Unsurprisingly, the breakfast eaters took forever in there.  Several of them even changed clothes and all of them grabbed several small arms.  Time better spent getting to the Admiral in Toasty’s opinion, which was the best opinion because he was a Toaster.

Then Toasty heard clattering in the hallway near him.  He paused at that, bringing the security cameras back up where he saw a sight he never expected to see.  A walking, talking Crab Rangoon was headed straight toward the compartment he was in.

Horror gripped Toasty, the creature was a giant crab, and it was clearly coming for him.  Toasty considered all the times he’d served crab with the Admiral’s eggs benedict.  His chicken had come to roost, and Toasty was all out of options.

Toasty quickly unplugged his comm cord and rolled into the corner of the room, and tried to look like he was in standby mode.   A moment later the massive six-legged, two-clawed creature stepped into the room.  The crab aimed its weapon towards the maintenance bot before blasting a smoking hole through the robot’s innards and deep into the armored deck plate.

A second Rangoon stepped into the room, scanning the environment.  It spoke in a series of clicks.

*Auto Translation software engaging*

“I thought you said you destroyed that robot,” hissed the first crab person.

“I blew out its frontal lobe, that’s where they keep their CPUs,” grumbled the second as he walked over and kicked the now inert robot.  “It should have been deactivated.”

The first crab scanned the room, spotting Toasty.  “Why is a utility bot in this area?”

“Who knows with these humans,” hissed the second aiming his weapon at the toaster.

“I didn’t say shoot it,” grumbled the first searching the area, “That plasma gouger will put a hole right through the wall.  That’s a waste of ammo, just smash it.”  The second crab clicked towards Toasty’s inert form.

Well, that didn’t work well, considered the toaster as the crab lifted him into the air.  The crab tentatively squeezed with its powerful claw, but Toasty had been built of sterner stuff.  As his frame bent, Toasty desperately hoped that the stuff was sterner at least.

“Someone replaced the frame with battle steel,” said the second crab as his claw slackened somewhat.  His helmet popped open and two massive eyestalks adjusted themselves so that the crab could examine its prize.

“You are supposed to leave your helmet on,” grumbled the first crab, who set his weapon down and started to examine the control panel.

Toasty’s captor sucked in a breath of air, “Sadly, this is an improvement.”

“Get your recycler fixed,” hissed the first crab.

“I will,” grumbled Toasty’s captor as he continued to fiddle with the magnificent toaster.  Toasty was just about done with this whole thing, but unfortunately from his past experience with crabs, the toaster knew his little arms wouldn’t help much against their shells.

“Oh no, the robot unpowered the brig,” hissed the first crab, reaching down for his weapon.  The second crab paused in his examination of toasty to check his own weapon, still held in his other claw, before looking over at the screen.

This is when Toasty ignited his laser sword and slashed it perfectly across the crab’s eyes.  The laser wasn’t powerful enough to carve through flesh like nothing, but it was powerful enough to bake an eyeball at point-blank range.

The flash of pain was so great that the crab accidentally discharged his weapon, causing all the lights in the room to fade as the shot blew through something in the room and out the far wall.  The ship’s environmental system responded by shutting off the compartment instantly, leaving Toasty floating in the air while the crab floundered about.

“I’m blind,” screamed the crab, but no one answered.  No one could.  Neither Toasty nor the crab’s companion possessed a functional vocal apparatus.  Toasty spent a moment to examine the now nearly headless crab, calculating the mass he should be able to get at least a few hundred eggs benedict with this specimen.

The second crab was still screaming, he reached out and grabbed at Toasty with both claws.  He missed, however, and only managed to grab his helmet.  With both claws and pain-infused strength, he was able to crush it, something that Toasty considered very impressive.  That would mean his claws would be very good eating.

“What is that hissing,” said the crab as he continued floating there in the darkness.  Toasty glanced at the wall, the hissing was the room being overpressurized by the CO2 reclaimer.  It didn’t bother Toasty any, so it wasn’t important.

The blind crab thought it was important though, he fumbled around first finding his companion whose neck had been severed by his weapon.  That helmet was likewise destroyed.  The crab then fumbled at the door for a moment, gasping as the air in the room became far more carbon dioxide and far less oxygen.

For a toaster or a human, the door was simple to open.  If all you had was an oversized claw, then it was a bit more of a challenge.  The crab scratched and pounded at the door for a long moment before finally becoming still.

Toasty considered that for a moment before using his bottle of precious ketchup to push himself over to the door.  Three buttons later the door opened and Toasty swung himself down to the nearby floor, his magnetic wheels locking onto it as he landed.  He needed to get to where the breakfast eaters were going.  He needed to save his Admiral.

***

The crab stirred as oxygen flooded the air.  He had been positive he was going to die.  The human-style emergency controls were not possible with his claws in pitch blackness.  The little utility bot had opened it though, and with the door open and light in the hallway, he realized he wasn’t entirely blind, just mostly.  The only thing he could see was that stupid utility bot though, and then only for a second as the little rover closed the door leaving him in hissing darkness all over again.