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“Good morning, Davyyd,” Lily said pleasantly, stirring her coffee.
The tiredness came through her voice and she sipped at her drink. Most people prefered a wake-up shot in the morning, but her family was old-fashioned and liked a good hot cup.
The Response Officer at the security desk smiled, giving her a mock salute. “Oh, hey Lily. I didn’t expect to see you around this early. Couldn’t sleep?”
“Something like that,” she muttered, looking down into her coffee.
He raised an eyebrow.
She caught the look as her eyes lifted up from her drink. “Oh, fine,” she admitted, both annoyed to be sharing and relieved that she could. “I just think I finally realized what was wrong with that drone’s engine. Fuel feed line thirteen is clogged – it has to be! I’ve checked everything else, and I wrote that off because of the initial scans said it was clear, but sometimes those can be wrong, you know? And since I’ve eliminated every other possibility, that has to be it.”
Davyyd held up his hands. “You’ve convinced me, Lily. It’s the thirteenth feed tube.” He laughed. “I won’t argue drones with you.”
“Sorry,” she replied, laughing at herself now. “It was just bothering me so much that I couldn’t figure out the problem. Then it just came to me while I was showering.”
“So you got up early to come fix it,” Davyyd said.
“Yes,” she agreed, then yawned. “Though damn me, it is too early to be awake . . .”
Davyyd pointed his thumb over his shoulder through the wide doorway. “Well, I took the liberty of logging you in. Have a good one, Lily.”
She walked on, grateful that the drone bays were in a spin-gravity area. She had hated working in the zero-g parts of past ships, the charm of floating wore off very quickly.
Continuing on towards the drone bay, Lily walked by one of the huge transparent titanium windows along the Maria’s Cog‘s flank.
Out there she could see stars, stars, and more stars. The arm of the Milky Way was out of view from this side, the ship was angled so that this window was looking ‘up’ relative to the galactic disk. When she stepped close enough to get a bit of an angle down, she could get a glimpse of the glowing, dusty arms.
The view never failed to please her, even if she’d served in space for most of her life.
Her eyes went back up to the stars, wondering just how many were actually colonized, and what they would look like when, one day, they all were. Because she knew that it would happen, Humans and Dessei and Sepht and all the other known species would just keep spreading until they had planted the seed of life around every star that shone.
Right now, every star near them was just a distant point; the ship had come out of zerospace six hours ago, and glancing down at the main hull she could see the large ring of their zerodrive. It had been retrofitted to the Maria’s Cog ten years ago, and she had proudly served as a workhorse of the Union, transporting supplies to far-flung colonies.
Not every ship got their own zerodrive! Most had to just tag along with a Ringship, or be launched by a gate and caught by another at their destination. She was grateful that the Maria’s Cog didn’t have to rely on anyone else; her worst nightmare was getting trapped in zerospace.
Because any ship that stayed in there longer than a week never came out. It was something of an urban myth, she knew, but no one ever denied it, either. There were stories of people staying in much longer, some lone researcher had claimed to have been under for a month, once. But none of them had any evidence, and even the best theories of neo-physicists entirely broke down after five days.
She sipped her coffee. Maybe you carcinized into a crab, she thought, trying to turn her dark thoughts into something amusing. Who could bring a ship out with claws, after all?
“Lily, I didn’t know you were on this shift,” she heard.
Turning, she smiled. “Oh, hi Reggie, I didn’t even notice you!”
“You seemed like you were lost in space,” he said, amused.
“A little. But yeah – I’m clocking in. I’m not scheduled, but I think I know what’s keeping drone 237’s engine from functioning. I just had to come down and see if I was right.”
“Oh, right on,” he said, starting on deeper into the drone maintenance bay. She followed him.
Entering the bay, she waved to some others, who smiled and waved back. They’d all been working together for some time, and she felt grateful to have such a good batch of co-workers. All competent and they just hit it off well.
“. . . we’ll be drawing in the net in ten hours, anyway,” she heard Lt. Kajetán say. “And we’re out in the middle of void. The watcher-net is a formality, don’t fret it too much.”
She could see the frustration on Amédée’s face. “But the procedure is a full net whenever we’re in realspace, sir. What if-“
“I know. And we are following it. I’m just saying that we don’t need to go crazy with it,” the lieutenant reassured her.
Lily leaned onto the console, sipping her coffee. “Is something wrong?”
The Lieutenant looked up at her, but did not rebuke her for butting in. “Amédée’s just trying to tweak the watcher net again,” he said.
“I think I’ve got an improved pattern for them, given we’re short on drones,” Amédée said emphatically. “I was working it out last night, and I’m just worried that something could slip through given our current pattern.”
“Technically,” Lt. Kajetán noted, “something could slip through while we reorder the net. Just saying.”
Amédée let out an annoyed sound. “I’ll try to create a reorg pattern real quick that will account for that . . .”
“Tell you what,” Lily said. “I think I know what has 237 not working. Half an hour, I can have it out there, then I can take a crack at the other non-functionals. Hopefully we can have a full proper net in an hour, sound good?”
“Yes!” Amédée said.
The Lieutenant smiled. “Sounds good. But I didn’t even think you were scheduled today, were you?”
“It’s some extra work,” Lily said. “But I’m happy to see if my thought was right!”
She stepped away from the two, heading towards the drone racks.
Even a supply ship like the Maria’s Cog had dozens of kinds of drones just for space work; repair drones for the ship, repair drones for other drones, scanner drones, net drones to watch for debris, defender drones for destroying said debris, probe drones and so many other specialized kinds . . .
They varied from the size of a suitcase for the smallest to five meters long. The net drones were among the largest, packed with all sorts of sensors that favored reliability and low power consumption over small size.
Going to 237, met by a number of small ship-board drones to help, she accessed its system and began to open up the engine compartment to check the fuel injectors.
She could still hear Amédée and Kajetán talking.
“. . . okay, so re-deployment should only give us a tiny window of vulnerability. The odds are insignificant that there will be trouble,” she heard Amédée say.
“It does look like a good net,” Kajetán agreed. “Redeployment in progress . . .” A few moments later; “Done. I hope you won’t be insulted if I run a check to make sure there’s no gaps.”
“Of course not, we have-” Amédée cut off.
“What is it?” Lily called out.
Amédée yelled back. “Drone 399 just winked out.”
“It’s probably just a stray cosmic ray causing a shutdown,” Kajetán said. “Lily, could you go to its rack and hit the reset? It’s quicker than doing it from here.”
“Sure,” she said. 399 was stored in the secondary storage room, but she was near there anyway.
Approaching the rack it normally rested in, she hit the reset switch.
“How’s that?” she called out.
“Great!” Kajetán called back.
Amédée spoke again, her voice so quiet with distance that Lily could barely hear it. “Kaj, do you see-“
Then there was a noise and everything went dark.
Other Terrestrial 
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