“So, what you’re saying is that CQC isn’t a problem for me?”
CORRECT. THE EFFECT DOESN’T LAST FOREVER THOUGH. IT IS AN ESCAPE TOOL, NOT A FREE TICKET TO BRAWL YOUR WAY THROUGH EVERY FIGHT.
“Still, good to know. I’ll have to remember all of that.”
The glow surrounding my hands faded, and I stepped out of the tram. The Dockmaster was waiting for me on the platform.
“TUGGER!” He had to yell over the noise in the hanger, and I could still barely hear him. “ITS TOO LOUD TO TALK OUT HERE, COME TO MY OFFICE!” I followed him wordlessly, stopping to make way for the crew on shift. This was the busy time for them. Not only did they need to take care of the mining ships that were crawling back in from all over the system with months of accumulated damage that needed to be repaired than put to bed for the station jump, but they needed to pull in docking linkages and seal the linkage ports. Nearly a hundred thousand man hours to get everything ready for the jump, and it usually happened every two months or so. With two weeks to get everything settled, it all flowed well usually. It wouldn’t be my problem, this time. I hoped I wasn’t fucking the station over too much.
I followed the Dockmaster to his office, relaxing slightly as the door sealed and cut off the din of the thrusters, power equipment and profuse swearing echoing through the main hangar. “Much better.” the Dockmaster said emphatically. He sighed. “I gotta say Tugger, you’re fucking the station over.” Whoops.
“I’d apologize, sir, but it’s not my choice. At all. As a matter of fact, I wanted” my mouth froze, and I suddenly couldn’t make a sound.
ADMINISTRATIVE LOCK ENABLED
TUGGER, IN CASE YOU DID NOT REALIZE EARLIER, ANOTHER OF MY FUNCTIONS IS TO MAINTAIN COMPANY SECRECY. THAT INCLUDES STOPPING YOU FROM DIVULGING SECRETS WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, AND ALLOWS ME TO ACT IN YOUR PLACE. THIS IS UNCOMFORTABLE FOR BOTH OF US, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ME DO THIS AGAIN.
ADMINISTRATIVE LOCK DISABLED
As I read the message my implant printed on my HUD, I heard and felt myself talk. It was disorienting. “… sorry, I lost my train of thought. I wanted to cut my contract a little early, so I made a bit of a deal. That’s why I sent you that list of refit requests for the Dusty Star.” I could tell that the cadence wasn’t quite right, but it was close enough that most people wouldn’t hear anything off.
“Don’t you fucking sir me Tugger. I might be stuck behind a desk now, but I have more flight hours than you’ve been contracted for.”
“Sorry, sir. I’ll address you correctly, Mister Peter the Dockmaster sir.”
He gave me a mock glare. Peter had been my trainer for piloting tugs, so when I had the chance I liked to give him a hard time.
“Uh huh. Sure you will. Look kid, this list doesn’t make any sense. I know you want to go explore, and your gear doesn’t match a short term explo boat at all. Do you want to just give me a new list? I’m not approving any of this nonsense you sent me unless we go over each item individually.”
I had no fucking clue what he was talking about, but I had dealt with so much nonsense in the past 5ish hours that I just rolled with it. “Let’s go over the list Pete. Its all there for a reason.”
“Ok. First off is your power plant change, and we can’t talk about that without diving into your new RCS choice. You’ve talked about getting trinary fusion reactors and dual ion-fuel RCS boosters ever since you got it into your head to go swimming. Now you want a TAPEs with magnetohydrodymanic vectored RCS? The TAPEs is fine, it makes sense. But, boyo, you should have ion based RCS if you’re exploring. You can’t afford to run out of thruster fuel, and even if you had the equipment to refuel in a nebula (which isn’t on this list), you can’t be sure you’ll get to one.”
I knew what I needed to say, and with my implant not telling me otherwise I figured I had a decent response. “I don’t just want to do exploration now. Some, sure, but if I get bored I figured I could be a cheap option for a VIP ferry.”
“You buffoon. They’re VIPs, they don’t do cheap. Whatever, I’ll approve it. Cargo ferrying needs quick reaction thrust too, so it’ll work when you need a fallback.”
