Two gunnery crew members stepped out of the crowd, they had three slanted bars on their cuffs instead of one like the rest behind them. They activated a panel built into the deck and opened it to reveal portable seating and a case of training visors. The rest of the gunnery crew started pulling out folding chairs and setting them up in rows.
He walked up in front of her and made a motion like he was patting his head with both hands. “This'll get you out. If ye had your own armour ye could customize the trigger, but good luck on that. I think Wheeler sold all the suits not on the gunnery deck, even the spares.”
She followed his directions and the chest cavity opened up more completely than it had before, all the way down to her knees. “That was fun, I'm going to have to try some other time, but I didn't get the restraints right.”
He stepped up on the foot and knees of the machine and leaned forward so he was balanced. “Let's see,” he said, grabbing her restraints and tugging. “Aye, you've got three centimetres give in each direction. There's a trick to it.” His hands went around her hips firmly and he looked at her. “Now hop.”
Stephanie was stunned for a moment and just stared.
“I won't hurt ye, now just bounce on yer heels.”
He was every bit the trainer, no sign of the man who had teased and flirted with Ashley for almost a year could be found. She hopped on her heels and he guided her so she fell back into the back and upper leg braces.
“See how that works? You jump a little as though you're throwin' yourself on yer back. Now you let the straps tighten again and you'll be right in there, no slack, no delay in the suit's response,” He tightened the safety belts and looked at her.
“I see,” was all Stephanie said as she looked back at him. She just stared into his light grey blues and started leaning towards him, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to close the few centimetres between them and her communicator vibrated against her left wrist. She ignored it, closed her eyes, and touched her lips to his.
For a moment there was no response, then one of his hands was cupping her cheek, the other was on her hip and Frost was kissing her. She pulled her arms out of the armour's sockets and wrapped them around his neck. The comm buzzed again. “The transmission watch you ordered turned up something Chief Vega, you should see this right away,”Andy Killbourne, one of the communications crew reported.
She pulled away from Frost hesitantly and replied; “Be right there.”
Frost let her go and leaned back, holding himself up by gripping the shoulder guard of the suit. “Looks like they need ye,” He said quietly before lowering himself down.
Stephanie undid the restraints and climbed out. “I'm sorry,” she apologized quietly as she looked around for people who might have seen. Two of the security personnel on shift were in sight, but they were facing away. It looked like they had seen it happen, but didn't look on out of respect. The rest of the trainees were several meters behind the armoured suit. They must have seen. This will be all over the ship by night shift. She thought to herself as her cheeks flushed.
“Don't be. If I'd have known I woulda done somethin' about it a year ago, prolly even further back. If I'd known a week ago then-” he said quietly as he picked up her boots, gun belt and coat.
“She's going to find out.”
“Aye, and she's one with a temper,” he nodded.
She stomped her feet into her combat boots and fastened the clasps. “I'm on shift. You have trainees.”
“Aye, long day ahead,” he handed her gun belt to her.
“Talk after?”
“Don't think I'll get away from Grace,” he shook his head sadly. “If I'd have known,” Shamus Frost apologized quietly.
“Me or her?” Stephanie whispered the question and immediately hoped Frost didn't hear.
If he did, he didn't give her any response.
She looked at him lingeringly for a moment and had never seen him so softened or disappointed then flicked her gaze to the rows of gunnery crewmen and women just meters away. This was her fault, if she had just shown up in the security office early instead of taking a side trip. Stephanie pressed all her disappointment down and straightened up. “Ride 'em hard Chief,” Stephanie said loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Aye!” he replied enthusiastically before turning his attention to the gunnery crew.
Stephanie turned away and finished putting on her long coat as she made her way to the large express lift that would take her down to the middle of the command deck.
The Engineering Control Centre
“Welcome to the control centre Captain,” Liam said as he watched a trio of holographic displays. They were detailing energy distribution across the ship, the status of the five reactors that were online and emitter performance across the hull. The rest of the oval shaped control room had stations for at least a dozen other technicians. At that time there were only four, each monitoring repairs and directing operations in different sections of the ship.
The walls above the terminals were transparent, providing a view of six of the reactor enclosures. They were cylindrical, polished metal containers with large cables extending out of the top. Fuel was at one time fed from the bottom, where the containment and feed adaptation compartments were. The diverse energy reactor assemblies, called DERA for short, could use almost anything to produce massive amounts of energy, but more dense materials or fusion were preferred. Whenever the type of fuel changed the reactors had to be adapted, and the engineering staff performed that work on the deck below. Recently materializers were installed to produce heated plasma for the fusion process, along with hydrogen cell backups in case there was little power to use for the materializers.
Chief Grady kept his engineering deck clean, and it was surprisingly quiet throughout. “It's about time I visited your office,” Captain Valance smiled.
“Well, this saves me from sending my report in. I'm happy to announce reactors seven and eight are ready, we can start using the scoops to collect pretty much anything and feed it straight into them.”
