The next morning, Thomas found himself awake earlier than he had expected. It was five o’clock local time, and he was out of bed, showered, and throwing on a fresh set of clothes. Victa had explained to him that they would be setting up his pay today, and then they would be getting started on the rip drive immediately after. She had made it very clear that getting the new engine installed was their top priority.
Thomas left his room and made the short walk to the magtram’s entrance. He pulled up the note-taking application on his implant, where he had recorded the deck and room Victa had told him to meet her in. Even with the previous day’s tour, Thomas knew it would take him a while to memorize the ship’s layout. He punched in the correct information, and felt the tram lurch as it shot off to his destination.
The ride gave Thomas a chance to reflect on yesterday’s events. Events were unfolding almost too quickly for him to keep up; it almost felt like he wasn’t in control of his situation, but he reassured himself that all of his recent choices were conscious, purposeful decisions. He was in control of his life, and not the other way around.
With a soft chime, the tram came to a halt. Thomas stepped out, noting the car’s jarring deceleration, and made a mental note to make fixing its inertial dampeners his next priority. He made his way down the corridor, struggling to remember the route to the XO’s office.
“Are you lost, Mr. Webb?”
Startled, Thomas snapped his head around to see Victa watching him from down the hallway. He took a deep breath to steady the pounding in his chest, and then responded, keeping his voice measured and even.
“A little bit, ma’am. I’m still trying to get my bearings.”
Victa nodded. “I understand. Even experienced sailors can have trouble adjusting to a new ship.” She beckoned for him to follow her, turning to head down the corridor. Thomas jogged to catch up to her, trying not to notice the various points of articulation in her legs as she strode beside him.
The pair arrived at the executive officer’s office, Victa opening it up with the swipe of a keycard. Thomas followed her inside, looking around at the office’s blank walls and plain desk. Judging from her office’s spartan features and her curt speech patterns, Thomas got the feeling that Victa was a very no-nonsense woman.
“Let’s get straight to business, shall we?” Victa asked, as if to cement Thomas’ opinion. She sat behind her desk and flicked on her terminal. With a gesture, she indicated for him to sit down in the chair in front of her desk. Thomas happily sat down; he always felt awkward standing up in a superior’s office.
The process seemed routine enough: she paired his bank account to their payroll system, gave him the contact information for the rest of the crew, and went over work expectations with him.
“Now, while your primary job will be inspection and maintenance of the FTL drive, you will also be expected to assist with our derelicts recovery efforts.”
Thomas quirked an eyebrow. “Derelict recovery efforts?”
Victa sighed. “Scavenging.” She spat the word out as if it left a bad taste in her mouth. “We scavenge ships and outposts that have been abandoned or wrecked.”
“Ah, right.” Thomas replied. Jeremy had explained the Fox’s main source of income to him when they had been messaging each other before the interview. He had been given the a general idea of how it worked, but was curious as to what the specifics were. “What exactly does that entail?”
Victa leaned back in her chair. “That tends to vary from job to job. No two derelicts are exactly alike, and we are often required to think fast in order to adapt to unforeseen circumstances.”
Thomas frowned. Her answer was a little bit more vague than he would have preferred. “Can you give me a general idea? I’d like to know what I’m getting into before I start.”
Victa regarded him for a moment, her expression unreadable to his untrained eyes. “Fair enough, I suppose.” she finally replied. “Very well.”
She proceeded to explain many of the common tasks that they needed to perform when scavenging: Rigging, heavy lifting, disassembly… it all sounded like a lot of manual labor, which Thomas wasn’t exactly thrilled about. Still, a job was a job, and he didn’t have all that much choice. The pay that Captain Caine was offering was generous, especially compared to what he would make working a minimum wage job on Tremere. Besides, he would much rather work a job in which he was able to work in his chosen field of expertise.
With Thomas’ payroll set up and his questions answered, the pair left the office.
“Time to start installing the drive now?” Thomas inquired.
Victa shook her head. “No, not yet. The captain is having it delivered today. It should be arriving in a few hours.” She led the way to the magtram, punching in a set of instructions as the door slid shut behind them. “Right now, we have something more important to do.”
“What’s that?” Thomas asked
The tram door opened, revealing a larger room with a set of tables and chairs occupying the majority of its space. Several industrial-grade kitchen appliances dominated the back wall. Thomas recognized the ship’s galley from the previous night’s tour.
