My Vacation On the Exotic Shores of a Black Hole - Part 12
This is a continuation of my story series "My Vacation On the Exotic Shores of a Black Hole".
To read the previous installments of this series, you can click below.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Tomorrow is the absolute last day to enter "My Art Contest On the Exotic Shores of a Black Hole"!
There is no reason not to enter! Make whatever type of art you want!
You could win 15 steem for the first prize or 5 steem for the runner-up. Additionally, 5 honorable mentions will each receive 1 steem! So, even if you don't win, chances are good that you'll get something, and have a bit of fun doing it!
"John..." I could feel her breath on my ear, then her tongue snaked my lobe into her mouth, and sucked on it. Shivers went down my spine, as my hands were on her's. Her skin was so soft and smooth. Much smoother than any I had ever touched before. Almost too perfect, but just slightly sticky.
I could feel the breath catch in my throat. "Julia..." I kissed her passionately, and it felt like my soul was being sucked out of my body, and went into hers.
Then I woke up.
Image used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. (source)
Thankfully I was laying on my stomach. I had to adjust myself for the discomfort of...something...pushing against my coveralls.
"Um...Julia, how long did I sleep?"
"3 hours, captain."
I kind of wanted to go back to sleep, and hopefully get back to what I was doing, but I also felt like I should get to that laser system. The dream had woken me up quite a bit. It was a dream, wasn't it? The feeling of her skin was similar to when I had passed out before. Almost too real. It wasn't quite the same though. This one was probably going to bother me for a while.
"I guess I'll get up, and work on that laser system." I unstrapped myself and rubbed my eyes. At least I still had my exo-suit on. I didn't have to do anything but get up and go attach the lasers to the cannon. But first, a midnight snack. My stomach started to hurt the second I moved away from the bed. "Julia, can you make me an Eggogae sandwich, with Bacotine sandwich? On toast."
"Right away captain."
Eggogae wasn't exactly the best egg substitute, but it was cheaper than real eggs, and you could find it pretty easily on any space station. It still had a bit of that green taste from the algae, with a bit of gritty texture. At least it was kind of slimy like eggs. Bacotine wasn't half bad though. Not really sure what it's made out of. Know for damn sure they don't raise pigs on any space station though. At least not any I've been to so far.
"Can you put that hot tomato stuff on it? What was that called? Fryzap?"
"Certainly, captain. I thought you might want that."
"Good." My mouth was salivating at the thought of the sandwich.
I drifted down the hallway, not even bothering to engage my mag-boots, and into the kitchen. "And can you heat up some coffee for me? Not too hot. I wanna be able to drink it."
"Yes, captain."
The sandwich was lovely. The Eggogae kinda of squished as I bit into it, and crumbs went everywhere. Oops. Robert would probably have to clean out the primary filter in the room today. The Fryzap was a bit too spicy, but it tasted so good.
"Julia, can you make me a hash brown too? Put a little Fryzap on it too, but not as much, and some standard tomato ketchup." Thank God tomatoes weren't too hard to grow in small spaces. I don't think I could live without ketchup and similar condiments.
"Ready, captain."
I unhooked my boot from under the table and floated over to the food dispenser to retrieve my hash brown. When I opened the foil container, steam poured out. It was so hot it almost burned my mouth, but I couldn't help but devour a few bites. It was so good. One side was coated with a bit of the Fryzap and ketchup, in just about the perfect amount. I finished off the rest of my sandwich, and at another couple of bites of the hash brown. So good. Then I grabbed an orange Scuttlebutt and proceeded to the machine shop.
"Captain, you really should drink more water."
"Ehh...who asked you? I pay for this shit. I can drink it if I want to."
"I was more concerned about your health than the price of it, captain."
"Yeah, well...fine." I turned around and got a water container from the food dispenser. "Happy?"
"I wouldn't say I am happy, but I am relieved that you listened to my advice on the maintenance of your health."
