Microcosm

[Sombs]

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July 27th, 824 - Omicron Kappa

"Cloak-to-Arclight test successful. Engine room, let every thing cool down, then prepare for the last test, Cloak-to-Heavy-Mortar. Same procedure, you know what to do." Almost fourty minutes had passed since the beginning of the first test. Cloak-to-Solaris was successful, Cloak-to-Point-Defense was successful, Cloak-to-Arclight was successful. No anomalies. Reason for Captain and Commander to be in a good mood.

"Aye Commander," the Kusarian replied and moved away from the camera, back to the console.

Ezrael sat in his Captain's seat, looking at the screen, at the power core in the engine room. Only a few shells of metal hid the hybrid of human, gammuian and nomad technology. He never understood how APM was able to do this. The artificial growth of nomad crystals, wiring from nomad to human technology, the almost snowflake-like gammuian constructs. The purple beams, like pillars, bent at APM's will. Sometimes he wondered if the nomad parts used by APM were really dead. Valery had a reason to dislike the Apahanta, calling it a graveyard. The Captain was caught in thoughts, only to be interupted when Sherry started talking to him. "How is your girlfriend?"

Blinking, he slowly turned his head towards Sherry, who happened to be giving him her full attention. "Fine, I guess? Didn't see her in a while, she isn't a fan of the good night calls. Mostly because of the time differences all over Sirius," he explained, before looking back at the main screen.

It made Sherry sigh. "And how often do you call each other?"

"I think I called her three days ago? Not sure." In fact, he was hesitant about calling her since the latest calls with Nancy. Shifting around a little in his seat, he licked slightly in a quick fashion about his lower lip, then noticed Sherry was still looking at him, catching it from the corner of his eye. Slightly startled, he grinned awkwardly at her. "What?"

"Everything fine between you two?" she asked him, leaning more on the armrest of her chair, in his direction. "Did you two have some trouble?"

"No, not at all." Yes. "We're fine." No. "She just enjoys her privacy from time to time. Maren is a pretty interverted woman," he explained, not knowing how Maren was showing her repertoire of horribly racist jokes against Kusarians at Liberty's capital planet. "Why do you ask?"

"I wonder how it affects your relationship, the fact you're spending so much time on the Apahanta recently. For how long now? Two months? Before that, the seat you're sitting in was mostly empty, as you were with her." Her typical pokerface felt to him like it was piercing into his face. "I'd have expected you two to be all over each other, thinking about how you claim to be in love with her. Did that change?"

Yes. "No, not at all," he replied, sitting more upright in his seat, cutting the feed to the engine room with a button on his armrest console. "We've been in a spa recently, Maren and I, together with some friends. It was really nice. I mean, every relationship has waves of highs and lows, but we're currently at a high."

"Ah. So there is no reason why you don't call her more often?"

He chuckled at that. "Are you just pulling a Lindsay on me?" Giving him a lopsided look, she blinked in confusion, first not understanding, then comprehending. Lindsay Camillo was the ship's counselor, who had a tendency to ask the questions nobody wanted really to answer, as it would deguard them. "My relationship with Maren is blooming, don't worry. I think the only issue with how it currently is the lack of daily sex and the fact I can't prevent her from eating chips and chocolate. She lost a few pounds since we're together, but I know she eats the same garbage they eat on Crete, smearing it in two layers on her buns."

Not knowing what he was refering to, she blinked at him, without any further expression. "Chili Sausage?"

"Nutella."

A beep interrupted their conversation, as the engine room requested a reestablishing of the previous feed. Grinning at Sherry, he used a button to do exactly that, turning his head to the main screen. "We're ready, Captain, Commander. Recuperators have been replaced, so we're ready to start," Asato sounded, a little bit exhausted. There was a bit of sweat on his forehead, causing his front hair to partially stick with the skin above his eyes.

"Bridge to all stations, send a signal to the bridge when ready," Sherry ordered, looking at the small screens next to the main screen, as almost instantly all red areas turned green. "Alright, proceed. Charge cloaking device. Ten minutes, then decloak and relay energy to the heavy mortar weapon group. Status updates every thirty seconds." Followed by a nod, the kusarian engineer returned to his console, initiating the test procedure. Turning her head to Ezrael, she was hesitant about continuing their talk they just had. Before she could say anything, she watched him standing up.

