Starship Engineer

Chapter 81 Mini Vacation

Why the hell had I decided to come to the Ederne system? Originally, this was his last stop in the Sapphire Empire before I relocated to the People’s Solidarity. But now, it was just a bad move on my part. The Ederne system had three massive asteroid belts in the outer system. By massive, it just meant there was enough mass in the orbiting rocks to make a few hundred Earth-sized planets. Since it was in the outer system though the individual asteroids were scattered far apart. But my navigator, Elias, warned me that not all objects were logged on the civilian navigation buoys. He advised making cautious speed into the system.

I told him to increase deflectors to max and power up the shield generators, getting them ready for an emergency during the voyage. Deflectors were angled forward shields that were very effective against micro meteors but not as effective against larger massed objects. We would be able to react quickly if something came up on sensors. Haily was at her station and vigilant. We logged six small objects, not on the navigation data sent to us. We relayed the objects’ mass, vectors, and speed to the civilian hub to be added to their directory. Fortunately, we encountered no issues as we approached the forest moon.

The moon had been home to massive trees that soared over 200 meters into the sky. The trees were slowly being cleared in favor of farmland for the Sapphire Empire. Zoe offered from the pilot’s seat that many of the trees they were cutting down were over a millennium in age. I brought up the system tourist info, and she was right. The system was selling the milled lumber and it looked to be a profitable venture, a true luxury good that could be bought cheap and sold for profit in a heavily populated system. The other export was common metals mined in the asteroid belt. I commed Vicky and Suruchi and told them I wanted the hold filled with the lumber. With no passengers I figured to try and make a little profit on the trip.

Resupply costs were high here as well. About 40% higher than they were in Ragnhild. So our small loss on this trip was going to be magnified. I prepped the crew’s 10% bonus since we would not be taking on passengers here. After the five days of general leave, we would board the ship and depart. Their bonuses would hit their PerCom accounts at that time. Vicky sent everyone a request for purchases so she could review them. I was already grumbling and looking at what I should sell from my precious metal stock. At this rate, I would be out of funds in a decade.

A whole slew of the crew wanted to try out my hoverbike on the moon. Zoe, Elias, Yannis, Saabir, Finn, Gwen, and Gabby all had signed a request form prepared by Yannis for my perusal. On the way into the system, we got our passes and permission to land on the moon. Our spot was just outside a large town along one of the remaining forest’s edges. The crew made to load my LUX shuttle with the bike, anxious to try it out.

We docked at an orbiting station. With the massive amount of asteroids in this system, they had cheap metals to build massive orbiting stations over the only habitable planet in the system. It looked like they planned to eventually form a ring around the planet, merging hundreds of stations in the far future. It was an ambitious project. The orbitals already made a web of navigation nightmare for an inexperienced pilot. Fortunately, Zoe and Elias made it a game, trying to scare the locals with their route through the massive station to our final dock. This got my ship fined three times which I told my pilot and co-pilot they were responsible for. Apparently, losing half a month’s salary was worth it from their expression. I guessed it had something to do with needling the Sapphirians.

The station was not impressive, and neither were the services listed. When I found out about the poor exchange rate for my own precious metal cargo I decided to convert the absolute minimum. I almost used some of Shinade’s wealth as it had reverted to Celeste and then myself through the local legal systems. But I wanted Celeste to have that nest egg to travel and attend whatever university she wanted when she was older.

After docking, the entire crew began to help transfer the passengers and cargo. It wouldn’t take long as we were well-practiced now and did not have a full load. I already received some figures for the lumber cargo. Vicky found there were two types of popular wood. One was an ebony color with silver growth rings, and the other was a rich golden red with black growth rings. I decided to divide the cargo equally between the two.

It took half a day to get the ship empty, and we were starting on our refueling. Vicky sent me how much funds we would need, which hurt a bit with the poor exchange rates for metals. I had some bots load what I selected and let Vicky know which cargo bay they would be in.

I spent time on the bridge with the bridge officers as we locked down the ship. I spent some of my time checking in on Damian and Nero in engineering. I spent very little time on the engineering problems myself, just reviewing their notes and offering suggestions. That was hard. I did find two of the air recyclers on deck five had a dozen different problems, which we linked to water damage from two of the shower drains on the luxury deck leaking all the way down here. That is why you didn’t have actual showers on ships! More plumbing, and if the grav plates failed, you ended up with a mess!