He tapped at the monitor above his desk.
“Next is your flight deck modification. There’s nothing wrong with your choice per se, but… it’s just so unnecessary. A full body gel pack, triplicate redundant control wiring, and neural control from anywhere inside of the ship? Just… why? And how? You don’t have any kind of interface installed, last I knew.”
“Well…” I didn’t have a good answer, and I knew it. “… I make bad choices sometimes? It sounds cool.”
“Really? That’s all you have for me?”
I took a second. “The neural interface is important for ship control. What happens if I’m doing an emergency space walk and I need to do some emergency maneuvers to avoid a chunk of rock? I have an implant lined up as part of the deal I cut, but I can’t talk about the details.”
The Dockmaster shook his head. “Fine. It’s not worth it, but I won’t stop you. Just ask yourself before you go through with the implant if you really want to turn out like 72. I know you never saw eye to eye with him, but he’s gotten worse since his operation.”
Too bad I was never given a choice. I watched him tap at his monitor and waited for the next surprise item on the list I had never sent. Maybe it had been my implant?
MY NAME IS THERIDION, TUGGER. AND YES, I SENT THIS LIST. WE ARE ON AN EXPEDITED SCHEDULE, AND WE DID NOT HAVE THE TIME TO WASTE. I DID NOT ANTICIPATE THIS DELAY, BUT YOU SEEM TO HAVE IT IN HAND.
“Wings are an odd choice, but if you want to enter atmo, I won’t stop you. Good to go there. Your food production is fine, it makes sense for exploration. The next issue I have is the sheer tonnage of weaponry you have on this list. No explorer needs these. VIP ferries don’t need all of this. You want a cruiser’s worth of firepower strapped onto a ship the size of a corvette. I don’t want to sign off on all of this, and even if I did, it won’t all fit. You need to resize your frame or stop pretending to be a military vessel.”
“So… I might have forgotten what I put on that list. Can you refresh my memory.”
“Tugger. You’re an idiot. How do you forget all of this? You’re asking for over four hundred laser CIWS scattered around your hull, turreted 100mm cannons bracketing every docking port, replacing your port and starboard docking ports with manned ball turrets with quad 60mm rotary cannons (with remote access, of course), and an additional four 100mm cannons on the port and starboard side of your front view visual suite, you have an underslung forward facing railgun, and fucking missile clamps facing every which way.”
“What can I say?” I shrugged. “It’s a dangerous galaxy.”
“Not that dangerous. Besides, your missiles will hit each other, trust me. Separation charges will cook off the other missiles you have strapped to your ship. I’ll approve forward facing launchers on your belly and on your new wings, if you can give me a better answer. Everything else is arguably for pirates, so fine. Why do you need missiles?”
I really had no clue what to say, and Theridion wasn’t me. Fuck it. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that, either. Classification is a bitch.”
“Ah.” The Dockmaster nodded. “I was wondering what kind of deal you cut. Good luck, Tugger. I guess that explains your software and comms requests too.”
“Could… could you remind me about those too? Just as a refresher, of course.”
Stolen novel; please report.
He tapped his nose. “Of course. You wrote the list, after all, you know what’s on my screen. Let’s see. For comms, you want an unprogrammed eight channel QComm. Odd to get it without a link already in, but you’re resourceful. I’m sure you’ll manage. Speaking of unprogrammed, you also want every single bit of software and firmware taken out of any and every box or chip on Dusty Star. You realize that turns your ship into a massive, expensive brick, right?”
“I do. Here’s hoping I have a solution, eh?” I figured I should just lean in to the cockiness that Peter clearly expected from me.
WE HAVE PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE AND FIRMWARE TUGGER. HAVING PRE-WIPED SYSTEMS SAVES TIME.
“I’m sure you do. I’m not so sure, boyo, about getting it done. These modifications are expensive. Beyond expensive, really. Do you want a breakdown, or just the whole number?”
“Just give me the number. If you can send me an itemized list, that would be appreciated.”
