“Are you really that dense, or are you joking?”

Asks the burly woman sitting in her security forces issued combat uniform. Tucked tightly into her dressing alcove on the mezzanine over looking the main flight deck. An enormous dry dock packed with mechanics doing repairs to all of the vessels stationed inside the sector. The young man is currently helping to bolt her into her multi part suit. “I just didn’t know what all the hub-bub was about. That’s all.” Pouts the small man, with large brown puppy dog eyes and a well worn cracked leather apron loaded with tools on it. “You silly prick. The drums are beating.” She barks in anger. “Huh? I don’t hear any drums, that warning klaxon and the alarms I hear, but no fucking drums!” He replies, earnestly without a hint of sarcasm, though he is pulling her chain, hard. “I’m speaking metaphorically – dip shit. Someone’s gone and pissed off an admiral, and now we’re heading off to war.” She is shouting over the loud peal of the intermittently sounding alarms, and the deep booming klaxon horns. As they approach the time to depart the warnings get closer and closer together. Like the contractions of birth, except it’ll involve the gushing of newly retrofitted attack vessels out of the dry docks all across the refurbished Torus Station. “But, I don’t get it. We’ve done nothing but science and exploration for centuries, why go to war now? What could be so bad as to warrant that.” Asks the diminutive armorer stuffing his hands inside the chest of his leather apron. Feeling the warm rough edges scrape across the skin of his exposed hands. It’s his default position, as he waits for his security personnel to run their internal diagnostics before he can bolt their helmets into place, and fully load out their projectile weapons canisters. “I have heard, via the grape vine, that the insurgencies mole capabilities has affected the admirals personally. Which means it now affects us all. Hey, gimme some of those exploding tip fifty caliber rounds for the shoulder cannons yeah? I like the added punch. Makes door breaching easier than just the shotguns, and I don’t have to get as close to the doors.” The woman remarks, with a wink. Though they bicker back and forth the woman from the security force rather likes her armorer slash valet. “If that’s what madam Mimi wants, that’s what she’ll have. I’ll make a note of that on your requisition forms. No doubt you’ll get them. I’ll flag you down if you don’t, before you get stowed away onboard the Gallant Mistress.” No longer looking at Mimi, but toggling through screens to order up the additional weaponry for her fifty caliber shoulder cannons. “Not with the Gallant Mistress this run, I’m bumped over to the Righteous Chord. Sounds as though we’re taking just about everybody who can fight with us.” Mimi exclaims. “Us too madam. Us too. No good having you out there fighting if you have no one around to repair your gear, or suit you lot up properly.” Their happy banter is slowly fading as the full weight of what the next few months of stasis transit, and then fighting may bring. Brian the valet & armorer will not go under. He’ll be awake for the two month trip making final adjustments and calibrations to the fighting gear. Though the advancements of the nanotech have jumped forward in leaps and bounds, he will still have to administer them individually to each fighter in the battalion that fall under his care. In all he has to repair and dress, undress fifteen members of the elite security fighting force. He somehow always manages to linger when it comes to Mimi. He laughs, but Mimi doesn’t hear him while she is engaged in her comm’s check, and HUD systems calibration. Mimi, not the name he would have guessed for the six foot eight behemoth of a woman infront of him. What kind of mother would think to name this giantess Mimi? The woman needs to give her head a shake. Though, in all honesty, she’s most likely dead. As for Mimi, she’s intimidating out of her weapons suit, and positively monolithic inside it.

The alcove where her suit hangs is like a two car garage, except with chains, hoists and pneumatic Jack’s to lift and lower her armor onto her. He is a modern day Squire to the black clad knight before him. He has still not untethered her from the external life support, as he himself is running triple checks on her aiming reticule, and GPS beacons. He has to climb a ladder to bolt the helmet down from the top, and attach her instrumentation cables in. It’ll be another hour or two yet before she gets loaded into the ships storage like a rifle magazine loaded with all the other walking tank like suits of her combat group.

Reaching over the lower rungs of the ladder to begin to climb up the racking that Mimi is held up against as the suit is still in idle mode, Brian catches Mimi’s eye, and gives her his biggest puppy dog eye wink and nod combo that he can manage. She laughs and looks away. The clicking of the winch lowering her helmet lets her know it’ll be lights out for her momentarily. When next she wakes, she will be deployed for all out war. The air quality inside the helmet is cool and fresh. The smell of oils and lubricants, and welding gases disappears as the helmet clunks into place over her head. Brian can be heard, muffled through the thick concrete glass, using an impact wrench to torque down the bolts to her helmet. Through the five inch thick dome she can see him bang on it three times with his open palm. The wet smack let’s her know she got all the weaponry she’s asked for. Inside the helmet she smiles broadly. Looking up she still smiles though she knows he can’t see her through the golden mirrored outer finish of her helmet. On the HUD a thirty second count down appears in green text across her entire field of vision. With an audible ping the numbers begin to count down with a slight click, as though it were an analog flip clock from centuries ago. As expected a shockingly cold pinch can he felt in the base of her neck. Her blood stream fills with the cool liquid, she doesn’t see the end of the countdown. Soon a pink viscous fluid will fill her lungs and other open cavities so that she can withstand the brutal forces associated with a crushingly hard thrust burn and the bone breaking deceleration to reach the outer edges of the solar system where UB313 awaits.

Part Sixteen: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.