Aneka Jansen 7: Hope by Niall Teasdale

us out ahead of the blast from four ten-kilotonne warheads.’
    Lanyon’s two lower hands slapped the table. ‘Oh man! That must have been something to see. And you really don’t look like the kind of person who does stuff like that. I heard you were a scientist.’
    ‘I am a scientist. I just… picked up some additional skills due to being dropped into a number of peculiar situations.’
    ‘Like outrunning nuclear explosions.’
    ‘And a few other things. I had a pretty quiet life, and then we found this woman on a dead Xinti starship and… Well, it’s not like she caused it all, but after that my life got a lot more complicated. It seemed like it had calmed down again. I’ve spent the last… almost thirty years running a department at a university. It’s only been normal dangers to worry about, not nuclear bombs, viral nanoweapons, interstellar wars, infiltrating highly secret, heavily fortified military bases to kill a rogue AI…’ She trailed off, looking up at the ceiling. Lanyon was staring at her. ‘You know, it’s kind of weird, but I almost miss all that.’ She grinned. ‘You see, that’s what thirty years of normal does to you.’
    ‘Uh, wouldn’t know.’
    Climbing from her seat, Ella took her bowl back to the kitchen counter and started for the door. ‘Nice meeting you, Lanyon. Would it be okay if I took a walk around, see the ship?’
    ‘Shouldn’t be a problem, no.’
    ‘Fridgy. Oh!’ She darted back to the table and picked up her glass, knocking back the rum in one go. ‘Nearly forgot. See you around.’
    Lanyon watched her walk out of the room, eyes a little wide. ‘What a woman!’
    ~~~
    Ella’s gaze ran around the engineering section, taking in the systems she could see around her. She was not exactly an engineer, except when she had an engineering chip plugged in, but she had seen quite a few engines in her time and assisted in dismantling one or two. And none of them had been quite like this.
    The warp coils, wrapped around the hull along maybe a sixth of its length, looked to be fairly standard, definitely part of the original design. From the basic configuration, Ella took it for a second-generation drive. From the looks of it, it had been derived from the original, Xinti-based, drives, but was an independent evolution. The Pinnacle had developed their own high-end technologies.
    The fusion reactor was also fairly standard and an uprated model using gravity-field compression to increase the yield. It was probably a Pinnacle design, but there were only so many ways you could build a fusion reactor.
    Right at the back, the large, spherical drive was another matter. She had seen Xinti reactionless drives before, one or two several times as big, but this one looked as though it had been bolted in using spit and setaestrip, and then wired to the rest of the ship with whatever cable there was lying around. Cubby had to be a genius, because only a genius could have created a mess like that and then got it to function.
    ‘I bet you’ve never seen anything like that, kid.’ Ella turned to see Cubby standing behind her.
    ‘Actually, I have, quite a few. Just never one that’s been wired up quite so… creatively.’
    ‘You have?’ he sounded genuinely surprised. ‘There’s not that many people who know Xinti technology when they see it, never mind having seen it working.’
    Ella looked at the strange little man for a second and then said, ‘Well, technically, if you discount a few generations of development, I’m Xinti technology. I work within a university that was created by Xinti AIs. I’ve got a computer in my head designed by them, cybernetic eyes, reinforced bones, enhanced organs… You’ve done amazing work given that you’ve been doing it from scratch.’
    She saw an eyebrow rise above his goggles. ‘Well… Now that’s a turn up for the logs. You come with me.’
    He led her off to starboard, down a ladder onto the lower deck of engineering and into a space