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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/LordCoale on 2024-10-31 02:23:56+00:00.

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“Hyper translation in three minutes, Captain.” Angela Chan’s voice broke the silence on the Star Wanderer’s bridge.

“Thanks, Angie,” Lin replied absently.

DTL could afford to hire the best crews and did. That meant the Star Wanderer’s crew was one of the best in human space. She knew the crew could do their jobs without being micromanaged. She kept track of the ship’s position and could see the countdown timer on the main holotank. But it’s the navigator’s job to make the announcement.

“As soon as we hit n-space, comm HQ and report in. Then contact System Control to get our route and parking instructions,” Lin ordered.

Technically, she should contact SysCon first, but the report to DTL headquarters was a data-only packet. System Control coordinated all the traffic within the Sol system, from the smallest single person pleasure craft to the largest supercargo carriers. The Wanderer fell somewhere at the top end of the tonnage but was nowhere near the largest cargo ship. It wasn’t even the largest cargo ship DTL owned.

“Roger,” Helen Donovan replied.

“Translation in ten… nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… dropping now,” Gabriel Marshall, the helmsman announced. The last two words were completely unnecessary. Dropping out of hyperspace made every human nauseous to varying degrees. Even the most experienced spacers felt it.

“Got our navigation instructions from SysCon,” Helen said. “And Grand-mère says welcome home. When we get to Terra, we can park the ship at the DTL hub on Olympus Station. Turn it over to Engineering and we are on leave, with an invite to HQ for a welcome home party.”

“Wooo hooo. Leave and a party?” Marshall asked. “I am so excited. I need me some down time.”

“Got that right,” Helen agreed. “I am going to the Seychelles. I got a date with some waves.”

Helen grew up on an island world and was more at home in the water and space than on land. She was also a competition level surfer and lived on a surfboard when on leave. The new head engineer, Demetria Vasilopoulos, would probably join her. They were beach buddies and loved to party. Though, with Demetria’s involvement with the Marine gunnery sergeant back in Dal’tari, the engineer was unlikely to join the other woman on the prowl for male companionship.

“What about you, Lin? What are your plans?” Marshall asked.

“Well, my family will be here for Frank’s award ceremony and swearing in. Then we will see him off to the Naval Academy’s accelerated OCS. He’s already a trained, credentialed, and licensed powerplant engineer. He just needs to learn how to be Navy. Then? I don’t know. Maybe go back home. I haven’t been back to New Jiangsu in a few years. I have some new nieces and nephews to meet. Then maybe back to New Damascus to spend time with Tom.”

Lin’s family had declined the offer to travel back to Terra aboard the Wanderer. They’d decided on the Regal Interstellar Lines luxury liner, the Regal Radiance. Frank chose to stay with Lin. He was just not completely comfortable around his new family yet. Lin could have forced him to go with her mother but decided against it.

Frank would be alone at the Academy soon enough. He needed to be among people he knew and trusted, and the Wanderer’s crew had adopted him as soon as he boarded. Lin had put him to work with Demetria, getting his hands dirty while learning the real job of a ship’s powerplant engineer. Theory learned in school was a good foundation, but you needed to work in real ship’s powerplant to get worthwhile experience.

Lin remembered something Oliver and Davis had told her years ago, ‘A combat ready company is not inspection ready, and an inspection ready company is not combat ready.’ Something similar applied to powerplant engineers. People who could quote you the manual could not repair a down-checked plant. People who could repair a down-checked plant with minimal resources had no use for manuals, or the people who could quote them.

Demetria kept him ass deep in repairs and maintenance, running him just a tiny bit ragged. It kept him busy, but it also made him part of the crew, part of a team. It forced him to come out of his shell and work with others. It helped that Demetria was drop dead gorgeous. Most men, and even some women, would go out of their way to please her. Lin had seen it happen so often that she just accepted it. To Demetria’s credit, she was not conceited or self-centered at all.

“I just might join you for the awards ceremony before I go catch some waves,” Helen said. “Frank needs people there to cheer for him. He’s part of the family now.”

