Chapter 57

I woke with a dry mouth in my cabin. I rolled in the silky sheets thinking that there might be someone else here. I had talked to a few drunken women last night and Haily had gotten me to dance with her. I think she kissed me? But I remember telling her that nothing was going to happen. I rolled to me feet and quickly checked the rest of my cabin…nope I was alone. Julie materialized and I nearly jumped since my brain was so foggy. Julie said my presence was required in marine country.

Marine country? Was this a joke? Julie affirmed that Abby and the new security staff were getting ready for the morning’s workout and Abby had been firm that my presence was required. I nodded but went to the grav shower, stripped and used a cold rain to clean myself and get back some focus. I had always liked cold showers. The shock to the senses and the overcoming the discomfort. It was a short shower and I dried and put on a clean skinsuit after tossing the used one in the cleaning pile for the steward bots.

‘Marine Country’ was just the fitness room on deck 8. Some sluggish marines were there getting whipped into shape by Abby. I got into cycle with everyone else and these guys were kind of fun. Abby, Buckie and Adam were a more serious kind of fun when we trained. This group was all jokes and over exaggerations dotted with verbal sparring among them. Whether I wanted to or not they dragged me into their low brow humor and camaraderie. I saw Abby smiling at my predicament the entire time. Did she select this group of four to bring me out of my shell? We moved onto some practice combat and Abby was relentless with all of us. She had been a marine combat instructor and even with rust she dominated all of us.

I didn’t suffer much besides some bruised muscles and ego. It seemed Hanno was the unofficial leader of the misfit four. Loree was mostly quiet but her one line responses usually hit home every time, cracking everyone up. I would have thought Maria, being from the Colonial Combine, would have been the odd person out but she dished out just as much as she got. When Abby finally called an end to the workout we all collapsed in unison. It was a comedic collapse and not physical exhaustion.

Abby announced Hanno and Maria had four hours of VR simulation to complete, the programs were already queued. Mitchel and Loree would be heading to the start to learn security monitoring from Eve. Then the pairs would switch. They headed off to their cabins to clean up before going to their assignments leaving me with Abby.

Abby asked me how I liked the group and I said they were great. She turned the topic to open crew slots and I moaned. More crew? She said Suruchi had found a botanist on the planet who was looking for ‘adventure’. Hmmm. I told her to forward the resume and I would review it. Then she said she found me a pilot, well Loree found me a pilot. Ensign Zoe Quintos. Zoe was a destroyer pilot before being demoted to a gunship pilot. She was a good pilot…just operated a little outside of normal navy doctrine. Abby admitted Zoe had in fact crashed her destroyer into a station but that was to avoid another ship. According to Loree, the impact to the station was less severe than hitting the other ship so she had saved navy assets. Unfortunately, the pilot duo on the other ship were well connected and she was the one who was disciplined.

Zoe would have washed out of the navy but the war was going on so she had been assigned to a gunship instead. Gunships had one of the highest mortality rates of ships in the Union, so it was a death sentence. Instead, Zoe performed ‘miracles’ in six fleet engagements before surrendering after her carrier ship had been destroyed. I asked Abby if a hot shot pilot was what our little passenger liner really needed? Abby eyebrows arched and she just said good pilots were extremely hard to find. I nodded and said to set up the interview.

I went down to the hull fabrication lab and opened up the profile for the botanist. Miguel Asuni. He was 37 and had a wealth of experience. I looked at Suruchi’s notes. He was fleeing from a breakup with his wife of 9 years? Did I need a heart sick botanist? He had some xeno research credentials on his resume. I just sent Suruchi a note that I would not be at the interview but she was free to hire him if she thought he would fit in.

I moved down to workshop with the hull fabricators. I spent a few hours completing the connections from the alien hull fabricator to our human translator module. If Eve and I had been correct in everything we should be able to program it without software and it would run the component fabrication in alien script. Excitedly I was about to use the device to fabricate a small dome housing for an inertia emitter. I stopped and asked Eve to join me. It didn’t seem right to do this without her. It had been weeks of work together to get to this point. She deserved to be here. Eve arrived and I told her I was ready to fabricate! Of course, she checked all my connections and interfaces before saying it was safe to proceed.

The energy draw was higher than predicated but the half meter half sphere was printed in forty-two minutes! I had expected it to only take about ten minutes so another slight failure but once we examined the final product I was ecstatic. It was near perfect. Off by just 0.02mm and it only took Eve a few minutes to correct this problem on the interface. I had a working alien hull fabricator! The max size of the panels would be 4m by 5m so it was going to take a long time to refit the ship. Eve wanted to try using the device to print a skeleton frame for a bot with the device so we did that next.

She had printed her own skeleton from my files. We started running tests on it when it was completed. It was an improvement, three times as strong and about 15% lighter. We put the new bot skeleton in storage and I promised Eve on the next voyage I would upgrade her frame. Eve also pointed out the sensors masking quality of the material. She wanted her somewhat illegal upgrades masked with the material. We talked about it for quite a while and it would require a reworking of her central structure. I couldn’t just put a ball of this material around her expanded memory and processors. That would be too obvious to scans. So we were going to have to rework some things. The end goal was to have any scans show Eve as just a normal bot. That way she could join me on the stations and planets without fear of being confiscated.