“Breakfast!” barked Victa. “In the navy, we had a saying: ‘A hungry sailor is no sailor at all.’” She strode into the room, making for the cabinets along the walls. Thomas followed her, admittedly noticing that he was pretty famished himself.
“What does that mean?” Thomas asked.
“It means,” Victa started, rummaging through the cabinets. “…that a hungry sailor Is unproductive because they cannot focus. Meanwhile, a well fed sailor Is both happy and undistracted, meaning that they perform their tasks to the best of their ability.” She pulled a box and a few bottles of foul-looking liquid from the cupboard, walking them over to the comically-oversized stovetop.
“Morale is one of the most important elements in any professional setting,” she stated, pulling out a pan and ladle from the cabinets above her. “Especially one that requires cooperation across a large or diverse workforce.”
Thomas listened carefully, hanging on to every word. Despite his initial apprehension about her physical appearance, Thomas felt a bit more at ease around Victa now. Her advice helped put him at ease, and he had a feeling that she had a great wealth of wisdom to offer.
The door opened behind them, chattering voices drifting into the galley. Thomas twisted around in his chair, watching as Kell and Tala walked in. “Morning, Victa! Morning, new guy!” Tala chirped. She rushed over to the cupboards, dexterously searching through the lower ones for her breakfast.
Kell strode in behind her, reaching up to pull his own food out. Rummaging around, he came out with a bag of chips, popping it open and throwing a handful in his mouth.
“You need some protein, Kell.” Victa called from her spot by the stove. “Put those things away and come get some of this.” She gestured towards the pan she was heating up, from which wafted a scent that Thomas could only describe as putrid.
Kell grit his teeth in disgust. “Yeah, no thanks. You can keep your bugs.” He ate another mouthful of chips, chewing slowly, deliberately, and on full display for his XO.
Victa closed her eyes with a huff, turning back towards her meal. “Tarka grubs are extremely nutritious, and-”
“-and taste like death.” Kell interrupted.
Victa kept her eyes on her food, but her twitching mandibles told Kell that he was getting to her. He leaned back with a toothy grin, throwing another handful of chips into his mouth.
Victa resumed her meal preparation. “Absolutely no culinary taste, none whatsoever.” she muttered to herself. Kell did not respond, opting instead to get to his feet while pouring the last few crumbs of his food into his mouth.
Tossing the empty bag into a trash container, he spun around before leaving the room. “Hey, Victa,” he called out. “Captain says the delivery will be here in 90 minutes, he wants us all in the cargo bay before that.” Without waiting for a response, he turned and left.
Victa didn’t turn around until the tram door slid shut, the metallic thunk signalling that the sestan security officer had left. She poured her meal into a thermos, placed the dirty pan and ladle into a dishwasher, and walked over to join Thomas at his table.
Thomas withheld the urge to dry heave at the noxious smell given off by the tarka grubs. He didn’t know anything about koth cuisine, but from the rancid odor wafting from the open thermos, he found himself siding with Kell on the matter. He set his spoon down in the bowl of cereal he’d poured himself, his appetite fading fast.
“Full already, Mr. Webb?” Victa asked, before taking a swig of her brew. The wet crunch of grubs between her teeth sent a shiver down Thomas’ spine.
“Yeah, I am.” he lied.
“If you insist.” she said, continuing her meal.
The rest of the meal went by quickly, with Tala and Victa scarfing down the rest of their food. Thomas politely declined Victa’s generous offering of grubs, forcing down the rest of his cereal to ease Victa’s concerns.
“We’re going to have to work on your dietary habits, young man.” quipped the first officer as they got up to leave. “The body needs protein in the morning to function properly. Pure carbohydrates alone will leave you wanting for strength later In the day, as I’m sure you and Mr. Vellus will be able to attest later.”
They piled into the tram car, heading off for the ship’s cargo bay. As they sped along, Victa went over with the plan with them.
“Riley has provided us with a work crew To help us get everything up to engineering. We’ll be using the freight elevator to move everything; some of the parts are too big for the magtram.“
“Who’s Riley?” Thomas asked.
“Our…informational contact.” Victa answered. “He provides us with most of our jobs. He is the one we are getting the the rip drive from.”
They arrived at the hangar, which was already buzzing with activity. People were rolling in all manner of parts and equipment up the ship’s open cargo ramp, and Thomas found himself able to identify several of the engine’s components, despite their obviously alien origin. Feeling more confident about his ability to put the drive together, he strode out into the bay to join the rest of the crew.
