CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
LAST MINUTE
Solar Storage Bay
'James, last load here for you, where do you want it?' asked a crewman with a levitating cargo pallet.
'Just in that corner,' James said, pointing to the spot he wanted it. He was bending over a piece of equipment on the floor, sorting out parts.
Two security guards stood by the doors to the bay, looking rather uncomfortable at the unexpected change in plans, but keeping it to themselves after having been told to let this pass.
James didn't know what the Captain told them, but he knew what he'd been told, and knew that his task was a vital one.
He heard the crewman drop the pallet to the ground and leave. A few minutes later, the communication panel by his workstation chimed.
James stood up and walked towards it. His body ached at the standing, still recovering from the incident that claimed Samuel Jennings life.
James sat down in his chair and turned on the communication system. 'Hello. James Bennet here.'
'James, it's Mark, we're ready to separate your bay from the command links. Do you need anything else?'
'The last of the supplies were brought in a few minutes ago. I'm ready to go. Are we still on schedule?'
'Separation in T-minus 30 minutes. You'll hear a klaxon sound before we cut you loose from the ship.'
'Alright, go ahead and sever the links, I'll run through the check of the bay's systems and get one of my aides to report back.'
'Roger that, James. Bridge out.'
James stood up and turned to the people gathered in the bay. 'Listen up ladies and gentlemen! We will be switching to our own systems now, the bridge is separating us from the ship's systems.'
The lights went off and then came back on again as the bay's own generators took over.
'There will be a momentary lapse in your quality of living, so please bear with us,' he said to a few chuckles.
'That said, we still have plenty of work to do. We've got to get ourselves ready to leave the nest.'
Bridge
'Commander Jona!' called out a bridge officer from her station,
'What is it, Lieutenant?' Mark said as he walked over.
'Something odd. Just as we were disconnecting the Solar Storage Bay from the power grid, a power surge came up the line towards it. It was literally three seconds after we severed the link.'
'How bad was it?'
'Melted the junction to the bay. Fried the automated systems that severed the link. If it had still been linked, it would have ended badly for us.'
Mark put a hand to his head and massaged his forehead. 'Thank you. Let's hope we get landed before the ship falls apart. Keep me posted.'
'Aye, sir.'
Sabotage attempt failed.
Power surge generation took too long.
Links to bay offline.
External interaction no longer possible.
Solution: use internal interaction.
Deploy Ayla into the bay.
A plan will be needed for sabotage.
Generating a plan to incapacitate James Bennet using Ayla as an agent.
...
...
Plan generated.
Execute plan.
AUTHORS COMMENTARY
POTENTIAL SPOILERS, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK
It's not the future unless something levitates. Hence the levitating cargo pallet. Honestly, that was the whole point of throwing that in, giving a kind of rough idea of the tech level of the story. It's a bit of a grab bag over all.
I suppose here is as good as any place to go over it.
We have faster than light travel and communication, though with caveats attached to those. As part of that travel, we have the Guardian cores which are necessary for the multidimensional math required for the jump drives operation. We have the cybernetics of the Advocates which allow for their roles to be filled, and giving them superhuman abilities. We also have anti-gravity tech and the ability to levitate things.
Some of these techs, like the faster than light communication, travel, and anti-gravity, serve a purpose to simplify the storytelling on my part. By handwaving those things away, I don't have to worry about explaining things like gravity being caused by acceleration, or how communication would work if a ship can go faster than light but signals can't. I picked a tech level and basis that I could most easily work with, while still allowing for me to have tech based limitation to force the pace of the story.
It's a bit of a balance. In many ways it's a lot like building a magic system in a fantasy story. How much power you give it, or what restrictions you put on it will radically change the shape of the story.
In many instances, the capabilities of the story teller do dictate these things. It's like teleportation in Star Trek, it was cheaper than doing shuttle shots all the the time.
The reverse can also be true of course, again with Star Trek, the prevalence of the holodeck in later series allowed the show writers to explore themes and ideas that would otherwise have been closed off to them because of their high tech environment.
The whole concept of defining your setting is a really fascinating one, and frightfully deep to boot. It seems good to me to leave it at what I've said, namely that my chosen technology was both to allow the story, and to simplify it.
Speaking of the story, Exo missed his move by mere seconds! Don't you just hate it when that happens? I guess he'll need a new plan. Good thing he's got a spare puppet kicking around. Normally he wouldn't risk Ayla, but this is kind of important.
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