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Eve returned to her monitoring work after this monumental successful test. I planned to fabricate 198 hull panels during the remaining 25 days we were in port and also paneling to shield the AI, nav computer and other core computer systems on the Void Phoenix. The outer hull was over 57,000 square meters. Meaning my 198 hull panels would cover just 6.7% of the hull! It was going to be a long journey for this refit. I hoped with each fabrication run I would get closer and closer to understanding the alien technology. If I could somehow patent it… My comm interrupted my thought of becoming an engineer known throughout galaxy wide! The interview with Zoe was happening in twenty minutes. I set up to start building another interface for the other hull plate fabricator and went to meet Abby and Suruchi.

They were talking about Edmund when I entered. I only caught a snippet and it appeared Dora and Edmund were already involved. Ship gossip. I sat down and the screen lit up with a woman in her 20s. She had short brown hair and pale complexion. I couldn’t tell if her eyes were blue or green. The interview started and Abby and Suruchi pushed me to ask the questions. As ships captain it was important for me to be comfortable with the pilot. Zoe talked in a lot of slang terms and she was from an industrial world in the Union. She grew up in a gang on her homeworld, not knowing her parents. She had been drafted forcibly to the navy. Her reflexes had earned her a fighter pilot track but she also had fantastic cert scores so was promoted to capital ship pilot. She reiterated the incident that got her demoted. She was very candid and rough around the edges socially. She had a very high price tag for her release though, triple that of Abby.

Zoe did want concessions though. She wanted her gunship crew freed as well. Even if they couldn’t join my crew she owed it to them to get them off of Bastille. There were three of them still on Bastille. Her co-pilot and navigator, Elias Petro. Her gunner and sensor operator, Arthur Davies. And the last one was her ordinance and engineer Yannis Makris. The problem I had after getting the data folders on them was their release fees were so damn high! Zoe volunteered that was due to her gunship being responsible for quite a bit of damage and death to the Sapphire navy.

I checked Yannis’ certs. He only had a few basic life support and propulsion certs, not even grade 1. I looked to Suruchi and Abby. They said it was my ship and my decision. I told Zoe I would free her crew and we would interview them on board the Void Phoenix. Abby whispered to me that I was a big softy. I was just thankful that it appeared I had a pilot.

The next three days blurred as I spent three hours working out after waking and then going to the hull fabricators with Eve. Abby had in fact made good on her promise to free up Eve. With Eve’s help I was hoping to double our production of hull panels while in port. We had both machines working and during the fabrication runs we went to the robotics lab. I was getting ready to give one of the steward bots a new skin suit. Zoe arrived with her crew three days after we interviewed her.

I don’t think any of them believed someone had paid to get them out. They were all from the poorest levels of Union society, forced into service like I was. Arthur Davies was from an agricultural station and had tattoos on his arms. He was short and had corded muscle. He looked intimidating until he smiled. Elias was the son of a police officer from a small city. He was tall and always seemed on alert. The engineer, Yannis, was an orphan. He had a similar experience to Zoe, growing up in a gang in a mega city. The group all stood casually as we talked in engineering. Abby came down as the conversation was drawing to a close.

I didn’t know if I wanted this group on my bridge. I decided I would put the foursome through some simulations in VR to see how they would do under pressure. I gave them a few hours to familiarize themselves with the ship in VR while I talked with Abby. Surprisingly Abby had some reservations. She was worried about the discipline of the additions. She knew her marines could be goofy but they knew when to get serous and focus. This foursome…she was not certain.

With Abby I watched them in their first scenario. It was the same shit storm Julie had the crew do, the pirate abduction. With Zoe’s flying they managed to evade attempts by the pirates in the debris field long enough for help to arrive. Ok so Zoe, Elias and Arthur worked amazingly well under pressure. I ran them through two more scenarios and tested Yannis on more engineering focused problems. Ok he was good, not great but good. He had the quality to find the quickest route to an engineering problem like me, not as efficient in the execution but still good.

As they came out of VR I stood stoically with Abby and asked them all to join my crew. Zoe and Elias would fill the two pilot roles. Arthur would take over sensors and Haily would move to the Comms officer role. Yannis would be assigned as the hull and structural engineer for now. I needed someone to supervise the installation of the new hull panels and it seemed like a good fit for his skills.

Abby got her marines to give them the official ship tour and get them to their assigned cabins. I talked with Abby for a while after about her three open security positions. She had gotten in touch with Buckie and had sent him funds to get a transport here. The problem was she didn’t know how long it would take, anywhere from 15 to 45 days depending on how lucky he was system hoping. She had a number of candidates from Bastille for the other two positions but was holding out hope for Francis. We had time so I wasn’t worried. I actually thought eight security might be too much for this ship.

I stopped on deck 7 for a meal since Cori had commed me saying she had finally gotten her kitchen setup and had prepared an old-world dish for me. Even without passengers deck 7 was showing signs of activity. Bots and crew worked in the area getting it ready for guests. Suruchi was giving a tour to her botanist and they were engrossed in conversation about the miniature biome on the promenade.

In the restaurant Cori met me and had the steward bot bring me a ricotta ravioli with a Bolognese sauce. She wouldn’t sit with me to eat so I ate alone. It was fantastic! I complimented her on her dish and she blushed. She said it was a basic dish and she had more exotic offerings in her culinary repertoire. I told her I was looking forward to trying every one of them.

I met up with Eve and she asked to do a VR sim with me and Julie. I was fairly tired so getting some VR rest would be good. I suggested that she could play Watson in my VR sim but she wanted to do the fantasy sim. The dedicated unit for the fantasy game had been installed by Emon. Ok, that sounded like fun too. So I went to play my half giant, maul wielding barbarian.