Freya sighed as she felt the hot water pour down on her from her new shower. Her new barracks room was amazing. She had left Mothers office and headed straight back to the barracks. She had planned to meet up with Monkeyman and Lurch to go to Pops, but she had gotten messages from both of them asking if she would be ok putting off going to the bar. Monkeyman had found out that the barracks had a door to the Navy and Marine Exchange, which was just one big mall full of all sorts of stores. He also told her that had a twenty percent discount in nearly all the stores, so he wanted to buy more things that went boom. Lurch had found that the barracks had a satellite college, and was signing up for a bunch of free courses. He wanted to browse through their collection to see what he wanted to take.

Freya hadn’t minded because it gave her time to check out her new room, and she was very glad that she did. When she opened the door she had found a huge suit instead of a barracks room. As soon as she walked into her room she found herself in a small kitchen with all the amenities that she could ever want including a walk in refrigerator. It wasn’t all that big, but still it was a walk-in refrigerator.

Just after the open kitchen there was a very small living room with a huge wall screen that connected to the ships entertainment systems like what the chow hall had on their second floor. Her living room had both a huge, but very comfortable couch and a reclining chair. The entertainment center had her entire library of music, entertainment feeds, and it even had her college classes that she hadn’t finished yet in it’s library.

The far end of the living room was taken up by a window that looked like the window in Mothers office. She had found that she could program the widow to show an extremely realistic view of pretty much anything she wanted. She even found a realistic view of her hometown. She had set it up so that it was showing main street in the autumn. It looked so realistic that it had fishing vessels coming in at dusk and heading out to sea in the early morning hours. She must have sat in front of that window for a half an hour just watching things go by. It was beautiful.

Between the kitchen and the living room was a non-digital door. It opened up to her new bedroom. The bedroom was mostly taken up by a huge and very comfortable bed. There was a window on the wall at the foot of her bed that was just like the window in the living room. She had set that one to show the rocky shore line that ran just north of her town. It was so realistic that when a boat left the pier in town she could go to her bedroom and watch it sail past heading out to the fishing lanes.

On the other side of her bedroom was another non-digital door that led to her bathroom which was huge. In fact it was nearly half the size of her bedroom. There was a stand up shower that had water heads coming from every direction,and behind the shower was a huge four person jacuzzi. At the far end of the bathroom was what she had at first thought was two toilets. It wasn’t. One was a toilet and the second was, according to the ship's information search engine, bidet. She avoided the bidet as she had no idea on how to use it, and really didn’t want to look up how it worked.

As soon as she finished examining her bathroom she had stripped down and jumped into the shower. The water was perfect and incredible. She had even discovered that she could play her music from the entertainment center in her shower. She had set the very mellow playlist of classic music and relaxed.

She was deep into the sounds of her playlist when she got a message from Diaz asking if she had read her recommendations on the designs for her new ship. Feeling slightly embarrassed hadn’t, she lied and said she had, but then added that they needed a few additional things. Then she sent Mothers list on what she wanted Freyad to have in her new dropship to Diaz.

Message from: Petty officer Second Class Diaz

To: Corporal O’Malley

Look, you may be my favorite meat shield in the military, but do you realize just how much something like that is going to cost. We aren’t going to be able to use any of my recommendations from before. You want a dropship that is not just a dropship, but a command and control vehicle. While there are models like this for dropships out there premade, no one actually buys those things. They are really just floor models that people use to custom build their own ships. We are going to have to design this thing from scratch, or you’ll get some generic piece of garbage. This is a huge undertaking, that we are not going to be able to do this over the message system. We are going to need to be face to face to design this thing.

Freya frowned as she turned off the shower. She thought about what Diaz had said as she dried herself off. She had a lot of money saved up, but did she really want to spend it all on something like that. It wasn’t like Mother had given her a lot of choice, but still what was in it for her. She almost got dressed in her civilian clothes, but realized that was going to go to pops and she couldn’t leave the camp out of uniform. She sat down on the reclining chair before the entertainment system to relax for a few minutes listening to her playlist. When the current song ended she did a quick search on what dropships that were also command and control vehicles. Her eye twitched when she saw the price. She took a deep breath and kept on reading. Then she smiled when she got to the end of the page.

