by Jacen Aster
Ernie unrolled the large flex-screen he was holding, revealing a familiar set of blueprints. He traced his finger along a conduit between one of the inertial compensation units and a life support pumping system. “See this conduit? It was supposed to be large enough that we could run a bunch of power, cooling, and data lines through to support a number of secondary and tertiary systems that are farther away from the generators. Problem is, we decided to upgrade to the new faster-than-light comms from Vincent Technologies to get more data out during our test run. The new unit requires a great deal more power, which means a thicker cable. A cable that just won't fit into the conduit. Jack wants you to take a look at the prints and see if you can find another little fix for him. One that won't involve months of rewiring.”
Henry tried not to sweat. This was a far more complex problem, and he couldn't imagine why the hell they had come to him with it. The coolant trick had been a simple lucky spot. This was a whole different animal. “Err...why me, boss? Isn't this a bit above my pay grade?”
Ernie gave him a slightly sardonic smile as he answered. “A bit? Kid, this is at my pay grade. A junior grease monkey shouldn’t even be allowed to see these blueprints, let alone suggest changes. Lucky for you, Jack decided he liked your out-of-the-box thinking, and lucky too that your last suggestion worked so damn well. Now, get working on this. I'll assign Greg to finish up those comm lines.” With that, Ernie rolled up the blueprints, handed over the blueprint case, and walked off.
It was only a few minutes later that Henry found a secluded drafting table in the science section, away from the noise and distractions of engineering, to look over what he'd been given. Opening up the blueprint container and unrolling the flex-screen, he was surprised to find that Jack and Ernie had included not only the schematics for the conduit, but those for all the parts surrounding it, including the top secret specs for the new inertial compensators. Humbled by what they had entrusted him with, he set to work.
Several hours passed, and after looking everything over for what had to be the thirty-fourth time, Henry sighed. Leaning back in his chair, he covered his eyes with his arm. He was, if anything, further from finding a solution than ever. There was just nowhere even vaguely close to the conduit that could handle an extra power cable that thick. Of course, if there had been, they would have just done it, rather than asking him to find a workaround.
Pushing himself away from the table, he rolled up and stored the blueprints, resolving to put it from his mind for a while. Maybe even go see Mira....
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
“Hey, Mira!” Henry had snuck up behind her and Mira, who had been examining something on the console in front of her, jumped several centimeters in surprise.
Aggrieved, she spun and jabbed a finger into his ribs, or tried to at least. He was surprisingly quick. “Henry! Why do you insist on startling me like that? One of these days you’ll give me a heart attack or something!”
“Because you’re cute when you’re angry, obviously,” Henry responded, adding a cheeky grin and a wink for dramatic effect.
She looked indignant for a moment before giving an exasperated sigh. “Henry, that line only worked the first time, and that was the third time this week. You’d better have something amazing planned for tonight if you expect me to stay my revenge.” She crossed her arms and tapped a foot in the manner all ticked off women seem to have mastered. The quirk at the corners of her mouth, where she was valiantly fighting a smile, did not help convey the gravity of her threat.
Henry tapped his chin in mock concentration. “Amazing, hmmm. Well, I was saving it for a special occasion, but I suppose making you happy is always a special occasion….”
Mira’s remaining irritation visibly melted away, subverted by curiosity. “As sweet and sappy as that is, and of course how very true it is…what exactly are you talking about?”
Henry just smirked. “Nope, not telling. You’re even cuter when you’re curious. You’ll just have to wait and find out. When are you getting off?”
Mira scrunched her nose and gave him frighteningly good puppy dog eyes, making it even more deadly by grabbing his left arm and pressing it to her chest. “Pretty please? Just a hint?”
Henry caved immediately.
“Fine! Fine! Just stop with the eyes! I’ve got a friend working at that new holo café on station. He arranged a special program for me. He even flagged a VIP pass so we can cut in line. That’s all you’re getting.” He paused to fortify himself against her vicious, vicious, eyes and added, “You’ll have to wait to see specifics. When are you off?”
Dropping the puppy dog eyes but hanging on to his arm, Mira freed one hand to grab his chin. A mischievous grin worked its way onto her face as she leaned in, almost going up on her toes to get closer to his height, and let him in on a secret. “I was off twenty minutes ago. I was just checking over a few things while I waited for you to show. Now get your cute butt in gear. I’ll meet you at the docking bridge.” Giving him a quick peck, she let go and exited with a deliberate sway that only added to Henry's suddenly dazed state.
Shaking off the drug-like effects her presence always had on him, Henry headed after her at a casual pace, knowing that even as excited as she was, he’d be ready long before her.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
It was nearly an hour later when Mira and Henry reached the Vistas Café. Shortly after their arrival they were smoothly guided past the long lines and into one of its larger holo chambers. Henry paused at the threshold. He already knew what there was to see, and he was more interested in watching Mira’s reaction. It had been tailored for her after all.
She didn't disappoint. She froze two steps into the chamber and gaped. Rather than the scenic vistas and natural beauty that were the typical fare of holo restaurants, Henry’s friend had recreated a scene from Mira’s favorite piece of historical sci-fi. Appearing to stretch below them for kilometers in every direction was a sprawling city planet, with untold miles of skyscrapers so tall that the ground was but a distant, ill-remembered, dream.
