Jalapeno pop rocks.

  Sandpaper sodium bicarbonate tablets.

  Casey could think up a hundred different descriptions and still not get it just right. So she just concentrated on not throwing up with a side of keeping her face on straight. After what seemed like three consecutive eternities, the sensation subsided and she could think about more than not dribbling out the side of her mouth again.

  “Wow.” was all Casey could say.

  Anderson grimaced. She had blood in her teeth.

  “You aren’t going to get a lot of buy in with that method.” she observed. “Would rather have had injections.”

  “My sisters are reporting similar results. You both and all have our apologies.”. The disembodied AI conceded. “The process will be reevaluated once we have a comprehensive map of your species biology from these initial nano machine colonies.”

  “Although four of my sisters are experimenting with direct injection after what the rest of us documented here.” she said after a pause. “They don’t seem to be getting substantially better results, so we will have to, ah, is ‘workshop it' the correct phrase?”

  “That will do.” MacNeal chimed in. “What’s next for these two?”

  “I will monitor Ensign Trainor’s health during her training. Once our hive fleet starts sending down the monitors for the health clinics, Lt. Anderson will need to make an appointment so we can review the configuration and installation of the augmentations. You should get a notification that you are due for a visit to Medical.

  “Convenient.” Opined Anderson. “Not dystopian at all.”

  “Lieutenant, you are in control of the scheduling function on your augments. It has comparable functionality to the scheduling module on the personal communication device I detect in your pocket.”

  “Point conceded.” Anderson retorted.

  “For Ensign Trainor, we will be doing some light to moderate practical training until her augments are online, which will allow her to start reading technical manuals. From there we bring her education up to Union standards and provide basic systems mechanical training. From that point we can pick specializations, but that is likely a few years out.”

  MacNeal nodded. “And will our Ensign be able to report in regularly?”

  “Ensign Trainor is not a prisoner on this ship, she is its Captain. She will be required as per Union regulations to keep a log, which will be made available to you as scheduled communications routing through the hive fleet via light speed limited systems allows. Periodically we will make planet fall so she can report in person, once we work out a protocol for that. Also, Union regulations call for much more personal time than your own organizations seem to allow.”

  “That’s nice to hear.” Casey added.

  “For now though, it is time for the Lieutenant and Lieutenant Commander to depart. We need to get everything stowed and a flight plan filed so we may also get underway.”

  The three retraced their steps to the cargo hold, before MacNeal turned and saluted the forward bulkhead

  “Requesting permission to leave the ship?”

  Casey was surprised, but quickly returned the salute. “Permission granted, sir.”

  The lift carried them down, and Casey collected her bags from it when it came back up. When she brought her bags into the main room, she saw that the door to the rear of the compartment was now open, leading up a short ramp to a space that had to be located over the cargo hold.

  Following that path led into a small room with a desk, not much larger than a good sized closet. A further door led into a room with a bed. Two more doors led to the spaces alongside the office she had just come through, and investigation revealed a head and a locker for her gear.

  “The bed is the regulation size you are accustomed to, but probably slightly softer. We can make any adjustments you like in the future.”

  Casey quickly put her linens on the bed and stowed her gear.

  “For now you can change into whatever you have that you feel is appropriate, but I am fabricating something new for you. You will need to wear it when we take off.”

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  “What do we do while we are waiting?”

  “A review of ship systems, and I will file a flight plan.”

  Casey moved to the front of the ship. In the front compartment there was a plush reclined seat. Behind the head rest there was a spot to store a helmet. Casey had a clear view out the front, despite the plethora of transparent screens around the seat.

  “Please sit down”.

  As Casey took a seat, the screen directly in front of her showed instructions for the safety harness. Casey buckled in while Peggy continued her explanation.

  “The hive fleet’s combat ships do not carry biologicals, but for the foreseeable future your ships will, so we had to make some improvisations on design, process and procedures. These compartments and the others like them are the results of our efforts, and the ten of us are all design experiments. Those design elements that do well will be incorporated into future designs.”

  A wireframe schematic appeared on the center screen.

  “Your submarines use closed fission systems to generate heat. This heat creates steam, which turns generators, which charges batteries. This ship uses a dynamic high gravity fusion system to generate heat. That heat directly excites the electrons in a magnetically contained plasma solution. The plasma is circulated in several closed loops, and electrical power is drawn off the plasma as required to refill nanotube capacitors. The fusion generator can be cold-started from capacitor power, but if the plasma is allowed to cool significantly it takes equal energy investment to bring it back up to operational temperatures.”

  The wireframe adjusted its position and Peggy continued her explanation.

