Chapter 1
Every ship has a grove which contains a single tree. Some might consider a grove containing a single tree to be sad. Compared to the cold emptiness of space, the Ship Tree is everything.
Tyche is the newest Sailfish class ship to come off the line. It contains all the latest technology the Blessed Accord offers. Ship Tree included. The largest island on Cat's Eye contains the orchard that grows Ship Trees for the entire fleet. The primary job of the Tree Speakers - the caretakers of the trees - is to care for and love the trees. Their secondary job is to commune with the trees and pick the ones most suited to life aboard a ship.
Tyche's Ship Tree is especially eager, and that eagerness shows as its leaves appear to dance with the breeze from the blowers. The breeze flows around the Ship Tree - an oak filling the center of The Grove. It caresses the tapestries along the walls, giving enough room for half a dozen to dance around the Ship Tree. The breeze slides out of the open door; continues down the hall, slipping around a corner to flow through the kitchen, which is empty and dark, waiting to be the center of attention to the crew. It continues on, bypassing the dimly lit lounge and careening into a little alcove that has a workbench and various tools.
The breeze spirals there for a few moments, climbing higher and higher before being sucked into a duct and pumped up to the bridge. There it flows around empty stations glowing with various readouts, creating a dimly lit atmosphere. The breeze settles on the conference table in the center of the bridge before being urged on by the blowers.
It slips down the steep stairs to slide over Rory's tattooed bald head and caresses her neck and shoulders, causing her to shiver as she enters Tyche.
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Rory, the ship's engineer, boards first. She is to do a thorough inspection before anyone else boards and before they depart on their first assignment. She shivers as she steps aboard and into a stream of cold air, as if the ship is greeting her. But why would it greet her so coldly? She reaches up to run her hands through hair that isn't there. Her nerves getting the best of her, she knows she has to get control of herself. She climbs the ladder to the bridge first. Letting her eyes adjust to the dim light of the controls, she walks over to the nearest station and brings up systems. Seeing everything green, she disconnects from station power and heads for The Grove.
Rory skips a few of the steep stairs going down from the bridge to the main hallway down the center of the ship. She is having trouble seeing the way and stops in place, smacks her forehead and says, "Computer, all lights on at 60% please." The lights come up, and she finishes the quick trip to The Grove.
Upon reaching The Grove's door, Rory shakes her head to free it from the distracting thoughts. Then, reaching up, she presses the button to open the door.
"Welcome, Rory Wyldwood. Please remove your shoes before entering." As the AI gives the programmed greeting in a monotone, Rory looks to the side of the door, and sure enough, there are magnetic clips for the ship shoes she wears. She unclips the fastener and slips her sizable foot out, blushing a little when she thinks of how much Vanessa used to tease her about her over-sized feet, usually before she...
"Not now! Jeez, woman." Rory undoes the other black ship shoe, reaches up, places it on its spot, and presses slightly. The mag locks in the shoe attaches to the plating. As she enters, the lights dim just enough to see. But there is a brighter light shining on the Ship Tree in the center of the room.
She stops for a moment to marvel at its beauty. She takes in its dark cracked bark and the vibrant green leaves that flutter in the air of the blowers. It reminds her of trees at home on Cat's Eye, though they are much much larger. Smiling at the tree, she walks in.
Rory walks over and kneels on a pillow at the edge of the exposed dirt, leans forward, closes her eyes, and presses her hands to the soil. As she slows her breathing in a long-practiced act of Ground-and-Centering, she is acutely aware of the air blowers doing their thing, the only sound she can hear besides her heartbeat, which she now notices. She imagines herself like the tree next to her, pictures roots going down in the earth, spreading, connecting to her home-world. Once rooted, she imagines energy flowing in both directions; unpleasant energy flowing from her to the earth and calm, powerful energy flowing into her, lighting up and aligning her chakras. A long, gentle inhale and a long exhale calms her. She repeats the exercise three times and opens her eyes.