She learned that yes it was going to cost a lot to buy, but once out of the Marines she could make some very good money as a transfer ship. Basically all she would have to do is park the ship somewhere where there wasn’t any already established spawning technology, and with the appropriate license she could use this type of ship to transfer people from one system to another. It worked by people despawning themselves in one system, and respawning in her pods. It required a lot of the tech that a command and control system already had. The great part was that it paid extremely well depending on the location. It had to have some crazy expensive permits, but she could get them at a discount if she used her E points.

Smiling, she sent a message to Diaz asking if she wanted to hang out, and discuss the design over some drinks at Pops. Diaz sent back a message saying yes, but with one condition. Freya had to buy all her drinks. Grinning Freya agreed, but warned her that she had to come to the green side Pops since she already had plans to hang out with some friends. Diaz agreed.

Freya smiled, and sat back in her chair. She discovered that the thing was really comfortable. Trying not to fall asleep she brought up the map of her new camp, and blinked in surprise. They had access to a huge number of buildings without ever going outside the barracks. She already knew that there was a door to the exchange somewhere in the barrack, and a satellite campus, but the sheer number of buildings she could use was staggering. Far more amenities than her last camp had.

“This is going to be awesome!” She thought to herself as she tried to memorize the map.

A few minutes later she got a message from Lurch telling her that they were ready to go. With a sad sigh she got up and shut off her music, but left the windows on. She watched as the sun set for a few seconds then turned and left her barracks room. She really liked her room, and it was hard to leave it. Still, it was time to go out and have fun. With a grin she walked down the hallway to the stairs.

Several hours later Freya looked up from the table, and spotted Diaz walking through the bar. She was getting a lot of attention from the Marines seeing as she was the only person in the room dressed in a Navy uniform. Freya did spot Maddog look up as Diaz walked by, but he went back to talking to a few female Marines. Freya quickly ordered a new beer for herself, and one for Diaz. She looked back up as her crew chief sat down beside her.

“Wow, this is so much more lively than the Navy version.” Diaz told her.

“Yeah, it's fun.” Freya said smiling.

“Just how long have you been here?” Diaz asked. Freya noted that the petty officer was frowning.

“I have no idea. Couple of hours?” Freya said, checking the ship time on her HUD. She blinked in surprise. According to it, she had been there for nearly eight hours. She turned her attention back to Diaz and nodded, “I maybe should get something to eat for us.”

“Yeah, I think you should.” Diaz said, giving her a gentle smile.

“So what do we have?” Freya asked after her order of melted cheese and chocolate had arrived. She dug in, as Diaz down her beer.

“So first… what in all of Tom’s toes do you think you were doing crashing your ship on purpose?” She asked her in a very angry tone of voice. “On top of that you had a passenger in the back. You know your ship is not rated for any passengers, right?”

Freya felt her cheeks get warm as she listened to Diaz yell at her. “Yeah, I know.” Freya replied feeling really embarrassed.

“You’re lucky that you were ordered to take off while he was in the back. That could have gone really bad. You’re taking too many chances doing that back on the Monarch, and now you’re doing it here. I really thought they were going to take your pilot's license away from you this time.” Diaz told her. “You would have if you hadn’t got that order.”

“I know.” Freya replied feeling scared. “How can we get around that?”

“Well, you’re going to need a passenger rated dropship. That is going to cost you. Here. Let's look over the list and see what we can do.” Diaz told her, putting her empty beer bottle down. Freya automatically ordered a new one for her.

Diaz did something to the table, and the tabletop changed into a huge tablet. Freya leaned forward as Diaz brought up ship hulls on the table.

“First we are going to have to build this one from scratch. We are going to need a wide hull with enough room to put down at least twelve chairs in it. To have enough support to carry passengers we will need to reinforce the hull. We can go with the bare minimum, which will allow for twelve passengers, but the downside is that everything will be crammed in there. Here, let me show you.” Diaz told her, moving one of the hulls that were on the table so that Freya could see it better.

Freya looked at the hull that Diaz was pointing at. It was not that much bigger than the ship she already had. It was longer and slightly wider, but that was it. Freya watched as Diaz started to add things like armor to the underside of the ship, and chairs in the middle of the bay. They were placed back to back so that there were six on each side. Then five pods appeared on each side of the ship very close to the chairs. Finally the entire front part of the ship turned yellow and a label appeared in white lettering saying command and control space.