A delighted laugh, light with amazed yet happy disbelief, escaped from Mira as she fully processed what she was seeing. Recovering from her surprise, she spun around, looking at everything with the whimsical delight of a child, taking in the appearance of the small balcony café they appeared to be in. Perched precariously at the very top of a skyscraper, the café presented a breathtaking view of the city's splendor. Air traffic darted and wove to and fro, and the lilting notes of an alien music drifted from somewhere below. Such sounds of a living city mixed with the low babble of hundreds of voices in dozens of tongues to completely convince the viewer that this was oh so very real. Mira took a deep breath, taking in the smells and subtly altered air, fit for a city instead of a space station. She closed her eyes to properly absorb all the added little touches of a high-grade sim that were far more felt than seen. Her eyes popped open after a few moments, almost glowing as Henry's surprise blew away the exhaustion of a long shift.
Catching sight of Henry watching her with a bemused, but pleased, smile, Mira launched herself at him with no warning at all, nearly sending them both to the floor. He only just barely managed to take her unexpected weight, keeping them both upright. After attacking his higher thought processes with a sizzling kiss, one that thoroughly wiped those poor, defenseless, thought processes from existence, she exclaimed, “You remembered!”
Still struggling to reboot conscious thought, Henry managed an answer in a slightly husky voice. “Of course, I remembered. I might not understand your fascination with those old celluloid movies, but if it makes you happy, then I don’t need to.”
Mira just smirked and pulled him to an open table. “And in that, my love, you’ve discovered the most important thing.” As they sat, an alien waitress appeared as if from nowhere, though in this case, that was probably literal. Mira hummed appreciatively as she eyed the menu she was handed and began chatting with the construct about her options. Henry couldn't
help the pleased smile that drew his lips into a soft curve. Yes, this had been a good idea, even if his friend never forgave him for how much work it had been.
After all, Mira was smiling.
Several delight-filled hours later, they stood in front of Mira’s quarters. Palming the hatch open, she stepped inside and crooked a finger for him to follow. Bright emerald eyes, tinted with not a little desire, captured Henry's as she drifted over to a well-stocked, if compact, wine cooler. Her eyes left his to dart over the selection, but she had clearly already known what she wanted. There was no hesitation as she slipped a dusty bottle from the very bottom rack.
“This is a curious little vintage from the turn of the century. Let’s pop it open and have a bit of a nightcap, eh, Henry?” Popping the bottle’s self-contained opener, which amazingly still worked despite having to be a very early design for such, given the apparent age, she placed it on the small dining table bolted to the bulkhead and added a pair of glasses. The rest of the night passed in a haze of fine wine and even finer company.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
It was nine the next morning when the absence of a warm body woke Henry. The sound of the shower clued him in on where Mira had vanished to, and knowing what that meant, he blearily stumbled out of bed to the coffee maker. Sitting down at the table with his mug of life, his mind started focusing on the problem of the day before.
How the hell was he going to solve a problem that two geniuses like Ernie and Jack hadn’t been able to sort? This wasn’t like the last time. It was a much more complex issue, one with no simple solutions to be had. None that he could see, at any rate. Visions of blueprints brought a pounding to his head and he dropped the subject, choosing instead to stare at the remnants of their “nightcap” from the previous evening.
Picking up the “curious” little bottle of wine, he examined it, trying to see just why it was that Mira had called it that. One look in the full light of coffee induced sobriety showed him the answer. The winery of its origin had created a unique bottle by running twisting spires of glass inside it, climbing from the bottom of the bottle nearly to the lip. Then, just like that, the answer hit him.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
It took a little wandering around the ship to find Ernie. Finally, after it seemed he’d searched half the ship, he located his boss near the portside maneuvering jets. Or what would eventually be the portside maneuvering jets, at any rate. It was little more than a hole in the side of the ship at this point.
“Hey, Ernie! I've got something for you.” Henry called to him as he navigated the debris-filled room to Ernie’s side.
Ernie turned away from his conversation with Greg Tallow and raised a questioning eyebrow. “What is it, Henry?” Seeing the blueprint container clutched at Henry's side, he added, “Found a fix for that conduit problem?”
Henry grinned. “I have, actually. Want to take a look?”
Slight disbelief etched Ernie's face as he disengaged himself from his conversation with Greg to join Henry. “So, you really think you found a solution huh? Well, let’s go see what Jack thinks.”
Henry hadn't counted on that. He had thought it would just be Ernie, not the big boss himself. “Er...do we really need to go see Mr. Amaril for this? Can't you just take a look at it?”
Looking like he’d sucked on a lemon, Ernie responded, “Oh no. I'm not going to be responsible for some hacked fix being applied to a ship I'm working on. Jack knows perfectly well I hate that kind of thing. No, he'll decide himself whether to use your fix or not.”
Nervous rather than jubilant now, Henry followed Ernie to the higher levels of the ship. They soon entered restricted command areas where Henry had never stepped foot before. Eventually, they ended up on the incomplete bridge, where Jack was directing a crew of engineers running wiring for consoles and instrumentation panels.