“You’re looking at about 40 million credits for parts, man hours, and labor premiums since we’ve started the moving process. You’ll also need another 7 to 8 million for ammunition for the railgun, missile launchers, and cannons, spare rails for the railgun, and lenses for your CIWS buds.”
I was a little disappointed that it was so close to the amount I had received, but so be it. “Buds?”
“You need to pay more attention to these lists you make, kid. The laser CIWS you chose are implanted into your hull, and vaporize incoming projectiles. Normally, the system’s software is smart enough to analyze and respond to EM attacks with destructive interference, but you want it wiped, so that’s gone. The only part outside the ship is a little dome to protect the focusing apparatus from particle collisions.”
“Neat. So, 48 million. Will you send me a bill, or…”
“You’re funny, Tugger. You should know damn well that Rumors doesn’t do anything outside of emergencies without getting paid first.”
“Better to ask, Peter. Where am I transferring to?” I tapped at the pad on my pressure suit’s forearm, confidently sitting flush with the armor that had folded around it, setting up a transfer. It was easier with a full sized tablet, but the PED that was practically a standard for pressure suits still got the job done.
“Dockmaster refit fund. Right…” The Dockmaster reached over and scrolled through a list of transfer candidates on my PED and pointed out an account name “…there. You should expect everything put together, tested, and loaded about a week after we get the station unpacked and operation at the new location. You’ll be on Wanderer 6, correct?” I nodded. “We’ll send you a message there, then. I also have to tell you that we can’t do any live-fire tests for your weapons. The CIWS we can test on rocks, but I’m not authorizing someone to shoot at Dusty Star, and no one on this station is going to get the ok to just dump munitions into the void.”
“That’s fine. I’ll do tests after I get my software package installed. Transfer iiiiis… done. Did you get it?” It may have been rude for me to ask, but 48 million credits was an insane amount of money. I wasn’t going to just assume that it went where I expected it to.
“I did. I’ve sent you your itemized invoice, just like you asked. You have manuals for weapon operation, but with your own software they might not be accurate, at least for theory of operation.”
“Perfect.” A ding echoed from my wrist as the invoice was delivered. I reached across the desk, and the Dockmaster shook my hand. His grip was still firm from his years of piloting and maintenance. “I’m glad I was able to work with you.”
“Now now, boy. This isn’t goodbye. You still need to pick up your baby when it’s finished.”
“Very true, sir. I’ll not be late, sir. Thank you sir.”
I left his office, a grin plastered to my face, as the Dockmaster shouted at my back.
“HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES TUGGER! DON’T YOU DARE FUCKING SIR ME! I STILL WORK FOR A LIVING!”
—-—————————————————————————————————————
The tram had been instructed to wait for me, I was surprised to learn.
OF COURSE, TUGGER. THE WANDERER 6 HAS A MISSION TO CONDUCT. I PREDICT THAT YOU WILL REFUSE ANY TRAINING COURSES DURING THIS TRAM RIDE IN LIEU OF LINGERING OVER THE CHANGES YOU HAVE ORDERED FOR YOUR OWN CRAFT. THIS WILL MEAN YOU HAVE TO PRACTICE LIVE IN PILOTING WANDERER 6 OUT OF THE STATION. WE WILL STILL HAVE TIME FOR YOUR OTHER TRAINING MODULES PRIOR TO THE HARROWING PART OF THE MISSION.
It stung a little that I was that predictable, but of course I wanted to look at this invoice. 40 million in parts and labor was expensive. There weren’t any surprises on the invoice, since Peter had been kind enough to go over every modification with me, but he had gone the extra step to add a small block of text to each line item, highlighting important capabilities that came with each weapon system. I wasn’t going to take the time to check, but I was willing to bet he had lifted the text straight from the marketing materials. I was shocked when I read the first entry, and it just kept getting worse.
> Power plant : Thermo-Acoustic Powerplant - Electrical/Hydraulic PEKS-PMHDA x2
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> The Thermo-Acoustic Powerplant - Electrical/Hydraulic, or TAPE, is a long standing workhorse in the spacefaring powerplant world. The TAPEs provides electrical and optional hydraulic power to every size of aircraft and spacecraft, and does so at a noise level far belong more damaging options like traditional rockets or turbines.
