August 3rd, 2362

Speak Softly, Crew Deck

0900, Widow Station Time

“This wouldn’t be nearly as annoying if you would just sit still, Rain.” said Love, more than a little irritable thanks to her current patient.

Rain tried not to squirm against the restraints holding him securely to the examination chair. He understood it was a necessity in a zero-g medical environment, and it was really just a lap belt and a few straps to brace his arms and legs against the chair. Still, he had never enjoyed being strapped down and examined by anyone in the medical field.

The Speak Softly’s med-bay was cozier than what he was used to, at least. He re-examined his surroundings as Love fussed with the blood pressure cuff wrapped around his right arm. It was a fairly large room, with three beds in case of any injury that needed more than just a quick suture. It had the typical sterile white walls, a desk, a hand sanitizing station, and a number of zero-g cabinets designed to hold fragile medical equipment in place.

No one wanted syringes, new or otherwise, littering any amount of three-d space, thank you very much.

Still, Love had managed to make it more inviting than he had expected. The board behind her desk was filled with a number of childish plastic printouts, labeled with the usual ‘Eat your veggies!’ or ‘Get your shots!’ slogans. The desk itself was crowded with memorabilia, including a small holo photo of Love and the Captain.

Even with the added homey-ness, Rain had to quell his desire to fidget, to escape, long enough for Love to finally take his blood pressure, the last thing she needed to do before he could finally escape.

“Okay, so...145/65, and a pulse of...damn, 45. I’m more than happy with those numbers. Now if you’ll just hang tight for a little longer, I want to check your neck one more time.” As she moved around behind him, plucking a small handheld scanner out of the air, he sighed. Ever since he’d woken up after being pulled out of Freyja, she’d been fussing over his general health, but especially over what had happened to his neck.

“I know, I know. We just need to be totally sure here, Rain. You’ve got foreign technology wired into your spine, here” she said as the cool instrument pressed up against his neck. He hissed slightly at the unwelcome temperature.

“I know Love, but the last three times you checked you said there wasn’t any sign of infection or complication.” As he spoke, a holo lit up on the wall opposite them. A small holoprojector, set just behind them, was projecting the data being collected by the scanner held against his neck.

It was a small thing, smaller than Rain was used to, but he was familiar with the type. It was essentially a handheld, wireless, highly advanced ultrasound. The greyscale image that resulted looked messy, but the data was relatively easy to parse once you were used to it.

His spine was picked out in a translucent white, the surrounding tissue a deep grey. Against his spine sat a flat structure, solid white in the ultrasound. Rain could make out what things were, but he couldn’t honestly tell if anything was wrong just from looking at it.

“So, for reference, here’s the photo we took of your neck while you were unconscious.” A smaller window popped up in the holo projection, in the lower corner. The back of Rain’s neck, his unruly hair lifted away. One could be forgiven for assuming that there was nothing wrong with him in the picture, aside from one thing. A dim silver circle could be seen just underneath his skin, set with two contacts that looked right out of a computer interface. Though he’d seen this photo, and checked himself in the mirror despite his misgivings, it still surprised how...normal it looked.

“It looks like I was born with a computer port attached to my spine. I thought that I’d have a scar, or something.”

“What did it feel like?” she asked, while moving the imager around his neck to get a more three dimensional view of where the terminal attached to his spine.

“Honestly, like someone shoved the biggest needle imaginable directly between my spine.”

Love hummed as she examined the ultrasound with narrowed eyes. “I can’t see any issues. There’s no obvious tissue inflammation, no fluid build up, not even any scarring. Whatever put this in you, it put you back together on the way out.” she sighed, and removed the ultrasound, having taken enough imagery for her tastes, Rain assumed. As she set about freeing him from his chair shaped prison, he asked,

“Do you need anything else, Love? I think Edmund wanted to talk to me in the hangar bay whenever I had the chance.”

“Fine, fine, go check out the new toy. Just come back if you feel any sudden pains, or any discomfort around the port, okay?” she responded.

“Not going to suggest we remove it?” Rain asked as he got up, twisting in space to face love as he drifted towards the exit.

She shook her head, “I don’t think so. It’s not causing any problems, and we’d do more damage going in to get it than just leaving it there. Just keep an eye on it, and we’ll re-asses if it becomes necessary. Now go on, I have to wrangle some other overgrown children long overdue for their shots.”

