“If you tell me that one more time,” Dawn grumbled. A white spark jumped from a stripped cable to the tip of her finger. She shook her hand out in a futile attempt to relieve the burn. “And I’ll cl
ose you up inside one of these walls.” Howard let slip a rare chuckle.
“It’s just… you’ve taken on so much. No need to burden yourself with the role of mechanic on top of it all,” said Howard. He slid aside to demonstrate firsthand how to bond fusion conductor posts without zapping oneself. Dawn watched intently, then replicated the procedure.
“Admiral, Captain, Mechanic… what’s the difference?” Dawn brushed off, “Besides, I had plenty of mechanical training in the academy, and we’re stuck here until the Arcadia is running. Helping with that keeps me from going insane with boredom.”
“Boredom: the great motivator,” Howard nodded. His tone was just distorted enough to be an attempt at sarcasm.
“It is… and… maybe I have a few things to make up for, with a certain ship that may or may not be listening,” Dawn mumbled. She soldered a few more wires. “She did try to defend me from Drogan and... I may have been more of an ass than I needed to.” A violet glow flickered through the splintered circuits of the hallway.
“I see,” said Howard, “Hand me that gear binder.” Dawn tossed the wrench-like machine his way. He crimped the Chrysum-charged clamp around a glowing gear and turned it into place. Dawn slid a charger cell up a conductor rod, just like Howard had shown her before. They needed one on every other rod to keep the current from surging.
“So…” Dawn lowered to a whisper, though she wasn’t sure it mattered, “Did you do any of the work on the AI, or just the Arcadia itself?” Little as she cared to admit it, since some of the resentment had receded, there was a great deal about said AI she found rather curious.
“You mean Alice?”
“I… yes,” Dawn admitted.
“I programmed her from the first bit of learning software,” Howard told her.
“Pretty impressive. A ship of this caliber and a personality matrix like Alice? You’ve done a lot with only a handful of years more than me,” Dawn commended.
“Well, I can’t take all the credit,” said Howard, head in the walls.
“Wellsworth?” Dawn asked.
“No,” Howard let loose yet another chuckle, “My grandfather, Tim. Him and my dad, I owe them… almost everything. They left me the collective sum of their research, when they both passed away. Generations of breakthroughs in cold fusion technology… it was a lot for an eight-year-old to take in. But I wanted it all. And once I had it, I wanted to use it.”
“You were eight when you started fusion design?” said Dawn.
“More or less,” Howard told her, “The high-density memory drives helped. Throughout everything I did… I had the Digital Brain Signatures of my grandfather and his best friend, Sheba, to guide me.” Dawn’s fusion rod dropped between her feet.
“Sheba?”
“Yes. She was a pioneer of 3D research. One of the most open-minded, well-read psychologists to ever work the Martian la-
“I know who she was. She was my great aunt,” Dawn broke in. Her hands hung limply at her sides, too heavy to patch the emptiness in her own chest, let alone the SS Arcadia. “She lost her mind to Dragon Dissociation Disorder. Her and her siblings, her sibling’s children… I left before it could get me.”
“Dawn, she-
“Flight capabilities satisfactory,” Alice’s sapphire light radiated through the circuits around them. “Because of your repair work. There’s more to do, but I thought I should let you know, Captain Dawn. We can leave whenever you’re ready. And… I should thank you.”
“Save the thanks,” smoldered Dawn, still reeling from Howard’s revelation. “What about Miller?”
“He arrived twenty minutes ago. His recovery will take approximately three weeks of heavy painkillers,” Alice told them. Dawn clapped the dust from her hands to straighten up. Mechanic to Captain in ten seconds, flat. “Dawn... I’m sorry about your family. I brought up bad memories when we flew past Mars. I shouldn’t have made assumptions.”
“You… already apologized for that,” Dawn rested a hand on the steel of the Arcadia’s wall. Alice’s warm, violet light glowed through her skin. “Besides, you more than paid me back with all the hits you took from Drogan. We’re even.” Dawn patted Howard’s shoulder on her way to the service lift. She pressed the switch to call it. “Your grandfather knew my great-aunt. I… want to talk about that more, later.”
“Of course,” said Howard. When the doors slid open, he added, “And I’m sorry, too.”
“Yeah,” said Dawn, before she stepped inside. She could hear that he meant it, though she had no idea the true weight of it. She didn’t know what he’d done with the DBS of his grandfather, Tim, or Sheba’s for that matter. She hadn’t seen the lab beneath Nereid’s Slushpit.
“There she is,” said Morgan. Her mechanical finger uncurled at a massive steel ship. Chrysum jets propelled it into the earthbound SkyLine. “The SS Arcadia.”
“Good. Though, it doesn’t look like all the high-tech expensive fantasy you promised,” mused the Captain. Morgan chewed the human part of her lips. Her thin patience was almost see-through now, after a week with this insufferable crew Marcus had chartered for her. Morgan understood how hard it was to find a scrapper ship with a registered cover. Still, there was only so much she could take.
“You’ll have to forgive appearances. The Arcadia took a battering from our very own Drogan. I assure you it’s still stocked with the all the gooey, Chrysum filling you could want,” Morgan told the Captain, “Which is why we have to strike now.”