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> Unlike standard TAPEs, which require an outside unit to provide shielding for the heat providing fusion reactor, the PiezoElectric KickStart line is a self-contained unit that is able to start with just the press of a button, using a fission reactor and piezoelectrical generation to initiate and maintain fusion shielding until the fusion reaction is self-sustaining. The fission reactor is normally disabled for safety, ensuring customers avoid nuclear incidents.
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> The TAPE PEKS-PMHDA allows the operator to divert heat from the acoustic generator to superheat RCS reaction material, allowing for magnetic thrust vectoring (MTV capable equipment sold separately).
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> RCS : MHDATV x44
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> RCS boosting is done, generally speaking, by ejecting mass out of a nozzle to control ship direction and spin. Accurate RCS usage requires ultra-precise burns from multiple nozzles, gimbaled nozzles, thrust vectoring, or even a combination of all three.
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> Magnetohydrodynamic actuation uses a reaction mass that can be influenced magnetically, allowing for thrust vectoring without expensive or difficult to repair components.
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> Aerodynamic Control Surfaces
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> These wings possess ailerons, slats, spoilers, flaps, blanks for RCS booster mounts, hard points for external fuel tank mounting, and hard points for mission specific load outs, such as missile launchers, bomb racks, and EWAR equipment for ECM, ECCM, and ELINT. These wings also contain self-sealing internal bladders for fuel or reaction mass, allowing longer mission effectiveness while maintaining combat integrity and reducing maintenance hours.
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> Cockpit : Body Sleeve, Remote Neural
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> Featuring a crash-proof black box that seals around the pilot when a potential collision is detected, and a secondary black box for the ship, body sleeve control schemes are the ultimate in safety. With a constantly self-molding gel layer, the pilot is safe from everything short of a collision with a star.
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> Movement in this gel-filled box is not a possibility, of course. The control layout for this cockpit model is entirely neural. When properly configured, the wireless access afforded to the pilot means constant pilot responsiveness, even during spacewalks or bio-breaks.
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> Aeroponics
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> This self contained aeroponics system was produced by Gravitic Solutions with a single goal - sustainability. Using Gravitic Solutions’ revolutionary new gravity production technology, nutrient laden water is misted and dispersed as necessary to ensure maximized plant growth and reduce mechanical complexity. The system can also accept organic waste matter to use in the creation of fertilizer.
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> Laser CIWS x450
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> Each CIWS is its own, self-contained defense system, utilizing UAIFF recognition software to find, target, and vaporize enemy munitions prior to contact with friendly forces. With a suite of up to 100 trickle charge capacitors supplemented by a direct tie-in to ship power, each CIWS is able to produce up to 150 full powered shots from the broad spectrum 600kw laser. Continual firing can be accomplished with ship power at reduced effectiveness.
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> CIWS are able to be tied in to the ship combat systems, allowing for faster target acquisition, tracking, and removal, and more efficient weapon application.
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> While most EM based weaponry does not have a consumable element, the Laser CIWS is designed for constant, consistent use in a target rich environment. In order to ensure the circuitry and mechanical portions of the Laser CIWS remains functional for as long as possible, otherwise damaging heat is routed into heat sinks built into the focusing arrays. These focusing arrays are designed to be replaceable, ejecting into a container or into space when thermal loads become detrimental to weapon function. Additional focusing units may be loaded into the Laser CIWS for automatic installation during periods of peak usage.
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> 100mm Cannons - Turreted x12
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> These cannons fire 100mm shells at a solid rate of 30 rpm, and can fire shells containing payloads for broad mission effectiveness. Shells are fed into the weapon from a fixed carriage line internal to the craft, and spent casings are ejected to the ships exterior. Cartridge ejection is done for heat management purposes.
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> Due to the turret mounting, these cannons have an additional 5 degrees of visibility when unobstructed, allowing for simultaneous firing solutions on a single target from multiple 100mm cannons.
