Nina shuffled in to the mess hall, late and yawning. Malachi and their new friend, Eva Kielser, was already there, along with a fourth person Nina hadn't met yet. Eva saw Nina first and called her over. Malachi hadn't noticed her arrival, he was side-eyeing the other person at their table.

"You should have woken me up," grumbled Nina. "I hate missing breakfast."

"There's still time. I'll get you something," said Eva. She cleared away her empty tray and found a clean one for Nina's food.

"Who's this?" Nina nodded at the other figure. They sat with their head bent so low over a datapad that Nina couldn't learn anything about them except they had brown hair, bad posture, and no comb.

"This is Cameron," said Malachi. "He's my room mate."

One finger poked through the hair as a salute of acknowledgement, possibly as greeting, then retreated.

"He doesn't say much," said Malachi.

"Hi Cameron, I'm Nina."

The finger rose and fell again.

"Or do much," said Malachi.

"I sense that of the two of you, you are the go-getter, Mal?" said Nina.

Malachi, somewhat offended by anyone who didn't want to learn, ignored the question, and slid a datapad across the table.

"Assignments are in. What did you get for first rotation?"

"You didn't look?"

"I didn't want to steal your thunder. Show me."

Nina quickly called up the assignment schedule, then deflated when she saw the result. "Network systems? I wanted something more challenging than that."

"Did you read the assignment brief. It's distributed networking for a satellite grid of the planet below."

"Okay, its more challenging but not sexy. I wanted something like cryptography, or data frame analysis."

"Maybe on your second rotation? You can always petition for an assignment."

"How do you know?"

Malachi flicked another document onto the screen. "Manual."

Of course. If there was a manual, or a guide, or a codex, Malachi would find it and read it.

"What did you get?" Nina asked. "Oh, thank you, Eva," she added as a pressed metal tray of food appeared in front of her.

"Coffee?" said Eva, and gave her a cup.

"Oh, always!" said Nina, gratefully.

"I got jump drives for my first assignment," said Malachi.

Nina chuckled through a slice of toast. "That's going to be useful on a space station with no engines."

"Which space station is that?" said Eva.

"No, it's good. The jump engines don't work on the Brunel. That's why it's a good training ship. It can't go anywhere, it just orbits Chikana. It needs parts fabricated, everything from chips to injectors to structural arrays. I get to build it all."

"Well that's a lot more useful," said Nina. "Congratulations! Eva, what did you get?"

"Jump navigation. There are physical repairs due and the code base needs to be overhauled. Would you believe the system is analogue?"

"Analogue jump navigation? That can't be right. Just how old is this ship?" said Malachi.

"I can help you with the code, if you want," said Nina.

"If you need the specifications of the computer cores I can probably find them for in you a few days, once I get settled," Eva offered.

"No need," yawned Nina.

Malachi grinned. "I should have known."

"Known what?" said Eva.

Malachi leaned forward and whispered, "You were up all night interrogating the ships systems, weren't you?"

"Not all night, thank you."

"How? We don't have access to any systems yet," said Eva.

"She does," said Malachi. "She likes to explore systems she's not supposed to."

"Oh shush," said Nina with playful modesty.

"You hacked the Brunel, on your first day?" said Eva.

"Not all of it, just an outline."

"But why?"

"Nina sees restricted systems as more of a suggestion than a warning, and a challenge."

"They are restricted for a reason," said Eva.

"It might not be a good reason."

"How would you know?"

"By getting inside and finding out."

"She's good at it too," said Malachi. "I haven't forgotten that datastick we used on Parador. And you're almost done with the Valk—"

"Shush, Mal!" warned Nina. "We don't want to bore our new friends, now, do we."

The hair mumbled something.

"Did you speak?" said Eva.

"What happened on Parador?" said Cameron.

"Nothing happened on Parador," said Nina.

Cameron grunted and returned to ignoring them.

Nina finished her breakfast, returned her tray, and they all stood up to leave.

"Here we go, Mal. First day nerves?" she asked?

"No. You?" Nina shook her head. "Eva?"

"One thing. How do I fix analogue navigation tech? I don't have a clue where to start."

"That's why we're here!" said Malachi. "I can't wait to find out."

"Now or never, right?" said Nina.

"The answer is always 'now'," said Malachi.

"Yeah," said Nina. She picked up her datapad and checked her route to the bridge. "I noticed that about you three."

They separated and left to their assigned stations. Nina and Eva both headed deeper into the ship. Cameron, they assumed, would find his own way to whatever it was he did. Jump navigation and the bridge were both as close to the centre of the Brunel as possible where they, along with other vital systems would have the most protection. It made sense from a tactical standpoint to bury the essentials under as much armour and shielding as possible, but from a maintenance perspective it was, as Malachi put it mildly, a pain. There were some parts of a warship that could only be properly serviced in a dry dock, where parts of the hull could be removed, but work like that was well beyond the scope of their training.

Malachi's destination was the jump engines, oddly enough located at the front of the ship. They were an equally vital system, but much like conventional ship's drives, needed an outlet for their energy. Main engines pushed the ship forward, so were located at the back. Jump engines opened doors, so naturally they were located at the front.

Malachi only knew a little about jump physics, he was an engineer at heart, but he was excited to learn more. As he had told Tila on more than one occasion, you never know when random knowledge can come be useful.

