“Damn! I heard of kicking your teeth in and Stone did a fine job. And here I thought you were infallible. Are you up to working?”
In answer he took a much larger seat Jacob must have brought in and raised the table to more comfortably work for them both. Jacob merely raised the seat’s height and let his feet dangle. Oliver’s brow wrinkled and with his missing teeth, sounded funny, but still wasn’t one to laugh at. “Do I really give you that impression that I’m… as you said, infallible?”
“Well yeah, actually.” Jacob grabbed a hammer with a square face that had a slight outward curve. “Makes me feel better you’re like the rest of us and not some deity some of my ancestors might have worshipped before our Age of Logic gained momentum.”
“But I am like you humans. I feel like I’m human… or what I’ve read during my schooling studies makes us extremely similar.”
“Not compared to the rest of us. Your speed, strength and mind are well above ours. Hell, even after you turned in, I ran simulations on one of my engineering programs from Jessica’s ingenious prototype compared to your own. It took four hours to render all known scenarios and you were right. You knew the failure was catastrophic after a few seconds of familiarizing yourself with the physics. Your design has only a four percent chance of failure in the first run while hers had a one hundred at, as you said, a quarter output. My program was damn expensive, but she didn’t have it and yet in seconds you found the deadly error and corrected it. No human could do that with just looking.”
“True, but it is my subconscious that did it and my consciousness translated it. Renee ran thousands of tests on me and my awareness of pain is identical to human and I feel just as strongly as the next person. When I think normally my mind processes like everyone else. And as you can see of my mouth, I’m just as prone to losing and accidents as the next person.”
“And it makes me feel a bit more comfortable. Pass me that soldering wire please.” Oliver passed the silvery coil and got a nod of thanks. “Parts are still being cut and crystals grown to operate it.” He pointed over to a large set of machines. One made entirely of clean titanium and another the size of a boulder made of rose pink crystal shining behind a draped over curtain to dim the light. The larger machine cut out any form of metal from whatever is programmed. “All the pieces will be ready by tomorrow morning. Crystal regulators too.
“So how did the micro-bore turn out this morning?”
“Double check my work. Better you than little miss busybody.”
A pen scanner measured the individual parts and the worrisome two microns were corrected perfectly, leaving an unnoticeable hole drilled through the core. Some new pieces were dangling as waves of heat radiated from ceramic pushed through them. What parts that had finished overnight the two of them worked well assembling together. Rarely talking. They found themselves good partners and some of the finer aspects not even Jacob’s little nimble hand would get to, Oliver’s telekinesis was up to the task.
During the work the stable hum of the engine room began to get just a shade louder and Jacob looked up to the left, at the stream of light to say “We’re moving. Someone initiated the sublight engines.” And a second later there came a hiss of air from far back. “And we’re in FTL.”
“Listen up ye dogs!” Came the Scottish brogue of the pirate king and captain of the Dorgenox, Jake Dorgen. Father of Renee and much older half brother to Jessica. Older meaning about nine centuries between them. His voice was nearly deeper than baritone and gravelly and shook the very air even speaking through speakers. “We have just entered FTL and are on our way to Havannah at long last. Ye have three days before we reach her. Old favors finally pulled though and we got all the time we need at the site. Trading opportunities await as do history remembering our work in uncovering more of our ancestors. We got a press conference to distract the populous as we keep on pillaging secrets of the past. Those of ye who can visit Havannah will be free to go about sightseeing till all me business is complete. Two and a quarter G’s. That is all, Lads.”
“Wish I could see the faces of the press. I’d probably piss myself laughing so hard. Stephanie is so lucky.” Jacob added a synthetic spray lubricant before hand-screwing in a screw with a basic screwdriver to join two plates together.
“Why don’t you?” Oliver wondered as he refined the software with ideas that he didn’t forget about during the night.
“Captain assigned me to go with you, Renee and the Hunters incase there are machines I can repair. If at all possible I mean. Anything down below has been sitting idle for twenty five millennia at the very least. Called me up two weeks ago. If things require a patch job, I’m your man. And since you are no slouch with a few tools I doubt there isn’t much we can’t get put back together. Jessica is coming too, mainly to knock out any cameras in the area that watch the monument twenty four seven. Pass me the… uh, thanks.”
Oliver nodded, gently licking his sore lip, anticipating what was needed and got back to work and later went to sleep. Renee couldn’t get in the mood that night with all his missing teeth and he didn’t mind as he was mentally and physically exhausted.
“Not yet.” Jacob led Jessica’s and Stephanie’s hands just as they dropped out of FTL inside the engine room. Both had on blindfolds to make the surprise more anticipated. He found Oliver beside the draped object as they carefully walked into the engineer’s workshop. “Just a few more steps. A little more… stop. Now wait till I tell you to take them off.”
“Hurry up already. The suspense is killing me.” Jessica stomped slightly as she heard little feet hurrying away.
“On three. One. Two. THREE!?”
The women pulled off the blindfolds to find Oliver and Jacob standing to either side of a brown tarp covering an enormous sphere a few centimeter’s shorter than Oliver as the two men were jerking the sheet back.