"I'll fetch an apple from the canteen and then go to the engine room. You have the bridge, Commander," Ezrael said, smirking as he walked over to her, patting her shoulder before he moved to leave the bridge.

"You leave me alone on the bridge?" she asked in faux offense, not even looking back at him but at the console to her right. She heard the automated door open for him.

"Yeah, before you're starting with the girly talk again," he sounded as he left, quickly followed by the door shutting. That way, he left her alone on the bridge, with only a few KSRs there. Nevertheless, she had to smile.

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The engine room. The place where the technologies of humans, gammuians and nomads culminated into the powerful AP-605940 power core. Incredibly powerful, incredibly hard to handle and thus never working at full capacity. Something that got changed with the AP-609. The Apahanta however was unique because of that, and the alterations done by the IRG and Livadia. Ezrael sat on a metal crate, biting into his apple while the rest of the crew was operating the consoles, checking all the monitors for even the slightest anomaly.

"Alright, ten minutes passed. Engineering to bridge, we're uncloaking now. Apahanta, reassign energy from the cloaking device to the heavy mortar weapon group once the decloaking sequence has finished!" Asato was visibly tensed up, sweating even more by now. Ezrael saw it and decided to walk over to him, taking another bite of the apple.

"Decloaking sequence complete," the synthetic voice of the Apahanta AI sounded all over the ship. Some things were moving now all around them, as energy was diverted to other systems. Other packed cables with glowing lables were lighting up. The temperature in the engine room was rising slightly, while the life support systems were running to counter it. Ezrael put a gloved hand on Asato's shoulder.

"Keep calm, Toru. Everything is fine, nothing will go wrong," Ezrael said quietly. "Take a deep breath, exhale and then focus again. Nothing bad will happen. You need to signal that to the other people of your team, too."

"Aye, Captain," Asato gave him back, keeping his eyes on the screens of the console. Listening to him, he inhaled audibly, then exhaled, then smirked for a moment. Removing his hand from the kusarian shoulder, Ezrael bit off the lower end of the apple core, chewing on it while looking at the other people. There was the rather young Annie Reese, next to her was Jeff Powell, who was mentoring her. At another console, Insa Bockmeyer was keeping track of all the screens. Ezrael knew they all were slightly stressed under the current circumstances. The heavy mortars used incredible amounts of energy. If something would go wrong, they wouldn't just lose a few energy relais or a turret. "Everything good so far, heavy mortar weapon group is charging within normal parameters."

"Good. Target the first buoy and fire when ready," Sherry sounded over the internal speakers.

"Captain, Commander, the weapon group is charging fast than expected," Asato said, gulping audibly. "By two seconds."

Turning around to the screen at the wall, which was showing Sherry on the bridge, who was busy checking it on her console next to her seat, Ezrael took a few steps closer to it, then looked at Asato. "That's good."

"No, Captain, it's not. The recuperators can't cool down fast enough if we the charge-up is sped up," Asato explained, typing on the console.

"And why does it charge faster?"

From behind them, Sherry answered over the speakers again. "The cloaking device diverts energy to the weapon group. However the cloak shouldn't receive any energy by now. Apahanta, decrease energy diversion to the cloaking device to zero! Gunnery, fire when ready."

That wasn't good, and Ezrael walked over back to Asato, looking at the console. The kusarian was significantly more stressed now. Especially since the Apahanta didn't react. They heard a loud sound as the first mortar shot was away, followed two seconds later by the second mortar on the other side of the ship. "It's only the right one. Why?"

Highly focused on the interface, Asato just shook his head in a slight increase of panic. "The Apahanta doesn't react, the manual changes are overwritten by the ship's AI."

"Apahanta, disable auto-adjustments of the energy diversion, allow manual input only," Ezrael ordered his ship, looking at a blueprint of the energy relais system. Yet the ship didn't listen. "Apahanta, Captain Ezrael Vertiga speaking. Disable auto-adjustments of the energy diversion. That is an order."

But the ship didn't react. "Nothing, Captain. We need to abort this."

"I agree. Apahanta, abort cloak-to-heavy-mortar test. Power down all weapons and cloaking device. All other systems on standby." It got warm in the engine room. No reaction from the ship's AI. "What the fuck is going on here..."

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