Chapter 16
Chapter 16
“Gurji, what are you doing here?”
“Oh, you know, I thought this was more interesting than all the other stuff going on right now,” the Salarian replied, leaning against a railing.
“Lemme guess, you want to take pictures of the guts of these things.”
Hish, whose blue skin contrasted heavily with Gurji’s orange skin, chuckled. “I bet he wants to do some sort of time lapse thingy as they strip that big green one down and refit it.”
“No. I mean, yes, that’s interesting and cool, but that’s not why I’m here.” Gurji paused, tilting his head as he considered something. “You guys know I have a degree in materials science, right?”
“No, it’s never come up before,” Treia replied, sharing a glance with Hish, who just shrugged. “I thought you worked in demolitions before joining the crew.”
“I did work in demolitions,” Gurji admitted. “I got that job because of my degree.”
“That doesn’t explain how you wound up on a deep space explorer,” Hish pointed out.
“I got bored of blowing up old buildings and bits of asteroids. Plus the hours were terrible.”
Treia’s reponse died in her throat as Yukinojo floated over to them, tablet in hand, followed quickly by Yamagi. Treia respected Yamagi – for a kid, he was a pretty sharp technician, and he’d brushed off some of her subordinates mistaking him for Takaki pretty well. There was something a bit different about him compared to the rest of the Mars boys though – maybe it was the fact that he was always wearing white gloves or pretty meticulous with grooming that hair of his.
“Alright, let’s get started,” Yukinojo announced. “We’re gonna do a deep dive on Barbatos to get you all familiar with the guts of a mobile suit. Then whoever’s interested can go over to Hammerhead and work on Gusion when we start stripping it down for refit.”
Everyone nodded, although Treia was still busy puzzling over the fact that he shaved his chin, but not the rest of his beard.
“First things first. Barbatos and Gusion are over 300 years old. That means whatever we do to fix them is basically an improvised repair. If something bad happens to the mobile suits’ frames, then we gotta take them all the way back to Saisei for repairs,” Yukinojo emphasized this by pointing his thumb over his shoulder, “because we don’t have the knowledge or tools to fix that stuff here or on Mars.”
Some uneasy glaces were exchanged among the aliens, but no one spoke up.
“The Graze is a lot easier to work on, since it’s a new design – only a decade or two in use,” the mechanic continued. “That means it was designed for ease of maintenance and uses a lot of commonly available parts, which is good for us, because it means we can fix things a lot faster.”
One of the Salarian technicians raised a hand. “What about those other mobile suits from the Brewers?”
“They’re Rodi frames, so they’re about as old as the Gundams, but there’s a lot of parts floating around for them, so fixing them isn’t quite as big a problem. If we keep any of them, replacing the armor is going to be the bigger issue, since that has to be custom made.”
Again, everyone nodded.
“Now, we’re going to go from the outside in on Barbatos. Let’s start with the armor. Mobile suits use nanolaminate armor. That’s a…” Yukinojo consulted his tablet. “’metallic vacuum deposited nanotube matrix in a liquid composition that converts to a solid film and is strengthened by Ahab particle/wave impregnation.’ Basically, it’s paint that gets really hard when you put it on something with an Ahab reactor and disperses impact forces.”
Gurji was nodding vigorously at this and raised his hand. “Does the direction of the particle or wave flow affect the nanotube matrix’s long term stability?”
Yukinojo blinked, then hurredly looked through the material on the tablet. “Uh, I’m going to go with ‘no,’ but you’re better off asking someone who makes this stuff, honestly.”
Gurji simply nodded and allowed Yukinojo to continue with his presentation. As Yukinojo and Yamagi led the group through several procedures, including refueling the thrusters, removing the armor, and visually examining the joints and hydraulics, Gurji faded into the background. It wasn’t until there was a break in the lesson that Treia got a chance to talk to him again.
“Mind explaining what that was about?” she asked, taking a sip from a cup of lukewarm water.
