Peek at next upcoming book.

Athia sighed, putting down the automatically-adjusting wrench she held. The sounds of welding and clanking mechanics would be overwhelming for most people but she had grown accustomed to it, a calming and repetitive background noise that would tell her things about the ships’ functioning. It took a while to develop the keen sense for it but most experienced mechanics could tell an issue just by the tone of the humming or the difference in vibrations. Obviously, each ship was different, the one that she was currently working on being a large freighter travelling through space.

It had seemed like a promising job at first, good pay, relatively low risk and very simple requirements. The problem with that was Athia got very tired of simple, very quickly. It was always, “put everything together as instructed Athia, not how you think it should be”. Well, It wasn’t her fault that everything was assembled inefficiently. A good example was the access panel right in front of her. She was in the process of repairing a faulty star drive, one of sixteen installed in the ship. She could tell by the energy humming within the large cylindrical frame that it was an issue with the internal loop, a simple fix. While she was here, she could have bypassed this one thingie-ma-bob in front of her, wiring it after the whats-it later in the circuit and bam, two, maybe three percent increase in efficiency.

Sure, that would probably cause issues further down the line with a slightly fluctuating power flow but that could be fixed with a simple…

She sighed again, letting the thought float away into space. Put everything together as instructed Athia, not how you think it should be. She could put things together how she wanted when she finally owned her own ship. A nice little star travel capable ship that she could explore the universe with.

She snapped back to reality and with a few final twists, had the replacement part installed.

“All’s good, wanna give it a test ‘ey?” She called up towards where her current work partner, Sal, was.

All mechanics and engineers aboard the interstellar freighter Adron were to always work with at least one other, in case something went wrong. There were few crew far and between on the huge ship, enough to keep it running at the least. It wasn’t a bad rule, quite smart in fact. Could save a life if it came to it. The issue Athia had with it was how incompetent she found many of the others that had been hired for the job. Sal was alright though, he did his best.

“Startin ‘er up, stand back!” Sal called back down.

He was up on top of the sideways laying star drive, where the control panel was.

Taking a few steps back, Athia tapped on the little screen attached to her arm. Most people in the galaxy had one, a control for the magic that flowed in their bodies. Back in the day, people would train a lifetime to master the magical arts the hard way. Nowadays though, a simple bionic instalment was enough to reach similar levels of skill via an AI that would control the magic for you. They were quite safe, if you got one done legit like Athia had. The system was completely free of any way to connect wirelessly. This meant no hacking, unless you got one done sketchy and the installer wanted a little control over you. There were, of course, ways to get one done in a quick and dirty manner but things tended to go wrong when you walked that path. It wasn’t illegal or nothin’, just stupid.

The list of her abilities popped up as she tapped the screen and she chose the one she was looking for, near to the top.

Analyse.

Nature - Ship, Technology.

Effect - Analyse a piece of ship technology in real time.

Cost - Power from a ship.

It was a pretty common one, a simple analysis tool that would use a tiny bit of power to give a live feed of information about whatever she chose. It was part of her contract that she was allowed to use simple abilities like that powered by the ship as long as they weren’t too draining.

The issue with a piece of technology controlling the magic within was the fact that the range of what could be accomplished with it became… expansive. The ‘Ship’ and ‘Technology’ natures were very easy to come by, most spaceports having a merchant who could sell one off to you for a few credits. Once you had them, it was simply a matter of finding an alteration station that you could create your abilities with. The tech was able to take any given effect you chose related to the nature, the related cost you wanted to pay for it and suddenly you were able to cast a spell. With a little help of course. So, for this one, she had chosen a power that could analyse bits of a ship with the cost being power from a ship as well. She could have chosen just ‘power’ as the cost but being more specific with both effect and cost would drastically reduce the overall cost.

For instance, a spell that would analyse any piece of technology using any power source, now that would be expensive. Also dangerous.

Realising she had missed about twenty seconds of readings and Sal was currently yelling at her, she adjusted the small air tank strapped over her shoulder and focused back on the task at hand. She had a little trouble with that sometimes.

She quickly read over the previous readings, of which it kept the past thirty seconds or so, and continued on.

“Lookin’ all good to me so far!” She called up over the sound of the spooling star drive.

