War Stories (Book 1) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [3]
“Very well. We will engage our matter transfer device and materialize upon your ship in order to inspect the unit and effect the upgrades to your vessel within ten minutes.”
The upgrades took two days. When they were completed, the Yridian’s ship had had its sensor efficiency increased by twenty-five-point-nine percent, its cruising speed increased to an FTL of 4.0 from its previous maximum of 2.14.
The Yridian, of course, felt the need to inspect all the changes, from the new antimatter containment unit to the burnished chrome used as molding on the helm console. Biron had seen the latter as an absurd extravagance, but this was a decadent alien species, and could not be held to the standards of the Androssi.
After his inspection, the Yridian stood before Biron—presently standing on the cramped flight deck of the Yridian vessel—and bared his teeth wider than he had at any time in their short acquaintance. “Overseer, I thank you from the top of my head. This outstrips even what I had heard about your people’s prowess with engines. I daresay you’d give Starfleet a run for their money.”
The praise of aliens was of no consequence. “May I take the storage unit containing the log entries now?”
“Of course.” The Yridian went to a small panel under his environmental control console and tapped a sequence of alphanumeric characters onto a touch pad, taking pains to block the exact sequence from the view of Biron or either of the workers still present. He then opened the door, revealing the storage unit. “Enjoy the reading. There are some gripping accounts of the war there, as it happens.”
Biron simply nodded to the workers, who removed the unit from the Yridian’s hands. Then Biron activated his subspace communications device. “Sub-Overseer Howwi. Activate the matter transferral beam and transport myself, the workers, and the storage unit back to the ship.”
“Acknowledged.”
“It was a pleasure doing business with you, sir,” the Yridian said, just before the matter transferral beam conveyed Biron to his vessel.
Seven minutes after the Yridian ship engaged its warp drive, Biron turned to Howwi. “Engage the dimensional blockers on all the equipment we installed upon the Yridian ship.”
Howwi was inappropriately enthusiastic when he said, “Yes, sir.” However, Biron was willing to forgive it. The sub-overseer added, “Dimensional blockers now read active. All equipment registers in Dimension 7.”
Biron nodded and rose from his chair. The others on the flight deck did the same. “I will be in my quarters,” he said and departed.
The Androssi had retrieved all of their equipment, including the new acquisitions, which would be potentially useful in future endeavors, and therefore would not be deemed untoward in an audit. Said equipment included an antimatter containment unit, but did not include the antimatter itself. The Yridian and his ship would by now have been eliminated by the catastrophic collision of the Yridian’s antimatter with the matter of the ship itself, no longer separated as they were by a containment unit. Thus, there was no danger of reprisal from the Yridian.
Now Biron had the information he needed. The only net loss was that of one irrelevant alien life and time: the time spent obtaining material and upgrading the Yridian ship, and the time that Biron would now spend reading over the log entries of the hated crew of the U.S.S. da Vinci.
The log entries were not up-to-date, but the Yridian had said that there would be a gap between what he could acquire and the present day. The most recent entries related to a medical crisis on Sherman’s Planet that the U.S.S. da Vinci’s chief medical officer, Dr. Elizabeth Lense, was able to solve with the aid of Fabian Stevens, a member of the ship’s Starfleet Corps of Engineers team. Biron found the method Dr. Lense used to be of interest, and added it to his ship’s database.
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