I found Eve applying new coats of epoxy in a rarely used corridor in aft engineering. She gave me a sad face…nope won’t work! Back to work! I asked her if she wanted to come to the planet with me. I was certain her new upgraded housing would protect her from scans but she just said she would watch Celeste after the cleaning shift.

My LUX shuttle was packed with twelve crew members and myself. Abby had sent two marines to keep an eye on me, and a few others wanted to watch the highly anticipated hover cycle trials. We landed at our assigned pad outside the settlement. It had dozens of people going about their business, but all our eyes were focused on the massive trees reaching toward the heavens. It was a shame humanity would destroy something as majestic as this. I felt some guilt at partaking in the destruction of these trees by purchasing the lumber. While the crew got the cycle ready for action, I wandered into the settlement with my two bodyguards following on my heels.

I explored shops and talked to locals in their native tongue, German. I was super rusty, but I was able to understand them and speak somewhat coherently. I could have just activated the translation feature on my PerCom but decided not to. I found a botanist who was studying the trees, and he gave me a dozen fist-sized acrons. He said the giant trees actually communicated amongst themselves via their root system. Sentient giants, he called them. I was extremely fascinated and got him to send me all his research.

The cycle was ready to go, and I was the first one up. The bike was unrecognizable from when I purchased it. I was longer and sleeker, and only one person could fit in the cockpit. The new controls and safety features were explained to me, and I was off. I kept it along the forest edge and the cockpit suddenly went transparent. It felt like I was flying as the holo imager inside the cockpit made just the controls visible. Even though I had expected it, I was still awed. It truly felt like I was flying! I circled the town five times, each time going faster and faster with more altitude.

When I returned to the group, I complimented Saabir and Yannis on the amazing upgrades. Zoe was up next, having won some sort of contest. She immediately took the bike into the woods and started weaving among the trees—frigging show-off. I left my crew to play and returned to the Void Phoenix on the LUX shuttle.

On board, I went to my botany lab and found Miguel working on the alien grass. I hadn’t heard from him, so I was surprised to find he had success. He identified the proper atmosphere and light and was close to the soil to maximize the growth of the grass. I was just here to drop off my acorns for the three varieties of trees I got on the moon. He was only semi-interested in my haul and the research I had received. He wanted to co-publish a paper on the grass. It was a blue-purple grass and quite strong, yet soft. He thought it might grow tall enough to weave into usable material. He didn’t find any chemicals in it dangerous to humans. It might be a good cash crop to create linens in a low-tech world, but that was about it. It also made a nice soft bed to lay in if it was dense enough.

I approved for him to grow a small patch on the promenade. That was if he could get them to germinate and collect seeds. As to the paper, I told him to go ahead. There were hundreds of thousands of new plant life discovered since humanity began traveling among the stars. What was one more? And yes, he could be the lead researcher on the paper and just include my name second, Devon Wellspring. I put my acorns in the alien stasis device and left him to his work. Maybe the next seed he germinated would be more interesting.

I visited Gwen in medical. Doc had her coming to consciousness every day now for an hour or so and asking her how she was doing. Her pain was lessening, and the new skin looked very good. She needled me about the Sword and Sorcery game. I almost decided to ask Julie to edit my character up a few levels above her, but then I remembered I was punishing the AI. Maybe Francis could be torn away for a round against Moriarty? This was supposed to be a mini vacation.

I did tell Gwen that Nero needed help with life support systems on the Void Phoneix if she wanted to brush up on the systems in VR to help when she came out. She eagerly took me up on it. I was sort of tricking her…hopefully, she would focus on the life support and not on the game!

I got a PerCom message from Gabby as I was headed to my cabin. The food replicator was assembled and working. It needed feeder stock, but she was certain it was good to go. She was excited, and I figured out why. She wanted the bonus I promised her to pay her her parts for her personal bot. I went down and confirmed the device was working while Gabby had a smug look on her face with her arms crossed, daring me to find something wrong with it. I transferred her the credits, and she said her bots schematics were on her terminal in the lab. Once I approved them she would begin making her own steward bot.

To her disappointment, I promised to do so tomorrow.

Back in my quarters, I felt like I had a family now. The crew with all their idiosyncrasies, was my family. I did have another father, though. One I had left behind and planned to check in on. I brought up the information on General Briggs again. Damn it. I needed to tell my parents everything I could about my brother. It was the right thing to do. Our next port of call was going to be the Vinita system.