“Well let’s call it a wrap then, call central and tell ‘em we are done here,” Sal called back down.

He was probably reading the outputs and data from the control panel and seeing as everything was working as it should, wanted to get back to the lunch he was so rudely interrupted from to come fix this.

Athia pressed the button on the little com strapped to her jumpsuit near her left collarbone.

“Central, this is maintenance crew eleven, star drive five up and runnin’. Should be good to be back on our way,” she said into the mic.

“We hear you eleven, star drive up and running. Initiating jump in five minutes, clear the room,” a voice replied.

It was the clear and crisp voice of a proper trained engineer, one that went to an academy probably. Unlike Athia who grew up strapping together scrappy machines in a ship junkyard on the backwater planet called Etia. She always found the accents and language of the central system crew of ships to be funny. They used so much energy saying things the right way and calling things by their names. She didn’t have the kind of energy for remembering all that stuff, she knew what it did, why did she need to explain it to someone else?

She quickly pushed the automatic wrench back into her tool belt, closed the access panel with a click, using the driver hanging off her side to secure the two bolts that held it firm. She jogged lightly down the walkway running along the side of the star drive towards the door, seeing Sal walking down the steps around the other side as she reached the end.

“Nice and quick work Sal,” Athia said with a grin.

“How many times do I ‘ave to tell ya, my names Mal,” he grumbled.

“Right! Yes, Mal. Off to finish ya lunch then ‘ey?” Athia asked.

“Right I will be, probably gone cold by now though. Damn shame, I always hate cold rations. Like chewin’ on a sponge,” Mal complained.

“Aw cheer up, at least these ones are solid. Much better than the paste Ostro corp usually serves up on a job like this,” Athia said cheerfully.

Mal shuddered.

“Bloody Ostro corp, that paste gives me nightmares it does, I tell you what,” Mal replied.

“See! Things ain’t so bad. We got solids to eat, air to breathe and machines to fix, what’s better than that!?” Athia said.

They reached the entrance, the door sliding open at their arrival. As they stepped through, Athia pressed the com button once more as she turned around to see the big five written on the closing door.

“Central, this is maintenance crew eleven. Star drive five clear, safe for lockdown,” she said into the mic.

“We hear you eleven, star drive five locked down,” the voice came back.

Athia hated the formality with which she had to speak to the central engineering crew but they insisted on it. Something about clarity of speech and safety procedures bla bla, she hadn’t listened to the whole spiel.

The little green light above the door went red and she heard a bolt slam into place.

“Central, this is maintenance crew eleven. Lock down confirmed,” Athia said into her com.

“We hear you eleven, lock down confirmed,” the voice came back.

Athia let out a sigh, done with the annoying communications.

“You’re doin’ it next time,” she said to Mal.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Bloody corporate and their ‘clear communication is key’ bullshit. You, me and everyone else aboard a ship knows not to stand in a room with an active star drive. Not once they’re fully goin’ at least,” Mal complained.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Athia replied, starting to walk down the narrow corridor back towards where the crew quarters were.

“An’ if they don’t know not to, they deserve what’s comin’. They shouldn’t be in a room with one if they don’t know what to do with it,” Mal finished.

“Now, now Sal, you gotta have some empathy for others in that mind of yours. Not everyone has the privilege of workin’ on a interstellar freighter like this one or any interstellar ship for that matter,” Athia reminded him.

“Mal,” Mal corrected her.

“You know names aren’t my thing,” Athia said.

“Then you should stop tryna’ use em,” Mal retorted.

“Well some of them central crew think it’s all rude of me to call people ‘hey you’ or ‘you with the bald head’ so I’m puttin’ the effort in to make a change,” Athia explained.

“I’m thinkin’ it’s a little bit more rude to call someone by a name that ain’t theirs,” Mal said.

“Well at least I’m tryin’,” Athia complained.

“Problem is, your tryin’, when it comes to people, ain’t so good,” Mal explained.

“Not so, I’m just not so good at names is all,” Athia said.

“That we can agree on,” Mal replied.

“Thank the stars for that,” Athia said sarcastically.

“May they ever burn,” Mal replied.

“May they ever burn,” Athia repeated.

