Thinking the tour would happen after Seabourne's trip to the medical bay, Scotty just nodded along to what the oddly dressed captain was saying. Then Seabourne just kept talking - before missing out in crucial information, Scotty whips out his personal device and starts up the voice-to-text application and kept it close to Seabourne. I'll write my adjustment report based on what I get from this tour and my own observations. This should be enough information for me to sort out... once the lad is done.
Partway through Seabourne's rather informative and flawless speech, Scotty looks down to check to see the application is still running. Having a red flashing icon in the corner tell him that it is, and that he has nothing to worry about. During this moment, Seabourne stopped in his tracks and paused for a moment. Did he see something? A sound? I didn't hear anything. Then Seabourne continued as if he was frozen in time, and simply resumed what he was doing. Perhaps actually paying attention to what the lad is saying instead of relying on what my device picks up is a good idea. The Medical Bay doors slide open and two men walk in. Seabourne goes looking through the cabinets while Scotty examines the tight room they walked into.
"This reminds me... those lads at MFE teach first aid, right? Might be a good idea to get some basic training."
Scotty looks around more, and records all the small details that would make a great Infirmary on board the NX-01. Seabourne's eyes stare at Scotty until they lock contact. Once they do, his hand was outstretched with a cylinder on top.
"Be a dear and stab me with this somewhere that isn't terribly painful?"
Seabourne falls limp and proceeds to collapse to the floor.
"Holy shit!"
The NX-01 has braved battles and stayed alive in warzones during Scotty's time on board. It all seems normal when you witness vessels get destroyed in space... until you witness another human being fall to the floor right in front of you. Scotty shakily checks his device and pauses the application. It's 3:13pm... oh god... it's getting real close... Can I do it? I don't know... I'm shaking and the lad is going to die if I don't do something. I've had zero training in the medical field. No amount of panic and stress could get him to come up with a safe way of delivering the epinephrine. Scotty fumbles around to get the shot ready in his hand... he looks at Seabourne's motionless body and tries to decide where to poke him. Arms? No... Legs? Also no... where?! Time is running out! Remembering his little joke about shooting Seabourne's backside when Scotty broke the main viewer, he decides that's where he's gonna do it. He won't notice that, and I'm under pressure. No one is here to help me and I've just gotta do it. A few hasty quick breaths, one hand covering his eyes, the other gripping the shot like a knife... Scotty stabs Seabourne's backside.
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Godspeed, Pilots.
"Oh, Mr Scotty, you didn't tell me this was one of THOSE cruises. I would have brought the emerald green boxers had I known. That way I'm not out of uniform if you know what I mean..."
Seabourne sat up on the floor and gazed around the scene, noticing the smashed grapefruit.
"Huh, didn't know the crew infirmary was rated for masectomies. In any event, we best be moving on. I imagine that shot has a prophylactic effect, which is doubly good if it's one of those kinds of cruises."
He winked at Scotty with both eyes simultaneously, which was disconcertingly somehow different from a blink.
"Onward and upwards! We'll take a manlift back to more civilized country," said Seabourne as they left the infirmary and took a left in the corridor. "One aspect to note is that orbital ships are designed with gravity in mind. Only engineering has zero-g work accommodations, mostly under the assumption that if things are going wrong the first thing repair crews will do is reestablish the artificial fields. Of course, given how deep those systems are in the ship, anything powerful enough to take out gravity is also probably powerful enough to crush an Enterprise class like an insolent walnut. There are emergency bulkheads to seal off sections of the ship, of course. Each stateroom can likewise be locked down, but that really only delays the inevitable. If you're in house space, there's enough air to last you until a patrol comes along. If you're elsewhere, c'est la vie as our Gallic friends would say."
The pair arrived at a manlift, a 3 foot wide hole in the ground and ceiling with a long chain of handles and small platforms continuously moving up on a vertical conveyer belt. It's twin was doing the opposite duty next to it. Seabourne grabbed a handle when it was at shoulder height and stepped onto the next foothold as it pulled him up.
"Mind the gap, or you'll find yourself getting a rather intimate tour of three decks of the Orlando simultaneously, and we are NOT dressed for that kind of party!"
Seabourne rises from the floor and Scotty breaks from his quick breathing and panic-influenced pose and smiles at Seabourne.
"Oh my god! You right bastard, you're okay!"
