Space, check
Weird shade of cyan, check
Bright new stripes of amber, check
"Who the hell does the styling on this ship?" The guestion to noone in particular. Most of the crew was nervosly chatting about life support or media stuff, but Ramos was out to rant.
"Why does our craggy ass cargo shuttle have racing stripes?" He turned to direct the question more broadly.
"Marketing" came the simple responce of one of the space rats who worked maintenance.
Marcus scoffed, "I do not market my ass with pinstripe tattoos, this ship shouldn't be marketed with racing stripes and ramen should not be marketed as a whole meal."
He got a few chuckles and someone standing made a wave, saying "se lavi" or something. The room went quiet and Marcus felt a shiver down his spine but not the forboding kind.
"You don't advertize a jacoozy by its horepower rating either" he kept his voice carefully on the line of loud enough to project but not to invite the whole mess hall to join in.
The lady who said the french thing looked around at the muttering and made a motion, her lil annoying circlet kit telling the hologram projectors to spin up. "As the owner of this ship I must ensure my crew is comfortable," she spoke with a raised, and somewhat french accented voice, "so I take it you all want to see the safety measure in place after out most recent refit?"
The room was silent and as Marcus looked around he sat up a lil taller, took a breath and put on his 'athoritative subordinate' voice.
"Yes ma'am, for most of the crew it is rather unsettling layout for the main living space." The slight baritone he put in didnt echo like it use to, but everyone heard and seemed to approve. Even Timmy put down his headphones to listen.
The lady nodded and with a few gestures of her gloved hands brought up the broad schematics, showing the floorplan and frame of the ship as she took a breath.
"You see here the general layout of the ship, floorplan, room shape structural layout." She waited for nods then made a motion, the floor plan became dimmer and changed to a green, verious color coded blobs appearing everywhere between the rooms in the wider gaps. "This is the detailed layout of the ship, usefull for damage control and estimate repair costs."
Everyone watched and listened as she explained the electronic system. The repeater stations and power lines following threw all the hallways and cutting threw rooms from the main reactor outwards. No quetions, even about the curious prevelence of silicate batteries lining the walls.
The hydraulics were little lumps of red that were oftine isolated so little clusters of actuators could work off one reservoir and electric pump. Same with the clean water system to faucets, but water cleaning had to be explained as the hanging stips of garden in the ceilings were listed as purification.
"Once the water has been scrubbed by the alge it then goes threw the plant beds to remove any particulate before being sanitized and filtered again. An expence in power to keep it all alive and working but overall a minor one that keeps our filters clean for close to 20 times their original estimate lifespan." She took and breath and was about to make a motion when Marcus spoke up.
"But reduces the maximum water processing that can be done per system volume." He had to play devil's advocate to keep people listening.
She simply smiled and took to rebuffing the criticism, "Yes, but the overall system volume has more than doubled and reduced peak load draw. The assistance to the ventilation and atmospheric control systems are considered ansilary benifits too."
The gesture like flicking the wrist accompanied two more ship systems without question, the regenerating food supply was pretty self explanatory: shrimp, fish, weeds, salad greens and whatever hanaged to grow around the plasma tubes. Most of it fast growth cycle stuff so rations were primarily protine and starch packs to get the gap left by berries and seafood.
Noone minded the pet fish, someone even spoke about their shineyness being the heavy metals getting deposited into their scales. They did mind that the fish had the mentality of puppies and would try to follow or play with crewmembers in the halls. She remined everyone that the fish exist in an ecosystem and their population has to be balanced against other populations. That didn't lift any spirits.
The electronic controll systems, monitoring and computational equipment had been expanded and distributed throughout the ship, prompting a half hearted hal 9000 joke that the ship AI didn't even scoff at.
"Damn, you are all going to hate what half the safty systems are if you're so attached to the fish." She muttered, having accurately read the room.
"Why'd you get the friendly ones?" Someome in the back asked, getting her to turn and call back, "alge and krill eating, compatible with our plants and water."
Turning back with a sigh she enlarged the hologram.
"If you notice at regular intervals around structural items there are large blank spaces around the hallways. You've noticed the baloons curled up and set into the floors. The whole cabin cannot be depresurized or vented pre incident, else we'd loose alot of plants and water. There are several passive measures to mitigate breeches, you may have spotted them as sections where the hallway has no planters or clear pannels." Many knew where this was going, spacers first lesson in plumbing: know every trick to dampen and isolate.
"These longer blank spaces are valvular conduits deployed by blowout pannels, you san see the space for the extra piping all around their area." Sure enough pressure management ducts about a quarter the cross section of the hallways had room to loop around into the hallway to redirect blasts and had the structure around them to not get thrust around. Questionable part was whether or not the hallways around them would cope.
"And the smaller spaces are spacing airlocks, with initial debris doors closeing in the center and pushing back to the actual pressure doors." And there was the space for three doors, all close to structure that could support thrust forces. How it works is the vacuum inbetween the doors stops any propagating shockwave from that section of thip. It works at least once and in both directions.
