Dinner
The Polished Plate really lived up to its status as a first-class restaurant, though Alwen couldn’t help but think the service would be much more pleasant if the wait-staff didn’t flinch every time someone moved too fast, or cringing in disgust when someone asked for any non-vegan items. With the way they acted you would think that the Terrans were all a belching bunch of barbarians. Which wasn’t at all the case.
The pirates were as well behaved as Alwen had ever seen them, they were all dressed in their finest clothes, armor and swords were painstakingly polished, and they spoke in the hushed civil tones of high society. To Alwen’s experienced eye they were all perfectly behaved, some more than others. Highland had even opted for a sensible kimono rather than the plaid monstrosity he wore just to offend the senses of everyone around him. Alwen smiled to herself when she saw his partner, Kevin, fuss with Terry’s collar for the third time that night.
Still, perfect behavior or not, the staff cowered and shuffled nervously whenever they were addressed directly, and would glare daggers whenever they thought no one was looking. This was the third and final night that the Astaroth had booked, and they just looked like they were ready to be done with this. It was now well known to the whole crew that the staff here had called the SS on their officers, and they took sadistic satisfaction in the very apparent discomfort of the staff. The staff had even tried to call the SS on the captain and her group when they visited the first night. Station security had strolled up with pomp and swagger, only to turn tail and flee when the ship’s ghoulish lawyers descended on them.
Alwen was sitting at a large table with Sean on one side and Alice on the other across from Terry, Kevin, and the ship’s helmsman Kathrine, who Alwen had only just met. She was what the Terrans called a variant, someone whose ancestors spliced non-sapient animal DNA with their own as a form of fashion. Kathrine had mostly human features, but the narrow pupils, elongated fangs, and long twisty black tail, which gave her a strangely appealing alure. According to what Alwen had heard about other variants, Kathrine had it easy compared to the rest, some were born with horrific and sometimes debilitating genetic diseases. The ancestors of those people had not gone to reputable gene clinics for their transformations and now their decedents were left to suffer the consequences. Sadly though there weren’t many deformed variants left since most of their conditions either killed them off too young, or made them sterile.
Kathrine was dating one of the Lycanoid marines who had pulled up a chair from another table named Kavic, or Havoc, Alwen wasn’t entirely sure which one it really was since everyone used the two names interchangeably. Everyone aboard seemed to find the pairing infinitely amusing, something about cats and dogs that Alwen didn’t get it.
Alwen had enjoyed her little chat with Kathrine about the intricate issues faced by Human variants, and Kavic’s insight into the situation of the uplifted had only enhanced the conversation. They both seemed to intrinsically understand that Alwen as an alien was only curious and wasn’t trying to be pushy or insensitive in her questions and assertions. Alwen wished she could say the same of her date.
Sean for all his well-meaning innocence was disturbingly more ignorant than Alwen was, and seemed to be loaded with what she heard Alice call “Martian elitist bias” under breath. As a sheltered son of a well off but minor Martian family and a person only recently out of his engineering degree Sean felt more alien and different from the Terrans than Alwen did as an actual alien. It was like he had no idea what life was like on Earth and had never met a single uplifted person. The divide between them felt a lot like the difference between northern mainlanders and southern islanders on Torwen. She had to rapidly change the discussion when he asked if she went into ‘heat’.
“So Sean I have to ask, what do you do on the ship. I haven’t quite figured out the actual difference between snipes and ‘apes?” It was pretty obvious that she was just trying to change the subject, and fortunately Terry had noticed just a little before everyone else and distracted them from the abrupt change in his usual way, with insults.
“Can’ ya tell. Pallid sken, sickly eyes, noodly arms, thas dea difference.” He said boisterously, poking at Kevin correspondingly.
Kevin in term growled “And you can always tell an ape from a snipe when they open their mouths. Broken speech, grunting and growling, and a miniscule intelligence.” He shot back.
They began to bicker back and forth, and Alwen watched amusedly. They seemed more like mortal enemies than partners.
Sean leaned in and whispered to her conversationally “the traditional difference is that apes would work above deck, while snipes ran the engines. Technically aboard the Astaroth we’re both classified as engineering divisions. But early on it became apparent that there needed to be a division of labor, one highly educated crew to handle the reactors and engines, and another to handle exterior hull damage. Different certifications, different divisions.”
“Aye” Highland said, apparently he had kept an ear on the conversation while they bickered. “Et was a year after she set sail. I waz dea Chief of dea Boat, meant I waz responsible fer all dea crew who weren’t officers, still am. I was an EVA certified welder before I joined with Astarte, and I got tired o’the piss poor job those educated engineers did on the hull. So I got a bunch of my old welding pals together and took over the hull work. After dat we began to take over a bunch of oter wee jobs on board that was below the engineers skill level. Pipes, deck plates, electrical, all of it.”
“And I, as the senior engineer on board, took over the engines and reactors” Kevin added “Now the division is technical work that requires a master’s degree or higher and labor that requires certification and experience” he explained.
“Then what’s with all the floor care?” Alwen asked, if the ‘apes were all electricians and welders, cleaning floors felt below them.