“Those are the reactors closest to the engines.”
“They are. If you can manage to park us near a sun, pretty much any sun, we could charge up our power reserves in the space of ten minutes.”
“How are our power reserves doing right now?”
“Still charging, sixty one point three percent. It'll take another two hours and seventeen minutes to get us to full. This uranium is trash, to be honest. It was material stripped out of old nuclear warheads. Given the choice, I'd rather use hyper dense ergranian to line a reaction chamber and draw power from fusion. We'd start producing several kilos of dense ergranian per reactor per day.”
“We have some?”
“Someone started growing some under engineering, close to the primary capacitors.”
“How long ago?”
“About thirty one years. We have about eight hundred square meters of it insulating engineering from the hangar decks. It would take one reactor about two days to supercharge a block of the stuff and make it so dense enough to protect and cultivate in our reactors. Then we can start using it to augment production with mass materializers, enhance our fighters, the Triton's armour plating, build new, harder protective suits for the gunnery loading crews. There are a lot of other uses, but those are the ones that seem to stand out on the request list.”
“That's incredible.”
“Ergranian metal is the most complex materials hulls are made of. The only known organic steel in the universe. The drawback is you can't materialize it, but if you have some to augment a materializer manufacturing process it speeds production up and allows you to materialize harder metals using much less energy.”
“I know, I wonder where it came from?”
“The molecular stamp says it was originally cultivated from the Blue Belt by Freeground.”
“Well, Wheeler was associated with them somehow. Sort of tarnishes my mental image of them. You have my go ahead o
n making dense ergranian metal and converting the reactors.”
“Thank you Captain, fusion will eliminate the problem of waste disposal. Instead we'll have tons of dense metals after a couple weeks as a byproduct.”
“How long will the reconfiguration take?”
“Depends on the reactors condition and on how easy they are to decontaminate. Shouldn't take more than a couple days, but we'll have to be in a pretty safe spot and entirely replace a lot of the internal irradiated hardware. Only reserve power will be available.”
“I'll find us a safe place after this pickup.”
“Moving on then. We need to test them, but the shields look ready. I'm also sending people out to replace those hyperspace emitters that don't register. After looking things over, I'm pretty sure they're actually gone. Must have happened during a battle that wasn't logged in engineering. Other than that, maintenance teams are finishing repairs on our mass materializer in hangar three and other internal combat damage the security teams found when they were doing their sweep,” Liam reported proudly.
“I couldn't ask for a better Chief Engineer, Liam,” Captain Valance said. “We're lucky to have you.”
“But you are still wondering why I'm here.”
“I have to admit I am. You have to understand, I've spent the last five years with people who don't exactly do anything out of the goodness of their hearts.”
“Well, at first I came aboard out of the kindness of my heart, and to satisfy my curiosity.”
“And now?”
“Let's just say I've been watching the news feeds. I checked the miniburst from Hart News when we came out of hyperspace half an hour ago. Three more civilized worlds have fallen under the influence of the AI virus. Eden ships have hit four more solar systems and left them in ruins. Your friends the Aucharians have officially surrendered to Regent Galactic so they can receive aid without paying for it. The Galaxy is in pain, freedoms and security are being eradicated solar system by solar system radiating out from the Regent Galactic territories. All the while your speeches about joining a revolution against them are getting more and more popular, spreading across the galaxy.”
“Looks like I don't watch the news enough.”
“I normally don't either, but after returning from Earth, I'm making an effort to catch up.”
“Ever think of finding a way back? It'll probably the only safe place left before long.”
“All the time. Then I pause for a moment. What was my time on Earth for if I turn around and beg my way back to the homeworld? I have learned much and applied very little over the last decade or two. This feels like a place I'm needed, where the right cause is being pursued. I was once a military man, I know how to press a group to accomplish a goal, how to reward and punish them if need be. So I am where I'm needed. As for you, well,” Liam chuckled and clasped Captain Valance's shoulder. “You are an icon whether you like it or not. Jacob Valance motivates people with his strength. Some people want to be you, others want to impress you, many respect you, a few want to befriend you while others like to hate you but just like everyone else, they believe you're the right man for the job.”
“I wouldn't say everyone.”
“True, there will always be those who stay here because they can't see their way anywhere else and they'll hate you because they can't think their way out of their own situation. They'll eventually find their way off the ship, whether it's on their own or trailing behind someone else. As the first paydays happen, they start to make this ship their home, and we're tried by combat, some will solidify, others will fall away. I believe that if you keep to the right ideals, trust your instincts, we will find ourselves on the right path.”
“That makes one of us,” Captain Valance said with a wry grin. “That's a lot of faith for someone I just met a few days ago.”
“I'm just returning the sentiment. You didn't need to take me on. You could have kept the Triton running on two or three reactors until you found a government willing to buy her from you. Instead you decided to trust me, to trust hundreds of other people, refugees, deserters and people hired for the lowest going rate. They're grateful, mind you, their alternatives were much worse.”