“As you can see here, there is no room for your extra tanks on the inside of the ship. That means that we are going to have to mount them on the outside. Your list also has vehicle locks, so that means that your tanks will have to be on the top part of your ship, here.” Diaz said, adding a white area and labeling it tanks.

“That is going to shoot your ship’s in-atmospheric stability all to hell. We will have to add more maneuvering engines to compensate, which means a bigger generator. That will severely limit the size of the main engine. In other words it will be a slow compact flying brick.” Diaz said, pausing to grab her new drink and take a big swig from it.

“It will also limit what kind of armaments you can carry, but it will get the job done with what your platoon leader wants. At least in spirit. I’d go with this one if you want to save some money.” Diaz said putting her half empty beer bottle back down on the table.

Freya grabbed her new beer, ignoring the water, and too a much shallower swig than Diaz had. “What other options do we have?” Freya asked looking at the other hulls.

“We can go with this hull. It will allow you to have up to sixteen pods with eighteen seats. I would recommend that we reduce the seat’s to sixteen, which will add more room for the command and control section. Look, I’m going to start calling it the CC section. It’s easier to say.” Diaz told her.

“Sounds good.” Freya said not looking up as Diaz pushed the next hull towards her. “What's the pros and cons on this one?”

“The biggest problem will be that we are going to have to remove one pod on each side to make room for the extra tanks. Also this model also doesn't have a lot of room for a big main engine. It’s the second slowest ship’s hull on my list. It has everything else you want that is on your list with some great options for armament.” Diaz said, grabbing some food.

“Next.” Freya replied by taking another swig on her drink. She watched as Diaz also grabbed her bottle and took a drink.

“This hull is similar to the last hull except it's bigger. It has the same amount of pods and chairs, but since its bigger we don’t have to remove any pods or chairs.” Diaz said sliding another hull option towards her. “The rest of the hulls are like this one, but they are faster and get much more expensive.”

“Show me.” Freya said putting her beer down and ordering another one for Diaz.

“From the cheapest to the most expensive, we have this one. It has a fatter rear end so we can put in a bigger engine. Unfortunately, it has a smaller generator room, so if we really want to go with a faster engine we are going to want to redesign the room. Only way that I can see to do that is to remove a pod, here, to make space for it.” Diaz said removing the pod in question and expanding the walls on the blueprint of the ship.

“This next one has the same fat butt, but has more room for a bigger generator.” Diaz said, putting her empty bottle down.

Freya bought her and herself another round and reached for more food. To her surprise they were out of food. Tired of the cheese and chocolate, she ordered some kind of meat finger food thingies that looked awesome on the menu. It looked like steak with some tiny mushrooms rolled up in it. It came with a bowl of dark red sauce.

“This last one is really expensive, but is awesome. It’s not going to be as fast as your last ship. Seriously though, I don’t think we can make one any faster than it anyway.” Diaz told her as their drinks came along with their finger food.

“Show me.” Freya said, grabbing the steak looking things. She chewed it a bit before deciding that while yes it tasted awesome, she had over estimated how large her stomach was. She left the food for Diaz who seemed to inhale them, and sipped from her beer bottle.

“It has that extended back for a larger engine. We can go as far as the 41k engine, which in this beast is awesome.” Diaz said, picking up her beer and waving it around to make her point. “It will go about a third as fast as your dropship cutter.”

“You know what. I’m going to call it that for now on. You could put that thing in races, and maybe win. Can you imagine putting a dropship in something like a Farsari 181.” Diaz said laughing. Freya joined in, not sure what kind of race the Farsari 181 was, as she ordered another round for her and her friend.

“This has eighteen pods like the rest, and it already comes with fifty manuvering engines stock. We can add more for maneuvering if we want to. I suggest we go with seventy. It will make you much more limber in case you want to use it like Toms own racing ship.” Diaz said looking up from the blue print. “Seriously, I love you like a sister, but please promise me you’ll stop doing dumb things like you did in your last mission.” Diaz pleaded.

“I will.” Freya said nodding her head.

“I’m serious.” Diaz said, putting her hand on Freya’s arm. “I like being your crew chief. You’re a pretty good meat shield. Better than any other bullet catchers that I’ve ever met.”