“Hmm?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. You seemed to know what that nanolaminate armor was before Mr. Yukinojo explained it.”
“Well, I didn’t really know, I just… suspected.” Gurji’s eyes seemed to turn in on themselves, and Treia got the feeling he was a thousand light years away. “Back when I was earning my degree, I was a lab assistant to an old family friend, a professor in the Materials Science department. He was more or less trying to make nanolaminate armor using mass effect fields instead of Ahab waves or particles.”
“Uh huh,” Treia commented, taking another sip of water. “Since I haven’t heard of anything like it before we got here, I’m gonna guess it didn’t end well.”
Gurji shook his head. “The material worked well once the mass effect field stabilized, but if you changed it in any way – lowering mass, turning it off, increasing mass – it just disrupted the nanotube matrix like crazy. He never got the chance to solve the problem either – he was pretty old when I started working for him, and he passed away during one of the demo jobs I was handling.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Treia bit her lip and frowned. “What clued you in to this?”
“I was taking pictures of the Graze in different light spectrums, and the way the paint didn’t reflect light in one spectrum reminded of the way our material didn’t.” A small smile crossed Gurji’s face. “The professor always said ‘Don’t rely on your eyes! Some of these concoctions look normal under everyday light, but the moment you hit them with something different, they reveal themselves.’”
“Sounds like he was a great guy.” It was a lame line, but Treia felt the need to say something in the moment. “But hey, at least you proved that the idea was sound, even if he needed something we didn’t know about to make it work.”
“Yeah, there’s that.”
Before Treia could muster a response to that, Yamagi leaned over some crates and said, “Hey guys, we’re going to keep going in a minute or two.”
“Gotcha.”
The pair rejoined the group, and the seminar dove deeper into the Gundam. Treia found herself growing more and more fascinated by the twin reactor system that the Gundam frames used. The fact that operating two reactors in parallel provided a near exponential increase in power was interesting in its own right. That it was difficult to achieve made it a challenge – and as an engineer, Treia found herself drawn to challenges more than anything else.
And figuring out how to get every last bit of performance out these reactors was a good starting point.
Getting out of the office feels good, Orga thought as he sank back into the couch in Naze’s lounge/meeting room. Been there a little too often for my taste.
At least the business of selling off some of the Brewers stuff was out of the way. Five of the Man Rodi’s, mostly the ones with ruined cockpits, were being sold to buyers in the Earth colonies. The other four were staying with Tekkadan, giving them two 3 mobile suit squads. Then there was the paperwork for the sale of the ship to Teiwaz, which Merribit was handling right now. Which was good, because of the five people that’d been in the room, he was the least sure about her need to know any of this.
And Orga was completely aware of the irony of that, given his last conversation with McMurdo Barriston.
“So, what exactly couldn’t we talk about with Merribit around?” Naze asked, pouring himself a drink.
“It’s a… complication with the Dort job.” He took a quick glance at Biscuit and Dr. Vass. The Salarian was, at most, mildly curious, but Biscuit… Biscuit looked almost as worried as he did during a battle. “The cargo isn’t minerals… it’s weapons for the workers. Looks like there’s a big strike coming and…”
Orga’s voice trailed off, but he didn’t need to complete the sentence. He could tell the others knew what the rest would be. “Thing is, they know Tekkadan’s bringing them the hardware…”
“So you’re worried that if Gjallarhorn knows about the worker’s plans, they might know Tekkadan’s coming,” Naze finished, sighing. “And where did you get this information?”
“I had a little chat with the Old Man last night.”
“Alright then.” Naze took a long sip of his drink and set it back on the table. “This is certainly a difficult situation. We’re obligated to deliver that cargo, no matter what – the contract doesn’t have any clauses that allow us to get out of it.”
“Besides, after taking on the Brewers kids, we need to resupply at Dort if we’re going to hang around Earth for a while. Even with the supplies we took off their ship, we barely have enough to make it there,” Biscuit added.