After the awkward moment of blinking at Scotty, the two make their way forward and the app was resumed on Scotty's device. Before Seabourne spoke, Scotty can see that this area of the ship is very familiar. Following the same engineering design principles of the NX-01, Scotty gets excited about finally getting a deep education of the Enterprise-Class engineering rooms. Keeping his device close to Seabourne, he highlights the texts describing the inner systems, zero-g environments and bulkheads. As the two made it to the manlift,
"Mind the gap, or you'll find yourself getting a rather intimate tour of three decks of the Orlando simultaneously, and we are NOT dressed for that kind of party!"
A very subdued groan comes from Scotty as he hears more ludicrous words from Seabourne. The lad may be dressed for fun, I sure as hell am not. Scotty positions himself identical to Seabourne on the lift, and gets taken upwards. Not familiar with the engineering of a manlift, he makes a small note about installing a couple on the new vessel.
"This magnificent vessel does look beautiful on the inside. A shame we cannot take a deeper look at the systems closer to the centre of engineering. Since we're already on route to the ice fields, I really don't want to mess with anything. Are there schematics I'm able to study? Surely there's a terminal somewhere I can download a copy from?"
Where Seabourne steps off the lift, Scotty follows soon after. Seabourne turns to face Scotty as he hops off the lift, finger in the air and an expression ready for a response to Scotty's question.
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Godspeed, Pilots.
"I'm a hospitality man, Mr. Scotty, I live to serve. To auxiliary damage control! Normally you have to book the behind-the-scenes tour WEEKS in advance to see this kind of thing. You're lucky we have a spot open today due to a last minute cancellation."
Seabourne hung a left going down what would have been a rather lovely two story promenade but was currently just a state of flux. A plaza like area full of stacked couches looked out through windows that spanned the two decks. A clear change in tint about halfway down revealed how far the window washers got before the alarms went off. Shops catering to every need imaginable flanked the inner walls of the ship. Some were still stocked, some where just signage, others were bare bulkheads, full of possibility.
"Orlando's undergoing a 5 year refit to freshen things up. As tastes change, we swap out passenger amenities as needed. If you do go making modifications, note that these bulkheads ARE structural and can't be moved. The staterooms are rated only to hold a little more than 1 atmosphere, but these dividers double as the ribs of the core of the ship. You can see where the emergency doors can slam down across their fronts. Those are radiation shielded and rated to take much higher than a single atm. They can essentially create a ship within the ship to serve as a safe haven. In practice, I only ever tested them against unruly passengers who started to riot. I did a booze cruise for a world cup match between Bretonia and Rheinland that got WAY too rowdy once. We sealed the shops and adjusted the oxygen mixture until they got sleepy. We pulled that stunt from the bridge, but you can also do it from here!"
The unassuming door had no label, just a small scanner for crew to wave their credentials off to one side. It was recessed, but not exactly hidden. It just was surrounded by so many other potential delights for the senses that no passenger would think to look at it.
"We've found that slapping "DANGER - CREW ONLY" on doors tends to invite the wrong kind of people, especially when your boat's packed to the gills with drunk socialites who seem to have "Do you know who my father is?" as their middle name. All of the crew-only areas are so disguised from the passenger areas. Past these doors you might find a broom closet or you might find a full armory. The trick is to keep the passengers NOT guessing."
Seabourne waved his hand at the pad. To both gentelmen's surprise, it turned green and opened.
"Huh, usually those are only keyed to officers since technically speaking you could murder everyone aboard the boat from here. The bridge can override anything in this room, of course, but here you have access to every system from one place except for propulsion and navigation."
The door opened to reveal a cramped room lined with monitors, half of which were off or simply read "OFFLINE" in front of an OS&C logo. The lights were dim save for the blue glow from the monitors. A large white board on the back wall had a large schematic of the ship, both from the side and each deck from above. Emergency gear such as first aid kits, magnetic boots, and oxygen tanks were on the inside of the wall on either side of the door. In the middle of the room was a long thin table with a meter long model of the Orlando done in white plastic. Seabourne flicked a switch and the lights came up. Projectors in the ceiling started displaying information on the table and on the model itself.
"We found that 3D projectors are too finicky when various bodily fluids are hitting the fan, so we opt for a more tried and true display option for a 3D model. Likewise, the whiteboard is a backup to the smart table. You can use your fingers to navigate it if you're comfortable with touch interfaces, or you can use the keyboards on any of the wall monitors and hit the large red "display" button to bring it up on the table. Hitting the button again reverts the table to it's neutral state, which just displays general information about the ship's life support, power supply, water circulation..."
A three tone alarm sounded along with a large orange dot on the front of the model. Its twin showed up on the smart table.
"...and collision alarms."
