Sholan Alliance Ch. 01

He finally sat up. "Well I am going to take a shower and get ready for the day. I have a ship to fix. I can do a decent breakfast as well and we have some leftovers from last night." Billy moved her arm and rolled out of bed and stretched. He wasn't anything near a model of a man. Though there was some fat he was heavy with muscles from working on his ship. When home he also worked around the farm. The actual management was run by a family member but he liked to keep his hand in the running when he could.

Satasha rolled over and looked at him and though he was shorter than an average Sholan male he was easily as muscled as most of them were. "It seems so strange to not see fur. Yes some of the alliance is furless but they tend to be completely furless." Damn it she probably shouldn't have mentioned that. "I am going to my ship to get clean and a clean ship suit. If it is okay I would like to take a look at the inside of your ship and I can show you around mine." Well some of it.

Billy turned and gave her a grin. "I already know yours is far more advanced than mine is and would die to see it inside and out. Too bad she is stealthed." He sighed when he said that. "Mine is just an old tramp freighter that is a prior Naval cargo vessel that was used for small fast runs. Doesn't carry a huge amount but moves along at a pretty nice clip for a lady of her age." Billy grabbed some cloths and with a nod in her direction walked out of his room and to the bathroom.

She stood up and stretched before grabbing the tabard and walked out of the room. This time before going anywhere other than the hallway she listened and sniffed but didn't sense any new odors or sounds. When she got to the front door she did much the same as well and then hurried over to her ship. It was too bad she didn't have one of the stealth suits she wasn't supposed to know about. From what she had heard they were rather sensitive and hadn't been perfected though.

Once inside the ship she hurried to her room and took a quick shower. The suit she pulled on was one normally used for maintenance and she made sure she had all the tools she usually needed. This actually wasn't something she would normally do but since the scout/fighter ships had such small compliments they were all cross trained. Normally she would be the communications and navigator for the ship but now she was commander, comm and navigation, engineer, cook, and whatever else was needed.

She had to admit that from what she had scanned of the hyper ships as well as intersystem ships she definitely had a major edge on them. She wanted to scan his ship and get an idea for the tech in the ship to see what she might be able to use to get hers working. The full diagnostics had finally finished and she would review it while she ate breakfast.

Billy took a quick shower as well though he ended up in standard redneck garb of a plaid button up shirt and coveralls. All the tools he needed were on the ship already so he simply made sure he had his pocket tool on his belt and walked out of his room to the kitchen. Satasha was still not in the house. Since there were more than enough leftovers he decided on an omelet with diced up onions, the meat from the night before, cheese, and hash browns.

He was whistling quietly when he heard the front door open and he assumed it was Satasha. "In here." Billy called out as he kept working on cutting the food up so it was ready when the eggs were. He had already mixed the eggs and turned and raised an eyebrow. "Man you make me look positively plebian." Her suit was a basic black but had some dark gray accents to it. There were a number of emblems on her uniform as well as tools in a belt.

Billy grinned at her. "If you are going to scan my ship and you get any patents I expect a percentage of the credit." The eggs were at the point where he tossed the meat and veggies in and folded it over and piled some cheese on. "Hope this is stuff you can eat." The omelets went onto a plate along with the hash. He carried it over to the table. He had already put some juices and ice tea on the table.

She settled down and pulled out the scanner she had used the night before and quickly scanned everything. "I am going to avoid that black stuff you gave me last night. Just picked up traces of a chemical that will react with my system sort of like alcohol." That must have been why she had fallen asleep so easily. Granted she had been exhausted from the long trip in system since she had been forced to do it manually.

"Well I suppose. You drive a hard bargain but for real food I think I could give you 12 percent of anything I can patent." She settled down and grinned as she sliced off a decent sized slice of the eggs and some of the potatoes and waited for him to get some food and then started eating. When she found a piece of the flank steak here eyes widened and her ears pricked forward. "Oh man whatever they did to the meat is good."

Billy was enjoying watching her eat and laughed. "Both ladies are damn good even if Sandi says she can't cook. This is one of their special recipes." He looked down at his food as he was talking and picked out a bit of food and munched on it. Talking about Sandi still hurt once in a blue moon and he didn't want her to see it. He kept eating and chatting about general things and once the food was done he picked the plates up and tossed them in the cleanser. "Well if you want to check out the ship we can. The engine compartment is torn apart since the hyper drive tubes need work."

She nodded and when she tried to help with the dishes he waved her away. "Tonight you can help or you can feed me something you cooked." After making sure everything was off he walked her out to the barn and inside. "Thankfully on this tub there is a repair hatch to engineering which makes things easier." The ladder to the hatch wasn't very long and there were a number of wires hanging out as well as some bits and pieces neatly placed on several heavy benches that needed work.

