Episode 2

The light kept flashing, eliciting a heavy, collective sigh from the gathered observers.

"What about the refrigeration?"

"No, we checked that already, Sharon.  I had three techs down there this morning and they-"

"Power spike?"

"Nyet, definitely not.  My systems are strong as-"

"Shut up, Peter."

"Harumph."

Sharon sighed.  Engineers were always like this.

"Ok.  We have roughly..."  The rustling of shuffled papers filled the silence.

"1 billion, boss."

"1 billion?"  Sharon sighed again.  It was never simple, was it.  "Ok, roughly 10% of our cargo has the chance of going bad.  That's lives on the line.  And if the fault cascades, or is a flaw in the system, I'm sure as hell don't want to be Eve with you lot,  So let's get this fixed."   It was an exaggeration, of course.  She was hardly the last woman alive, or even the room.  Although, as she thought about it, she was a fair shade prettier than that pudgy botanist in the corner, and Louisa was a bit beyond child bearing years.

Whose idea was it to even put in a generic warning light?  How can the system know that something is wrong but not know what it is?  None of the specific warning lights are flashing, just this one.

"Has anyone asked the computer what's wrong?"

The room erupted into silence.

It lasted about 20 seconds before laughter drowned it out.

"No, guys, seriously.  Sharon, yeah, the system is a little... quirky -"

"That's putting it gently."

"- and doesn't react well under the best of circumstances, but..."

Sharon thought about it for a few seconds and shrugged.  "What the hell, why not."  Spinning in her chair, her fingers quickly flew across the keyboard.  Sure, voice command was great and all, when you're working on personal stuff, but for something running a whole ship, a whole fleet, you don't want multiple voices to get into the mix. 

"Anyone care to translate the answer?"

"What did you ask?"

Sharon hid a smile.  The computer, mildly insane as it was, continued to be her favorite part of the command.  It was as quirky as any of her crew, but it was consistently quirky.  It somehow failed to surprise by simply always surprising.  "Well, I went for brute force simplicity.  'Why is the Generic Warning Light flashing on pods J-S?' and the answer is....
                Like spring's swollen stream
                And the carp dodging the fish hook
                Think outside the ship"

Sharon rubbed the bridge of her nose as the voices rose and fell, trying to beat each other out in volume and intelligence.  Everyone slowly stopped talking as the Pysicist slowly stood and walked to the viewscreen.

"I think the answer is quite clear."

Sharon hushed the choked down chortles.

".... yes?"

"Sure.  Whatever is causing the alarm is out there.  Obviously."