Archaea Read Free Page A

precision or mechanicals, they were mostly functioning and reasonably within safe parameters.
    Safety is pretty important when your ship is hammering vortexes of collapsed gravity waveforms as it blasts through the fringe. Not that we were going to just firewall the slipspace generator right off the dock, of course. Well, I guess I couldn't really say that for sure, knowing the captain.
    Dak and I tackled that ship like the Emperor was waiting dockside for a tour. We tore into every possible access hatch, port, cover, and where there wasn't a hatch, we cut and installed one. Most of the core systems like enviro and life support systems were pretty solid, and didn't need too much to bring them up to speed, though we did integrate some new tech we liberated from the tyranny and oppression of their previous owners. In other words, what we couldn't beg or borrow, we flat out stole. Military supply being what it is, in the service you could get anything you wanted, if you knew who to ask.
    You can't even imagine the thoughts that went through my mind when I first went forward from the hold and discovered the Archaea was built around that gun. What a beast that thing is! I've been in ships a hundred times the size of the Archaea that didn't have a main gun like she did.
    I think, to be honest, that gun was what sold the captain - but as much as he may want to drop the hammer on some poor unsuspecting pirate in deep space, I want to make sure it wouldn't vaporize the chunk of existence we occupied.
    We definitely needed a professional on the roster to work that problem, and luckily for us we found Jane Short, the tiny little queen of all that is murderous and vicious, a first-rate weapon tech specialist. She secretly loves it when you call her Shorty, by the way.
    She's an engineer like me, so we have to play nice. She has her area where the gun geeks play, and I have the real engineering spaces – we stay to our sections mostly.
    She came in pretty much like I did with guns blazing, and immediately tore everything apart and then rebuilt. Luckily, we had updated the wetnet throughout the ship, or she would have probably broken...err, fixed that too.
    We're both pretty impressed with Pauli's work. His code was impressive, definitely next-gen sort of stuff and super easy to work with on our end. He's a nice enough kid too, one of those spooky-smart types, but easy to talk to.
    At this point, I thought we'd probably survive the shakedown cruise, as long as the captain didn't decide to firewall the engines or fire that gun. Knowing him as I do, however, we have to plan for him to run everything up to maximum rating and beyond.
     
    *****
     
    My days were getting shorter. I wouldn't put it past Pauli or his 'expert system' to intentionally mess with my clocks to push us to the breaking point getting our weapons systems operational, but the captain insisted I was being paranoid.
    It sure seemed to me like my days were getting shorter, and my backlog was getting longer.
    My name is Jane Short, but don't call me 'Shorty'. I am over 5'2" tall (by a smidge) but that's beside the point. It's trite, annoying, not funny, and predictably, no one listens or cares. Everyone on this ship calls me 'Shorty', despite (and probably because of) the irritation it causes me. You would think grown intelligent men would be more respectful of a lethal weapon, even one my size.
    I am the weapons specialist on the Archaea, and have known Captain Smith going on ten years now. I was between jobs, and a Unet posting he made recently caught my eye. He was looking for an armament specialist with a nova-class certification, so obviously I was interested - opportunities to work on systems like that just don't exist for civvies. I really enjoyed working with Captain Smith in the service, and all in all, it looked like a dream opportunity for a woman like me.
    When I first saw the Archaea, I wondered if Captain Smith had his specs confused. What I saw was a long-haul