“Look, I don’t really care. I’ll be nice and warm in my pod.” I said.

“With all due respect, sir, that’s fine and dandy for you, but the rest of us are stuck freezing our asses off until you get the heating system fixed. Did you know Drex got his tongue stuck to a wall strut on a bet just this morning? Stupid sod had to go to the infirmary after he ripped his tongue away.”

“I’ve had Aura run a full systems diagnostics. There is nothing wrong with the heating system.” I retorted. “And if Drex is that much of an infant, then he deserves the pain. He had better report in for his shift. I don’t give time off for stupidity.”

“Are you daft, Colonel? Can you not feel the cold?”

“Watch yourself, Karm. You’re close to that line of insubordination.” I let that linger for a moment. “Do you want me to come down to engineering with you, show you everything is fine in front of your team, and leave you feeling humiliated? Is that really want you want? Because I’m happy to oblige.”

“I just want the bleeding heat on, sir.” Karm said, his sarcasm emphasized on the term of respect.

My eyebrow raised in annoyance, but I held my tongue.

“Lead on then.” I said, gesturing down the hallway with my hand.

It was cold. I wasn’t an idiot. I could see our collective breath hanging in the air in front of us during the entire verbal exchange. Obviously, something wasn’t right, but Aura had checked for hull breaches, heating unit running temperature, duct blockage analysis, as well as several other tests, and nothing was wrong.”

The lower we went through the ship, the more our fine Minmatar craftsmanship shone through: exposed wiring, sloppy soldering on crooked metal plates, duct tape everywhere. It truly was a marvel that our ships held together at all sometimes.

Karm and I made our way to the heating control unit, where he stood quite proudly with an expression of victory on his face.

I moved closer and put the palm of my hand on the unit. It was quite warm, which was normal.

“It’s warm.” I said out of reflex, realizing how stupid I sounded.

“Ah, we never thought to try that, sir.” Karm said. I was more apt to cut him a little more slack in front of his team, as he had to demonstrate his alpha status to maintain their respect, but it was still a fine line he walked.

All the gauges on the unit showed nominal values. I followed the two main pipes that left the unit, feeding hot water into the condenser unit, which turned the liquid into heated vapour, then fed it into the ductwork. Those were warm as well.

Each pipe had a handle at about shoulder height. They were manual control of the water flow, turned off during emergencies where the ship retained a lot of heat. I touched my hands to the pipes above the handles.

They were cold. I smirked.

I grabbed both handles and with a little exertion, turned them to the open position. Within seconds, the connecting pipes became very warm to the touch.

Aura had been right. Human error.

I turned towards Karm, who’s face was already deflated, anticipating the verbal lashing that was surely to come. Karm was a good officer, respected by his team. I wasn’t about to undermine that.

It was enough that he knew I knew he screwed up. He would punish himself for it far more severely than I would.

I simply smiled at Karm, and walked away.