“Melissa, c’mon. You know I’m supposed to finish mounting the warp array today.”
“I do know, and I figured that you could use a little good news motivation so you don’t mess it up.” She had set up a screen around my bedroom corner while I was finishing up some stress-strain modeling on the housing that would contain the array and help it not get torn of cruising in atmosphere.
Katie sits next to me at the table with two cups of a Klatuun equivalent of coffee. She’s getting in the habit of wearing only bottoms around our loft, and I can’t say I mind. I kiss he cheek in thanks and wait for Mel to do whatever she’s doing.
She comes out wearing a slick white suit with the same heliotrope, blue, and silver accents that my EVA suit does, but with lines on the leg seams and accents on the coat lapels and shoulders. A crisp beret with a small heliotrope insignia-rank field rests upon her head.
“You designed more uniforms?!” My interest piqued.
“Yes, since I felt left out last time, we designed three. Officer and Enlisted Dress uniforms, and a working jumpsuit. The jumpsuit is mostly grey, like your EVA.” She beams, proud of herself.
“What, no ridiculous pink and purple camo pattern?” Melissa groans.
“Yes! I knew it! Now you have to model that one.”
“But why.” She storms off back behind the screen, “she had Atropos run the environment data around here to make you a camo.”
“It would be every bit as effective as US jungle camouflage if we were to fight a guerrilla war in our Rainforest.” Katie’s smile is disturbing and beautiful. Must be thinking about blood
A few minutes later, Mel comes out in what should look ridiculous, but I like it. A slightly baggy outfit nearly identically cut like American camo of the old 2010s, but the coloring is silver, beige, with flecks of silver-muted pink. The boots are matte silver and the undershirt is the muted pink like the flecks. It’s Andromeda blasted glorious.
“Oh, no. You like it don’t you. You do! Damnit. I owe Katie ten credits.”
“What’s wrong with it? It would be our off-ship uniform.”
“But our jumpsuits would be nice enough for that too!” I can’t help but think how cute she looks with her tantrum face in that uniform. Katie smacks the side of my arm.
“I bet they do hon, and I also bet that I’ll be spending more time in the uniforms you designed. But practical pink camouflage? C’mon babe, you have to admit that is amazing!” I hop up and walk to her going in for a kiss, but she turns her head away. I kiss her cheek instead. “Thanks for doing this Mel. I really appreciate it, and the whites are pretty great.”
“Will you wear them for me later?”
I pull her into a hug, “I’ll wear them for you both later. I’ll wear them every day I’m not in solid danger of being exploded.”
She hugs me back, tightly. “You know I hate when you treat your death so casually.”
“And I hate it when you doubt her preparation.” Katie leers at Melissa.
Nope, I don’t want to sit in this atmosphere, I give Katie a hug from behind, and a promise for some us-time before heading out.
***
Five hours after leaving Melissa and Katie in my apartment and I haven’t blown myself up . . . yet. I am standing here with a plasma torch in my hand welding a warp array full of potentially explosive runes to a space-ship with heat resistant enchanted paneling. I have this little tool turned up hot enough that I needed to put on my EVA helmet.
I check over my work, trying to make sure that it won’t rip off in flight when the damn torch explodes in my hand. My arm is wrenched as it throws me into a spin. I land heavy on my face and groan at the discomfort of it all. Should I have known that it’s dangerous to run something that hot that long? Yes, I should have. Especially when it had an aether battery in it. I’ve checked if my ink is flammable, and it very much is, but only at high heat. Probably why it works so well as a thruster enhancer.
I squirm my way to my feet, cradling my right arm once I stand and mosey slowly over to the medical station consisting of another T-2 emergency kit on a small table, that feels entirely too far away. I grab a cylinder that looks like an epi-pen and jam it into my shoulder in several places and take another to jab my hand twice. Pain killer plus nano beacon to pull all available swarm machines to reconstruct my injuries.
Melissa is never going to let me hear the end of it.
“The med kit? Shit are you okay?”
“Yeah, Beech, I’ll be fine. Can’t stop blowing myself up though.”
“Can you at least wait until you finish the ship before you kill yourself.”
