Chapter 6: Technobabble

January 11^th, 2279

The future SFC Rubicon loudly slammed back into her supports, finally having finished her short brush with recycling. A shudder went through the hangar, knocking over some boxes.

Anyway, Basil needed a crew. He went back over to the nameless Lieutenant.

- Lieutenant, I have to inform you that admiral Hays has passed away.

- I know.

She keeps saying that. Am I sure I want this one on comms?

- How?

- I keep an eye on the chatter, Sir.

Okay, I want her on comms.

- Listen. We need to get a crew ASAP. And then I need you to join me on a barge, picking up our D-9. Where are Feterni and Perlas?

- Just sent the updated schematics. Should be on their way, now. Lots of pushers dropping off boxes, too.

Basil turned to the rear of the hangar, glancing past the returned ship that looked a bit like a whale decaying on a beach, slowly turning into a sun-bleached skeleton. Boxes were piling up next to it, and some giant devices were floating just outside the hangar. What Basil hadn’t noticed were the few engineers that were standing near the entrance, now waiting for further instructions. They gave the giant wreck nervous glances. Basil was about to go over and talk to them, but as he saw the two engineers from the freight elevator, he decided to leave that to Feterni or Perlas, likely Perlas, since Feterni was a Horon, they only spoke when they had to. But then again, Perlas might even be the better choice to nicely introduce them to the massed amount of dangerous and chaotic work these engineers had ahead of them, basically wiring up a whole ship in mere days. Basil decided to start recruitment with the medical team, just in case.

- Lieutenant ... Okay. What’s your name?

She blankly looked at him, as if not understanding the question. Basil felt the need to explain, since she surely wasn’t going to ask for an explanation, the way she looked.

- Listen, we’ve never introduced ourselves. I am Anthony Basil. How would you like to be addressed?

- Lieutenant is fine.

Basil felt he was wasting time.

- I asked you a question Lieutenant. I can’t keep calling you by your rank as many of the crew will be the same rank.

She looked convinced.

- Nocks. Mariam Nocks.

- Thank you. Lieutenant Nocks, we need a crew. Let’s start with the medical personnel so we have them here on standby when one of the engineers walks into an active powerline. Then security, we need to secure the hangar against prying eyes. Best do the marines as well. Then science and the rest.

- We don’t need security yet.

- And that is why, exactly?

She is exactly the type of person you send when you want to grind down a talkative trader before you talk to him yourself.

- The drones are already securing this hangar.

- What drones?

Basil didn’t even look around; he surely would have noticed drones flying around. Nocks sighed, pushed a few keys floating around her and a dozen Perlas-sized drones decloaked in the hangar, all of them armed with several sensors and painful looking weapons. It reminded Basil of the bodyguard drones some of the syndicate leaders used for protection, minus the cloaking ability. The engineers didn’t react at all, seemingly familiar with the technology.

- We have cloaked drones?

- XD rolled them out a few months back.

- So that’s why security in hangar 6 was so useless.

- Yes, the guys there are just for show. We caught a few intruders with the drones.

- Intruders?

- Yes. CO took them away.

All the cool shit became available right after I quit. Great.

- How long can they cloak?

- About an hour, depending on how much energy they use for patrolling.

- And then?

- Then what?

- I mean do they just decloak? Fall to the ground?

- No.

Nocks felt like she was talking to someone from the past, having walked out of an old movie.

- They return to the charging station.

Now, Basil was looking around.

- Sir, the charging station is on top of your quarters here in the corner. They land behind the raised corner and decloak out of sight, charging.

- I have quarters here? ... Scratch that. How many of these drones do we have?

- None.

Basil was close to screaming at her, but was trying to avoid portraying the unhinged captain from a show they were all binging whenever they had the time. It was about a captain with a very short fuse stuck on the slowest ship in the fleet, surrounded by robots which were always right.

- Ah. These are XD property. Which means we can take them, yes?

- No, they were transferred to Kappa to save money on security. We’ll have to give them back.

- Admiral Petumbio will surely give us some. I want them on the Rubicon.

- Sir?

Basil either needed sleep or needed to hack his medcomp for some strong cocktail if he had to continue talking to her. She was like a computer, always reacting to the last prompt only, never picking up on the general conversational cues. Which gave Basil an idea how to approach her.

- Yes?

- The ship’s interior is cramped.

- Nocks, give me a full explanation of why you are telling me the interior is cramped.

- See, these drones would constantly bump into crew. So, we’d have to use them without cloak. Which defeats their purpose.

Fair enough, hadn’t thought about that. I need sleep.

- I meant using them for recon outside the ship, on missions. What is your opinion on that?

- Might work, but we’d need larger, more durable drones for recon. I could prepare a schematic for that. We can just swap over the cloak. Maybe we should get a few, four maybe.

- Send a message to Petumbio that we’ll need six of those drones. He’ll greenlight that.

- Aye.

- Do you know anything more about the production versions of this ship, the ones already launched? What kind of tech they have? We might learn from them or get the same equipment.

- The engineers might. But I know only a little, CO took them to some other place after we built the hulls.

- I see. Give me a minute.

Basil walked over to his quarters, entered, and opened his personal display on his wristcomp. He and his friends from CO had cracked their devices long ago, giving them the ability to break all codes concerning off-label use of medication. He selected his number one cocktail from his personal favorites and confirmed the order. The computer acknowledged the request for herbal medicine. They had to tell the computer something, just blocking the internal safeguards for certain orders. He then walked back to Nocks at a brisk pace, still ignoring the engineers, who were now gathered around Feterni and Perlas, the latter pointing his claws at the ship and then at the medkits on the wall.

- Nocks.

- Yes?

- Let’s find a medical crew. I want 2 doctors and one nurse.

Nocks opened the display listing all available crew on the station. There were several filters available.

- Filter for personnel under 2 meters in height and under a quarter of the race’s lifespan.

- Computer won’t do that, Sir.

- Why?

- It’s not allowed to filter for physical attributes or age. The committee on...

- Yes, but the ship is a tight space. And we’re going to see a lot of physically demanding missions, trust me on that.

- It simply won’t allow it.

Basil really didn’t want to go through the whole list one by one, especially since he now realized the overview of available crew was anonymized for equal opportunity. All a recruiting officer could apparently see were the service record and qualifications, along with commendations or reprimands.

Doing things for the first time always makes you look like a fool.

- Any ideas?

Nocks hated this. Especially, since she knew the solution but she felt this was exactly the kind of thing the fleet had moved beyond. But then again, the ship really wasn’t a place for tall people or frail people. She was wondering what the Horon near the entrance was doing, likely, he would remain on the station or switch to the preferred way of Horon walking ‒ on all four extremities.