Across the room by the bay’s enormous entry ramp, Jeremy stood with Riley, going over the installation plans.
“Jeremy, listen to me. We’re going to get this done on time.” Riley assured. “Don’t worry about all the little things, my boys will take care of it.”
Jeremy took a deep breath. It seemed he had not studied up on their new equipment as thoroughly as he had originally thought; he had not realized what an extensive overhaul this would be. It was not simply swapping out the engine, but also adding components throughout the engineering bay, as well as coating the hull with a shielding material to protect the crew from extradimensional radiation.
Jeremy released his breath. “Ok. Ok.” he answered. “I’m trusting you on this one.”
Riley clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll have you back out there in no time.” he barked enthusiastically. “Now, I’m out of here; I’m gonna leave my foreman in charge, just give me a call if you run into any trouble.” He started to retreat down the ramp, still facing the captain. “You’re my boy, Jeremy, I’m lookin’ out for you!” he shouted, before turning away.
Jeremy took a deep breath as he turned back inside. He trusted Riley to steer him right; the man had skin in the game, after all, and Jeremy knew that the Fox’s hauls were some of Riley’s most lucrative sources of income. His intel may have been off on the Anne-Marie job, but Riley was usually a trustworthy contact.
Shaking off his doubts, the captain was brought back to the task at hand as he heard his voice called. He turned back to see his crew approaching; or most of them, anyway. Jai and Kell were already helping move the new equipment to engineering. Victa, Tala, and Thomas walked up to him, his XO at the forefront.
“What do we have, captain?” Victa asked, grabbing the tablet out of Jeremy’s hands. She looked it over, examining the installation plans. “Hmm.” she mused. “I’ll oversee the modifications to the bridge. Tala, please take Thomas down to engineering, and start helping with the installation of the main drive down there.”
Tala gave a casual salute. “You got it, boss lady. Come on, new guy, let’s get to work.”
The pair headed off for the magtram, leaving Victa and the captain. She turned to him, handing the tablet back.
“Go ahead and send me a copy of that outline. I’m going to head up to the bridge now, why don’t you go ahead and help them out with the hull coating?”
Without waiting for a response, Victa strode away, leaving her captain by himself. Jeremy shook his head; he often found himself questioning who was really in charge of the ship. With a shrug, he set out to find Riley’s foreman and get to work.
—————————————————-
Over the course of the following three weeks, the modifications proved to go smoothly, but slowly. The renovation crew ended up being rather undermanned, and, though Thomas understood how the machinery worked, its alien design gave him some trouble. He spent hours researching their newly acquired equipment, learning that it was a somewhat outdated koth commercial engine.
.
Armed with that knowledge, Thomas dove into his research with the same tenacity and drive that got him through college. He learned everything he could about the drive, memorizing model numbers, production standards, maintenance requirements, and operating procedures. Soon, he found himself working shoulder to shoulder with the others, showing them what to do.
Despite the slow pace, Jeremy felt confident. Victa didn’t seem to have anything negative to say to him about it, and Riley was constantly assuring him of the plan’s imminent success. He worked with his XO to keep their budget tightly managed; they had no income while the ship was out of commission, so they had to tighten their belts far more than any of them were used to.
It was this subject that was on the crew’s mind as they ate a meager breakfast in the galley. Victa had implemented a strict rationing program to keep them afloat. Jeremy had pointed out that her measures were perhaps a bit much, but she had insisted that it was better to be safe than sorry.
“No bugs today, Victa?” Kell chided as the executive officer pulled a granola bar from the cupboard.
“We are running low.” she responded curtly, sitting down and unwrapping her breakfast. “I’d prefer to conserve our remaining vital supplies.”
“Mmhmm.” the sestan smirked with satisfaction as he popped a mouthful of his favorite chips into his mouth. Victa ignored him, quickly devouring her bar and throwing the wrapper away. Without another word, she left the galley, closing herself in the magtram.
She brought up her notes on her implant, her eyes flicking as images flashed around in her mind’s eye. The installation was nearing completion, but there was much to double check. The slightest error when operating dimensional equipment could have catastrophic, and sometimes very messy results. Everything had to be done perfectly.
As she waited to get to the bridge, Victa’s stomach churned uncomfortably. She would never admit it to anybody, especially not Kell, but her rationing system was hitting her hard. Koth had very fast metabolisms, and an insufficient caloric intake could result in lethargic behavior and apathy, two things that she absolutely could not afford to deal with right now.
