with my friends, but I preferred to study.”
Suddenly, the console beeped. Abby turned to check the status of her calculations. “There we are. All done.” She turned back to Deliza. “Now, let’s go talk to the captain about those computers.”
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Jessica asked as she entered the ready room.
“Yeah, Jess. Remember how you were talking about signals intelligence earlier?”
“Sure,” she answered as she plopped down on the couch.
Nathan was amused at the way she always went straight to that couch. “You really like that couch, don’t you?”
“Hey, what can I say? I’ve got a thing for couches.”
“Have you moved into your new quarters yet?”
“Naw, why?”
“They’re bigger. And they’ve got couches.”
“Great. I guess that’s next on my to-do list. So what were you saying about signals intel?”
“Comms reported a lot of civilian signals coming in from all directions. Mostly general broadcasting and communications stuff. Guess since we’re sitting in the middle of everything, we’re getting it from all over the cluster. I told comms to record everything, but he says with half the main frame still down, he’ll run out of storage space in less than a day.”
“Well, since we’re at least a few years out from any star, everything we pickup is going to be at least a few years old. So none of it will be actionable. But it could help give us a feel for the area-it’s history, customs, popular opinion, and the like. Hell, it could even tell us what the rebellion has been up to over the last few years. That is, if we get lucky and pick up a news broadcast or something.”
“Yeah, you’re right. But what about the storage issue.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re only going to be out here for five hours anyway. After that we’ll be sitting much closer in, so the sig-int will be fresh. Of course, that presents a whole new problem. How are we going to translate it all?”
“There’s a woman, one of the workers. She was serving molo stew last night. Nara-something. Naralena, I think. She speaks like eight languages fluently. Worked as a translator before.”
“Eight languages? How the hell did she end up on Haven?”
“No idea. I wasn’t sure it was polite to ask, to be honest. Maybe she can help.”
“What the hell. Apparently we’re accepting all applicants.”
Nathan’s eyebrows raised momentarily, acknowledging that her pun had more truth in it than she might have realized. He pressed the call button on the comm-panel on the desk. “Can you hail Naralena to my ready room? She’s one of our guests.”
“Yes, sir,” the comm-officer replied over the comm-set.
“Captain?” Abby’s voice came from the hatchway. “A moment?”
“Of course, Doctor,” Nathan said, gesturing for her to enter. Abby stepped through the hatchway into the ready room, with Deliza following. Deliza looked sheepishly into the room, obviously feeling ill at ease in the captain’s official office.
Abby waited for Deliza to step up next to her before beginning. “Deliza has informed me that the computers used on the shuttle might be more efficient at processing the multi-spatial calculations used for plotting our jumps. If she is correct, it could speed up the process ten-fold. With your permission, I’d like to look into it.”
“As long as it doesn’t interfere with the operations of the drive, I don’t see why not,” Nathan answered. “You can probably use the one from the out-of-service shuttle. I believe they were planning on using it for spare parts anyway. I’ll let Josh and Loki know that you’ll be coming by.” Nathan looked directly at Deliza instead of Abby. “Thank you, Deliza.”
“You’re quite welcome, sir,” she answered as they turned to exit.
Jessica shook her head. “And the applicants just keep getting younger.”
“According to Vlad, that little girl is smarter than any of us.”
A few moments after Abby and Deliza departed, the Volonese woman, Naralena, appeared at the hatchway.
“Excuse me?” the woman said. “I was told you wished to speak with me.”
“Yes, Naralena, right?”
“Yes,” she said as she entered the room.
“This is Jessica Nash, my Chief of Security.”
“Pleased,” Jessica said. Naralena simply nodded politely.
“I was wondering if you could help us out.” Nathan said.
“I’d be happy to help in whatever way that I can, Captain.”
“We’re collecting a lot of transmissions, from neighboring stars and such. Communications, broadcasting, all sorts of stuff. But it’s all in languages that we don’t yet understand. We were hoping that you might be able to translate at least some of it for us.”
“I can certainly try. I do speak most of the common languages in this area. Is there anything in particular you are looking for?”
“We’re just trying to get a better understanding of the societies and cultures of the area, as well as a bit of recent history.”
“Yes, of course. I can see how that would be of use to you. Of course, I’d be more than happy to translate whatever I can.”
“Great, I’m going to have you work for Jessica for now. She’ll get you set up in one of our auxiliary offices for now, where you should be able to work without interruption.”
“It sounds like an interesting assignment,” she admitted. After working for the harvesting team on Haven for the last six months, sitting in a climate controlled, clean office translating any number of common languages into ancient Angla was going to be a joy.
Jessica rose to escort Naralena to her new office.
“You know, in sig-int, they usually have computer algorithms that search for keywords and phrases, tagging them for further analysis. Maybe we can rig up something similar?”
“Talk to Vlad,” Nathan told her. “He might be able to help you out with that.”
Nathan was a bit surprised to see Deliza sitting on the floor, behind and beside the jump control console located at the aft end of the starboard side of the bridge. She had several large electronic components arranged around her, one of which was connected to an external battery of some type. The side panel to the aft end of the jump control console was open, and Deliza appeared to be peering into the opening, comparing what she saw inside the console to the array of connectors she had splayed out across the deck in front of her. As she checked each connector, she entered information into her data pad, apparently double-checking and triple-checking everything.
“What’s she doing?” Nathan whispered to Jessica at the tactical station.
“I think she’s figuring out how to connect that computer core from the shuttle with the one in Abby’s console.”
“That’s not going to interfere with anything, is it?”
“Not according to Abby. But I advised that she wait until after we reach the hideout before she started connecting anything. For now, the little brainiac is just figuring out how she’s going to connect it. I’m pretty sure I heard Abby talking about running some simulations on the shuttle core first, though.”
“How are we looking, Doctor?” Nathan asked Abby.
“Jump drive is fully charged. The last jump to just outside the Darvano system is plotted and ready, and an escape jump from Darvano is also ready.”
“Very well. Stand by for a jump.”
“Standing by,” Abby said. She leaned down toward Deliza. “You might want to see this.” Deliza grinned, and immediately stood up, moving into position to better view the event.
Nathan looked around. “Where’s Cam?”
“Getting some rack time,” Jessica told him.
“We can do this without her, can’t we?”