Lin smiled at that. She’d come to deeply value the young man, she and was glad that the rest of the Wanderer’s crew had adopted him. He was a good kid. It was about time for the universe to give him a break. And she was going to do her level best to make sure he knew his value from now on.

“I am sure he’d be happy about that,” Lin replied. “Prime Minster Magalhães and Parliament will have the ceremony at Sutton House followed by a reception and dinner. We’ll have to get your name added to the list of guests.”

“You might as well add all of us,” Marshall added. “We all want to be there for him. Besides, when will we ever get the chance to have dinner with the Prime Minister?”

“Yeah,” Angela joined the conversation. “I’ve never even been to the capitol. I mean, I don’t remember ever wanting to go to the capitol. I grew up on Éire, and I never even went to the capitol there. But I am game for something new.”

“You just want the free food,” Marshall grinned and shook his head. “Not that I blame you.”

“Just got a data packet from HQ,” Helen interrupted. “The Wanderer is getting an upgraded hyperdrive and fusion plants. She’s gonna be in drydock for four months. We are on paid leave until she starts getting ready for reacceptance trials.”

“Awesome,” Lin replied. “We all could use the downtime.”

 *******************************************

“The GPX-88 fusion plant is a good design,” Demetria told Frank as they replaced a faulty control board on the powerplant’s antimatter injectors, “and it’s been installed on thousands of ships, but the peripherals leave a lot to be desired. The mag-bottle’s plasma injectors are finicky. They don’t handle power surges well, and a surge can fry their mag-bottle’s control module, which can cause a runaway reaction. This normally isn’t a huge issue, as a runaway can be stopped by killing the fuel feed. It’s an automatic safety feature on all fusion plants. No fuel, no reaction.

“But then that same power surge can cause the fuel feed to get jammed open. If there is damage in just the right spot, the mag-bottle goes runaway and the fuel feed can’t get cut, then it goes boom. Hopefully, you can eject the core before it blows the ship, too.”

“Okay. There is no way Lin would leave that be. So, what did you do to fix it.”

“You got that right. Hand me the test set.”

Frank grabbed the small computer test set from where it was magnetically attached to the bulkhead.

“Thanks. We pulled the injectors and fuel feeds,” she continued, “and replaced them with some from a decommissioned BNT-90. It is older but still found on a lot of battleships. We had to retrofit some stuff, but the 90 is a solid machine. That means it is a proven system designed for abuse. It’s also bigger, which means the injectors are bigger. They can take more abuse.”

“Makes sense. Military stuff is designed to be easy to replace because they can get damaged in battle. But it is mostly hot swapping full assemblies. That makes sense for military ships, but not a cargo ship.”

“You are right. We don’t carry full subassemblies, but we have all the parts that commonly break or wear out. We can repair quite a bit with that. But for the rest, we have a full nano-forge that can print just about anything that we don’t have in stock, at least as long as we have the raw materials.”

“A full nano-forge? That’s an expensive thing to have on a merchant ship.”

Nano-forges are manufacturing foundries capable of machining the hardest alloys to .00005 microns and use nanites to print parts from individual molecules. It can take several days to complete complex assemblies, but they could produce precise parts from scratch.

“We had a ship get stranded once because of a little safety sensor in a mag-bottle containment emitter. That ship did not have the spare part in inventory, and they could not make one. We had to send out another ship with the part.  

“A tiny part barely six centimeters long cost the company almost twenty million dollars in late delivery penalties and overhead. It really pissed of some of the senior leadership. So… Donatienne Pierre put nano-forges on all DTL ships. Yeah, they are expensive, about a million apiece. But we’ll never have that situation again.”

“How many ships does DTL own?” Frank asked.

DTL is not the largest or oldest transtellar shipping company, but it was in the top ten. But it is the only privately owned out of those ten. The fact that they are not beholden to investors meant the owners can spend what they like however they want, no matter how stupid or ridiculous others might think.

“Last count I saw was eighty-two. Most are Star Caravans like the *…

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