“A lot of them are spoiling for revenge against Regent or Eden.”
“While others just want to be close to a man they believe in on a ship capable of giving them a quality of life they might not find anywhere else,” Liam walked Jake over to the quieter end of the engineering control room floor.
“I'll be honest,” Jake sighed, making a concious decision he hoped he wouldn't regret in the future; To trust the older man. “I'm five years old, maybe six or seven at the most. They tried to implant memories from someone else and according to him I wiped them out or suppressed them, leaving only what he knew how to do and whole operational databases on engineering, tactics and medicine. Give the parts to a Raze Mark Three Space Superiority fighter and I can build it for you then fly it off the deck. If you scan me right now with one of those high resolution readers you'll find a bioelectrical frame that can materialize living matter.”
“I already did Jake, you might be surprised at how hard it is to detect that technology. I'm sure you scanned yourself before you realized what you were made of and didn't see it.”
“I did, there's a layer of bone and insulation you can't get through unless you use a very high quality system.”
“Though that's more intriguing than this entire ship, it doesn't phase me. For many reasons extending past your construction or origin, you're a unique individual like anyone else.”
“That's not my problem. I'm getting pieces of Jonas' memories. They're coming to me in dreams, just the most important bits I think.”
“How do you feel when you're having them? Just try and put yourself in those moments and recall the sensations for me.”
Jake couldn't believe he was having this conversation, not with him, not with anyone. There was something about Liam, his self assuredness and kind manner. As he thought about it he realized all he had to lose were a few secrets. He relaxed and let his mind wander back to those memories. To those people. “I feel that I'm with friends, people I trust, people I enjoy being with. The one that says he's proud of me is very important, while there's another who, well, she appeared more than once. I feel like I miss her, she's very special, very dear to me.” He opened his eyes and looked at Liam. “But none of this is mine. It belongs to a dead man.”
“You understand that, but it isn't the way you may ultimately feel. I suggest you let this happen, experience it fully. Maintain the awareness that these aren't your memories but allow them to enrich your life. If you meet anyone who you remember through his experiences look at yourself as a representative of him. Tell these people that you aren't Jonas, that you have his feelings and emotions if that's ultimately where this leads, and go forward as yourself. Don't pretend to be him, but don't be afraid to become more like him. That could happen naturally if the memories continue to surface.”
Everything he said made sense, and Jake nodded along even though there was a nagging fear. The fear that he would lose himself in the recollections of someone who he barely knew. “I understand. I'll try it.”
“There were victims of traumatic experiences on Earth. I met several of them while I was on retreat. They had some of the same problems with their own memories. After blocking whole parts of their lives out they became different people and when those memories returned they didn't know how to handle it. You have to be prepared to remember things that changed your predecessor's life, to relive powerful emotions and find someone you trust to talk about them. They'll change you, and so will the way you deal with them.”
Jake laughed ruefully and shook his head. “You know, I came here to check on the engines, not to be checked on by the Engineer. Thank you Liam, just keep this to yourself.”
“Only if you keep me up to speed on how you're doing. I'd like to help, I believe I can. Let's just say my reward is living vicariously throu
gh you. Your life is much more interesting than my own.”
“Done. I have to get to the bridge. Thank you for the work you've done down here. Your officers quarters are ready at the rear of the command deck.”
“Ah, I've already moved into the Chief Engineer's ready quarters down here. Reassign them.”
“You're sure?”
“Aye Captain. I'm a minimalist.”
As Jacob Valance left engineering in one of the main express cars, he couldn't help noticing that things were changing.
The main lift was crowded. It was a freight lift sandwiched between four other personnel lifts at the main hubs on each deck. It eventually led to three points on each deck except for the Command Deck, where it only reached the center. There were half a dozen mechanics, four soldiers and a few other people behind him. As soon as he had stepped inside the car silence settled over its occupants.
His thoughts were still turned inward, his conversation with the Chief Engineer had helped far more than he had expected. He felt different, the same things were important; taking care of the crew, going against Regent Galactic, and helping who he could but there was less anger. At the same time he was feeling young for the first time in his entire life.
He turned towards the doors and nodded. “Good morning,” he said clearly but quietly.
At various volumes and levels of enthusiasm, everyone in the car replied; “Good morning,” or “Good morning Captain,” and the silence returned. He stared at the doors, not focusing his attention on anyone until they reached the command deck. He walked off the lift with four soldiers and one other person, a civilian from what he could tell in his periphery.
He caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye and turned to face the woman in the hallway. She was wearing a loose, high necked black dress over a mostly transparent vacsuit. The command and control unit she had chosen for herself from the materializer was made to hang down as a long necklace. At a glance it just looked like a one centimetre wide, four centimetre long piece of silver jewellery, but it had a small interactive holoprojector and split down the center to reveal an interface pad that stretched.
Triton – 01 sf-3 Page 25