As the tram came to a halt, Victa composed herself, burying her discomfort beneath an avalanche of willpower. She slipped into the well-practiced demeanor she had developed throughout her years in the navy, striding forth through the open doors with an air of confidence and calm.
Tala and Jeremy were already there, along with the work crew’s foreman, a massive ta’kesh who looked none too pleased to be crammed into the tiny human-scale bridge. The burly man picked at his tusks absentmindedly, the corners of his snout downturned in a grimacing frown. He turned to look at Victa as she walked in.
“Captain Caine, your executive officer is finally here. Can we get this rolling now?”
Victa’s mandibles twitched slightly, but she didn’t respond. She had no interest in irritating the foreman, given that he was a vital component of this project. The facts that he was roughly 20 times her body mass and had biceps bigger around than her torso may have contributed, as well.
“Who was it who’s always late, Victa?” Jeremy asked in an obnoxious voice, swiveling around to look at her. “Was it me, or you? I can’t remember.”
“You.” Victa stated matter-of-factly as she took her seat.
Jeremy’s childish grin broke. “Oh. Erm. Hmm…” he trailed off, not offering any actual words in response. He turned back around, clearing his throat. “Alright! Let’s get to work!”
Victa withheld the snide comment that came bubbling up in her thoughts, opting instead to open a channel to the work crew outside. “Mr. Tict-Vah, are you ready?”
Outside of the Fox, an engineer answered her, lifting his communicator up to his mouth.. “Affirmative, all units are positioned.”
Riley’s crew had surrounded the vessel, setting up radiological devices all around it; not only on the deck, but also secured to the ceiling and bulkheads as well. Inside the freighter, radiation detectors were placed in every room and passageway, tuned specifically to pick up neutron radiation.
“Commence the test.” Victa ordered.
The hangar was filled with a low hum as the equipment came to life. Each machine, pointing towards the Fox’s hull, began emitting broad waves of radiation, composed of trillions of neutrons. The waves were harmless, too dispersed to cause any harm to biological beings, but they were strong and constant, matching the conditions of the much deadlier dimensional radiation encountered when utilizing a rip drive for FTL travel. The detectors would tell them if any of the radiation managed to get through the ship’s new protective hull coating, which was quite possibly the most vital part of the entire installation; more efficient travel didn’t do you any good if it cooked you and your crewmates straight through the hull of your ship.
On the bridge, Victa, Jeremy, and the ta’keshi foreman watched the main monitor intently. The dozens of radiation sensors throughout the ship all fed their findings directly to the bridge, where the trio waited with bated breath to see if the installation had been executed properly.
“Readings…normal.” Victa announced, carefully dragging her eyes over the readout. “No radiation detected. Radiological shielding holding.”
Jeremy breathed a sigh of relief. They would have to leave the emitters running for a few hours more for a thorough test, but if there were no immediate leaks, it generally meant that the coating had been applied correctly.
“Alright, let’s get rocking.” he said. “We’ve got to get the rest of the equipment online as soon as possible. We’ve been dead in the water for long enough.”
While the vast majority of the hardware had already been installed, there was a lot of calibration and programming that had to go into making it usable. The old FTL navigation computer was now completely obsolete, and an entirely new system had to be installed and set up. Maintenance programs and post-jump inspection routines had to be downloaded into the Fox’s mainframe, and integrated into their regular maintenance schedule. Tala, Jai, and Thomas had started working on it with Riley’s programmers; when last Jeremy had seen them, all three had been bleary-eyed and tired, working nonstop to perfect the Fox’s software.
Jeremy next set about handling his own task. Victa had said she would take care of the last few pieces of heavy equipment installation, while Jeremy had to prepare for the final, critical phase: the test jump. First, he cleared the jump with Tremere’s traffic authority to ensure nobody was in the vicinity. If the Fox accidentally transitioned back into space that was already occupied by something else, the results would be messy, to say the least.
After getting off the line with the traffic control officer, Jeremy double-checked the cargo and engineering bays, making sure there was no forgotten or unaccounted for equipment. A missing component would most assuredly result in a failed test, but failure could mean anything from nothing happening, to their constituent molecules being painfully spread across a thousand different dimensions.
After dragging the search out into the entirety of the day, and bullying Kell into helping him along the way, Jeremy felt confident that everything was in place. The computers said that all of the equipment was connected, but the crew felt it pertinent to physically check themselves, given the potentially disastrous results.