“Cuz dey’re nice flars’,” Terry snapped, he paused before he sighed and continued “Dea deck division outnumber the engineers tree ta wan, ets so we can do rapid repairs. But samtimes ders nah work ta doo, so I found things ta keep’em busy. ‘Sides, who deasnt like a clean ship.”
“Okay I think I get it, so do you still work as a coolant tech then?” she said this last part to her date. She felt bad that she kept getting into conversations with other people, she was supposed to be getting to know him after all. But it was hard when all her table mates were genuinely more interesting people.
“Uh, no. I transferred. After the accident I found it hard to get back into the swing of things. Now I work on the main batteries” he said with a wave of his three and a half-pronged fork that they were all given to eat with.
“I thought the ship was nuclear”
“Tha guns lass,” the bosun clarified. The conversation was all in English rather than common and she was having a lot of trouble with the homophones. It also made Terry’s speech incoherent in a whole different way than in common, were the Scottish intentionally unintelligible no matter what language they spoke?
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“Ohh” Alwen said feeling a little dumb.
“Well there’s batteries in the batteries” Sean said, cracking a wry smile. Alwen laughed at his dumb joke; he was kinda funny, in a dorky sort of way. “They have these dense super capacitors feeding them so that they can produce a large blast each time, rather than run a huge HV cable from the engines.” He explained, using some arcane hand gestures to indicate what he meant.
“Why not, aren’t super capacitors dangerous if they get damaged?” she asked. Some of the lab equipment had small super capacitors, and she had been told why dropping a machine with one plugged in would likely be her last mistake, better to take the batterie out and move them separately.
“Well yeah super caps are pretty explosive; all that energy needs to go somewhere right?. But with the way pulse cannons work it’s better to run a ton of LV super conductive cable into a capacitor bank, rather than one HV cable. Cannons are the most vulnerable system on the ship, if they get taken out its better to have just them explode rather than let the energy overload get to the engines. Plus HV cables are high maintenance, it makes sense for cities to use them long distance but not on a ship like the Astaroth.” He explained knowledgably, as the newest snipe it was pretty obvious that he didn’t get to share his expertise with someone who didn’t already know it all very often. Alwen had felt the same way half a year ago.
She pondered what he said when something occurred to her “so the ship doesn’t use live munitions? I thought since the cannons looked so similar to ballistic weapons that you guys had used something similar to old Torweni battleships”
There was a collective cringe between Sean and Kevin, obviously this was a difficult engineering question “Its complicated.” Sean said before he took a minute to collect his thoughts. “Actually Kat would you mind taking this one” he asked. Kat had been silently rubbing a hand through Kavic’s back and was startled to suddenly be included in the conversation.
“I’m just the Helmsman and navigator” she said.
“Yes, but you work in close proximity to the gunnery command, and you actually get to see the battles firsthand, we just read the AAR’s” Kevin said having given up on a way to explain the ships weapons.
“Uh okay, so the ship has like a bunch of different weapon system. From electronic warfare, missiles, railguns, point defense, and the main cannons. Mostly the cannons and missiles work in tandem, we don’t use the gauss cannons for anything long range because of the enormous distances involved in space combat, our average engagement zone is like 50 klicks wide. The main cannons look a lot like old naval ballistic guns because they work in a similar way, they pack a ridiculous amount of power in them but if it was all focused in on one spot then the enemy shields would easily compensate. Spreading out though allows us to exploit something called ‘shield bubble loads’, which I’m not qualified to discuss in any technical sense, just think of it as a way to temporarily overload a section of a field before the shield bubble fixes itself. Whenever you can saturate multiple points on a shield you can weaken the field as a whole. When we pierce the bubble several missiles can exploit that breach and hit critical enemy systems with pin point accuracy.”
Alwen blinked twice as she tried to process what had just been said. “Ok, so why not have cannons and weapons on every side of the ship, not just the deck. Space is three dimensional right?”
“Cannon cool downs, you need to wait for capacitors to recharge and for the focusing lens inside the barrel to cool. When that happens I maneuver the ship’s keel or hull towards the enemy so that they can’t hit our exposed cannons, preferably showing as little metal as I can. They’re the weakest and most susceptible to return fire, while the rest of the ship is armored. Sure we’d have more guns and firing angles, but we would have a major risk of back surge overloading our shields and other essential systems. Though Union Battleships have a total 360 by 360 firing angle, firing solutions on anything in range to keep pressure on their opponents shields. Anyway that was a bit of a tangent, its actually never been explained to me but I’m pretty sure that’s why the Astaroth is shaped like an old maritime surface warfare vessel, so that we can turn an angled hull towards the enemy when we need to recharge.”