Vass tapped his chin. “Let’s proceed under the assumption that Gjallarhorn does know we’re coming and what the workers are plotting. What is the worst case scenario?”
“Gjallarhorn shows up and we get blown to bits alongside the workers,” Orga answered.
“No, it could be far worse.” Vass looked at Naze. “Would I be mistaken in saying there’s a good deal of discontent in the colonies?”
“Not at all.”
“So, if I were Gjallarhorn, in order to preserve the stability of system, I would do everything in my power to delegitimize any potential rebels.” Vass stood up and began pacing. “Assuming that they intend to crush the rebels regardless, media manipulation through a false flag attack would be one likely avenue for this. It’s rather simple, really. Simply find a location where the workers would be in force, detonate some explosives, and claim the workers were behind it.”
Vass tapped his chin again. “No, that wouldn’t be good enough, would it? Delegitimizing rebels is good, but demoralizing them is better. So, it would have to be a decisive victory, one where there’s no survivors.”
“Why?!” Biscuit blurted out. “Why would they do that?”
Orga knew exactly why they’d do it. “So no one has the guts to go up against them for a long time.”
“What sort of weapons are we taking to them?” Vass asked Orga.
“Guns, mobile workers, some explosives.”
“Hmm…” Vass continued pacing. “No way for them to sabotage those, so Gjallarhorn is clearly not going to rely on its infantry crushing the rebellion. Too many opportunities for the workers to inflict casualties on Gjallarhorn forces. So clearly, they want to force an encounter in space, where the odds are more slanted in their favor.”
“The workers do have access to mobile suits,” Biscuit added, earning a surprised look from Orga. “They’re for working on the colony exterior, but some of the tools could be turned into weapons.”
“Yes, yes… sabotage those, then when the retaliatory strike happens, the rebels will be helpless.” Vass nodded. “Fairly simple, don’t you think?”
“Unfortunately, I have to agree with you,” Naze remarked. “In fact, I’m not sure there’s much you can do.”
“But-“
Naze cut off Biscuit with firm, but sympathetic glance. “I know you want to help those people, but your main responsibility is getting Kudelia to Earth alive. That means Tekkadan has to survive to fulfill that responsibility. If you get yourselves killed at Dort, everything you’ve done will have been for nothing.”
Orga recognized it as a dramatic embellishment for effect, but it felt more than a bit hollow with Dr. Vass standing there. Helping save the solar system from alien enslavement was pretty hard to sweep under the rug, especially when you were rubbing elbows with aliens everyday. But Biscuit swallowed down his protests, so it worked, although the whole situation was odd. As far as Orga knew, Biscuit shouldn’t have any reason to care about the people on Dort beyond being a good person.
It wasn’t as if Orga disagreed with Biscuit about the horrible fate of the Dort workers. He just didn’t see any way to help them that didn’t involve stepping into that mess and potentially having Gjallarhorn drop the hammer on them.
He ran his hand over his face and sighed. “I don’t know, can we just… warn them or something?”
“Sabotage can be hard to detect, especially if you don’t have any idea of where the tampering could be,” Vass replied. “Mobile suits are fairly complex machines, as I understand it. Even if the workers have experience operating them, they may not have the in-depth knowledge required to spot sabotage, especially if it’s done not long after our arrival.”
“I take it you don’t have any advice on where to look?” Naze asked.
“Unfortunately, I don’t. While I had the privilege of observing experts sabotage military hardware in the field, my specialized training means I’m more familiar with sabotaging scientific and medical hardware than anything else.” The Salarian doctor shrugged. “I suppose you’d be better off asking the mechanics for help with that.”
Not much progress was made after that, and just about the only thing everyone agreed on was that Orga needed more sleep. Still, on the trip back to the Isaribi, Orga found time to ask Biscuit about his knowledge of the Dort colonies.