Both men instinctively looked at the three bar graphs projected on the table. Universal to every ship in Sirius, they were a quick display of shields (blue), hull integrity (red), and available energy (yellow). Gallia had, coincidentally, evolved the same convention from whatever the Alliance used back on Earth before the fleets went their separate ways. Seabourne had wondered at times if Nomads had something similar in their otherwise completely alien craft. Both gentlemen breathed a small sigh of relief to see the blue bar barely took a hit before instantly rebounding. And both of them had their eyes drawn to the yellow.
"That's odd. I know the only red bar that really matters is the last one, but I'm pretty sure that even while being refitted, an Enteprise's power core should be running at more than 10%."
He turned from the table to face Scotty in dramatic fashion.
"Unless there's something on this ship that shouldn't be!"
After a pause.
"Aside from us I mean."
A different set of tones chimed and a green circle was projected on the ship model.
A concerned look befalls Scotty as he looks at the yellow bar on the projector. Having the energy output capped at 10% surely isn't optimal. Between having a real shot to put together the perfect Liner and having now to diagnose the same class of liner he wants to operate, everything is looking very interesting for Scotty, despite feeling a little annoyed.
"Alright, lad. Here's what's going to happen."
Scotty uses a nearby keyboard to pull up the same ship model, but with all the internal components and rooms removed. Displayed as a long-ways cross section of the liner.
"I'm going to put together a liner of my own design using this display. Once I'm satisfied with what I have put together, then I'll focus my attention on the power-core problem. It could take me a few minutes, or a couple hours."
Scotty looks at the displays, keyboards and interfaces surrounding the room they are in.
"All these devices I'm not familiar with. Are these standard issue Orbital dashboards? I'm sure I'll figure these out. With your help it shouldn't take too long."
The two men start to get to work. Over the span of the next four hours, Scott and Seabourne build the best version of the Enterprise-Class Liner. Using the notes from Scotty's personal device, and the highlights from Seabourne's speech, they manually add in each modular asset into the Liner one at a time. A question would fire from Scotty, and Seabourne would weirdly, albeit eloquently answer it. Together, they create the new flagship of the Starfliers. One of the first things they did was to remove all weapon mounts. Enough cargo space to carry multiple hyperspacial scans worth of fuel. The polarized plating was doubled to house a much bigger power-core. Direct power couplings were setup to run through the center of the ship, going from the power-core to all the main systems - with two sets of backups in case of power failure. Funnels would replace the port and starboard Orbital walkways, leading from the cargo bays to the survey module fuel injectors. Seabourne's speech taught Scotty that internal passageways are used by the Orbital staff to stay hidden from the public rooms and passageways. Using this, the rooms along these passageways will house small servers to hold the system scans. The bulkheads were also rearranged to give the Starfliers a lounge close by the main deck, somewhere to get some R&R. The manlifts were also thrown in to give the small team easy access to multiple decks every few meters. All the pathways and lifts within this new model could be thought of as a ribcage of the new vessel. The exterior of the vessel was slimmed down too. The decorative bricks on both sides of the ship were removed to make the ship's cruise speed a little faster. All the added weight from the larger power-core, hyperspace hardware, rift-jumping device and stacks of servers would take away from the vessels turning circle. The ship is designed to fly a little faster than a normal cruiser, but in a straight line. Under the engine configuration tab, the only available option was to use the yellow Orbital engine. This wasn't going to do, as Scotty wants something else to make this Liner look like a Starflier vessel. So he just disabled it on the preview. The hull panels on the outside were tinted to a mix of border world light blue and civilian grey.
A solid concept was put together and Scotty puts his hands on his hips while staring at it with starred-eyes. Incomplete in some areas, but very close to a full schematic, Scotty downloads the files to his personal device and turns to Seabourne, who was resetting the work area.
This incomplete schematic is based on Orbital Spa & Cruise's L-584 "Enterprise" Luxury Liner
Statistics
Gun/Turret Mounts: 0/0
Base Armour: ---
Explosion Resistance: ---
Cargo Space: 4,300
Power Output: --- / 200,000
Thruster Energy: --- / ---
Shield Batteries / Nano Bots: 700 / 700
Equipment Slots: CM
External Equipment
Carrier Bay: x1
Type 1 Equipment: Jump Drive
Type 1 Equipment: Hyperspace Survey Module
Shield Class: ---
Maneuverability
Cruise Speed: 375 m/s
Maximum Turn Rate: 7.50*
Time To Max Turn: ---
Time To Turn 180*: ---
Maximum Strafe Speed: 16.67 m/s
Distance Strafed in 0.5s: 2.48m
He kisses his device with a loud "mwah!"