Polished silver glistened off its surface as supports held it in place from rolling away. It sat hovering on a platform with a controller laying on one side and another held a charged power source. The outer shell was smooth though one could see crisscrossing plates of gravimetric strips.
“What did you do to my specs?” Jessica asked, but only out of curiosity. She was far from upset.
“Scrapped them mostly. Better thank Oliver or we’d be up shit’s creek without a boat let alone a paddle.”
“Have you tested it yet?” Stephanie asked, ogling it with a bit of lust.
“No way would we go beyond preliminary checks. We haven’t even checked if it’ll even power up. The forces it can generate are beyond anything humanity has ever attempted beyond theory. And it won’t activate unless the remote is at least ten thousand kilometers away and under a complete vacuum. And that is pushing it too. It has a self-destruct, but we also need to take care it doesn’t become self sustaining. The probability is near nonexistent with the amount of mass and the amount of power, but we just don’t know. As the last backup, Oliver got the captain’s approval to fire the big cannon as a final line. And the captain won’t test within an inhabited solar system. We’ll head deeper into Andromeda’s core where other super-massive black holes are, but in a safe zone. If all goes well, you’ll get to try in two weeks. Till then, you can go over Oliver’s protocols and factors, but only I’ve got the password to initiate any power-up procedures. Also, it won’t leave my shop till it’s deployed, but you can come down and look her over. You know, make sure we don’t kill each other.”
“You can be sure I’ll go over every nanometer, but I must say you to boys do good work.”
“Thank you.” The two men said simultaneously to Jessica.
“Well I need to go to the dock and get ready.” Oliver said. “Steph, you ready for the big reveal?”
“No, but then I never will be. I’ve never been on GNN’s radar let alone its spotlight, but after today I’m going to be famous. It would help if you were there, but I agree with Jake that your heritage remain secret is more pivotal. You’d never know
peace if it were known to be the Solarians weren’t entirely extinct.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll do great. You look ready and very pretty in that red dress. Just picture the reporters as students like you did for your degree in archeology.”
“Thank you and I’ll do that. I can try to manage it thinking they are my students and not cameras transmitting my face to every human world in the known Empire. Students are more manageable. Two trillion students… sure.” She hopped up and kissed his cheek as he passed. “And good luck yourself.”
“You coming, Jessica?” Oliver offered.
“Hmm?” She blinked and turned from the finished prototype that had her curiosity wanting to press the pretty buttons a lot. “Oh. Um. Yes, I’ll go with you.” She turned around and embraced Stephanie, gave her a passionate lover’s look that couldn’t be denied and kissed her quickly but deeply. “Babe, you’ll do great. I wish I could be with you, but my brother knows what he’s doing. We’ve rehearsed many times and our pillow talk lets me know you know all there is with all the vast resources aboard. Love you and make sure you make eye contact with the reporters. You tend to slouch holding a podium. Throw your shoulders back and make sure to show off my favorite assets.” Jessica winked.
“You be safe too.” She gave a kiss back before letting go and smoothing out her lovely red dress. “Keep my wife safe, Oliver.”
“I’ll do my best, I can promise that.” He clarified.
“I can feel better than an empty promise for an impossible task. Good luck.”
The giant cloaked in battle-ready armor and the flight suit hugging the curves of an average woman in height waved as they moved out, letting Stephanie go over the prototype on the way to the nearest elevator.
On the ride Jessica timidly looked up to ask “Were my calculations really that off?”
“I won’t sugarcoat it…”
Jessica curled a lock of long auburn hair around a finger and interrupted. “Good because I don’t like it when people do it. How can I learn if people don’t point out mistakes.”
“It may have worked if everything was three hundred and fifty eight percent larger in every dimension and thickness, but the smaller scale you designed would have imploded long before reaching optimum output required for the levels you calculated to lock atoms in. But I must say your numbers were spot on. You certainly are good with designing numerical frequencies for something other scientists have yet to accurately quantify.”
Jessica blushed slightly and smiled. “The missing puzzle pieces was your sword actually. When Steph and I were recalibrating her instruments again and again to figure out how it worked and finally focused it to get readings, how the atoms were perfectly arranged got me thinking that nothing had touched to crate it. No tool markings of any kind. If nothing touched to make it then how was it created? And how can it be so dense? So I asked myself what force is strong enough to do that and gravity seemed to be the only answer. So I toiled with ideas in my free time and really got into it after I got tired of listening to the AI Alleia day in and out. I told no one, but when Steph showed off her new knife I showed her my gravity manipulator idea. We worked together the last two days, refining it. It’s how I gave the schematics to Jacob in just two days. In actuality I’ve worked on it close to three months, but I love numbers. Still, if you tell me what I did wrong, I can learn from it.”
“I downloaded the information to my tablet. Turn yours on and I’ll flash a copy to you.”
In just a few seconds she was smiling. “I’ll go through it later.” She said, putting the crystal back in her skintight pocket.
