by Elin Wyn
The fact that she wanted to bypass the damper and connect directly to the cooling interface made no sense. There was a reason the damper was there in the first place.
“Oh, really? Are you sure? Then maybe you would have heard me say that we’re bypassing the damper because the output will be too much for it to handle and it’ll explode.” Her tone of voice was that of an older child talking down to a much younger and dumber sibling.
I bristled. “Well,” I tried to keep my voice level and calm as I spoke to her. “Then why not add a second damper disc to it, or…”
I hesitated as a thought popped into my head. Her own expression changed as she caught on to the fact that I had a potentially brilliant idea. “What if…oh, ho ho, what if we, instead of using the damper discs, we wrap the coupling in a cooling line, fill the cooling line with some hyper-insulation, and then connect that to the main interface.”
I looked at her and watched as she went through the mechanics of my idea. Her head bobbed side to side a couple of times. I forced myself to sit patiently for nearly two minutes before she began nodding.
“Yeah, I think that could work. Yeah,” she was getting excited, as was I. “Let’s give it a try.” She flashed a smile, and for a moment I was struck by the sheer brilliance of it.
As she worked on getting the cooling line around the coupling, I headed over to the supply closet to get some of the hyper-insulation, a spray that set and hardened in two seconds after coming into contact with oxygen. We’d have to make sure that we had things in place exactly where we wanted them before we sprayed.
Luckily, while hyper-insulation hardened to nearly the strength of steel, it was easily dissipated by a solution that came with it when you bought it. That allowed you to fix mistakes easily. The problem? The stuff was ridiculously expensive, and not something you wanted to play with irresponsibly.
When I returned with the materials, Maris had already gotten things ready. The cooling line had been placed around the coupling and had already been connected to the main interface yet disconnected from the tertiary crankshaft.
Alright. I had to admit she was good. Talented. Quick to learn.
Still a pain in my hurg.
“Let’s hope this works,” I said as I put the nozzle for the hyper-insulation inside the cooling line. I sprayed and pulled the nozzle back quickly and watched as the insulation quickly expanded and set. “Hurry, connect it!”
She snapped it into the crankshaft assembly and pulled her hands away. “Let’s test this baby,” she smiled at me.
Her enthusiasm was infectious, and I couldn’t resist smiling back. We connected two tablets to the engine diagnostic ports, then turned it on. The noise inside was intense and Maris tried yelling something at me, but I couldn’t hear her at all.
Squinting a bit from the loud noise, we monitored the tablets to see what the results would be. Within seconds, we both knew the converter was working, but we continued the test for another five minutes. After the five minutes were up, we disconnected the tablets, stepped out of the engine compartment, and then reconnected to the ports outside the door.
Maris’s smile spread from ear to ear and was filled with an I-told-you-so-stupid sense of smugness. I rolled my eyes and shook my head, but my own smile betrayed me.
We’d done it. She’d done it.
We monitored the converter’s progress every five minutes for the next hour, going inside the compartment every ten minutes to monitor the temperature.
It was working perfectly.
Her estimates earlier did her work no justice. She had claimed that with four converters installed, she’d be able to add another ten to fifteen percent speed and make the engine eight percent more efficient. By my calculations, her converter, this one solitary piece here, would give us six percent better efficiency all on its own.
The idea of four of them on at once? If they were wired correctly, we could increase our efficiency by nearly twenty-five percent.
“Take a nap,” she pressed her tiny hands against my chest. I blinked. I hadn’t even realized she’d moved closer to me.
“Can’t,” I muttered. “Need to monitor.”
She rolled her eyes again, but this time it felt different, friendly. Like we were a team. “We’ll take it in shifts. If it works, we’ll have a lot to do.”
I started to shake my head, but she just looked stern. “We can’t risk making a mistake, right?”
“You know it’s not fair to use my own words against me, right?”
A flash of that brilliant smile, and I stumbled back to my cot.
After waiting and monitoring for two hours, there was nothing wrong with her converter. With a new sense of purpose and a slightly clearer head after my nap, we began work on the other three. She showed me how to build the converter with the second one, then we each built one separately for numbers three and four.
Over the course of the next ten hours, we built, sealed, installed, tested, and fumed over the next three converters. Converter two was giving us fits, and after giving up on it, installing the other two and ensuring they were working, we went back to number two.
“What in the world is going wrong with this one? I just don’t understand it,” Maris said, voice tired and frustrated.
I was at a loss for words, as well. It was built exactly like the other three, connected just like the other three, and performed in tests like the other three. The issue was, when it was connected, it didn’t work at all.
“We have to take it off and take it apart,” Maris sighed.
I rubbed her slumped shoulders for just a moment. For such a small thing, she’d worked hard as any Shein.
“But it’s the only way to get this done,” I offered as I started the long process.
One of the components had stripped, which meant that it wasn’t turning. We found a replacement, rebuilt the converter, reinstalled it, and retested it. Things were finally working perfectly.
