“There's a battle going on, I understand.”
“In the meantime, would you like to move to better quarters? These seem small and drab.”
“I saw some on deck twelve, section B I liked in the system, and they're empty.”
“Then they're yours. That's not far from mine either, but you probably already knew that,” Lister teased. “Well then, Mia here will help you with your things. If you can stay focused on just being yourself, on not connecting to the computer system she'll even help you decorate if you like.”
“All right,” Nora beamed.
“But Mia will stop helping if she sees you're not paying attention. She can be your personal assistant all the time if you like, and I think you'll get along well, she's a nice young woman. She's brought a present for you as well,” Lister directed the aide to give the box to Nora.
She took the long lid off and gasped as she moved the thin white tissue paper aside. “Oh, it's beautiful,” she said in a hushed whisper as she drew the upper half out carefully.
“Mia can help you get washed and dressed. You can talk to her, she's here to help you with whatever you need,” Hampon nodded at the young woman knowingly. He had opened the door as per Mia's instructions, and as she had predicted the whole experience was an emotional one for him as well as Nora. Mia would have her work cut out for her, but as the best qualified therapist in her age group amongst the West Watch, he expected her to do well.
“I'll be around to see how things are coming along in your new place,” he offered a hug and Nora took it with vigour.
“Thank you so much, I'll try to stay out of the system.”
“Good. Make sure you eat regularly and get plenty of rest. I don't want to watch you wither away like Gabriel,” he stood and was just about to leave when Nora stopped him.
“Lister, where's Gabriel? I know he left the main fleet but couldn't find out where he'd gone.”
He offered her a comforting smile; “He's on a mission to spread the word of the Order of Eden. Don't worry about him right now, you could concentrate on your own happiness.”
Emergence
Captain Alice Valent was still reading after action reports from the various section commanders aboard Triton when the door to the ready quarters chimed. She stood up, put her eye patch on and moved to stand in front of the desk. Somehow it just didn't feel right to have people see her sitting behind it. “Come in,” she called out quietly.
The Heavy armoured hatch was drawn out of the doorway by thick arms and Chief Grady stepped inside. The thick block of dense metal that kept the ready quarters secure was pushed back into place behind him. “I'd hate to have to use the manual cranks to get that open,” he commented quietly as the seals squeaked against each other for a second. “I'll send someone up to fix that noise.”
“Thank you Chief but I think you have bigger fish to fry. What can I do for you?”
“You can relax for a start.” He was amused by her demeanour, and as he folded his hands in the sleeves of his robes she realized she was practically scowling. “There are five chairs in this room and you're leaning.”
“I'm sorry,” she said with a sigh, sitting more comfortably on the corner of the desk. “There's just so much going on. I don't know how Jake did it.”
“He delegated part of the workload to you and all of his department heads.”
“I know, and I've been trying. You, Stephanie, Shamus, even Price and Finn have been great, but there's always something left. Medical is still a mess, thank God we didn't have many wounded, most of our fighter pilots didn't come back, and Jake's ship is ready for the scrap heap.”
“You mean the Samson.”
“What's left of it.”
“That's all taken care of. Once we know what's going on in orbit around Pandem I'll be able to send some engineering staff to help Frost and the deck crew make improvements and repairs.”
“He's still down there?”
“No, actually. I heard he was back on the gunnery deck.”
Alice sighed and nodded. “I still need him there. He's good at what he does, his people look to him and removing him, even if he did tell his people he was stepping down willingly, has caused an even larger divide between the gunnery crew and security. We can't have that, not now, so he's running things up there again.”
“And after this engagement?”
“Well, I'm not reinstating him as Chief, I don't think he'll ever have that title again, but to be honest I don't know what to do past that. I'm hoping Jake can make a decision.”
“Here's hoping. Captain Valance will be pretty pleased at the ship's condition considering what she's gone through. He might not even notice that the gunnery crew and security staff have taken sides.”
“So the repairs on Triton are complete?”
“They are. I had modified ergranian metal ready to patch her up and now the few holes we earned have nice thick grafts of the stuff.”
“Grafts?”
Liam smiled and nodded. “Laura gave me access to the copy of the Freeground development database she brought with her and after a little research I was able to figure out a way to add ergranian steel to damaged sections of the ship so it would bond with the metal surrounding it.”
“What about the light shifting layer? Will those sections bend light around them like the rest of the ship?”
“Everything will happen under the light shifting layer that runs on top of the hull, so there won't be any problems there. If anything the new metal should be dense enough to disguise any thermal or electromagnetic signatures even better than the existing hull. Eventually those grafts will replace all the metal around them, consuming the matter as they grow, I'll keep an eye on it.”
“This ship isn't your Petri dish Chief, we can't afford to have problems with the hull.”
“Don't worry, most of the research has been done, the only new aspect to this is the idea of stimulating the metal in such a way that it will very slowly consume other metals and replace them. It'll happen gradually enough for the ship to adjust to the mass differential automatically and we'll be stronger in the long run, starting with the dorsal gunnery deck where we need the most armour.”
“I just don't think right now is the time to begin new things, I mean Jake is still out there and we're-” she checked her command and control unit and verified with the count down she had running there. “-nineteen minutes away from emerging from a wormhole we generated using stolen technology that we're not sure we can shield enough so our cloaking systems will work.”
“I'm sure.”
“That's something, but will it even work again? I saw what you had to do to jury rig that thing to work for us.”
“A lot of what you saw was redundant cabling. Even with the damage the Samson had to do to capture it that hypertransmitter is still in fine shape. The ion cannons they used to disrupt it long enough to take it didn't do much damage, and considering that the device is made to survive solar winds and direct cosmic interference I'm surprised they did any damage at all.”
“So you didn't think the plan was going to work?” Alice asked quietly, her frustration coming to a boiling point.
“I had a group of volunteers ready in the hangar to receive the hypertransmitter when it was pried free of the Samson just in case it was about to right itself and turn back on. If there were any problems they would have shut it down if Finn didn't do it himself first.”
“That's a long answer, Chief.”
“I gave it fifty-fifty.”
“But you let me go ahead anyway.”
“Captain Valance left you in charge for a reason. He could have left me in charge, or Stephanie, or Price, or