Rain nodded, and grabbed the doorway as the door silently cycled open. He waved to Love as he pulled himself into the hallway. She waved back, just in time for the door to close. He sighed, and idly rubbed the back of his neck.

“What the hell…” he muttered. As he did, he tapped a small button that sat on the wall at about waist height, next to the doorway. When he did, a small handle popped out of the wall, set into a thin track. He grabbed it, and lightly squeezed it. The internal pressure sensors noted this, and engaged the track. The handle smoothly slid down the hall, away from Love’s medical suite and toward the hangar bay. It only pulled Rain along at about an average walking pace, but it was safer than flying down the hall and maybe running into someone. The only noise was a slight electric whirr from the electromagnets responsible for the motion.

As he approached the t-junction at the end of the hall, he heard electronic beeps, along with a clearly synthesized voice. “Help! I’m floating! Help! I’m floating!” He glanced towards the voice, coming from his right, he found the source. A small circular object floated in the middle of the hall. It was slowly rotating, but Rain saw a circular LED screen on the top face of the machine. It was currently occupied with a flashing red exclamation mark that flashed in time with the message it was yelling. Said machine was about the thickness of both of Rain’s fists stacked on top of each other.

“Who knocked you around Clint? Couldn’t even put you back...” Rain muttered as he pushed away from the wall over to the small robot. It was a simple matter to rotate the machine and push it back down onto the floor, where the small magnets set next to its wheels could engage and keep it stuck to the floor. As soon as it made contact, the electronic beeps ceased. The exclamation point disappeared, to be replaced with a blue smiley face, the eyes upward arcs and the mouth wide.

“Thank you! Thank you!” it said, in a happier, but still synthesized, tone. It spun in place, internal sensors scanning its environment, before the slight whirr of its vacuum started up. It moved away from Rain at a short clip, occasionally beeping or whistling. Rain shook his head, smiling a little. The captain was insistent that the little cleaner-bot have a personality. She found it charming. He supposed it was, in its own odd way. Better than just a weird little cleaner trundling down the halls.

He watched it turn in place, before it found a specialized ramp built into where the wall met the floor, and it trundled on up, happily continuing its duties. Rain turned, still smiling, and found a handle on the wall heading the opposite direction.

His passage went uninterrupted, before he came to a door at the end of the hall. It opened as he came close, spitting him out onto a wide catwalk above the hangar proper. In fact, as he drifted forward and caught the railing, he saw he was just above his former Peregrin. Formerly his, as a few days ago Eletta had asked permission to use the simulator function in it’s cockpit. He hadn’t seen a reason to say no at the time.

He never wanted to sit in that particular machine’s cockpit again, afterall.

He pulled himself over the railing, and kicked off it with carefully measured power, aiming for the large man standing across the hangar, just in front of the massive white Frame he had found several days ago. As he drifted past, he turned to take in his old machine. Formerly naked machinery was now covered, repaired armor fastened back into place. A few mechanical arms held armor panels just away from the machine, allowing access to its innards before reattaching the plating.

Rain nodded approvingly. Edmund hadn’t just adhered to the machine’s spec sheet, he noted. Several of the armor plates had been modified for better ballistic deflection, especially around the chest. He assumed the same could be said for the various wires, servos, and false muscles that made the machine move.

Still, he was out of time to muse. He twisted around his center of gravity, and caught himself on the floor with his hands. This became a graceful roll to his feet, bouncing back up slightly to catch himself against a storage crate secured near the feet of Freyja.

Edmund simply shook his head and muttered under his breath, “These damn kids, they all think they’re invincible…”

Rain smiled and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Sorry, sorry! I was just in a rush to get here.”

The large man sighed, “It’s fine. You’re probably the best in microgravity on the ship, just startled me is all. Anyways, let’s get down to brass tacks, we don’t have that much time before we dock at Widow. I don’t think Alex would appreciate us tumbling ass over tea kettle to splatter over the wall there when we decelerate.” Rain nodded, and lightly pushed over to stand next to Edmund, though he only came up to the middle of the man’s chest. As he did so, he was handed a datapad, already displaying a readout of Freyja’s systems.

“The first thing I noticed,” began Edmund, poking at his own pad. As he did, the readout on Rain’s pad shifted, displaying an unfamiliar reactor diagram. “Was this thing’s reactor.”

