Authors: Jr H. Lee Morgan
“
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 around. 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.”