Scavengers of the Void by Gnizak Michael

Author:Gnizak, Michael
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

FTL relay beacons made interstellar communication possible on a galactic scale. It wasn’t instantaneous, but it was close. Like with the FTL drive, the base speed in real space multiplied after transitioning into FTL. At the speed of light, radio waves were already fast, in FTL they could cross known space in just a few minutes. An FTL relay beacon though was an expensive piece of hardware. New colonies didn’t always have room in their budget for one.

The lag time from Hardy Town out to the relay and then through FTL and back made live conversations problematic. To get her crew access to anti-aging drugs, Annis either needed to contact and arrange for someone to come to them, or they would need to travel. After some thought, Annis realized a message requesting some medical professional to travel out to the fringe just wouldn’t cut it. Even if she could talk to them in real time. It just wouldn’t be worth their time. Even if she promised them a sizable deposit. She was getting a headache just thinking about it. If they hired more crew, future visits would be just as expensive.

“I’d be better off opening a clinic out here,” she muttered.

She set the problem aside for now and picked up the physical copy of the papers declaring her the owner of A.S.S. Whipping, A.S.S. Raynard, A.S.S. Can, one of the ship's two pinnaces—it fit with their growing theme—the A.S.S. Bucket, the small rundown transport they had left Earth in, and lastly, the second pinnace, which she’d named, A.S.S. End.

She smirked at the names but was quite proud of their growing collection. They were hers in full, legally speaking. The only downside was, she hadn’t been able to think of a better use of the ‘Can of whoop ass’ moniker and had to settle for A.S.S. Can. A real tragedy. She’d live, but, oh, what a hardship!

Annis snorted. Now if she could just get the nightmares to stop she might fool herself into thinking she was getting good at this Captain thing. Not likely, but then again she’d never thought she’d walk away from Recon, at least not before making a career out of it.

Her tablet chimed with a new message and she realized she had a bunch of those piling up. With a sigh, she opened it. The latest was from her new engineer, Samson Refee. He’d asked for approval for a work request from Tex. That caught her eye and she reread the first bit instead of skimming and then shook her head. Tex wanted to mount guns on the racer. Another ship she’d forgotten about. I’m going to need a name for that one too. And it needs to be registered… Tex had already written out a suggestion and wanted to turn the racing ship into a fighter. She wasn’t sure how well that would work. According to the logs, the racer belonged to the previous Captain.

“Guess I’m off to the bank again,” she muttered. Though the name Tex suggested did meet with her approval.

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