She began pointing to all the spots that had these measures and in what direction untill Marcus had to ask. "But what about the active systems?"
There was a pause and he stood up, theatrics being good for briefings like this, "Yes, airlocks are good before a fight if you know its coming, balloons are good for a breach you already have, Tesla valves are excellent space syncs but what stops us flying into space or worse, our ship"
Some of the crew joined in as she gave him a curt nod and waved down the agitated spacers.
"You are use to narrow, winding halls with pipes intersecting to know where you are, having little panic cubbies and net blankets. We do not have those anymore, we have combination grav pad and hardlight projectors, with maximum engagement lasting three hours and fine enough controll to only engage the sections where people are located or atmosphere is leaking from. The granular controll is what the extra AI systems, batteries and pipes are needed for."
Some of the crew relaxed, the maintenance people Marcus could see looked almost outraged.
"What model of pads and projectors are being used?"
His question got the suddenly glazed over eyes of someone getting information overload from their nural interface kit. She took off the tiara looking thing and rubbed her temples, getting back her balance slowly.
"Something solid state, for both, they just overheat fast but their response time is faster than reflex and they're safe when set to dumb. Hardlight cant penetrate solid surfaces and grav is...grav." she gave her head a shake and put her kit back on with a wave to dismiss the hologram as the lights came back on.
The room wasn't quite abuzz, but people were talking now the presentation was over, nervousness aperently banished by outrage over the fish being endangered by overstressed safety systems or getting to those systems for repairs.
Marcus got up and walked past the ship owner and clapped her on the shoulder as he went by, hardly anyone noticed which made the congratulations all the more appreciated. He'd roam the halls and try to work off the nervousness of being in a space large enough to fit a shipping container...if you removed the planter up top.
It was fancy, spacious especially by spacer standards, the floors and walls a clean white panneling if not the snowflake patterns made by mirrors arranged to bounce as much light threw the algal water under the acrillic/aluminum/ceramic sandwich. The lights were a high amber, cozy feeling to most, and the plants drank it up, in a few hours the lights would go threw their 'noon' cycle and add uv and thermal into their spectrum.
Marcus was a little surprised it had taken so long for the crew to get that nervous, he thought it would've happened yesterday. Maybe it was everyone sleeping or at their workstations but a day is a long time when you cant get away from a problem.
Most were probably happy to be back in blue water.
It made sense, their little dampening bubble collecting the blushift and debris and sifting it out in a flow that would exert force on the hull. When you can see the blue of the stars and only the vague mist stray gasses you were sailing blue whaters. Free of buffeting, pirates, militia and whatever else seeks to irritate you, just smoothe sailing.
He leaned onto the railing by the window, translucent composite making up the whole wall and letting him stare out at the shifting constellations.
"People use to have a job of knowing all these stars." A somewhat accented voice came from behind, making him turn and look.
"Hey chef, you from a polynesian lineage?" He smiled and picked himself up a bit as she rested on a bench.
"Nah, not that I know of, I just got curious is all." She stretched and slid her arms hehind her head.
"Hellish life that must have been" he remarked, getting a slight chuckle.
"What, no gps or motors to worry about?"
He chuckled, "No, there wasnt any toilet paper back then, no shades, sunscreen, soap..." That had her laughing soft.
"No filters for water either"
Silence.
"Didn't think they'd turn this old rust bucket into a decent ship" she finnaly said.
"No, but apparently the colony ships we serve are coming up on a system." Marcus did a stretch after the words, drowning out the protests of the cook with his joints, muscles feeling ready.
Infront of their ship sailed a slow transport ship, a brick with scant few gantries to load and unload cargo from. Barely manned and slingshot from one system to the next they carried supplies for the generation ships that refined those raw resources into machinery and terraforming suplies. The Espinosa being the go between for the massive ships moveing at very different speeds.
"...and thats another thing, why are you all so damn paranoid, what happened to you all before I got here? Oi ideot I'm talking to you." She jabbed at his side making him bring his arms down as he grinned.
"What, cant expect me to pay attention all the time." He said elbowing back
"You got fogbrain" she said with a scoff and walked off, leaving Marcus to his thoughts and to gaze out at the wake made be the interstellar freight car.
The Espinosa would be docking soon enough and he'd be the one responsible for offloading the port side rack. Once they were inside the wake they were on final approach and the armored doors would swing open to reveal the goods. Stacked in a grid four crates thick a dozen tall and almost a hundred long, all held by squeezing pylons on an actuated frame. The joints being glorified plasic castings.
Like most limited angle joints on the exterior, a compliant mechinism that saved space for the doors to cover one way and opened a space for them to go the other. All while being rigid enough outside their intended axis to be "crash safe"
Marcus chuckled at that. Sure hed been in docking accidents, a few routing accidents but a crash at fill speed between two ships left little more than the dust they were wading threw.
He sent a memo to check scanners and started walking, compensators himmed their calibrations and self checks around him as they expected to work soon. The fish swarmed people's feet playfully as the crew thumped about, their three day brake over at last.