“Its not” Kevin Heizer interjected. “I was a part of the original team that built Astaroth, back when I worked for Martian Drive Yards. Back then it was a much smaller operation than it is now, we were a linchpin in the Sol economy. Tugs, freighters, ferry’s, mining and construction drones, any ship that needed to be built to Terran standards and for Terran use, we made it. and occasionally we would make private yachts built to the customer’s specific needs. When the captain and Karega came to us we really didn’t understand what they wanted, not really. They gave their specifications, but we couldn’t seem to figure out how to make it work. They didn’t have a size in mind, instead they had armor specs, power plant requirements, and wanted the most advanced warp field emitters on the market. They turned down design after design, and I don’t blame them. One looked like a squashed chicken humping an ugly duck.”
Alwen and her companions were all silent as he spoke. At first Alwen could written off the strange shape of the ship as a quirk of Terran psychology, but now that she actually knew them she couldn’t really leave it at that. They were silly and irreverent at times, but distinctly practical when it came to their lives. They were deathworlders like her, they didn’t play around with their lives because they evolved on a world where any small mistake could mean death.
“Eventually the captain burst into our drawing room and told to us burn any crappy designs we had ready, she brought us all onto a shuttle and took us the naval history dome on Phobos and brought us to a section of old oil burning behemoths from Earth’s second world war. She took us on a tour through the USS Missouri, and said ‘I want a recreation of this ship that matches the other specifications we gave you; I want you to study these old-world warships and channel that energy into my ship.’ We thought she was batshit crazy” he chuckled to himself “and maybe she really is, but after a bit of study I began to understand what she was doing. We didn’t know how to build warships, there hasn’t been any human navy for over a hundred years, but studying those ships gave us insight into the design philosophy’s needed to make something competent. We learned lessons humanity had once known and applied them to space. Not just Iowa class battleships either, reactor designs from late 21st century nuclear carriers like USS Obama, stealth ideas barrowed from Virginia class subs. And missile launcher designs from Arleigh-burke class destroyers. We even borrowed a few other innovations from the Obama since it was humanity’s first space bound war ship, it may be primitive, but a lot of thought went into the Obama’s design. The Astaroth was a catalyst for MDY, her and her sister ships changed the nature of the whole company” he said enthusiastically, using his hands to mine out things in the way all engineers seemed to do as they were visualizing stuff.
Alwen felt something swift brush past her leg and Chief Heizer grunted in pain as Alice’s foot met his shin “Say no more, she isn’t marked” Alice growled lowly.
Kevin and Terry did a sort of half cringe “sorry mam” they mumbled together.
Alwen glared at Alice “You didn’t have to do that; I already know there are other ships like the Astaroth”
Alice squinted at her “How?”
Alwen realized that she had made a mistake, she had wanted to keep that discovery to herself to see what else she could learn while their guards were down “the numbers didn’t add up” she said. Alice cocked her head a little to the side so Alwen elaborated. “Some of the raids didn’t match up with the pay, I know how much cargo space the ship has, and I know what percentage of each job I get paid, there seemed to be more than the ship had storage for. Plus I got a look at that other ship when we attacked that Kruhur station, it was a warship like the Astaroth. Not hard to figure that there are other Astaroth class ships that likely have some support freighters and maybe some smaller ships as well. Knowing the whole demonology theme Astarte has I’d guess that the other ship was the Lucifer, or maybe the Satan”
They stared at her dumbly for a few silent moment before the Bosun broke out in a loud hearty laugh “I told’er, dis lass es ta smart fer her own good” he kept laughing, much to the restaurant staff’s shock and discomfort.
Alice sighed, “Almost spot on, but that ship was the Asmodeus.”
“Is there not a Satan”
“No” Kathrine said, she was looking Alwen up and down and reassessing her earlier judgments “But there is a Lucifer, and I think that’s all we’re allowed to say more”
“Not bad though” Kavic rumbled. He had been mostly silent throughout the whole conversation, only really paying attention to Kathrine. But now he was looking at Alwen with interest.
They sat in silence for a while until Alice stood up and stretch out her arms. She hadn’t really been interested in coming, but as a Marine captain she was sort of strong armed into coming. Of course the ‘captain’ rank she held was very different from the ‘captain’ rank that Astarte held, somehow. English sometimes seemed to have very rigid and well-defined rules that were very understandable, and then would turn around and began to beat you over the head with all its exceptions and contextual rules. She was pretty sure both ‘captains’ meant the same thing, but were also intrinsically understood to mean different things by the whole crew, and Alwen was entirely lost as to where that understanding came from.
“Well this place kinda sucks” Alice said loudly, now switching back into common for the benefit of the rude staff.
Taking her cue Alwen stood up as well “the food was alright I guess; they’ve got nothing on our cook though. And the service was downright offensive, I’m surprised they didn’t spit in it as they set it down” she said, delighting in the waiters nettled expressions. She normally didn’t condone being rude to service workers, but these people really deserved it.
“I heard Limey, and the lot are all out at an Irish pub, wanna go?” Alice asked to the rest of the table, she and Alwen had already decided to go before hand.
“Sounds fun” Kat said as Kavic gripped her around the waist, careful not to claw her delicate looking clothes. Around them the other crewmates began to rise from their respective tables.
“I tink we’ll call et ‘ere.” Terry yawned “benn a lang day”
“Alright, take care” Alice said as she walked for the front door, Alwen, Kat, and Kavic at her heels