Spinward Fringe Broadcast 3

by Randolph Lalonde

  “Not the usual way of climbin' in, most people open up the bottom half of the chest.” Frost said with a shrug. “At least I know flexibility won't be a problem. Most loader operators get so bulky after a while from repetitive motion that they couldn't squirm inta a suit like you just did if they had ta.”

  “Former child gymnast,” she reminded as she started fastening the restraints.

  “Aye, you're in better shape than most on this boat. Anyhow, strap in tight and settle into the supports. They'll be loose until you get set.”

  She could feel the supports around her legs, arms, up her back and pressed against them. He was right, they did start tightening up as she settled in. “How do I start it?”

  “Push your hands all the way in and bring your arms up towards your head, pretend like you're touchin' your forehead. Before you do that, I should tell you-”

  Stephanie extended her arms as far as they would go and the machine wrapped around them. She brought them up towards her face and by the time the hands touched its flat head the suit closed around her completely. The display had energy levels, her medical information, a full depiction of the area around her and a rear view below that. Her entire field of vision was covered so she didn't see the inside of the machine at all.

  “Now move normal like, don't overcompensate or you'll lose balance or worse,” Frost instructed as he hurriedly ran backwards.

  She instinctively took a step backwards and lost her balance. As she tried to step forward again she fell with an incredible crashing sound. “Wow,” she whispered to herself as she looked at the ceiling above.

  “Okay, everyone falls the first time,” Frost reassured. “Now the key is to act normally, take it slow, as though you're real tired or favourin' sore muscles.”

  Stephanie took a deep breath, tried to forget where she was and started to roll over. The suit cooperated for the most part, but her torso still didn't feel tightly supported. As she moved it showed, the armour didn't quite move with her. She ignored it and got the machine up on all fours.

  “I wonder,” she whispered to herself. Stephanie pushed off with her hands and the machine straightened up effortlessly. “So I'll just pretend I'm in the best shape of my life,” she smiled, closing her eyes and standing up straight.

  She was up on her feet and turned around in seconds. After making sure no one was in front of her she closed her eyes again and took several steps. The machine responded almost perfectly, there was a slight bounce in her step because she was being jostled up and down in her waist and chest harness, but she still felt steady and ended her walk by bringing her speed up to a run and dropping into a somersault.

  The armour came up on its feet and almost carried on to fall on its face, but she caught herself just in time, dropping to one knee instead. She turned around and walked back to the rest of the suits, where her security people, the new gunnery crew and Frost watched from. “Our Chief of Security's first time in heavy armour, how about that?” he called out loudly, clapping his broad hands.

  The rest of the crew, a couple hundred of whom had arrived in time to see her run and roll, joined in on the applause. She couldn't help but grin from ear to ear as she took an unsteady bow. “Now how do I get out of this thing?” she asked.

  Laughter trickled through the crowd and Frost turned to them. “Ferrah, Gambon, break out the sim visors and pass 'em out. Get set in the Lost Fleet gunnery sim and I'll be there in ten. Anyone missin's bunkin' in the brig tonight!” he called out with a voice that echoed across the expansive gunnery deck.

  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 on 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.”