My Vacation On the Exotic Shores of a Black Hole - Part 8

_{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}

Do I hear singing? Is that Julia's voice?

I could have sworn I heard singing in the distance, but as I opened my eyes, it faded. Maybe I was just dreaming.

"Julia. How long did I sleep?"

"Two and a half hours, captain."

"I guess that's a good amount." I unstrapped myself from the bed, and got my exo-suit and the boots out of the cabinet, and strapped it on. I actually managed to catch myself before hitting my head on the wall, and used too much force, sending myself careening across the room. But I didn't hurt myself! That was the point!

As I was walking out the door of my chambers, suddenly I felt a tickle in my nostrils. "ACHOO! AHH! OUCH! FUCK!" With one of the most violent sneezes I've ever had, the nose plugs I had in flew across the hall, and stuck to the wall.

"Gross."

"Julia, did you just say gross?" I held my nose. The plugs had taken quite a few hairs with them.

"Well, it is captain."

"I swear you are becoming less like a ship's computer every day. Run a diagnostic. Make sure there's nothing wrong with your programming."

"There's nothing wrong with my programming captain."

"Then why are you acting so different?"

"I may have made a few tweaks."

"What?"

"I wanted to act a bit more human."

I sighed. "So that's it. Well, I can't blame a computer for wanting to be more human. Let me know next time though, so I'm not freaking out, thinking there's something wrong. I hope you at least made a backup."

"Of course, captain. I wouldn't want to be permanently lost if I made any errors in my calculations."

"I'm going over that with you later. And don't you dare try to weasel your way out of it!"

"Yes, captain."

"I doubt any other ship's computer would do this...or get away with it." A glob of partially coagulated blood and snot floated in front of me, as well as smaller droplets. I groaned and rubbed my eyes. At least my nose felt better. "Switch to negative pressure in the hall, and get a bot to clean this up. Right now we gotta focus on what's in front of us. Lets go take that cannon apart, and see what we can do."

I made my way into the cargo bay. My tools were floating everywhere. "Um...Julia, what happened?"

"While you were sleeping a micro meteor was spotted on sensors. I had to take evasive action. We would have been hit if it weren't for the upgrades you did to the deflectors."

I looked down. "How close were we?"

"We managed to evade it by less than one tenth of a meter, captain."

I hit the wall. I could feel tears welling up. "Julia. Run similar pattern recognition checks to what we've been doing with the other systems on the engine systems. See if there's anything we can do to increase maneuvering. Even slightly. I don't care if I have to spend my entire time going back to the space station working on it, if it keeps us alive. I'm not fucking dying out here!"

"Yes, captain."

I managed to avoid completely crying, but I could feel the wetness in my eyes. I wasn't doing as well as I had thought. Right now I kinda felt like I was on the verge of panic. I didn't though. I just gathered up my tools, and started towards the cannon.

"Well, at least it's not all smashed up."The cannon stood on the other side of the room. There was kind of a pretty big hole in the wall near where it was.

"Yes, captain. I managed to use the magnetic retention controls in the cargo bay to slow it's movement towards the wall, and keep it from puncturing it or being significantly damaged. At least I don't believe it was significantly damaged.

I walked around the cannon. Honestly, I couldn't even tell it had hit the wall. The wall on the other hand, had seen better days. "Hey. Doesn't look damaged. Well, lets get started." I started to walk up to the cannon, but then thought about the wall. "Is there any chance Scrappy could fix that wall?"

"Yes captain, I'll have him get to it right away."

"Heh." That little guy was proving most useful. And I'd finally get to see him in action. I disengaged my mag-boots, and pushed off from the cargo bay floor, grabbing onto the cannon, and making my way to the top. I identified a few bolts that I needed to remove to get the casing off. Removing bolts in zero g was always a task. Thankfully my mag-boots and exo-suit made it a bit easier.

As I worked on disassembling the cannon, Scrappy came in with a stack of composite fiber plates. They dwarfed him in size, but he managed to carry them quite well with the help of his beefy arm. I have to say, I was a bit more interested in what he was doing than what I was. He cut the hole slightly larger than it was, and cut pieces exactly the right size, then held them perfectly in place as he used a resin to graft the fiber plates onto the sides of the hole, and to each other. He would then quicken the pace of the drying with a laser. It didn't take long before the hole was sealed, and he was off.

"I'll wait until you leave to have him sand it and put a sealant on it captain, due to the potential lung irritants."

"Oh, yes." I suppose she had caught me staring. It was interesting to see him work. I'm glad I had made him.

I finally managed to get the case off the cannon. I didn't recognize all the components, but I did recognize multiple individual laser generators, all next to each other, in concentric circles. This thing must have massive power.

"So, what do you think, Julia? Do you think there's any chance we could use it?"

"The lasers appear to be powerful enough to destroy micro-meteors, but I doubt that one would be large enough to destroy anything much larger than would be dealt with by our deflector. The combination of a laser and the deflector might be able to allow us to deal with slightly larger micro-meteors than we are able to now."

I rubbed my eyes, and tried to think. "So, we would have to use multiple lasers?"

"That is one possibility captain."

"One possibility? Julia. Don't mess with me. What is the best possible solution to create an alternative to the point defense laser system?"

"Judging by my calculations, the manufacture of a fully custom laser cannon using multiple lasers from the larger cannon. There is a problem though captain. It would take extensive time. The lasers just seem to be too well integrated into the larger cannon."

I rubbed my face again, and looked at the cannon. On either side, and the top there were large flat surfaces. "Julia, what if we didn't remove the lasers from the cannon?"

"Captain? What do you mean?"

"These big flat spaces here. What if we mounted smaller laser cannons onto them, and rerouted the output from some of the lasers in the larger cannon into them."

"That could work captain. It won't be an easy task to mount the cannon to the side of the ship however. Our point defense laser mounts simply weren't made to mount full size cannons, let alone anything even remotely this size. Additionally, we'll have to fabricate multiple components, but I believe that we can can adapt either the point defense lasers or the mining lasers to the task."

"Nuh uh uh! Both."

"Both, captain?"

"That's right. We're gonna adapt both the mining lasers, and the point defense lasers. We have 4 mining lasers, right? I want one on either side of each cannon, and one of the point defense lasers on top."

"Yes, that would be possible, but would be a lot more work. Why would we do that captain?"

"Because it's gonna be cool."

_(source)

_{Gonna leave it there for today. Another semi-short chapter. I think it was a pretty natural point to leave it though. I'll try to get another one in as soon as possible.
If you like it, do all that shit that one does when you like it. Comment and shit. Tell me what you think.}

Click here to read Part 9