Maris hit me with a smug smile as I ran the tests on each converter again. The engine, with all four sections humming in concert, was producing twenty-two percent better than it had been, which fell within the given range for the margin of error.
“So? What did I say?”
I looked over to see Maris glowing with pride. As she should be. I glanced again at the tablet, the stack of tasks still waiting for me.
After the burst of energy at our success, all I wanted to do was sleep.
Which wasn’t going to happen.
“Your converters are working according to specifications. I need to continue monitoring them to ensure that they continue to perform without incident over the long-term. While I do that, why don’t you go about finishing up the projects that need to be done.” I rubbed my eyes, transferred a portion of the tasks to her own tablet.
She’d done well and should have some sort of reward, and I knew the perfect thing. “You can use my workstation if needed.”
Her smile vanished, and with a string of curses emanating from her lips, she stomped away.
Well, that wasn’t what I’d intended.
I watched her for a moment, then I turned back to my panels, continuing to monitor the changes.
She would get over it.
But as I pulled up the next set of diagnostics, a twinge of something far too similar to guilt ran through me.
Maris
“Are you going to wear something nice to dinner?” Aryn asked.
“Is that a trick question?” I laughed, looking down at my coveralls. “I don’t have anything nice. None of us do.”
“There’s that storage room filled with skin dye and alien formalwear,” Aryn reminded me.
I’d completely forgotten. There wasn’t any reason for me to think about it. It’s not like I ever needed anything from it. Going out wasn’t really in my plans, and fancy clothing would just get torn working on the engine.
“You want to go to dinner dressed as a snooty alien?” I asked her.
“Kalyn, Lynna,
and some of the other girls are dressing up, getting a little formal,” Aryn replied, a small twist to her lips.
I gave her a funny look. “When have you ever been interested in going all out when we’re staying in?” I asked.
“I’m not. I just wanted to see how long I could keep you going,” Aryn laughed, sticking out her tongue.
“Bitch,” I laughed.
We linked arms as we walked through the corridors of the Rogue Star. When we entered the dining hall, most of the women were already there. A long row of tables were pushed together, with as many chairs as possible squished up next to each other in an attempt to accommodate just under thirty women.
“When Kalyn said she wanted us to be closer to each other, I didn’t think she meant literally,” I muttered to Aryn, who clamped a hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t laugh.
After the alien girls came aboard, Kalyn had watched the distrust between all of them and got the idea that the women from Persephone Station should have dinner together once a week.
If we ever got into a tough situation again, like when we were almost kidnapped by a Dominion official on Dominion Outpost Nine, she wanted to make sure we could always rely on the trust between us.
Which made a kind of sense, even if I hated the idea.
If someone had told me last month that I would be willing to participate in a bonding dinner on an alien spaceship, I would’ve told them they were crazy.
Honestly, the alien spaceship would’ve been the more believable part of that story.
When I first arrived at Persephone Station, I didn’t care about making friends. In fact, I was relieved I wouldn’t need to make friends.
The more people close to you just meant more chances to get stabbed in the back.
I’d had my fill of that at a young age.
For the first two years of my time on Persephone Station, not even Aryn and I were close. In fact, it had taken me until the beginning of last year to warm up to her at all.
She was still my only friend, though I was thawing out to some of the other women.
A little.
We found two seats next to each other and pushed them outward as far as we could, so we could have a little elbow room. Shenna sat directly across from me. The weird little fluffy thing she’d found sat on her shoulder, watching us with its massive eyes.
I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not. Technically it was cute. I supposed. But it was strange, and I wasn’t sure I believed she’d just found it in a closet. What if it had babies all over the ship and they got into the systems, mucking everything up with their fur?
I shook myself. That wasn’t really likely. Hopefully.
Shenna had lived with Aryn and me before Kalyn had moved into Captain Dejar’s cabin, making a bit more space. Having Shenna in our room hadn’t bothered me, though space was tight.
But the damn cat that she cared for bothered me a lot. I swear that cat was going to kill me in my sleep. I’m surprised it hadn’t eaten the fluffy thing yet.
“Aren’t we going to invite our honored guests?” Xyla, a girl who’d only been at Persephone Station for a few months before the station collapsed, sneered at Kalyn.
I didn’t know Xyla well at all. Based on her attitude, I was alright with that.
I might be a stand-offish, short-tempered bitch, but she seemed to genuinely hate everyone else, except for the two girls she bunked with.
And she didn’t seem to like them all that much, either.
“I wanted the first dinner to be just us.” Kalyn’s smile was obviously forced. “If they want to join us later, should they still be aboard, they’re more than welcome.”
“Will they already be gone by next week?” Manda asked. She was a naturally quiet person. Even though we were all contained on a finite amount of space, I didn’t see her very often. I didn’t even know who she bunked with.
Maybe Kalyn had a point with these dinners.
“Maybe not. We’ll be arriving at the space station sooner than expected,” Kalyn smiled. Now I could see how she resembled her mother. I’d never met Adastria Askvig, but I’d seen her on news reports, and her signature twice. It was on my discharge papers from the Space Force and on my contract for Persephone Station.