I start laughing, happy that the painkillers have kicked in. “How inconsiderate of me.” I slump back against the wall and slide to the ground. “While you’re here, can you look at my welds and see what you think?”
He takes fifteen minutes with an eyeglass and a hammer and bangs around my weld sites. I’m horrified by his audacity. “They seem to be fine, looks like you haven’t welded in a while, but fine.”
“I did ask, I suppose. She’s pretty much flight ready, save a week or so of testing. Unless we think we need weapons. Do you know anyone that makes weapons?”
He taps the side of his hammer against his jaw in contemplation, “Gordy was trying to retrofit some coil guns with explosive rods, but with mixed results. So far, you make the best weapons, Admiral. Those plasma grenades are pretty choice.”
He waits around for a minute or so in case I have anything else for him, but I’m far to busy thinking how I don’t want to be making weapons, but I seem awfully good at it.
“Hey Tessa? Can you fly the Shuttle without Melissa’s bracelet?”
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I could if I had to, but Melissa hard-wired a connection for you in the Pilot’s chair. The cable also has full command override should someone attempt to hack the shuttle. I am pleased that the people who care about you are so capable.
/Hey Mel. Just got the rig installed and you had expressed interest in coming with me for warp testing?/
/Already?! Do you have to start tonight? Can you postpone it to tomorrow afternoon maybe?/
As itchy as I am to start, the best I could safely do injured would be instrument checks and system diagnostics. Which would, of course, proceed faster with Melissa onboard.
/Yeah, I had some things in the personal column I can test out tomorrow. Does this mean you’ll be working all night?/
/Yes? You’re not mad are you? I’ll be in our downstairs lab working. I put a faraday cage in your explosions room, by the way. Could you encase it in concrete when you have the time?/
I ping her the affirmative, knowing that she means after she’s finished with whatever is keeping her from snuggling me tonight. Whatever she has planned, it has to be important enough to her to postpone leaving by a day.
“Tessa, the little shipboard ansible won’t allow us to teleport in supplies, will it?”
Not unless you supplement the teleportation, which I’m not sure how that would happen. Though you could test it on the far side of the planet or your moon. Same idea, just farther.
“Boo. Can you ping Atropos to see if they’re flagging any space/supply issues that need construction or magic to fix?” Tessa pings in affirmation.
The quick math says it might be close with 8 people, food and water for a few weeks and ansible parts that can’t be manufactured quickly by the fabricator that we also have to bring.
Atropos and Katie are convinced that a significant increase in storage is necessary to optimize your hopping strategy, requiring only a month of reconstruction on Astoria, while potentially saving 6 plus weeks during transit. Additionally, our travel route is still uncertain on middle systems. Integrating what swarm humans know of previous Earth data and what was taken from Copernicus before departure, we still don’t have enough information for stops two and three.
Ahh, I see what’s going on. They’re proposing we fill our time optimizing instead of potentially getting stuck waiting where we have less infrastructure.
***
“You want to turn the cargo elevator into an airlock?”
“You can read the hologram Penny.” Katie sounds annoyed.
“I get the top hatch and the back hatch, but why the bottom and forward hatches?” The holo of my elevator is now a 6-sided airtight space that can recede into the shuttle and seal at full extension and full retraction, but not in between.
“The bottom hatch is for safer docking with another ship, especially if the cargo module is occupied. And the forward hatch is for when the elevator is retracted, allowing you to access space without venting the shuttle.”
She’s queued up animations for what she’s describing and it makes perfect sense. “In hindsight, we should have just made another ship yeah?”
“If everything was perfect, sure. Our current warping technology is not reliable enough to ensure we arrive at the same place at the same time. There would be other issues, but they’re not worth exploring as it’s not currently a viable option.”
I start running construction times and pay in my head and when we can fit it in the schedule.
“As you likely just realized, we’ll need to break up your testing before your final checks for two reasons: The new assembly may be unstable, and two we’ll likely need you and Meeker to scrounge for materials. We’re short on rubber-like materials for seals and shock mounts. Frannie has been able to synthesize some, but not on an industrial scale.”
I can’t help but chuckle at the near futility of trying to rest. “Will the fabricator and you two be ready to transit to Mercy tomorrow afternoon? It’s where most of our listed stockpile of metals is, and we have all the welding and forging tools we could need up there. Beecham’s been busy.”