“I used to live there,” he admitted. “My older brother could still be there, actually, on Dort 3. When my parents died in an accident, Cookie, Cracker, and I got adopted by our grandmother and moved to Mars. But my brother was smart, so he got taken in by a Dort Company executive. We… really haven’t kept in touch.”
What is it with this trip and brothers? Orga thought. Aloud, he said, “I know this has got to be tough for you, but I’m not saying helping them is off the table. We just gotta be careful about it and be ready for the worst.”
He sighed and shook his head. “It’d help if all this other stuff wasn’t already piling up on us.”
“Well, look at this way,” Biscuit replied. “After we get the Brewers kids settled in and figure out how to fix up our new Gundam, we’ll have a whole month to just throw ideas out there and see what sticks.”
Orga chuckled at that. “Looks like long, boring trips in space finally have an upshot.”
The two shared a good laugh at that, which died off too quickly for either man’s liking.
“Hey, Orga?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you really think we can find a way to help them?”
Orga looked out the tiny viewport next to him and saw nothing but the pitiless, unblinking stars. “I honestly don’t know.”
Nevara Char rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand and sniffed at the drink humans called “coffee.” For the past week or so, she’d been sampling different brews in an effort to keep up with the sheer amount of paperwork and questions she’d been dealing with. The caffeine helped, but no amount of creamer, milk, and/or sugar made it taste any better, at least to her palette. Then again, the colony she’d grown up had a native plant that made a great sweet tea, so that informed her tastes.
In her hand was a computer tablet containing translated documents to go over, mostly requests for her crew to explain or provide one thing or another. In fact, many of them were contradictory and impossible to fulfill in a timely nature. At least the old guy working on the quantum entanglement communicator had gotten his work done already. Two days ago, his grand, theatrical exit shouting “I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” had been the highlight of the day. Today, the highlight was the news that a few shipmates were coming by fairly soon on a captured pirate vessel, which was more exciting than being badgered by human scientists.
Very rarely did she allow herself to think about what likely happened to former superiors’ bodies. The less she knew, the better off she’d be when the humans inevitably made proper contact with the Citadel races. The humans could make up all the excuses they wanted for taking extensive samples from the bodies – and some of them probably were totally valid – she just wanted to avoid the Dantius family’s wrath. Sometimes an Asari’s wrath was the only thing worse than a Krogan’s blood rage.
Before she could make her way to bridge, Mr. Chen intercepted her, a tablet in his hand as well. “Captain Char, a moment of your time?”
“Sure, why not.” Nevara sighed and prepared to drink some of the coffee. At the very least, it was useful for stalling a conversation.
“The engineers want to get a close look at the omni-gel converters. Do you mind if they pull them apart?”
“They can look at one of them. Worst case, we can use the other ones to make enough omni-gel to fix the one they break.”
Chen nodded and made a note on his tablet. “A wise precaution.”
Nevara stepped onto the CIC, with Chen in tow, and sighed. There were tablets, portable computers, and access panels lying all over the place, along with people leaning over, under, and into just about everything imaginable. It looked like a tornado had rampaged through the place, and it was equally as depressing.
Waiting by the galaxy map platform was an older dark skinned human she hadn’t met before and Vorhess. The newcomer and chief engineer were discussing something, then dropped the conversation as they spotted the captain. As Nevara stepped up to them, the human held out his hand in greeting.
“Fred Johnson III, from the Callisto Shipyard. It’s a pleasure to be aboard.” He grinned. “Even though she’s a bit messier than I expected, it’s still an incredible experience.”
“Nevara Char, captain of the Thrill Seeker,” she replied, a wry grin crossing her face. “If it wasn’t such a pain getting in and out of the garage, we could probably show you a thing or two.”
“Well, there’ll be time enough for that later,” Johnson demurred. “Right now, let’s talk about the special job the Old Man gave me.”
“That’d be?” Nevara prompted, because she sure as hell didn’t know what it was. In fact, the only communique she’d gotten from him was the message about the captured pirate ship.