"You know what would really help my health? Not having a fucked knee." Speaking of which, I should pick up some pills in the med bay before I go outside. And probably take a shower. At least I had changed out of my space suit before working on the lasers, but I should probably wash some of the dirt and grime off before I put a suit on. Looks like I didn't save any time keeping my exo-suit on.
"I'm sorry captain. I really didn't see any alternative."
"Yeah, whatever Julia. I'm just griping. I don't blame you. I know you were just trying to save me and the ship."
"But mostly the ship."
"What?"
"Nothing, captain."
"I swear, I'm gonna have to take a look at those changes you made to your programming! I'm starting to wonder if these are really jokes, or if you aren't going a little psycho on me. You wouldn't be plotting my murder, would you Julia?"
"I would never intentionally murder you, captain. Then I would have to train a whole new captain."
"That's right! And they probably would be a lot worse than me!"
"They might be able to afford some upgrades to the ship though."
"And your processors."
"Point taken. I will never intentionally bash the ship into you again unless it is absolutely necessary."
I laughed a little as I got two pain pills from the med bay and drifted towards where the shower was. Whatever Julia changed, our little moments of banter were even more fun than usual. She seemed to have a real sense of humour now.
The shower was refreshing, but I felt so worn out. I knew I couldn't relax just yet though. Well, maybe a little. "Julia, after I get these installed, what do you say we watch a movie?" I began putting on a space suit Julia had waiting for me. Glad she thought of it when I completely forgot.
"What did you have in mind, captain?"
"What about a western? Old black and white one. Good guys versus bad guys. Real white hat versus black hat sort of thing."
"I have several options available, captain. Would you like to choose?"
"Nah, you make the choice. Whatever you think I'll like." I finished strapping on my exo-suit, and put on my booties and mag-boots, then finally engaged them.
It wasn't exactly easy carrying four lasers, zero gravity or not. Each one of them was almost as long as my leg, and a bit wider. It was a lot easier once I managed to strap them onto the tether, but they ran into each other a few times when I moved around. I was a bit afraid of them causing a bit of damage to each other, but they seemed to be alright.
"Alright Julia, give 'em a test."
"Step back, please, captain."
"Yeah, yeah." I walked maybe a bit less than twenty meters away. "Alright, give it a go." The canon came to life, and again I saw a flashing light in the distance, followed by a rather large asteroid exploding. "Oh fuck." The cannon didn't stop there though. The smaller lasers on the top and sides started moving and firing, vaporizing smaller pieces. The larger cannon was moving as well though, and the next thing I knew, two more asteroids had exploded, and any pieces remaining were vaporized. "Getting a bit excited there, aren't you Julia?"
"I had to properly analyze their destructive capabilities."
"Yeah, sure you did. Alright, I'll go install the others." The installs on the other cannon went easy enough. "Alright, do your tests. I'm gonna check out some of these damaged systems I've been putting off."
"Yes, captain."
I walked over to the other side of the ship and used my drill to remove a piece of hull plating. Scrappy didn't do too bad of a job. Looked like the backup radar support system was out. "Julia, do we have replacement parts for this?"
"Yes, captain."
"So, I'm guessing he just had trouble getting in here."
"Yes, captain."
"Yeah, well, it's not exactly gonna be a picnic for me either. I'm going to have to take the entire module out for repair." I unscrewed a few bolts and pulled on the module. I didn't remember it being so big. It had to be more than a meter across, and a bit more than a half meter deep. This was gonna be like moving a piano.
The module barely fit through the airlock on the side door. I thought I was going to have to open the cargo bay. I managed to barely get it inside though. Well, into the airlock anyway. I ended up having to make the choice between working on it in the airlock or taking it to the cargo bay. Unfortunately, I decided to take it to the cargo bay. It would be a lot easier to work on in there.
That turned out to be a good decision. I ended up with screws and parts spread over half the cargo bay. I managed to fix it though, after more than an hour. How many more systems were there that needed repair? How much longer would it take?
