Jack and Sarah climbed down a series of ladders, moving their way from the crew compartment deck down to the engine room at the aft of the ship. For the first time that day, Jack began to feel pressure gnawing at the back of his mind. This was their final chance to finish the restoration that he and Sarah had begun plotting and designing for three years. Either they finished the job on this journey, and finished it right, or the entire project was going to fall apart, and they’d receive failing grades. They would both prove their worth as officers and graduate with honors, or they’d leave the school as infantry, consigned to grunt work and guarding VIPs. Or worse, sitting in offices and processing data. Data that they both knew that no one in the Earth United Government considered to be of any importance whatsoever.
Indeed, after the Armistice of 2110 was signed, and the Omegans pledged to leave Earth forever untouched, the prevailing sentiment against the EAD had begun to turn negative. “No one,” Captain Morrison told students on their first day, “likes to be reminded of the wars. Not the First Period, and now not the Second. So every time these people see a uniform, all they see is death. The death of their families, friends, co-workers. We serve as a uniformed reminder of loss and pain. They also see a reminder of a time when there was compulsory military service planet-wide.”
“So be prepared,” he said in a stony tone, “to be hated by those you’ve taken an oath to protect.”
Jack listened to that first lecture and felt a great swell of anger. How quickly people forgot. Only twenty-eight years removed from that treaty and the EUG had basically relegated the military to the sidelines, a small joke of its former glory. Where once a proud force of men and women had stood to protect their world, now it was a fractioned, marginalized band. Unappreciated. Undermanned. Ignored.
And those few that joined? It was just as Jack’s mother had said. Too few were Earth’s best and brightest. Only the extreme few like the crew working on the restoration gave him hope for the safety of Earth’s future.
As they reached the engine room, Jack peeked his head through the door slowly. During his last visit down into the ship’s guts, he had rammed his face into a barrier of cables and cords that Richard had left strung across a gantry. That was the quintessential Park move; get so deeply involved with a minute component that he would forget everything else. That led to a broken arm the first time the group boarded the old ship, and a lacerated chest during their second. Richard had also managed to cut open his upper torso with a laser torch during one seemingly routine repair. But his singular focus spread the injury bug past himself, as Jack could attest. Kate and Gina had also managed injuries in trips down to work with him as well.
“Richard Park,” Sarah observed, “is a danger to himself and others. He’d have made a great assassin hundreds of years ago… if he didn’t wind up killing himself before the target.”
Jack and Sarah moved gingerly through the compartment, making sure to take note of anything that looked out of place. Finally, turning a corner, they spotted their classmate using a hydraulic spanner to lock a covering back into place. They waited until he finished before speaking, not wanting to disrupt his concentration, fearing what could happen as a result.
“Hey guys,” Richard said, noticing them as he set the tool down. “Just finished fine-tuning the drive capacitors. Once we get this tub up to speed, it should remain pretty stable.”
Jack grinned. “Really? Cause I was hoping it would feel like we were going to shake apart.”
Richard snorted. “Ha! You guys want a vibrating bed, make your own!” Jack and Sarah locked into place, not knowing what to say. They had done their best to hide their physical relationship, thinking no one else knew. Park waited for a laugh, then realized that the discomfort level in the room had risen. “Oh. I see. You guys thought that your little deal was a secret,” he paused, “well, it isn’t. Let’s move on shall we?”
Sarah and Jack gave a subtle nod, and Richard stood up from his crouch. “Okay, so where we’re at today… basically, we have one major thing left to complete: the shielding and armor system.”
“What needs to be done?” Sarah asked.
Richard motioned for the pair to follow him, and they began walking towards another section of the engine room. “Okay, Sarah, you designed the basic principles of the shielding system, so you know the basic deal: the ship has its ‘running shield’, a low-powered force field through a front projector which prevents a piece of space dust from ripping through the ship like a bullet while we’re at speed.”
Sarah nodded. “Which we power through the use of small particle collectors near the engines. The primary issue used to be running that power from the aft to the fore of the ship in an efficient manner, but my biogel power transmission system nearly eradicated signal degradation.”
The accident prone engineer nodded. “Right. The problem now is an issue of overload. The biogel packs are prone to problems when we use the secondary shielding system. It’s like they freak out, which causes them to shut down…”
“Leaving us vulnerable in an entirely different way,” Jack chimed in. “Damn.”
Park shrugged. “And that’s your system, Jack. The quantum-level ablative armor is fantastic; an energy weapon like a laser cannon won’t do a whole lot to this ship; impacts will smear and dissipate across the hull effortlessly. But those energy bursts will overload the biogel as the system is designed now. Mind you, a physical impact like a missile strike should be fine; that particular quantum alignment on the armor doesn’t disperse that type of energy.”
Sarah let out an exasperated sigh. “Damnit. Richard, how long have you known about this? I can’t believe you’re just telling us this now!”
“Hey,” he barked at her, “don’t blame me for this stuff. Remember last night’s testing? Well, when I came in this morning and was checking everything over, I found this.” He reached into his tool case and pulled out a biogel pack. What once was a blazing green mass of cells was charcoal black. “Dead. D.E.A.D. Dead. I’d have told you earlier, but you apparently overslept.”
Sarah shot Jack an angry glance. “I guess we’d better get to work on fixing this.” He nodded at her.
“I guess we’d better,” he said, mindful of his tone. “We only have two days.”
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