That seemed to throw Johnson off balance. “I, er, assumed that…”
“I hear you humans have a saying about that,” Vorhess spoke up for the first time. “Besides, the captain here’s been pretty busy with a lot of red tape and other fun stuff, so she probably hasn’t had the time to figure it out.”
“Alright then.” Johnson rubbed his chin, trying to figue out where to start. “The Old Man wants to pull the Ahab reactor from that assault carrier Tekkadan captured and put it in the Thrill Seeker.”
It felt like a good time for a stalling sip of coffee, so Nevara swallowed down some of the bitter stuff. Once it was down her gullet, she said, “That seems a bit… ambitious.”
Johnson chuckled. “Actually, now that I’ve had a look at things in person, I think it’s simpler than any of us imagined.”
“Check this out.” Vorhess activated his omni-tool and pulled up a holographic image of the ship, with several red lines through various sections. “Turns out the Turians designed this thing with modular disassembly for refits.”
Johnson pointed at the red lines. “All these spots are weld seams between two bulkheads. I’m not exactly sure what the welds were done with, but they provide extra material that can be cut through without damaging the hull’s structural integrity. We simply cut through those, separate the reactor compartment from the rest of the ship, pull the primary fusion reactor and its support equipment, then replace it with the carrier’s Ahab reactor.”
“Uh huh.” Nevara looked at both men. “I imagine there’s some other, more complicated thing involved in this.”
Vorhess grimaced. “We’d have to tear up all the deckplates to replace the mass effect field generators with waveguides for their artificial gravity system, which’ll take forever.”
“Luckily for us all,” Mr. Chen added, spooking Nevara a bit – she forgot he was there, “those parts are fairly common and easily available, so the cost will be minimal and there’s plenty of documentation on how to install them.”
Nevara took another sip of coffee. “I’ve got some questions. First, are we even sure the Ahab reactor will even fit in the ship? Second, where the hell are we going to put everyone during this? Third, don’t these Ahab reactor thingies screw up electronics? Won’t this just break everything on the ship?”
“To answer your questions in that order: yes, we’ve checked – the reactor compartment is well within tolerances for holding an Ahab reactor; the Black Site should have enough room to house the crew during the duration; based on our inspections, most of the electronics are already shielded by half-metals in their casings, and the ones that aren’t would be trivially easy to shield,” Johnson rattled off.
She turned to Chen, who said, “The Black Site has more than enough room for your crew and their possessions.”
“Mmm.” It was time for another sip of coffee. “So, is it just me, or has everything already been decided and I’m just learning about it now?”
“Well, it’s been a pretty busy week for you,” Vorhess pointed out. “It’s not too surprising that our new bosses might’ve tried to ‘help’ and didn’t keep you entirely in the loop.”
“Wonderful.” Acerbic sarcasm dripped off the word. “Toss that on the pile of things to schedule.”
In a “blink or you miss it” moment, Mr. Chen scowled at that comment, even as he kept his voice firmly level. “I believe there’s plenty of time to handle the personnel issues, since it’ll be a little over a week before the ship arrives.”
“Uh huh, sure.” Nevara started nodding. “Let’s do that. In fact, let’s just go with whatever other ideas you all have, because Goddess knows I apparently don’t rate too highly in the scheme of things.”
With that, she turned on her heel, walked out of the CIC, and disappeared into her quarters.
Unfortunately for her, the door chime rang only a few minutes later. As she slowly rocked from side to side in her desk chair, the ringing continued, until she at last felt compelled to open the damn door. Vorhess stood on the other side, an apologetic look on his face.
“Mind if I come in?”
Nevara threw up her hands and said, “Sure, why not?”
She plopped down on the bed, while Vorhess leaned up against her desk. He peered into the cup sitting there and sighed. “You know, you should probably cut back on that coffee stuff. Being pumped full of caffeine all the time isn’t a great idea.”