When they walked into the hanger she looked around and sort of made a mental list of what she was seeing. Satasha really wanted to pull her scanner out and run it past a few items. Most of them she recognized though their style was very old fashioned. That made it virtually impossible to identify some of the parts. They were simply to modular and antiquated for her to even have a clue. Much of Sholan tech was based on moly circuits which normally were extremely dependable. Failures like what she had were vanishingly rare.

When Billy climbed the ladder she followed and ended up perched on the edge of the hatch and simply stared at the engine. The damn thing was huge. If it worked even half as well as hers this thing could probably haul some pretty massive loads. There was no way it was nearly as efficient as hers was or as fast but the hauling capacity must have been almost crazy. "By Vartra that thing is massive. I think you could damn near pull my ship into space."

Billy couldn't help but grin at her. "One version of this boat was as a space going tug to haul damaged ships back to port. There were a few that had the tug mod with the cargo capacity." One hand stroked a coil that was going to need to come out. "She can move like a scalded cat when needed." He realized what he had said. "Sorry, just an expression indicating moving really fast to get away from something."

For half a moment she looked horrified and then laughed. "Not a saying I have ever heard before but I get the concept." She slid down into the engine room. "So what is wrong with her? It looks like you have gutted the entire drive system." Very carefully she touched a few cables and almost frowned. "Why are you still using discrete wiring? I would have thought you would be using micro controller paths that are part of the hyper tubing itself. They are far more stable and dependable."

Billy sighed. "De-crystallization of some of the pipes are leading to unacceptable wear and tear on the drive system. The Space Guard down checked her till I repair the parts of the tubing that are potential failure points. I have just finished getting the last hyper pipe disconnected and ready to be removed. Once done I will start repairing and or replacing as needed."

For a moment he simply looked tired. "Sometimes owning your own ship has its drawbacks." When she started talking about building the runs into the pipes he simply stared at her. He had heard of such things but they were still years down the road for anyone but the military. "Um, still in experimental status I think. It is something the military would get first. It would be too expensive for the average joe and all that." It would be easier but he could see some issues with it.

"One problem would be that I can scan the pipes and cut and weld good sections together and not compromise the integrity of the drive system. If you had to worry about matching built in controller runs that could cause problems." You would almost have to have specialized welders and repair centers for that. "Besides when the pipes start to de-crystallize you would have to replace the entire pipe and that would get expensive."

Satasha almost stared at him but managed not to at the last moment. Instead she stared at the pipes and noticed some very nice welding seams. He was right that it was cheaper to cut and fit good pieces together but with the right machinery you could cut and weld all day and simply lay new runs by realigning the existing runs and forming new ones. "Well one thing is to reverse the loss of the crystallization. That will extend the life of the pipes significantly but by realigning the control runs on the quantum level cleans out the old ones and creates the new ones."

Even she knew that and she was just a glorified technician. Satasha had to stop that train of thought or she would start thinking of him and everyone on his world as less intelligent. "Sorry Yilly but this is something we have been doing for over a century and closer to a century and a half."

Billy stared at her for a few minutes with a sort of hard focused expression on his face and without bothering to have her move grasped an edge of the hatch and pulled himself up and out. He landed with a light thump and started pacing. "The control conduits are simply not possible right now but..." He was plucking at his lower lip and continued pacing. "Now the re-crystallization in theory is doable but nobody has really bothered since the pipes actually don't cost that much...."

He walked over to his smart board and flipped out a few 3d virtual screens and started working some math. Hell the math was relatively simple when it came to creating the pipes. The actual process was more complex since some of the chemicals were very sensitive to shock or heat changes till they had stabilized. "Now if we took the value of..." Using the virtual pen he was scribbling for all he was worth. The math wasn't a huge deal since again it had been around for quite some time.

Satasha stared at him and was rather caught up with what he was doing till she realized he appeared to be writing in air but not leaving anything behind. She figured it was a VR display and he did have some glasses on. "Yilly, oh Yilly." She tried calling out a number of times but nothing seemed to get through to him and she started looking grumpy with being ignored. Since he was obviously focused on what he was doing she broke out the diagnostics data and started going through it.

It was into this scenario that Jenna walked and she glanced at Satasha and then Billy and sighed. She walked over to Billy and gave him a good solid smack on the back of his head and it wasn't a gentle smack either. "Billy you are ignoring Satasha. I don't care what you are working on but this is completely wrong." She flipped on some of the VR glasses as well and had to blink. There were at least a dozen screens packed with some serious math. With that she could see how he had gotten lost but it still wasn't an excuse or a good one.

When she smacked him he jerked away from it and glared at her before looking at Satasha and winced again. "Damn it. You kick started my brain which chased everything else. Next time readjust it by smacking me to get my attention." He hurried over to her after grabbing the glasses that Jenna had been using. "Check these with me and tell me if I am even close please. Well if you can."