"Now, let's get to work, shall we?" Rory reaches out and presses her palm to rough bark, and issues a brief prayer of gratitude to Anteros before beginning her rounds. She looks around and gasps, as she had been so focused on Ground-and-Centering that she hadn't seen the tapestries. "Whoa!" She spins around, taking it all in. All around the room are tapestries that work together to create the immersive experience of being in a wild woodland meadow. There are trees, shadows, animals, leaves falling, and they configured the blowers in such a way in this room to move the tapestries slightly, which has the added benefit of simulating movement in the images.
Rory sidesteps the tree, making a note of how much space is in the room and takes pride that they set aside the space in the ship to make sure that the crew could maintain their spirituality. Other cultures packed the entire ship with machinery or, she shuddered, weapons. It's not like Tyche was defenseless, far from it, but her weaponry - she didn't like that word - her defenses were all non-lethal. The Blessed Accord prided themselves on their non-violent approach to diplomacy. The Wiccan Rede is one of their guiding tenets. She recites it to herself out of habit, "And it harm none, do what ye will." Rory didn't like the archaic words, but the intent was clear. You have great personal freedom as long as you don't infringe on another person.
"Come on, Rory, focus." No doubt Brigit is waiting impatiently to take her ship. Rory makes her way to the far wall and presses a little hidden button. The altar in front of her slides into an alcove and all the tapestries rise and store themselves, leaving bare gray metal behind.
Her tooth-implanted com device chirps. She accepts the request and speaks to the captain. "How is the inspection going, Rory? Is the ship going to hold together?" Rory can hear the amusement in the captain's voice, as it is a brand new ship and thus shouldn't have any issues. But she can also hear the impatience.
"Sorry captain, I um, got sidetracked in the Grove." She also doesn't have to vocalize her words, but she likes the sound of her voice, so she speaks anyway. She quickly exits The Grove and slips on her ship-shoes.
"I'll just focus on what I need to inspect to get you all on the ship. Sorry." She speaks in a hurried rush as she heads for the engine room, knowing that the console there will give her access to all the ship's systems and keep her free from distractions. From there, she can check the essential items that she needs to check off before others can come aboard. She can then finish her visual inspection when they aren't waiting for her.
Not for the first time, she wonders why they insist on calling it the engine room. You couldn't find an engine in the place. As she enters, she sees a cavernous room. One enormous cuboid object occupies the central rear of the room and two smaller, though still quite large, similar cubes are on either side towards the starboard and port. The Blessed Accord embraced high technology, but they kept their attention to beauty as well, and so even though it vexed Rory to no end because they hid all the wires, pipes, etc. behind panels, she couldn't help but find the clean lines attractive.
Her eyes take in the beauty of the drives and open wider, shining with amazement. The two sail generators on either side created an electromagnetic sail and propelled them far enough out to transition to the next system. The primary drive at the rear does that.
Rory knows how to fix anything on the ship. That is her job, of course. But her brilliance in engineering doesn't translate into physics. So while she understands what the primary drive does, and how to fix it, but she can't quite wrap her head around how it transitioned the ship from one system to the next.
Rory also knows enough about how it works to understand why you did not want to fire up the primary drive close to a celestial object. The holos they had shown of the first experiments made her stomach churn. She said a quick prayer to Charon for those souls to make it as painlessly as possible to their next incarnation.
Because of the dangers, they used the solar wind to make their way out far enough to fire up the drive. The larger the ship, the longer it took to get from place to place. She would love someday to be on a crew of, or a passenger on, a Fast Folder. She muses on how it doesn't fold space any faster; it just got to the folding point more quickly.
She shakes her head again from her internal distractions and approaches the large illuminated console near the door. Rory quickly brings up all the systems and studies them. Then, noting that everything is green and ready for the crew, she speaks again to her chip, "All clear, captain!"
The ship is theirs.