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> Manual Guidance Ball Turret : Quad 60mm Rotary Cannon x2
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> Sensors and automation go a long on the modern battlefield, but sometimes, you need to squeeze a trigger yourself and lay down a line of hate and righteous fury. Internally mounted weaponry, while useful, takes up valuable airframe space and has, at best, a narrow field of fire.
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> Enter the ball turret. No longer do you need to risk your own life just to take one; the ball turret is a hermetically sealed environment that protects the user and can even act as a survival pod in case the craft it was attached to didn’t have enough ball turrets to keep it alive.
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> A state of the art gyroscopic control seat keep the operator in line with the mounted weapons at all times, while hardened carriage gantries both position the mounted weapon in-line with the operator and provide consistent munitions feeding to the mounted weapon.
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> The 60mm Rotary Cannon, produced by Admiral Electronics, delivers hundreds of pounds of munitions to its target every second. An eight barrel design, this air-cooled cannon was not originally meant for exoatmospheric use, but it able to operate in space without additional cooling measures thanks to the proprietary metal used in the manufacture of the 60mm shells. With a maximum speed of 3,000 rounds per minute per gun, or 12,000 rpm with a four weapon set-up, the operator is well equipped to eliminate most targets and severely damage any target with extreme prejudice.
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> Gravimetric Railgun
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> The railgun has been standard fare for weaponry as soon as armed conflict made its way out of atmosphere. Even today, most railguns are expensive and difficult to operate and maintain due to high heat generation relative to other weapons, and rail degradation. This is not most railguns.
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> The newest hardware from Gravitic Arms, this weapon utilizes gravitoelectricalmagnetic propulsion rather than electromagnetic propulsion to accelerate rounds. Not only does the addition of induced gravity relieve heat production and physical stress in the rails, acceleration is increased multiplicatively with the introduction of induced gravity. The theoretical limitation of muzzle velocity with this weapon is .7c. At .5c, this weapon is able to fire continuously at 30 rpm without noticeable speed or accuracy degradation until 10,000 rounds or even beyond, depending on duty cycle.
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> Missile Clamp : Variable Size x14
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> This standard missile clamp has variable geometry arms that lock into place around any size munition, allowing for quick turn-around mission reconfiguration without wasting time replacing or daisy chaining pylons.
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> The clamp is also designed with spaces for squibs to be inserted to act as separation charges during zero-g munition launches with low or even no craft acceleration available.
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> QCOMM : 8 Channel, Packeted
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> Quantum Communication has become the galactic standard for instant data transfer. Due to the low chance of data loss and to increase computer speeds, most quantum communication makes use of data streams. Higher quality QComms and heavy duty QComms, especially military units, still utilize encrypted packet transfer protocols to minimize information loss and possible data breeches.
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> With 8 channels, this QComm is equipped to contact 8 different data hubs at a time, an expensive proposition for all but the largest organizations.
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> RegCOMM Package : Full EM, Military Spec x1
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> This communications suite is the real deal. Able to transmit and receive across the EM spectrum, RegCOMM customers never need to be concerned with losing a connection or dropping packets.
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> The mil-spec variation allows for our customers to conduct broad-spectrum receiving missions without having to broadcast responses to solidify encryption handshakes while enjoying Rx/Tx capabilities hardened against both digital and physical attacks. We label this as mil-spec and not military grade, because we and our customers both know that ‘military grade’ is a nice way of saying ‘absolute dog piss’. We are proud to say that no military in the galaxy has taken to widespread adoption of our product. Quality has its price.
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> Frame Extension
“I’ll be honest, Theridion, this is not what I had planned for my refit.”
I AM AWARE, TUGGER. YOU STILL LIKE THE CHANGES, THOUGH.
“Yeah, I do. At the very least I won’t be a soft target for pirates now.”
WHEN YOU GET TIRED OF EXPLORING, I HAVE ALREADY FILED FOR AND RECEIVED CLEARANCE FROM RMC AUTHORIZING YOU TO GO PIRATE HUNTING.
“One thing at a time.”
I stood up as the tram arrived to the hangar with the sleek, black ship I still didn’t know how to fly.
“Ok. Let’s start the training modules. BFM first, I’d think.”