Rain scrutinized it. It didn’t look awfully different from any other high density fusion reactor design he had ever seen. Though, he thought, there were a couple things as he looked closer.

“Does this thing have two magnetic containment fields? And what are those output numbers, there's no way that's right.” Edmund nodded next to him, and the two magnetic toruses lit up on the pad. They were stacked on top of each other, with a central cylinder both mounting them as well as containing the rest of the necessary machinery for a reactor.

“Good eye. Most fusion reactors have one containment field, with the fusion reaction kept under high density, maximizing f-particle output, and thus, maximizing power output. Every so often a new reactor manages to get a little more density, with a little more particle output, but we’ve been stalled on reactor tech for a while now.”

Rain nodded. It was fairly common knowledge among fusion researchers that making more efficient designs was the best path forward. Apparently someone didn’t get the memo.

“This thing has two fusion chambers, which you’d think would just be for double the power. A few different groups have tried it. But, that's not it at all! The top chamber is supplying power to the Frame, and it’s making enough to run maybe three or four modern Frames at once.”

Rain’s eyes widened. “How is it doing that? I thought we couldn’t get more power out of a single reactor?” He looked up at the machine. He’d known it was incredible while he was piloting it, but it hadn’t really sunk in yet.

“Whoever designed these things found a way around the density problem. So, the reaction is held at about twice the density of a normal HD reactor. Normally that would cause all kinds of problems, up to and including failure of the magnetic containment field. But look at this,” he keyed his pad again, bringing up a field diagram.

“It uses a standard stellarator containment field, but the field changes alignment and shape to best respond to the contained plasma, and it’s doing this both actively and preemptively! My best guess is that they designed a rudimentary AI to run the reactors!” As he finished, Edmund slapped his datapad. His speech sped up at the end, betraying exactly how excited he was.

Rain hummed to himself, looking at the two diagrams on his screen. “So then, what’s the second one for?” He pointed at a key section on the diagram, where the top torus was connected to a blocky construct. “Look here, only the top reactor is connected to the particle dynamo. The bottom reactor just has leads going...somewhere?”

Edmund shrugged and sighed, some of excitement bleeding out of him as he slouched forwards. “I’m not so sure about that one. Best I’ve been able to tell is that it just makes as many particles as it possibly can.” As she spoke, he reached up to scratch his head with his prosthetic, but winced as soon as he did. Thankfully, the attached multimeter wasn’t sharp or powered on.

Rain looked thoughtfully up at Freya. “So where do those particles...go?” He asked. He tilted his head to the side. Something insisted that he knew the answer to that. It felt like something was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t begin to guess what.

“Judging by the diagram Antonia coaxed out of the computer, a couple of things. It disperses a fair bit of them into surrounding space; pretty standard combat doctrine.” Rain nodded at that. Most Frames were designed to disperse particles, and some specialist Frames had that duty as their only and entire reason for existing.

“The second reason?” He pressed.

Edmund tapped his datapad again, bringing up a full body diagram of Freyja. Little more than a blacked out silhouette, it had several rectangles set into the body highlighted in white. One each in the lower legs, a larger one in the torso, and one each in each forearm. Something clicked in Rain’s mind then, his knowledge of military vessels meshing suddenly with his experiences in Freyja’s cockpit.

“Particle storage?” He said, before Edmund could continue.

The older man smiled, “Yeah, good eye. Pretty similar in concept to the storage tanks that feed the Softly’s guns. I’ve never seen them in a Frame, and never at these densities. Looks like they’re linked to the Frame’s verniers, too...” he muttered.

“The Federation tested a system like that, halfway through the war...the prototype detonated before it could launch, killing the test pilot and blowing a hole in the side of a very expensive warship.” Rain said, before he could stop himself. Inwardly, he cursed. He hadn’t meant to say that.

Edmund looked up from his datapad, confusion writ in his furrowed brow. “I’d never heard of that, where did you-”

“Attention all crew, decel in tee minus thirty minutes. Please find your seat, fasten your safety harness, and keep all hands and feet inside the ride!” came the cheerful voice of Isobel over the loudspeaker.

Edmund shook his head, then. “Well, we gotta get packed up here. There's a list on that pad, supplies for the Frames. Give it a once over for me, will you?”