Doors opened to the fight deck where the lovely Rose had her forelegs up against the inner wall of the large cargo hold of Renee’s shuttle, using her long neck to carefully bite and pull something off the top shelf. Rose was a four winged Drake like her mate Sparky, but was barely eight meters long compared to her ten meter lover. Her scales were a rosy pink and she was clearly softer of feature than the rugged male. “Need some help?” Oliver immediately called as she pushed off the wooden, single mast sailboat with wings.
As with all Drakes, they communicated with telepathy since their vocal cords were unable to vocalize words, nor were their mouths and tongues designed for more than shredding prey. Her voice was sweet and dainty. “Greetings, Oliver, but I’m well enough to do this task.” In her teeth was a metallic box she spat out between her talon tipped hands. They didn’t have human hand dexterity, but they managed well enough. She undid a latch and lifted it to pull out a clear capsule of some kind, filled with some sort of liquid and popped it between her teeth, made a loud crunch to let the liquid gush and flow down her long, supple neck. She spat out the now empty capsule on the ground with puncture marks and closed the lid before replacing it back on the shelf of inside the cargo hold. With just her lips she lifted the spat piece and dropped it down into the recycling tube to be broken down and reused for another purpose.
The two came over, him asking “What was that you just took?”
“A respiratory coating. Havannah’s nitrogen levels are too high for my kind without it. It still needs another six to nine decades before the terraformers stabilize the atmosphere for my people. Your kind will have no issue, but I do not want to wear a filtration mask. If Havannah had higher oxygen concentration I would not need the coating.”
“Okay then. Where is everyone else a…”
“Hey, Toothless! Good morning.” Cheerfully called Steven coming through a door rather than exit off the elevator. Visor loyally perched on his left shoulder.
Self-conscious about it, Oliver licked his gums that had yet to even show signs of new tooth growth. He missed having front teeth, but would endure till they grew back in. Till then he’d suffer the taunts. “Hey there, Steven. Visor, you mind?”
“Not at all.” If the eagle could smirk, he would have as he turned and sharply pecked Steven right in the crown of his head.
“Ow! What the hell, Featherbrain!” Steven’s probing of the area came back with crimson droplets on the gauntlet fingertips.
“Stop being such an ass. Oliver is my friend as well. How would you feel if you lost all your teeth and sounded like you have a bit of a lisp?”
“I know my mates wouldn’t complain if I dined below the equator to be gummed to bliss.” His chuckle turned to a “YEOWW!” as a bolt of lightning zapped precisely in the crack of his armored ass to turn around to find Renee and Sparky getting off the elevator, both looking rather smug.
“It is rude to upset my companion’s mate, Steven. She does not take kindly to it, especially if spoken right in front of her.” Sparky hissed and hummed, a Drake’s version of a chuckle.
“Why can’t people take a joke.”
“Oh, I can take a joke. Just don’t make fun of Olly’s teeth being missing or I’m liable to bite you in his place. So this is your last warning, pick something else to run with. Oliver’s teeth are like Sparky and Opera. Don’t mention it if you don’t want to be in traction for the foreseeable future.” Renee warned lightly and came across the floor. “Good morning, Auntie. Looking good.”
“Do you have to wear your armor? I know you like look like a badass, but man, you look ready to throttle someone.”
“Olly and I decided that just to be safe we would keep the armor on in event the nursery defenses find I’m an imposter, should it even work. My genes could have been a fluke. The ship was far from good condition remember?”
“Your armor though is different than when I last saw it.” Jessica noticed, taking a look at the spiked plates on the outer forearm and on top of the hand.
“Yeah, after the cube completed the properties of my bracelet I found out through it I can modify my armor to accomplish functions like my old flight suit.” Renee tapped the top of her right hand. “Like how Oliver made a camera on his shoulder, I cannibalized the scanner in my old medic suit and used it to integrate and even enhance the scanner. Now I don’t need to worry about carrying extra crap aro
und. Every form of field medical testing I know of can be analyzed by my suit now. All I need is to connect my chip into a terran networked device and smear a drop of blood over my forearm and I can identify the person and any issues the patient has. Plus I’ve just gotten word this morning I’m now a licensed splicer so anything I do medically won’t land me in prison. I’ll still need to pay for any regulated changes already approved by the board of health.”
“Are you serious?”
“Very. It’s why I’ve been so busy the past couple days after the cube and splinting Stephanie’s hand. My bracelet showed me all she can do and most of it is still far beyond me. But what I did find, sure has helped speed things up. My med bay is still better, but I can guarantee that out in the field there is no one better equipped than me right now in an emergency. Deegen and Bell here yet?”
“Running a few minutes behind.” Steven admitted. “Deegen had an issue with his suit. Had to replace a few faulty nanites that corrupted the regulator. Won’t take too long.”
Not long at all actually as the dark skinned man with dreadlocks came out carrying chakrams hooked to either hip with a long black whip wrapped around his wide torso. Chakram being a ringed weapon with a handle with which to be used in close quarters as well as to be thrown like a disc that return if done correctly. His silvery armor was much more battle scarred and blackened than Steven’s.
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