I felt a small pang of guilt as I remembered how I used that contract against Kalyn, used Kalyn’s mother to justify my dislike for Kalyn.
I still felt like Kalyn was only given the position of Commander because of her mother, which wasn’t right. But no matter how she got the position, Kalyn was actually suited for the job.
She just needed to be launched into another galaxy to figure that out.
“Really?” Shenna asked, her eyes shining. Out of all of us, she was most eager to explore the universe.
“Yes. You can thank Maris for that.” Kalyn nodded to me.
A few people laughed as if Kalyn had told a joke. I rolled my eyes.
“It’s true. I outsmarted the ship's engineer and gave the engines a tune-up,” I boasted, with just a faint tinge of guilt running through me.
It wasn’t entirely true.
I didn’t outsmart Orrin’s engineering. He was a genius, even though he was stubborn and unreasonably and I’d never tell him so.
I just tricked him…a little bit. Just enough to make him try something new.
I caught Xyla rolling her eyes at her end of the table.
“Careful, you might pull something,” I called down to her.
Aryn snorted and Xyla fixed me with a glare that would’ve been scary if I’d never seen anyone glare before.
“Forgive me.” Her voice dripped in sarcasm. “Am I supposed to be congratulating you for fixing up an alien’s ship? You could be using your skills to get us out of here.”
“You can’t be serious.” I wanted for her to laugh and tell me she was kidding. She didn’t. “You want me to focus on escaping…in the middle of space where we’re technically criminals? And to where? Empty space?”
“All of that stuff about the Dominion is a load of crap!” Xyla exclaimed. “They aren’t going to shoot us down for crossing back into the Terran System. The crew is just saying that to get free labor out of us.”
“You do remember the Dominion attempting to kidnap us, right?” Aryn said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“I remember the Dominion promising to take us home. And I remember her,” she pointed a finger at Kalyn, “doing everything she can to keep that from happening.”
“I told you,” Kalyn spoke through gritted teeth. “I heard someone talking about experiments and only needing females.”
“That doesn’t mean it was about us!” Xyla exclaimed.
“Did you really want to take that chance?” Kalyn replied.
“Maybe. But I didn’t get a choice. You were too busy scaring everyone so you could save them in the end. You wanted to make us forget that three of our women are dead because you decided that the rest of us should stay on this ship!” Xyla shrieked.
Kalyn’s mouth was a hard line. During our first few days aboard, the Rogue Star was attacked by a nameless dark ship that came out of nowhere. They were after the cargo we carried. None of us knew what was in the crates, but it didn’t matter. Three women died in the firefight that ensued. Captain Dejar lost some of his crew members, too.
It had been a terrible, awful day, and I’d been helpless, unable to do anything about it.
Like Kalyn.
“Tell me what else Kalyn could have done, what any of us could have done,” I demanded. “Xyla, you’re so convinced you never had a choice in the matter. What were the other options? What other choices do you think are available?” I stared at her expectantly.
Her eyes darted around the room as she tried to think of something. The other women watched her. Some looked annoyed, others disappointed.
“That’s what I thought.” My smile held no warmth. “There weren’t any other choices. We would’ve died if the Rogue Star wasn’t there. You’re just looking for some
one to blame because you can’t cope.”
“Bitch,” Xyla hissed.
“Kind of,” I admitted. “But if I, of all people, am willing to accept living in fucking space with a bunch of aliens, that should tell you something.”
It was no secret that I had been stubbornly opposed to everything that happened after Persephone Station was destroyed by a shockwave. I had once felt what Xyla felt. I definitely took it out on Kalyn.
Then I’d realized that Kalyn cared about us. Captain Dejar cared about us, too, even if it was mostly for Kalyn’s sake.
I might not be the friendliest person around, but I was smart enough not to separate myself from the people I depended on for my survival.
“She still killed three of our own,” Xyla hissed.
“No, she didn’t,” I snapped, fed up with the stupidity. “The only people that killed Idensa, Daria, and Neera are the ones who fired the guns on that ship. Now, if you’d please be quiet, I’m trying to bond over here.”
Xyla stood up, pushing her chair back so hard that it clattered to the floor, then stormed out of the dining hall.
“Thanks,” Kalyn said to me. “It means a lot that you’d stand up for me.”
“No problem,” I nodded. “You showed us who you really are when you helped us escape from Outpost Nine.”
“I was in a blind panic most of that time,” Kalyn laughed.
“So were we,” Lynna chimed in.
“You’d all tell me if you hated it on the Rogue Star, right?” Kalyn asked the group.
“Would it matter if we did?” Manda asked. “It’s not like we can go anywhere.”
“True,” Kalyn nodded. “But I like knowing where everyone stands.”
“Free food, a place to sleep, and a chance at a decent life are all most of us want,” I told Kalyn. “We have that here.”
Orrin
Yet another short rest, more tests, another nap.
And just to complicate things, my mind had begun to mess with me, draw me down mental paths I refused to explore.