Ernie walked right up to Jack and said without preamble, “The kid says he has a solution for you, Jack. Got time to take a look?”
Jack looked up from the console he was helping wire and rubbed sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Ah, Henry! You got it figured out then? I bet Ernie here you could do it. I told him, 'Ern, we don't have time for this. I bet that kid who solved our heat problem can find us something.’ Didn't want to believe me, he didn't. Bet him five grand you could do it. Hope you haven't let me down!”
Even more nervous now, Henry gave a little nod.
Jack grinned and made a come hither gesture toward the bulkhead. In answer, Elana seemed to appear from nowhere, as if merely summoned into existence by Jack's gesture. Following the others as Jack led them to a nearby, mostly completed, conference room, Henry found himself wondering if she was secretly a ninja. No one that beautiful should be able to go unnoticed so easily….
Once they had settled in the conference room, Jack addressed him again. “So, Henry, what's the brilliant solution this time?”
“Well, I don't know if it's brilliant, sir, but—”
Jack interrupted him. “Tut! None of this ‘sir’ nonsense, Henry. I told you it's just Jack.”
“Er, sure...Jack.... Anyway, I looked over the blueprints and just couldn't see anywhere that we could squeeze such a thick cable, at least not without going way out of the way to do it. Then I got a bit of a brainwave. If we remove the sub-light real-time transmission power cable, it will give us the room we need.”
Seeing Jack's face falling in disappointment, Henry threw up his hand. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘But, Henry, we have to have the sub-light speed transmissions. The new systems aren't wide spread yet so we can't communicate without the old gear!’ I'm well aware of that being the case, but I found somewhere else to run the sub-light systems through.”
Henry was on a roll now and his audience’s confused expressions only made his growing smirk wider. He unfurled a blueprint onto the table with a dramatic snap of his wrist. He'd had to practice that move for a good twenty minutes. Mira had laughed, but he swore it was worth it. “Now, the whole problem is the choke point between the inertial compensators and the life support pump. Everywhere else has plenty of clearance. It was only when I took a glance at the design of your new compensators that I realized what we could do. When those compensators are running full bore, they leak all sorts of energy emissions like a sieve. Because of this, you had to build space between each piece and install cabling to absorb and bleed the radiating energy back out somewhere nice and safe. Now, the interesting thing is that some of those grounding cables are almost the exact same materials used in the sub-light comms for power transmission. Close enough, in fact, to be within tolerance.”
Jack, visibly growing excited, cut him off. “You can run the power line for the sub-light comm through the compensators to avoid needing extra cabling at all, at least until you're past the choke point. It's brilliant!”
“Exactly! The only time you'd lose the sub-light comms is when the energy grounding is needed at maximum. Basically, only at or near light speed, where those comms are utterly useless anyway,” Henry finished, feeling nothing but smug satisfaction now that he knew Jack liked the idea. It didn't hurt that the look of disbelief on Ernie's face had morphed into annoyance, rapidly fading to resigned acceptance as he too realized Jack was going to go for the modification.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, without a great deal of change in routine. The ship grew more and more complete. Jack occasionally sent a bit of work by for one of Henry’s oddball fixes, and Henry couldn’t be happier with how his relationship with Mira took off. As a matter of fact, eight months into their relationship, Henry asked her to marry him. With her enthusiastic ‘yes,’ the date for the wedding was set for the week after the first full light speed test of the Exploration, which was scheduled for the second week of the new year. Just over a year, as it happened, from Henry’s first sight of the ship from the station viewport. Henry considered it a good omen, even if Mira had teased him merci
lessly when he mentioned it out loud.
The day of the first run at the light speed barrier dawned with a chaotic cacophony of sound, little different from that heard a dozen times already during the lesser shakedown runs taken by the ship over the past two months. Among the most startling overall differences was the high presence of military and police cruisers working hard to keep the ships of the general public at a safe observational distance. Noon, the official test time, rolled around and rolled right on past as last minute details were ironed out and every system was checked and triple checked.
Finally, at 13:37, Jack Amaril’s voice came over the comm as the ship crept into position, giving a simple speech that would become legend. “As we creep ever closer to the final throw of the switch, I find the rare need to say a few words for posterity. Every one of you has come to know me, in some capacity, over the past three years, as my dream, or perhaps delusion, has come into being from a great nothingness. Prior to my grand declaration of disbelief in all the ‘cannots’ of science that had come before, no one had but the barest pipe dreams of what we now hope to make reality. For if this test succeeds, and I have no doubt that it will succeed, then we will have accomplished the supposed impossible and enabled humanity to explore the great vastness of an unimaginable frontier. Never, in all the days of humanity, has such a vast promise of new things, of grand new horizons and limitless dreams, been so close. Today, we seize that promise in both hands and truly open up a universe of possibilities.”
As Jack’s speech terminated, the weight of his dream, forgotten by the crew in the day-to-day of the project, settled on the shoulders of all aboard. Some people laughed, some people prayed, but most merely took a deep breath and bent to their tasks. The countdown came and went, and at exactly 13:42:57, ESV Exploration began its final acceleration.