"Thanks to you, I got exactly what I came for! One sexy schematic of a sexy ship! Suppose I should settle down and figure out what's wrong with the real thing, aye?"
The same blueprints get pulled up on the dashboard. This time, all the edits Scotty made were replaced with the layouts and rooms that matched the Orlando.
"Firstly, let's filter between each group of systems. There'll be a discrepancy overlap between at least two of those. If it's to do with power... could be more."
Below the whiteboard, multiple colours of markers lay on a tray. Scotty pulls out a few random ones, all sporting different colours. This was to keep track of all the problem areas. With a press of a few keys, the system displays a handful of blips.
"Okay lad, I'll mark these locations on the whiteboard. At the end we'll see where the biggest overlap is, keeping the power in mind, and then we'll go take a look around those areas."
With each press of a button, Scotty marks every blip with a different colour on the white board according to the filters.
"FILTER // CREW WALKWAYS, ROOMS and QUARTERS."
"FILTER // ENGINEERING, ENGINES and MAINTENANCE AREAS"
"FILTER // POWERCORE, CONDUIT ROUTING and MANAGEMENT"
"FILTER // MISCELLANIOUS and LESSER SYSTEMS"
"Gotchya! I think I got it... not too sure. Lad, look at this."
The two men stand in front of the whiteboard. Dots of every colour cover the cross section of the Enterprise-Class. It's very clear that there's a couple of yellow dots versus the other colours which have dots in the tens and twenties. This seems normal, as the vessel was in the middle of a maintenance check and refit before they came on board, so there are bound to be smaller problems everywhere. Closely examining the dotted whiteboard, they notice that Room 308 and Escape Pod 02 have problems with power. A couple other groups of dots are centralised around those points.
"We have two possible problem areas. Room 308, whatever is in there, we will find out. The other is an escape pod. Which do we want to investigate first?"
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Godspeed, Pilots.
Seabourne knew there is a lot of daylight between being a shipmaster and being a ship designer. Having said a silent prayer to Englund for the blasphemy he committed, he suggested sprinkling manlifts throughout the ship since there was never a free one when you really needed it. Beyond that, it was a lot of nodding and agreeing while tossing out random pieces of engineering jargon. He was shocked to find out that "inversing the manifold conduits" was not only a cogent statement, but a viable engineering solution. When he ran short on jargon, Seabourne simply parroted back what Scotty just said but phrased as a question. It was a trick Seabourne picked up from years of his ship hosting conferences on topics that he knew little on and cared less about. Scotty seemed to eat up the "suggestions" which, to Seabourne, were nonsensical. Either the captain was an idiot-savant when it came to ship design or Scotty was in over his head. The two were not mutually exclusive.
"Not a whole heck of a lot of fun you can cram into an escape pod, though heaven knows the passengers try. They're a popular choice for joining the orbital club, and I'm not talking about the rewards program. Fortunately, the upholstery was designed to be easily cleaned, though it was done for blood and vomit rather than the more amusing fluids. I say we save whatever's in the pod for the grand finale since it will probably double as our exit ticket. Onwards to 308!"
Seabourne triumphantly marched out the door before ducking his head back in.
"Oh, and it's cabin 308, not room. Seriously, it's like you know nothing about starships at all."
He headed off in the direction of the cabin, humming an OS&C jingle to himself.
Seabourne's humming gets quieter as skips further down the hallway. Scotty quickly made sure that the files were indeed saved on his device. Would be a complete waste to have come all this way and not get the one thing he was after. The files were checked to be saved as "Original" and many duplicates.
"Wait!"
Device in his pocket and his engineering mind focused on the power problem, Scotty moves around to corner to see Seabourne taking a right turn at the very end of the hallway.
"Goddamn the lad moves fast."
He then proceeds to jog after Seabourne's distant humming.
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Godspeed, Pilots.
"Oh it's all about being nautical. When you're on a ship, you stay in a cabin, not a room. Left and right are port and starboard. And we didn't steal Orlando, we commandeered her. Very important distinction."
Seabourne stopped for a second and looked around. A few spins of his eyeballs and some facial twitching later, something clicked and he took a quick right.
"After all, grand theft is usually only punishable by fines and jailtime, but piracy! That's a whole different kettle of fish. Steal $200 million credits from Orbital while wearing a suit on some online exchange and LPI will slap you with 20 years in some low security luxury resort on Houston. We should be so lucky! Did you know they get conjugal visits?