It was obvious he was still thinking a mile a minute and she had to laugh at him and then at Jenna and laughed even more. Her expression was one of long suffering as she watched Billy pull her over to the boards she couldn't see as of yet. "Put them on and look and let me know what you think."

Satasha actually laughed at him till she put the glasses on and looked at the boards and froze. Though some of the math was wrong or in the wrong place he was 95% correct. She ran a finger across the formula he was working out and was literally shocked. Granted his society should have this math but he had knocked it out as if it was nothing. As she was staring at it Billy pulled her to the end.

"Now this is the part that just didn't quite add up. With the constant on the cooling rate being maintained right below the melting point technically it should..." He was working his way across the last bit. "The hard part is trying to figure out how to heat the crystalline structure of the metal consistently so the re-crystallization of the metal reforms evenly or you end up with the same problem."

Jenna rolled her eyes and was getting ready to smack him again when Satasha caught her hand and shook her head. She was more than startled and then looked at Satasha. The expression she had was of total shock. Satasha looked more than shocked as Billy was essentially describing a process that had taken her people years to come up with and perfect. "Satasha?" Jenna asked.

She wasn't thinking as she waved to her to silence and finally Billy finished what he was talking about and she pulled the glasses off. The expression she gave him was still shocked and it could be seen in the set of her tail and ears. "Good god man and you just fly a tramp cargo ship? You should be designing things." She was probably saying more than she should but he had really impressed her. "Do you have any idea how long it took us to come up with that? There are a few problems with the equation and you will have to work out the heating and cooling process but..."

Jenna looked at both of them and actually looked stumped. She knew Billy was smart and had been in the Space Navy when he was younger and had worked in development but not like this. The cat looked totally shocked as she was being shown whatever it was that Billy had showed her. Most people would take a look at the red neck local yokel and assume he was dumb. It allowed him to pull some fast ones at times but trying to listen to whatever the hell he was saying simply blew her mind away. She understood till he got to the third statement and then was lost.

Billy did look sort of startled. "Just common sense once you mentioned it." He shrugged when he said it and looked back at the boards and hit the save function so he could come back to it later. "Now the hard part would be figuring out the re-crystallization if you were going to be welding sections together. Re-doing the crystallization is going to be the hard part. Each part is crystallized just a bit differently and..."

Jenna rolled her eyes and shook him. "Fine, you are smart but when was the last time you ate? Or more importantly fed your guest? Sandi and I might need to move in just to make sure you are eating correctly and feeding Satasha." She was trying not to look impressed with what he was spouting off. Now looking at him and then the watch she managed to look irritated. "Out of the barn and to the house. It is well after noon and you are going to take a break and eat." She glared at him.

Satasha snickered and tucked her arm in his and then Jenna's. "Foods on me assuming you can eat it." She led them out to her ship and carefully inside since they couldn't see the outside. As soon as she pulled in the ramp and shut the door the short extent of stealth in the Ship shut off and both blinked. For a Sholan the colors on the wall were pleasing and designed to keep them from going nuts on the long patrols.

The walls were a sand color that had both light and dark sections that blended well. The lights were not subdued but of a different hue than the human sun. The floor was some sort of soft padding that she could sink her claws into in comfort and not worry about destroying or damaging the covering. "Welcome to my Ship. The dining area is this way." Satasha turned to the left and led them to the relaxation area.

"This is the relaxation area and we normally have games and stories from the story tellers." She spoke in Sholan and some music came up as she walked to the small cooking area. "We can either autoheat the packs or cook and flavor to our tastes." She pulled up a VR screen and made a few selections that she hoped they would like. The packs were delivered shortly thereafter.

"I am going to actually cook these and I really hope you enjoy them. The spices were different but the computer indicated they were safe for you." She gathered the packs and using a recipe she knew mixed them and got started.

~~~

Back at the command ship one of the officers was verifying communications against scout ships that were on patrol. What he found was not quite what he expected and or wanted. One of the ships hadn't checked in for several weeks and that was not normal. They were required to check in weekly though depending on hyper conditions it could take several weeks for them to actually check in. In this case it had been close to three months since Lt. Verzilon had checked in. That should have been flagged but with all the changes it didn't really surprise him.

"Commander we have a ship that hasn't checked in for three months." He turned and looked at the officer in charge of the scouts and fighters. "I should have caught this sooner but with all the changes it just hadn't been flagged sir."

The commander came over and looked and frowned. "We can't divert our path without screwing up all current flight paths." He didn't bother yelling at the male since everything had been so screwed up. "Um, send Scout 2319 to her last known position to see what they can find. It is going to take some time but they are the closest." If they enemy had gotten her they needed to know. "Tell them to take their time and be very careful."

"Yes sir, will do." He turned to the workstation and started typing out commands for the stealth fighter. It sounded bad but it was better to sacrifice one or two small ships than a command carrier. As part of the orders he included a daily check in with anything and everything they had found. The orders also included moving in very slowly and using every bit of stealth they had.

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