The next thirty-six hours were a complete blur to the entire crew. Shortly after their meeting broke up, Absolution was pulled into Actium’s launch bay where hundreds of tech crews descended on her from all around. Each team had a particular mission to accomplish before they could return to their other, already overwhelming duties, and they worked at break neck speed. Within the first twelve hours, Cargo Bay One had been almost completely transformed into a living space and armory for the ship’s new marine compliment.
In the subsequent twenty-four hours, nearly every other ship’s system had received a major overhaul, catching up on months of back maintenance that hadn’t been performed due to lack of time, money, or both. In addition, the new docking collar installation was nearly finished and the tech crews and marines would be testing it under simulated combat conditions within the next few hours.
Throughout all of this, Michaels had been the center of attention. As the ships engineer, as well as the person who had personally modified most of the systems well beyond design specs, his knowledge was invaluable. DSF personnel were coming to him for permission so often that he’d completely lost track of what they had removed or installed. He kept wondering how long it would take to figure out exactly what was in his engines now. Somewhere in the middle of this confusion, two DSF tech introduced themselves. They would be accompanying the ship out into the field.
“As I was saying, I’m Technician Second Class Gerald and this is Technician Apprentice Larson. We’re really looking forward to working on board the Absolution. Everything is always so predictable on a DSF ship; it’ll be nice to work with some different tech for a change. You won’t have to worry about us though. We’ll stay out of your hair.”
“Uh… that’s, uh, that’s great. I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?” Michaels asked, as he pulled himself out from the bottom of a thruster control console. He found himself staring up at two friendly looking techs. Both were dressed in standard technician coveralls, although theirs were significantly cleaner than those belonging to their comrades that had so recently infested Absolution. Gerald was taller, pushing six feet, though not quite making it. While he was by no means fat, his general lack of muscle tone made it obvious that he was not accustomed to much physical labor. His sandy hair was slightly out of regulation, as was the mustache that adorned his round face. Larson on the other hand was something completely unexpected. Under different circumstances, Michaels would have described her as stunning. The coveralls did nothing to accentuate her figure. Her face was a bit chubby, given her build, and it was marked by more than a few grease smudges. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun, though a few strands had worked themselves loose as a result of the day’s labors.
“Anyways, I kind of wanted to ask you a question. We were told we’d have complete access to the entire ship, but we were just over at Cargo Bays Three and Four, and they’re locked by some kind of biometric sensor. I suppose everyone is entitled to their privacy and all, but I just thought it was curious that those two particular bays would be locked. I mean what could you guys possibly have in there that you wouldn’t want people getting into?”
Michaels began to sweat as he clambered to his feet and struggled to come up with some sort of semi-plausible answer. “Well we, uh, what I mean is that before you guys showed up, we were transporting some high end goods for the ummm… planetary governor of Star’s End. We just want to keep his stuff safe until this is all over, that’s all.” He hoped that the panicked look on his face wasn’t too telling.
“Star’s End? Can’t say I’ve ever head of the place, but then again, it’s not like I’ve been to every little backwater in the whole DS. Have you been? To Star’s End I mean. What’s it like there, if you don’t mind me asking? This governor must be some kind of serious big-wig if you guys have his stuff behind a lock like that. I’m no expert, but that looked like a Pepperton model XM82 bioscanner. Ok, maybe I am a bit of an expert, but that’s beside the point. You know, I bet Captain Lawrence wouldn’t mind if you unlocked it for just a moment, just long enough for us to take a quick peek. I mean it’s not like we’re gonna steal anything and besides, we never get to see how the other half live. I bet you he’s got some really cool tech in there.” The more Gerald talked, the more Michaels was certain that a stroke was in his near future. The mild panic that had been steadily growing with each question was now full blown terror. His only comfort lay in knowing that if he did have a stroke, it would spare his being torn apart by Lawrence.
Right about the time Michaels was mentally writing his own eulogy, Larson finally spoke up. “Oh come on, Gerald, knock it off. Can’t you see you’ve got him completely terrified? Time to fess up.”
Michaels barely heard Larson’s words, and on a conscious level was completely unable to understand them past the riot that was going on in his brain. Thankfully, though rather abruptly, he was snapped back to reality by a good natured, but vigorous slap on the back from Gerald.
“I’m sorry, buddy, I got a little carried away there. I had no intention of scaring you half to death. I already know what’s in the bays. My understanding is that you’ve managed to jury-rig a set of plasma cannons off an old, heavy cruiser. Am I right?”
Twenty seconds earlier Michaels had thought he understood the maximum extent of panic of which he was capable. Suddenly, however he suddenly realized that he had only just begun to tap that particular well. Through near hyperventilation he managed to sputter out “I… I can explain, um you see…well it was, ummmmm…I didn’t want to, uh, I mean, I didn’t want to do it, but…”
“Let me stop you there.” Larson said coolly as she put a hand Michaels’ shoulder. “We aren’t here to bust you. In fact, truth be told, I think that little setup you’ve got going on in there is probably part of the reason the Admiral recruited you guys. You pack way more punch than a ship your size should, and it’s concealed, so anybody dumb enough to pick a fight with you will be in for a rude awakening. If they survive the first salvo, that is.”
Gerald gave Michaels another exuberant slap on the back. “What I’d love to know is how you managed to run those things. I figure you’ve got some dedicated generators inside the bays. Unless you’ve done some impressive mods to the ones we’ve already seen, they just aren’t putting out enough juice to power even one of those cannons on top of the rest of the ship’s systems. I also can’t figure out how you’re controlling the damn things. Typically a heavy cruiser has an independent fire control system. Even given that you’re only running a fraction of the firepower that a heavy cruiser usually has at its disposal, you’d still need some kind of dedicated computer to manage the system.”
Finally managing to shake the worst of his ailment, Michaels croaked out a response “You’re not too far off actually. We managed to, uh, acquire an old fire control computer off a decommissioned Daedalus-class destroyer. It took some work, but I managed to get it to interface with the cannons.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me!” Both Larson and Gerald were plainly in shock. Larson was the first to realize her mouth was hanging open. “Those two systems should be completely incompatible! Even if you managed to get them to communicate, which I again stress should be impossible, there’s no way you could control the cannons with a piece of tech that would have been twenty years out of date when those cannons were designed, let alone built. Hell, that thing is probably older than I am!”
“I did say it took some work.” Michaels said, as a sheepish smile crept across his face.
Gerald broke out into a hearty laugh from which it took him nearly a minute to recover. “That’s probably the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard.” He sucked in a breath, letting it out in a deep sigh. “Well however you managed to pull that off, we’ve got a present for you.” He pulled out a data slate and passed it to Michaels. Upon inspection, Michaels found it contained an approved requisition form for a brand new fire control computer.
“We weren’t sure we’d get it from Fleet Requisition in time. You know how they can be. It’s state of the art, real bleeding edge kind of stuff. It’s probably overkill for our needs, but I’d rather not take any chances on this crazy-ass mission. Once we get it properly installed, it should boost the efficiency of your cannons several times over. I’d give you exact numbers, but I haven’t the faintest idea how your cannons are working in the first place, so it’s a bit tough to determine a baseline for comparison. The system itself will be onboard in about an hour and we’ll get right to work on it. We’ve also got a few tech who’d like to take a look at your generators and see if you can’t tune them up as well.”
As the last of his terror faded away Michaels looked at the two techs with newfound respect. “You know, for fleet tech monkeys, you guys aren’t all that bad.”
Therefore I Geek 
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