“I will be much more cautious. I promise.” Freya replied, nodding her head again and putting her left hand over Diaz’s hand.

“Okay, good.” Diaz said, pulling her hand back. “I’d say lets get this one if we can afford it. Well, not that I’m paying, but it would be so awesome to build something like this.”

“Oh and hey don’t forget we still have to buy the CC package and everything else. This price is just for the hull alone.” Diaz said pointing to the price tag on the corner.

“Say we go with this one.” Freya said nodding to herself. “What would that cost?”

“Well, we would have to pick the engines and the generator for the ship. From there we would have to pick everything else. So what kind of engie do you want?” Diaz asked.

“The fastest one we can put in her.” Freya said with a smile.

“Okay, I like the 41Ks. They’re rated high for acceleration, and for extended flight. There are others, but it’s big enough to stable all of Tom’s horses. It will get up and go and stay going for a really long time. The downside is that its a power hog. That means a Housier Delta or higher generator. I like the Drocnaid’s 401. It big and it generates enough power to light up a small town.” Diaz said sliding an engine and a generator blueprint towards her.

“I can add a bunch of mods to make the Drocnaid go faster, but it gets expensive after a while.” Diaz told her.

“More speed.” Freya said ordering another beer.

“More speed it is.” Diaz said toasting to her.

Freya watched the price go up on the side of the blueprint and winched. It was by far the most she had even spent in her entire life. What was worse was that she knew that she wasn’t done yet. She worriedly bit her lip looking at the price tag as the android server delivered their beers. Freya quickly grabbed one and took a drink from it.

“Now for the armaments. With the generator that you are buying we have a lot of options for beam weapons along with some really cool ballistic ones as well. Your platoon leader want’s a large artillery weapon. I can see why she wants it, but it’s going to cost you. I was going to suggest you go with a ballistic weapon, but if we mod out your generator we can add a beam element to it. It will make it faster, more accurate, and do much more damage. If you have the credits this is the way to go. We can skimp on the other things, but I suggest we don’t skimp too much on this one.” Diaz told her, showing her a huge barrel gun that attached itself to the top of her ship.

The barrel to the cannon was about a foot wide while the barrel itself was about eight feet long. The animation showed it rising slightly and moving in a complete three-sixty degree angle. It wouldn’t rise above forty-five degrees, but then again it was an artillery piece not an anti ship weapon. It could be set to fire beyond the horizon, but the accuracy decreased without someone or something spotting for it.

She saw that it could fire, depending on the type of shell it was going to fire, for as fast as eight times a minute up to six times a minute. It could make and fire it’s own shells as long as it has enough printer fluid. The cost of fluid was surprisingly low giving what it was being used for. Still she would need the larger tank of printer fluid that her Platoon leader wanted if they wanted to use it more often. The only problem she found was that it wasn’t exactly a quiet round. Given enough time the enemy tracked the shell back to her ship.

When she brought it up to Diaz, the petty officer smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I saw that. If we go with that option we will need a better active camo projector on your ship. The best on the market is this one. It is six times better than the one you have now. I would have suggested we get it for your cutter, but we can’t fit it on your ship. We would need a bigger generator, but you already have the biggest generator you can fit on your ship.” Diaz replied.

Freya watched the price rise once more and winched. “What are the other options for the artillery cannons?” Freya asked.

Diaz went through the other options and Freya sighed. Not only would they be less effective over the one she pointed out, it would also be much harder to hide her ship even with an upgraded active camouflage projector. She admitted defeat and agreed with the expensive cannon.

“On the plus side, you can fire it in space. You will have your own orbital weapon.” Diaz said with a kind smile.

“Yay me.” Freya said holding up her beer in mock cheer. “What about anti ship weapons?” Freya asked.

“You can have a lot mounted on your ship. My suggestion is to go with a mixture of anti personnel weapons that can be used as an anti ship weapons system as well. In the vein, I suggest we stick with Shands auto cannon, but go with their EL cannons instead of the one you have. It fires a bigger round, and we can mod it so that it will fire twenty rounds without reloading. A bit overkill for human targets, but not so much against what I saw in your missions.” Diaz told her.

“You watched my missions?” Freya asked, surprised.

“Yeah. Got read in on your mission. Got reclassified to be read in on it, so that will look good on my record.” Diaz replied, putting her beer down on the table. Freya noted it was still full.