I was worn out. "Julia, I'm going back to sleep... Oh, wait...right...the western. Alright, let's go watch it. But I'll probably fall asleep during."
"I have it ready in the cinema, captain."
I turned off my mag-boots and drifted there. I don't know what it was about today that I wanted to just drift through the ship. It seemed so much more relaxed. Once there, I put my mag-boots in a cabinet and strapped myself down. Julia had been playing cartoons but started the movie while I was strapping myself into the chair.
It was a slow movie, with moments of action, and a slow build up. I had no chance of staying awake through it.
I'm gonna stop it here. I could probably continue on a bit, but this is a good place to stop, and I don't want to esentially start what might end up being another section at the end of this post.
Wow,
Read Part 11, and 12 now buddy. Still need to go back to catch up like i said i would. Have not had a meal yet tonight and the start of your story made me hungry, So gonna go get some food.
Source: Your Host With The Most, Something Fucking Interesting.
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Thank you! You too!
Something f****** interesting!
Good enough ;)?
Nope. You just reposted the meme I made.
I liked it though. That's why I made it.
Yeah, sorry if I didn’t make it clear, nice meme, I meant that you posted that meme and you look at peoples’ blogs ‘because they actually said “something f****** interesting”’, just my silly little play on punctuation :) sorry for the confusion :(
Yeah, I get it.
Lucky it was not a full on wet dream.
Being all caught up now and reading the parts as they come out I really look forward to it, as it might seem at times not much of anything is happening but if you actually look at the time frame of a part there is a lot happening.
I appreciated the fact that you compared the size of the module to something I could imagine it really helps a lot, not sure if I missed it but I just can't scale the laserers and canon in my mind at all.
Julia is becoming a bit like one of those people that have a witty reply for everything , not sure I would want to keep chatting with her in that case, but glad to see she gets right back to business at hand.
The lasers are all a bit wider than a large human leg, minus the mounting hardware, but probably a bit shorter than most. I'm pretty sure I actually said that in this post. The point defense lasers I would think would be slightly larger.
The cannons are fucking huge. I don't think I established an exact size. I think I might have even been a bit misleading about their size in the first one. He pulls them out of the crate, but they're so fucking huge, the only reason he was able to was his exo-suit, even with it being zero-g. They're maybe a bit bigger than a Hummer.
You may have mentioned it, from context if I missed that I did settle on more a large sniper size myself.
As big as a hummer nice, liking these canons a lot more, that is how I also imagined them when they destroy the astroids that and after googling a bit I settled on a modified version of this
The internal lasers are in a circular configuration, with 2 concentric circles. Not sure if I mentioned that. So the main structure would be circular, not rectangular.
They are then aimed with a holographic crystal, which has a reconfigurable internal structure that works similar to how a DLP projector works. Basically, it has tiny mirrors that can be adjusted by the second to create what looks like a 3D structure to the naked eye. This would give it more of a wide bore look, almost like a jet engine.
Because they repurposed the technology to use in a cannon, it can actually envelop an object, and create far more damage, vaporizing something far larger than would be possible with a cannon of a similar size.
Due to it being a sort of holographic laser projection, it can also target multiple points with near surgical precision, within an area of fire. So, it could do something like cut a cannon off of a ship or cut multiple docking clamps at once, if they were close enough together, or it was far enough away, for example.
I wanted it to be something special.
Thank you for that, really cool to know how you imagined it , very understandable that writing a story can take a lot out of you especially when you actually imagine things in such detail but have to decide how to plainly write it down.
Woo hoo getting a bit racey there mate!! I love how witty and strong Julia is! You truly have this well and truly detailed in your head! Do you draw geek, I’d love to see your drawings of some of the components of the ship, and Julia too!!
I don't know about drawing the ship. I'd have to find my mech drawing book and practice a hell of a lot.
I considered trying to draw Julia though.