Seabourne stopped long enough to raise and lower his eyebrows a few times in what would normally be a suggestive manner. On the captain, the effect took on many adjectives, none of which could be charitably mistaken for being in the same solar system as proper innuendo. He continued down the corridor.
"But you take one vessel and all of a sudden it's a capital offense."
Seabourne stopped again to take his bearings. He licked a finger and held it up as if determining the direction of the wind. Looking as if he didn't get what he wanted, he plugged the finger into an ear and tried again, as though he were experimenting with various orrifices to see if any offered any new insights. Fortunately, the earwax seemed to tell him something the saliva didn't, eliminating the need to go down the list.
"Cabin 308 should be three decks above us, more or less. We can take the scenic route this time."
The two men turned a corner and saw a large, majestic double staircase. Orlando's was done in a sleek, modernist style in brushed aluminum and frosted glass. Geometric patterns on the flat surfaces looked like nonsensical dazzle camoflage up close, but from where the two were standing it gave an impression of movement, like the stairs were actually escalators. The steps zig-zagged from deck to deck, alternating being next to each other and being separated by open air and glistening mobiles.
Race you there!
Seabourne dashed up the stairs, oblivious to the green, faintly smoldering webbed footprints on the steps he was taking two at a time.
Just as Scotty catches up with Seabourne, he bends over with his hands on his knees. Huffing and puffing away, wiping a sweat or two from his forehead, the last thing anyone wants to hear at the end of a long jog is... more jogging. Of course, being that Seabourne is not a normal man, he decides to declare a race right as Scotty is in recovery. In between each breath, Scotty says with a raspy voice
"You... want... to... ra-..."
He then stops, and notices something strangely familiar. After regaining some of his stamina, the webbed footprints become the focus for the moment. Scotty remarks,
"These... no... the Goose? Here? I thought it died."
However, since the deck Scotty was on was pretty distant from the airlock he entered the Orlando from, the Goose had to still be alive. Seabourne was already up and around, probably at the room with some ludicrous winning speech prepared. Scotty, being too busy almost puking after jogging for a bit, didn't see where he went. The Starflier's engineer decides to follow the footprints instead of "racing" Seabourne, not knowing they lead to the exact same room...
"Let's hope it's too tired to scream at me again..."
The footprints lead up to Deck Three, where Scotty looks up to see Seabourne looking at his wrist as if he was wearing a watch, tapping his foot.
"Suppose you didn't notice this, lad?"
He points to the burn marks coming from the staircase, all the way to where they are standing. The door to Room 308 just a couple meters away.
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Godspeed, Pilots.
"Sadly, I did not. Doubly sadly, you weren't the first to point it out to me, though you were the first to be civilized about it!
Seabourne turned his head and shouted the last part down the hallway, as though he was hoping it would be overheard. While doing so, Scotty caught a view of Seabourne's wrist. A nasty bruise was taking up position around a green v-shaped slash. Seabourne turned back to Scotty.
"It appears we're not the only ones interested in the room. Cabin. I meant cabin!"
Seabourne gave a wave of his still functional wrist to indicate the door to 308 which was guarded by the goose. Miraculously, there was someone on board Orlando having a worse day than Scotty. Even more miraculously, the creature was still alive, though the universe looked well on its way to correcting this oversight. The bird looked significantly smaller than before, surrounded by assorted leaks, smears, and patches of feathers coming out of various orifices. Its breathing was strained. Its chest heaved up and down in no discernable rhythm with bubbling and gurgling noises coming from within. Its legs flailed, struggling to get traction on the various fluids on the ground. Three of its wings looked broken as it raised them up in challenge. But the eyes, the eyes were functioning normally. Full of anger and rage and hell bent on revenge. It hissed at the two men, ejecting a small amount of bloody spittle.
"One thing we discovered when these were aboard Breezewood is a strong attraction to electromagnetic fields. They did a number on the number-3 conduit before we properly shielded it. The boffins on Cambridge theorized they're sensitive to magnetic poles for navigation during their migrations. My guess is he's here for the same reason we are, because SOMETHING behind that door is sucking up power like it's going out of style."
The two men stared at the creature, once their ticket onto the ship but now their biggest obstacle.
"I tried asking it nicely and now I'm out of ideas and almost out of wrists. What say you?"
![[Image: PVArGCT.png]](https://i.imgur.com/PVArGCT.png)
![[+]](/forums/images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
Incomplete Starflier Vessel Schematic![[Image: Luxury_liner.png]](https://discoverygc.com/wiki/images/b/b8/Luxury_liner.png)