“No, it probably isn’t,” the Asari replied, flopping back onto the bed. “So, you here to lecture me?”
“Nah, that’s more Vass’s thing,” the Batarian engineer admitted. “I’m just here to see what’s up with you.”
“That makes me feel so much better,” was the sarcastic response. “You know, I’m not some teenage maiden who needs to cry on her parents’ shoulders.”
“I totally agree.” Nevara’s head lifted off the bed. “But I’ve been in your shoes before. I know what it’s like to be cut out of the loop.”
“Oh really? When did—oh wait, that was in the Republic military, wasn’t it?”
“Yup, back when I was a combat engineer.” Vorhess brushed some dust off his gloves. “Being a squad leader means you get the fun job of making decisions, while still being jerked around by officers who think they know better than you.”
Nevara sat up and raised an eyebrow. “Did they?”
The Batarian chuckled. “Sometimes. Mostly when the intel guys actually managed to do their job without fucking up.”
She smiled at that and rubbed her hands on her knees. “So… what did you do back then?”
“Bitched about it with my fellow squad leaders.” Vorhess paused and a wry grin crossed his face. “I guess I’m volunteering to fill that role, even though you should probably be having these sorts of chats with that Orga guy. I mean sure, he’s technically our boss, but I get the feeling that he’s got the same thing going on.”
“Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point.” Nevara looked down at the floor. “He seemed as clueless as I was a few times during that meeting with Mr. Barriston. But… I dunno, he’s got… something I don’t have. If he’s fumbling around like I am, he’s doing a lot better job of hiding it.”
“Yeah, that guy seemed like a born leader,” the engineer admitted. “All that means is that he’s got some skills that don’t come naturally to you. I bet you that if you practiced some and relaxed a little, you could pull that off too.”
“You’re just flattering me.”
Vorhess snorted. “Believe me, I learned the hard way that a lot of being in command is being able to fake being way more talented and unflappable than you really are. That said, it helps if you got some motivation driving you forward.”
“Uh huh. Any suggestions?”
“I don’t know, find something you want to do and use that?” The Batarian’s shrug conveyed how little he could help with that. “Shit, I just wanted to get me and my guys back home in one piece, that’s all.”
Nevara buried her face in her hands, sighed, and swept them off her face. “You know, that doesn’t really help me at all.”
Vorhess shrugged. “Hey, I’m just giving you some advice, because I sure as hell don’t have all the answers.”
“Wow, you sure are a font of wisdom.” The crooked smile on the Asari’s face took a lot of bite out of the caustic words. “But thanks, I guess. I got some more stuff to think about, at least.”
“Then my job here is done.” Vorhess made his way back to the door, then paused and turned back. “Feel free to stop by whenever you need another chat.”
“Yeah, sure.” Nevara waved him on and flopped back onto the bed as the door closed. “Find my motivation? Goddess, could you give anyone less useful advice?”
Author's Notes: Hey, pay off for stuff I established forever ago in the story! See, I don't forget these details, I just take my time getting around to them. This also kinda addresses the perennial question of these sorts of crossover/fusion stories - why don't the other guys have ____? In this case, some times they have the idea and just can't make it work, because they're working with the wrong stuff.
I find myself sympathizing far too much with Orga, mostly because my schedule 4 days out of 7 is just the worst. Fortunately for him, having an ex-spy who's been around the Terminus has some advantages, but it also doesn't mean you can actually do anything with that information. Also, if you look carefully, I'm stretching out the timeline for this part of the story, mostly because the Brewers/Dort arc has some really absurd time compression going on, or for some reason, the Isaribi can pull of Epstein drive levels of speed, but only in a line that is not directly going from Mars to Earth. I go for the former, mostly because visual scifi does a terrible job of handling travel times, and some things that happen later in IBO don't make sense if everyone has fusion torches capable of getting ships to and from Jupiter in days.
Also, I didn't intend to write Nevara kinda having a emotional breakdown, it just sort of happened.