Finally, after three straight weeks of hard labor and no income, the Fox was ready. All hardware had been installed, all of the programming completed, and the parameters for the test had been defined and arranged. All that remained was the test jump itself; the simplest part of the project, but also unquestionably the most dangerous.
With the testing space cleared, the Fox exited the station’s hangar and turned out into open space. Only Tala and Jai were aboard; for such a hazardous test, it was deemed necessary for only essential personnel to be on board the ship. Thomas had worked out the jump calculations with Jai beforehand, and the system’s operating procedures had been discussed to death by the entire crew.
Back on the station, The others watched through the hangar cameras as the freighter slipped out into the velvety black. Jeremy bit his lip, concern etched into his face as he watched his ship disappear beyond visual range. While he was relieved to not be on board, a dreadful anxiety gnawed at the pit of his stomach as he worried after his friends.
On the ship’s bridge, Jai sat at the helm, flying the ship out to the jump’s designated origin point. He worked the ship’s controls with practiced ease, gliding effortlessly through the vacuum. He had known Jeremy since before they had come to own the Fox, back when they’d been in the Persean Naval Academy together. When Jeremy bought the ship over 15 years ago, he had immediately come to Jai with the offer to fly it. Jai had been doing so ever since.
Letting the ship’s autopilot take over, Jai sat back in his chair, and flipped on the intership communications system.
“You all set, Tala?”
In the ship’s engineering bay, the short rai engineer punched her own intercom on.
“Ready and rarin’. We’re all in the green down here.”
She looked over the rip drive’s readouts on the main monitor, double-checking to make sure that she was indeed right. Tala wasn’t nervous, per say, but neither was she relaxed. She had been on plenty of ships with rip drives before, but she had never traveled on one where she had installed the drive herself.
Confirming that the drive was indeed ready, she began priming its systems. She had spent hours poring over the operating instructions for the drive with Thomas, which she add opened in a tabs on her monitor for reference as she completed each step of the spin-up process.
Up on the bridge, Jai brought the Fox to a halt, its retro thrusters gently firing to arrest its forward momentum. He plugged in the preset calculations, selecting their destination. It would be a very short jump; distance played no part in the results of the test. Accuracy, however, did. To that end, a number of targeting lasers on buoys had the planned destination marked. If the ship was off by even a little bit, they would know.
“Alright, spin-up complete,” Tala stated, her voice emanating from the bridge speakers. “Ready to jump on your go.”
“Roger that.” Jai replied. He brought up the drive’s control interface on his monitor, which presented him with the question of the day: EXECUTE JUMP? SELECT Y/N.
Jai took a deep breath, and sent one more call down to engineering. “Stand by, here we go.”
“All set, do it Jai!” came the response.
“Happy thoughts.” Jai muttered to himself, and selected “Y.”
The deep hum of the drive could be heard all the way up at the bridge; down in engineering, Tala winced slightly as the thrum drowned out all other noise. The freighter shuddered as power surged into the rip drive, and the vessel was enveloped in a prismatic burst of light. Looking out the bridge viewport, Jai shielded his eyes as the inky black of space was replaced by a rainbow of different hues.
The explosion of colors faded in an instant; but even before it had begun to wane, an identical phenomenon burst to life a few hundred kilometers away. Out of the wash of light and color sailed the Fox, exactly where she was supposed to be. Wisps of vapor-like color trailed from her fuselage as she pulled away from her exit point.
Jai whooped as his viewport was once again filled with a starry expanse. “It worked!” he cried elatedly into the intercom, pumping his fist in the air. “It worked, we’re golden, baby!”
Tala released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as she heard Jai’s announcement. Her readouts had gotten a little bit erratic at the moment of the jump, but had quickly stabilized after the ship had reemerged.
Back on the station, the rest of the crew let out a collective sigh of relief as the sensor buoys picked up the Fox. Jeremy let his body relax, slumping back in his chair. He opened a communication line to the ship’s bridge.
“Jai? Everything good?”
“Better than ever, captain! It worked perfectly!” came the jubilant reply.
Jeremy could not have grinned any wider. Around him, his crew congratulated one another happily. Victa even gave him a little nudge with her elbow. He looked down at her, and raised an eyebrow at the very rare smile that adorned her face.
“Not bad, captain.” she said, turning to leave. “Not bad at all.”