Rain had already kicked off the deck, sailing towards the Peregin. “No problem!” he waved as he went, but Edmund had already turned to packing up his tools for a safe deceleration.

As he grabbed the railing and pulled himself over, he heard a loud hiss behind him. He turned to watch the upper chest armor of the Pergine fold open, and Eletta pulled herself out. Clad in her usual shipboard attire of a tank top and work pants, she kicked off the raised hatch and came to a rest near Rain, at the wall leading to the hall.

“Hey Rain,” she said. “Didn’t realize you were down here. Wanna head up to the observation deck?”

Rain nodded. His gaze snapped to her arms for a moment before snapped back to her eyes. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

“Good!” she said, “I have a few things I wanted to ask you, about piloting a Frame…”

Rain smiled, as they moved and talked. Maybe things would be fine, after all.

----

Alexandria tapped the arm of her command chair, idly taking in the surface of Ganymede in the distance through the bridge viewport. Noa had seen them through deceleration perfectly, as usual, and had slotted them neatly into the docking line for the colony. The rest of her bridge crew were taking in the sight of the massive, cylindrical station that filled the front viewport.

It was a truly massive feat of engineering. At a whopping thirty-five kilometers long and ten kilometers in diameter, it dwarfed every single ship in local space put together. One end, the end they faced, had a large docking station set into it. From there, she knew, one could access the rotating cylinder that made up the body of the station, and experienced the closest thing to real gravity-living anyone alive ever could.

This was Widow Station, she mused. Once the second part of the Ganymede 1 and Ganymede 2 research and development colonies, it had earned its new name when Ganymede 1 was destroyed by a supposedly Federation-made nuclear device. Now, two years after the war, it was something of a black mark on Confederate space, a veritable hive of scum and villainy. More than a few smugglers called it their home port, after all.

She eyed the message sitting, unread, on the terminal to her left.

It said ‘unknown sender’, but she knew who it was. She had sent the first message, seeking court with this man. She tuned out Isobel explaining some obscure fact about their destination to Cleopatra, and opened the message.

Miss Valentina, I was truly surprised to see that you had contacted me. Given the circumstances of our last conversation, I had assumed you would never voluntarily set foot on my station again. Of course, I am more than willing to hear what you have to say. You remember where to go, of course. Please be there no less than two hours after your ship docks.

And of course, feel free to bring a companion. I look forward to seeing you, my dear.

-M

A hand went to her head as she finished reading. Thankfully, she had remembered to take her medication this morning, so the sudden stress didn’t burst a vessel in her temple. As if fate was trying to make that happen anyway, the comm crackled to life.

“CSS Speak Softly, you are cleared to dock in cradle 3, please proceed.”

“So fast?”, “Yes! Shore leave!”, “Wow, that was fast…” came the voices of her less professional bridge officers, the three young women excited at the prospect of shore leave on a station they’d never been to before.

Noa shared a glance with her, before pulling the ship out ahead of the other vessels waiting for permission to dock. Cruising speed this close to a colony was glacially slow , giving Valentina ample time to fume. It was just like that man, manipulating things just because he could.

She watched the colony grow in the viewport and tried not to imagine the frustrated captains of the vessels they had left behind taking shots at them in revenge. To occupy her mind, she spoke up.

“I’ve got a meeting aboard the station in a couple of hours Noa, and I can only take one crewmate with me. Who do you think I take?” she asked.

“You take Eletta with you, of course.”

She nodded. That was her first choice as well, but- “Then you leave a small group outside, listening to your meeting at all times. I think myself and the other salvage crew spread out around the establishment would be fine.”

“That’s actually a pretty good idea Noa-”

“You could also have someone inside, but that’s harder to get away with these days, especially with our crew manifest on the station's files. Rain might be a good fit, but I believe Edmund has him helping with supplies for the two Frames.”

The bridge was silent.

“Hey Noa?” asked Isobel, “What exactly did you say you did in the military?”

“I don’t believe I ever did.” He responded, voice dry as the old-Earth deserts.

Alexandria couldn’t help but smile. The man’s poker face was incredible, frankly.

“Alright, let’s workshop this, we’ve got a couple hours. And girls?”

“Ma’am!” They chorused.

“Enjoy your shore leave.”

“Yes ma’am!”