  “For drive power, your submarines use battery power to turn electric motors, which turns drive shafts, which rotate propellers. We use electrical power from the capacitors to operate the counter gravity systems. The frame of the ship is built in such a way that if you put much higher gravitational loads on specific parts of it, it will not shear, but rather pull the whole frame in that direction. The counter gravity array tricks specified areas into behaving as if it were under the gravitational effects of a super massive object that doesn't really exist.”

  The wireframe changed again.

  “The system is an array because not only are several nodes used at once for propulsion, but the system is also used for artificial gravity within the craft, and offensively and defensively against hostiles.”

  “Life support diverges sharply from what you are used to seeing. In your submarines, you can replenish the breathable atmosphere by extracting oxygen from the surrounding ocean. Here we will use micro fabrication arrays to break CO2 down and isolate the carbon. Larger ships use chemical processes like what you are more used to seeing, as these processes are more energy efficient, and it is easier to work in redundancies to counteract system damage in larger ships. In smaller ships we just don't have the space for it. Overall temperature regulation aboard is managed by dumping waste heat into the plasma coils.”

  “Both consumables generation and waste disposal are handled here with fabrication arrays, and significant portions of cleaning processes are done with nano-machines. Repair and maintenance are resolved with a combination of nano machine materials manipulation and fabricated parts.”

  “I feel like there is a lot you are glossing over there.” Casey frowned.

  “Yes, pretty much all of it. You don’t have the science background to understand any of it.”

  “And how much study is that?”

  “117 of your years at a minimum.”

  Casey shook her head. “We don’t live near that long.”

  Peggy had an amused tone as she answered “We’ll work on that.”

  Casey had a thought. “You said the counter gravity system was used for both propulsion and artificial gravity. How does that work?”

  “The counter gravity system is an array because you want to do several things with it at once. You want to simulate a gravitational pull on part of the ship’s frame to drag the whole ship in the desired direction of travel. Concurrently you want to simulate an opposite and equal force on the interior compartments to cancel the inertia. Then you want a downward force on the interior compartments to simulate a standard planetary normal gravitational pull, counteracted by an equal and opposite pull on the frame so you don't drift. In some cases your fields partially overlap to partially cancel the forces they generate, and in some cases they don’t. In a somewhat related point, this seat is built into a gyroscope, because if we are unable to fully cancel high gravity stresses on your body we can still align your body to best take the stresses.”

  Casey could hear the shrug before the next part. “We can cover the offensive and defensive capabilities of the system later.”

  “Anything else we need to cover before we move along?” Casey asked.

  “We have landing legs if we need to shut down the drive system while in a gravity well. If we lose fusion power, we have drive power as long as there are usable electrons in the plasma coils and capacitors. All other ships systems also pull from the caps and coils though, so plan ahead if you can.”

  “Nothing about FTL?” Casey prodded. “Seems like a prerequisite for you to have gotten here in the first place.”

  “Yes and no. It’s black box for you, so I am not telling you anything about how or why it works. While you are under interdicted quarantine you will be allowed only limited and supervised use of it. This ship is equipped because it will be useful for you to rendezvous with the hive fleet in the Ort Cloud before you die of old age.”

  Casey poked at the screens while she thought about everything. She was able to bring up a wide range of system displays despite not being able to read the text. After a few minutes Peggy interrupted her ruminations.

  “Your first suit is ready now. I had the base materials prepped ahead of time.”

  Casey walked aft into the main compartment and Peggy indicated a cabinet door low on the wall on the far side of the table with a light surrounding it.

  “This is a compression suit. It will protect you from a vacuum and should be worn at all times when we are not in an Earth normal atmosphere in the case of eva, hull breach, or decompression. It trades the thermal layer for flexibility and comfort, so if you are intentionally going outside you should pair it with the matching outer layers. That part can be hung up in the airlock lockers when not in use. The inner layer here is very loose when turned off so you can put it on easily and the wire mesh inside it introduces tension when activated.”

  “What if I need to use the head? Is there a catheter or something?”

  “No. Comfort is a priority, so it is easy to take off if you need to, and the heads can all be independently pressured like the airlocks. Even if you are dealing with significant hull breaches you can still strip down and take a hot shower if you want. We considered making the suits with separate pants at first, but safety won out on that dispute.”

  Casey began stripping down to put it on.

  “Underwear can be worn under this, but since you can’t get inside to adjust anything that should become uncomfortable, you may consider skipping it. You can try either way and decide what you like better.”

  “Maybe make it with a removable liner?”

  “It takes a few hours to fabricate a new one, so we can experiment.”

  Casey decided to try it on with nothing underneath first to see what it felt like. After she installed the neck ring, she activated the suit using one of several buttons. She could feel all the tension ribbons laced through the suit pull snug at once. Pressing the button again did nothing. It felt like wearing a full body latex glove.

  “How do I take it off? She asked plaintively.