Many of the outer world people tended to worship the stars, just a little. They were the bringers of life after all. There wasn’t a world you could establish a colony on that didn’t have a nice big star nearby. Not that Athia had ever heard of anyways.

She could hear the star drives start to spool, all sixteen of them, even from the relative distance they had gotten since repairing number five. The drives weren’t really thrusters as much as they were a method by which the ship was able to fold space. It was a genius mixture of technology and magic, the way by which humans had first ventured into space. The ship itself had all your standard systems which you’d like, the travel drive and manoeuvering thrusters which you had to be a lot more careful with using when people were about. The star drives though, were surprisingly safe as long as you weren’t in the heavily shielded rooms they lay in. Or as long as one didn’t explode. Or you jumped yourself into a planet and became part of its core.

None of those things really ever happened though… well, once, but you had to be really unlucky for that to happen. They had all sorts of safety measures in place around most worlds to stop that kind of thing from happening.

The drives finally finished spooling and for a moment, it was as if she had been previously seeing the world in two dimensions and could now see the third. That was the scale of difference between normality and the experience of folding space. For just a moment, then, the jump was complete. As always, a sense of disorientation came with the jump but that very quickly passed, she was more than experienced with jumping. What came next, didn’t usually happen.

Alarm: Battle stations. Alarm: Battle stations. This is not a drill.

“Ohhh shit,” Athia yelled, sprinting down the hall.

An explosion resounded and a vibration soon followed, shaking the ship around them as Mal followed her down the hall. The one part of the initiation spiel Athia had listened to properly was what to do in case of emergency. She didn’t like the formality of the inner worlders, but, when it came to emergency they certainly did what they did best.

Alarm: Battle stations. Alarm: Battle stations. This is not a drill.

Alarm: Ship is under fire and has received damage. Alarm: Ship is under fire and has received damage. All civilians to the escape pods. Repeat: All civilians to the escape pods.

“What the hell is happenin’,” Athia yelled over her shoulder towards Sal.

“Sounds like somebody is bloody shootin’ us up, after we just fixed the thing too, damnit!” Sal yelled back.

They sprinted down the hall to a T intersection, finding other employees running towards the escape pods as well. Athia waited for Sal and together they pushed into the flow of people. Another explosion rocked the ship and Athia was flung hard into the wall, floating upwards as the lights and gravity cut. The ship had lost power.

Dazed and running on instinct, Athia smacked two buttons built into the sides of her jumpsuit and her magnetic boots kicked in. Sal, his own boots also active, pulled her down to the floor and the magnets locked to it. They stumbled forwards, moving only by the dim emergency lights running down the length of the corridor.

A-Alarm: B-B-B-Battle Sta-Stations. Alarm: Battle Statio-tions. Thi-is is not a drill.

The stuttered comm alarm wasn’t necessary for Athia to tell the ship was in real bad shape. Real bad. She could tell that by the grinding and inconsistent humming coming from the hull.

They made it to the escape pods and as each escape pod held only two people, Athia and Sal hopped into one, strapped themselves down, sealed the door and pressed the launch button. A burst of acceleration pushed them back into their seats and Athia activated the autopilot function, reading the sensor screen on the little row of touchpads in front of her.

“I’m readin’ no attackin’ ships Sal, what have you got over there?” Athia asked tensely.

She saw out one of the small side windows as a projectile as large as the escape pod smashed through a pod to their left, there and gone in a flash.

“Nothin’ Athia, what the hell is doin’ that?” Sal said back.

“I dun’ know!” Athia yelled.

Another shot blasted a nearby pod and their own was peppered with shrapnel, the overhead light and screens in front flickering as they were shoved to the side.

“Shit!” Sal yelled.

“Shut down power, quickly,” Athia urged.

“Shut down the power, are you insane?” Sal screamed at her, breathing hard.

“They’re targetin’ the bloody pods Sal, shut down the power. Pretend we’re jus’ a bit of space junk!” Athia screamed back.

Sal gave her an intense look before turning to the screens in front of him and shutting down every system, life support included.

“I hope ya know what you’re doin’ Athia,” he growled.

“So do I Sal,” Athia whispered.

“Mal,” he corrected.

She didn’t bother replying, staring out the little side window, heart beating hard, eyes straining.