“You said a mixture. What else do you have on your mind?” Freya asked, curious.

“Okay, Shands makes missile pods that we can mod so we can fire multi types of missiles. You can load multiple anti personnel missiles to anti ship missiles. Hell, if we go with the advanced mod you can even load a decoy missile.” Diaz told her sliding all the different types of missiles that she could fire across to her. There were a bunch more missiles that could be produced than what she had said. Freya noted it and winched at the price tag.

“Okay.” Freya said dully. “That's it?” She asked hopefully.

“Nope, sorry.” Diaz replied, sounding like she really was sorry.

“What else do we need?” Freya asked putting her head between her hands

“First, we can always go with a cheaper design. It won’t be as effective as this one, but you can get it if you want.” Diaz told her.

“No, go ahead. I got the credits. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting it to be this much.” Freya said, waving her hand for Diaz to continue.

“Ok, here are a list of sensor upgrades that I suggest you get. If you want a cheaper version, then I can check, but with the weapons systems that you are putting in you need something that can handle it.” Diaz said, passing a list of various sensors. To Freya’s surprise it was by far the cheapest thing that had been recommended so far.

“The last thing we need to get is the CC package. We don’t have to get a really big one, but it has to have enough access so that your Platoon leader can fit all her stuff in. Here I recommend the cheapest of the bunch. You won’t be using it, so why put credits into it.” Diaz said with a small smile.

“I plan to use the ship for a transfer ship when I get out. Can I get this CC and still be a transfer ship?” Freya asked hopefully.

‘No.” Diaz said, crushing her hope. “That’s a really good idea, but we will need to upgrade if you want to do that.”

“Hit me.” Freya said, closing her eyes.

“We can go with this one. It has all the basic stuff you will need if you want to go that way. It has enough access for everything your platoon leader will ever need, plus some.” Diaz told her.

Freya sighed and opened her eyes. The price tag wasn’t as large as she thought it would be, but it wasn’t cheap. It was about half way between what she would be paying for her new sensors and her weapons systems. She also noted that it said it had a FTL communication antenna on it. Remembering her last real world mission she knew she wanted it just in case something like that happened again. She also noted that she could also use CC to increase her ship’s memory space. She could also mod it so that she could download a digital world in case she ever got marooned again.

“Okay.” Freya said, closing her eyes again.

“Okay, what?” Diaz asked.

“Let’s buy it.” Freya said leaning forward and buy more beer. “How long until you can build it?”

“Silly Marine, time means nothing.” Diaz said with a big smile. “I’ll have it built before your next mission. I have a guy who will give you a discount on your fluid contracts if you do with him. He’s retired Navy, and he has all the copyrights we need. If you give me the go ahead I can contract him and get us the copyright, plus the contract.”

“Go for it.” Freya said accepting another beer from the android waiter.

“Press here to authorize the deal.” Diaz said, pointing at a handprint on the table. Freya did as her crew chief asked, and bought her new ship. Freya checked the price tag one last time and winched. Her last ship cost about 36 thousand credits. This one cost her 198,445 credits. She still had a huge sum left, but she had never bought anything that was costly. She had no idea what something like that was worth back on her home world. She could buy a fleet of fishing vessels with how much she had just spent. Still, she comforted herself in knowing that she had the most badass dropship in the Marines. It could almost be called an assault ship if it was faster and could maneuver better. It had the same if not more weapons than a normal assault ship had.

“You up for some serious drinking?” Freya asked Diaz after she was done buying her new ship.

“Sure. I’ll even chip in.” Diaz said with a big smile.

“Good. I’m broke now.” Freya replied.

“Hey Ma shiv, who the Navy squid?” Monkeyman asked walking up to the table from wherever he had disappeared to after they had been drinking awhile.

“You all lowering your ears?” He asked, looking at all the bottles of beer sitting on the table. “Can anyone join?”

“The more the merrier.” Freya said waving at an empty seat.

“Don’t mind her, we just designed a new dropship, and she's broke.” Diaz said. Freya noted that she was smiling up at the Marine.

“Oh, well that sucks.” Monkeyman said, with a very big smile. He sat down in the chair that was next to Diaz and asked. “So what do you do?”

Freya sighed and lay her head in her arms, defeated.