Starship Engineer

I went to my quarters on deck 9. I heard someone inside and expected it to be Shinade but found Eve there. Eve was installing two closets and when I asked she said they were for Shinade. I told Eve I was going to get some rest but if she could get some bots to set up a desk terminal in the quarters I would appreciate it. Also I asked her to set some security to my quarters. I guess I had to give Shinade access though.

I programmed my SLUMBER unit with the original first contact scenario with the Sylvan. I thought it would be educational to learn more about them and it was supposedly historically accurate. What I learned during the event was the space elves were arrogant and looked down on humanity...they tolerated the presence of humans. I also learned why the Sylvan lived on city ships. 90,000 or so years ago they had been enslaved and abducted from their home world which when translated was called 'Utopia'. The city ships now scoured this galaxy and two others trying to find their origin planet. There was nothing in the scenario about their oppressors but they were alluded to as the 'Malevolents' by the elves in the SLUMBER program.

On waking I found Shinade sleeping next to me. She drooled a little in her sleep and she was wearing a thin nightgown that I had gotten her on the station. I would have to get her to wear her skinsuit when she slept. If there was a ship emergency she wouldn't have to waste precious seconds dressing. I had bought her a new one on Silverstream and she had been wearing it at dinner. Eve was not present but the terminal desk was here and active. Four screens wide and a comfy red chair.

I sat in the seat and connected it to my PerCom. It was time to start planning. First, I set to programming my bots on the planetoid to start prepping the landing site I had identified for the Void Phoenix. I would need to move them and none of the bots were earth movers but I figured we could get the site ready in a week as it didn't need to be perfect.

Next I began to go through my cargo container inventories. I needed to get everything I could on board the ship. I planned to cram it with the alien tech and precious metals but I also had a lot of great salvage. I had 6 heavy fighters of the Sapphire Empire. I brought up the scan data and decided to move the least damaged fighters to shuttle bay 5 and 6. A single fighter looked like it could fit and still have enough room for maintenance. The other four fighters would be disassembled for parts for the two I was keeping. I should be able to get both fighters fully functional and fill up one of the storage rooms with parts.

Shuttles were next. I had 5 shuttles. I had the new luxury personal shuttle, my marine shuttle, the shuttles on the planet that were used as boarding action shuttles and a small transport shuttle. The only shuttle bay that was empty was bay 3...no that was not right...my hover cycle was in there. I noted to bring it down to the planetoid and sent that note off to Eve to move it to my luxury shuttle. The small transport shuttle was in terrible condition and was made to make quick transitions between adjacent ships in space or from a station to a ship. I marked it for salvage. We would get as many components as we could and abandon it. The two boarding shuttles were both decent but needed an overhaul and cleaning. I did some 3D overlay work and I think I could squeeze both in shuttle bay 3 but doing maintenance on them would be difficult. I marked to have them stored in Bay 3 and sent an alert to Vanessa to work on them when they arrived. I sent Eve a message to load the repair unit for the downed shuttle that was full of the precious metal crates.

We had crates and crates of valuable metals and dozens more awaiting harvest. I marked two of the smaller holds on deck 2 to store as many of the one meter crates as possible. The holds were 8m x 4m x 16m. I ran through a bunch of load profiles and finished with a configuration to safely store 512 crates in those two holds. Deck 6 would take the overflow of metal crates. I also did some quick computations...I didn't think we should take more than 1200 crates of metals because of the added mass. I noted to take the most valuable 1100 crates and then an assortment of metals beyond that for my fabricators.

Eve's fuel rods were in one of the containers, 249 remained. They were in radiation housing so I decided to store them on deck 4 where the robotics labs were located. Bots...I had a lot of bots. As I was reviewing my list of bots on the planetoid Nero commed me. He wanted to know what he should do with the parts for the food replicator. I asked if he thought it could be salvaged and assembled to working order and he didn't know. It was a pricy unit, I think if it was new it would be close to 500,000 Silverstream credits. I told him to tell Gabby it was her job to get it working on the side as a hobby. If she got it working and functional then I would give her a 5,000 credit bonus. Hopefully she was credit motivated.

Returning to my bots it was time to make some decisions. I had two ancient bots that were over 500 years old. Three exterior repair bots. Four ship maintenance bots. Three medium cleaning bots. And three old model engineering bots. I decided I wouldn't take any of them with me when we left except the 3 medium cleaning bots. The other bots were just so antiquated and required constant maintanence. They would ride the planetoid till the end of time. Hopefully Eve wouldn't object. For now they would assist us, first with preparing the landing site.

Next I dug into our provisions. I brought up the ships current stores. We had fresh food for 140 meals…about 7 days with the 7 crew. In addition we had 1500 non perishable meals. That was another 70 days. On the planetoid there were the Union navy meals. According to the inventory from Vanessa in the ship's system there were 12,320 crew meals and 1,409 officer meals remaining. I noted to have 2,000 crew meals left on the planetoid and everything else moved to the ship. I also had the officer’s lounge alcohol cache that Eve recovered listed under consumables. I noted to move it the officers lounge on deck 9 but also to put a lock on it. We could break it out for celebrations.

Now the sad part of my review, my fabricators on the planetoid. The cargo container had flooded and frozen so we would have to salvage them and probably rebuild both. I wouldn’t have time right now so planned to move them to deck 4. Maybe I could buy new ones at our next port.

The last piece of notable gear was the military gear. I had 6 Union EVA marine suits. They were all in need of serious maintenance and minor repairs. I also had 43 Sapphire Marine Combat Armors…well 44 if you included the one I was using already on board. They were superior in functionality to the Union ones and designed for boarding actions and repelling boarders. I tagged 24 for the drop shuttle but they would be stored in one of the smaller cargo holds for now, another 12 were destined for the deck 8 security/armory and the rest of the suits were to be broken down for repair parts and sent to storage on deck 4. The Union suits would get repaired and stripped down from combat function and would be moved to the engineering EVA station on the shuttle deck. I also had quite a bit of heavy weapons from the Sapphire Empire. I had grabbed an entire 'heavy detachment' deployment armory from a Sapphire cruiser. That armory had been near the bridge and virtually untouched which is why all the suits were in great condition. I decided to put some trust in Shinade and noted for her to sort the weapons.

I had so much alien tech to sort out next. I took a break as Shinade was stirring. I told her that wearing her skin suit to bed would be a good idea. She just said she wasn’t in the marines any more and would prefer to sleep comfortably. She did thank me for the outfits at least. She got dressed in her skin suit and I found I was still attracted to her naked body which she was showing off by dressing slowly.

I had hoped she would make a move to bring me to the bed but after she dressed we both left to get some food at her insistence. She asked about my SLUMBER unit and I said she could use it…but then said I would need to update it first. I needed to scrub some programs I didn’t want her to know I used. We were the only ones at breakfast…I really needed to get the ship on a universal time schedule.

At breakfast we talked about the baby. Conversation evolved into suggested names. I liked Celeste for a girl and Zephyr for a boy. Shinade was favoring Ciara for a girl after her great grandmother or Leon for a boy after her father.

After breakfast I went to prep my Lux shuttle. I needed to move the bots to prep the site, repair the shuttle and then I was going to delve into the alien tech. I wanted to get as much on board the Void Phoenix as soon as possible so we could start efficiently packing the ship and also to give me more time to explore the larger tech machines on the planetoid that we couldn’t take with us. Shinade left me to continue her work on redesigning deck 8.