Katie considers her tablet for a minute, hits a few buttons and nods her head. “tomorrow afternoon is doable.”
“Does that mean you’re working all night?”
“Likely. Did you want to come distract me?” If Mel is going to be busy, I really should spend more time with Katie.
***
Much to Katie’s dismay, we didn’t have sex last night, but I still feel guilty coming home this morning to find Melissa passed out in the lounge surrounded by a new assortment of colored pillows she bought during her uniform design frenzy. Speaking of, I order myself an Astorian Navy Coverall unit with optional utility belt? Oh you beautiful genius. I customize a belt with ampule straps, a holster for my rod of destruction and a zip pouch for medical supplies. They use the same matte silver boots. Three credits per kit isn’t exactly cheap, but it might be doable for sailor jane in my future galactic navy. It might also be subsidized as basic clothing for those that enlist. Yeah, that sounds better.
“Melissa, time to get up babe. I’m going to go help load the shuttle, and then we need to leave for Mercy.”
She unconsciously wipes her face on a decorative pillow. “Huh? Oh, it’s morning. Uh, I need coffee and 20 minutes?”
“Well, I’ve got the Klatuun equivalent brewing for you. And you have an hour.” I kiss her messy hair and ruffle it some more. She feebly pushes my arm away and I chuckle at the charming mess that she is right now.
Midsummer here is beautiful, just like every other season really, but this season has clear skies with the occasional grumpy afternoon cloud that tells you you’re in a tropics-like climate. I walk to Katie’s workshop and drop off the shuttle for them to load before heading toward the edge of the forest.
Time for destructive testing! Breaking things for science is a solid 9/10 on life’s list of joys. I pull out my new rod of destruction. Maybe if I dress it up and stylize it, I could re-name it as a Scepter of Destruction. That sounds like a ruler-ey thing to have. I focus it on a fern-ish plant and for whatever reason, before I can define a shape it catches fire in a whoosh and all that is left is a stack of graphite and other trace metals.
Huh. Why didn’t it let me trace something. The slab of moon did, but the fern is an odd shape? I turn to a 15m tall tree next to me and thank the tree for its sacrifice. I quickly trace a small rectangle and push it only a small distance into the tree. A rectangular shape is cored out of the tree and in its place are rough-shaped cubes of pressed plant material a glopy blob of something and trace elements. Well that’s fun and different.
/Doc. I have an experiment you might want to check out./
/Can you bring it to me? I’m working on a natural rubber process for the seals we need to make./
/Uh, sure. Give me 10 minutes./ She pings affirmative.
I pull out my fancy plasma saber and start chopping down a tree. I use the destruction setting on the canopy and section a good sized, fat log to load onto our lev cart. I fetch said cart and push it a kilometer to Doc’s farm house.
“That’s a nice log, but why are you showing me this?” She asks, with gloves and goggles on.
I wave my engraved Titansteel around. “New tool.” I focus a ring shape just inside the bark outline and push it toward the cart about half a meter then let the aether go. The flash of light fades and in the emptied log is wood pulp cubes and a cube of goo that sloughs into a blob.
“Fascinating!” she picks up a cube of pulp, smashes it between her fingers, sniffs it, and to my surprise tastes it. “Smells and tastes faintly of peaches. Delightful.” She does the same to the glob but spits furiously this time. She plays with glob some more, takes it to various stations, mixes it with several liquids, boils some of it, strait sets some on fire.
“How did you have all of this ready?”
“I have devised a standard set of tests for all strange plants that Meeker brings back. It hasn’t been a lot so far, but he has promised me many more.”
“Ah, I hope he comes back with a natural rubber ancillary, because apparently we need quite a bit of it.”
“I have some more testing to do, but this could be similar to a clarification and dehydration of a latex-like substance. If so, you and your wand could provide me with more than enough to make the seals that Katie needs.”
“It’s a scepter. Far too long to be a wand.” I attempt to hold it regally.
“True, too heavy for a casual flick and swish.” She sighs in dismay.
“OH. MY. GOD.” I teleport out of there before she can say anything worse.