Archaea Read Free

about Duron. When energized far beyond factory recommendations, the material becomes hardened to an absolute state that can absorb nearly any impact. He had been using it for a few years experimentally as interior coating for tokamak casings on the big capital ships we served on in the fleet, and had been sitting quiet on this discovery for quite some time.
    Since Gene had been able to upgrade the Archaea with an even bigger destroyer-class tokamak to power her main gun, he had a nearly unlimited power source. With 15 centimeters of Duron to charge, we were pretty well protected against just about anything we might come across – from fast mover meteroids, to hyper-velocity kinetic railgun ordinance. The Archaea was going to last, and look good doing it.
    Gene's second great triumph in the Archaea was the upgrade of her wired systems backbone. He was something of a horse-trader in the various stations we visited, and was always on the lookout for new parts or materials he could use. People have many hobbies aboard a ship – some paint, others play music – but Gene tinkered. The best type of person to have as an engineer, I've always thought.
    During our time in the service, Gene had managed to get his hands on a nexus core that had been scrapped out of a destroyer, and had it in storage. He wanted to wire it into the Archaea, as it would greatly improve our fire-control and systems capabilities. I realized this would be a significant upgrade, but its true significance would prove to be astounding.
    He must have called in every favor, because he shortly had our little bird fitted out with the latest generation of wetnet to go along with the core. I asked him what he planned to do with that much computing power, as it was probably enough to run an entire station, or even a planetary network, and he just smiled.
    He was always of the mind, that it's better to have, than need. Of course, he's right - as a result, the Archaea was born again hard, and almost ready to go. We only needed to tie up a few hundred loose ends.
     
    *****
     
    I love a challenge, and the Archaea was one of those rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to really dig in and make a difference. She was the very definition of 'challenge'. Dirty, unkempt, un-maintained, and barely operational, but what a ship! I loved her the first time I laid eyes on her. She was perfect for what we needed, and the price was right considering her condition.
    My first glimpse into the hatch was so horrible that with therapy, I may someday be able to block it from memory. What I saw was a dark hole, barely lit with a semi-dead flickering flouro on the side of the corridor. The walls were so grimy that determining the original color was impossible; they appeared to have been formed from compressed dirt.
    Trash of every possible type cluttered nearly every nook and cranny – grime, dust and rotting fuzzy bunches of grimy muck that may have once been a sandwich but had since evolved into a semi-sentient being looking for representation in the galactic federation.
    So what was it about the Archaea that I liked? What about it caught my attention?
    The engines, of course.
    This ship was built for speed, unlike anything I had seen. The fastest corvettes in the service would have anything on this ship. The Archaea was nearly all engine, with lean, shark-like lines giving the impression that she was about to slip her mooring and leap away.
    She had decent capacity in the holds and a solid and well built internal structure, and best of all, the slipspace generator amidships spoke to my engineers eye of massive, unbelievable power systems hidden inside. With that kind of power plant, you can make a compressed pile of rotten dirt into a magnificent star-faring chariot - which may have been what they did, from the looks of it.
    The grime and grit were only skin deep, however. My initial inspection of the internals showed me that while much was outdated and not up to my standards for