When he entered the Jump Room, Chief Hudson was already there., clipboard in hand. She was conferring with the officer in charge. There were no other engineers present. Hudson acknowledged Malachi's entry and gestured for him to wait, which gave him the chance to look around.

The room was smaller than he expected. For such an important part of the ship, he expected something bigger, full of machinery and lights and wires. Instead the room seemed small and cramped, and part of the reason for this was that it was painted almost entirely black. Three workstations were built over three large electromagnetic coils which wrapped around black tubes. The tubes disappeared into the wall. A fourth workstation, Malachi assumed a supervisor console, was centrally located. The tubes were stencilled with large white letters; B, L and T. There were other electronic and panels around the room, but overall, it felt underwhelming considering this room was what made is possible to jump something the size of a warship between the stars.

Hudson finished her conversation and the officer left.

"Chambers?"

"Yes, sir?" said Malachi.

"Small, isn't it?"

"Smaller than I thought it would be," he agreed.

"This is the emitter control room. Power plants and computing takes place downstairs. You'll get to see that later, but I wanted to introduce you to your assignment in here, as this is where you will be spending most of your first rotation. You're an engineer, tell me what you know about jump technology."

Malachi reeled off the basic outline of a jump without thinking. They were the basics, after all.

"Jump beacons calculate navigational way points and act like lighthouses between stars to stop ships getting lost. On board ships, the jump navigational systems assimilate beacon data and shipboard data like mass and velocity to calculate the jump point. The job of the jump engines is to take all that data and open the portal. Conventional engines can then push the ship through, and fourteen minutes and three seconds later, it arrives at its destination."

"Very good, you understand the basics then. Now tell me about the portal."

Very rarely did Malachi falter, but this was one of those times. Jump portals involved temporal physics, and strange interactions of theoretical particles. He built and fixed things. This was far outside his area of expertise.

"Something to do with tachyons?" he ventured.

"Bradyons, Luxons, and Tachyons." Hudson pointed at the three tubes. "B, L, T."

"Oh, like the sandwich?"

"If a sandwich could make a controlled tear in the fabric of spacetime by intersecting controlled streams of imaginary particles, then yes."

"That's quite a sandwich," said Malachi.

"That, Mister Chambers, is an understatement."

"I'm am engineer, not a physisist," he said. "This is outside my toolbox."

"Even the physists don't understand how it all works, but it works. Physics is mathematics, so is engineering. All we have to do is control the numbers, and the science will take care of itself. I assigned you to this room because you had the most experience in fabrication and construction. Your job is to replace the housing of the tachyon emitter, and configure the electromagnetic coils for targeting. Once all three emitters are working properly, it should be possible for this ship to make its own jump points once more."

"Eva is working in jump navigation, we need that working too."

"Who?"

"Eva Kielser."

Hudson consulted her clipboard. "Correct. Between your team and hers, you have a chance of theoretically jumping this ship."

"Why only theoretically?"

"This ship uses an analogue jump computer. One of the spheres is broken. Its impossible to make the calculations without it."

"Spheres?"

"All in good time, Chambers. Kielser has her assignment, and you have yours. Now its time to see the rest of the facilities, and see your workshop."

Hudson checked something off on her clipboard, and they left the room. She took them down two flights of stairs to a pair of large doors about three metres tall. The frames and edges were covered with worn black and yellow chevrons. Above the doors were two light panels, one red, one green. The green panel was illuminated. Hudson opened the doors, and Malachi walked into his personal wonderland.

This room buzzed with activity. The jump room was quiet and dark, small and lonely, but this room was its opposite in every way. It was two decks high for a start, and nearly a hundred meters long. Bright lights filled the room, only appearing to dim under the pure white energy of sparks and flashes from arc wielders and laser cutters. Malachi could see structural repairs being made, or big equipment being assembled for testing and then disassembled so it could get through the doors to where it was needed.

It reminded him of the factory floor on the Solar Forge, but that was dead and lifeless compared to the activity going on here. Everywhere he looked, someone was working. Most of them wore face shields, heavy overalls and thick gloves to protect themselves.

Away from the equipment he saw the stores. Racks and racks of shelving and bins which housed tools, parts, and raw materials. Six robotic arms hung from the ceiling, finding requested items from each bin and passing them down to trolleys below.

Beyond those were enclosed spaces, separating their contents from the noise and mess of construction.

"What happens in there?" he yelled.

Hudson didn't bother answering over the noise. She led him away from the chaos through carefully marked safe-zones toward the rooms he had pointed at. When they were far enough from the noise to speak she said, "What did you say?"

"What happens in these rooms?" he repeated, in a more reasonable volume.

"These are for fabrication, design, meeting rooms. That end, where we came in, is major construction. This end is for smaller detailed work, microelectronics, field generators, and so on. You'll be working down this end for the most part. Some fab work is required for the emitter housings, but mostly your work will be on calibration and testing. It's detailed and extremely precise, but I'm sure you're up to the challenge."

Malachi nodded. He was good at detail work, but he still wished he was able to use some of those heavy tools. He could only dream of access to the hydro blades and CNC routers on board the Brunel.

But work was work, and knowledge was knowledge. He wasn't fussy.

Hudson led him to a smaller office with a digital workstation, large table, tools, and rows of equipment.

Malachi looked around the room and nodded to himself, satisfied this was something he could work with.

"Where do I start?"

"Start with the manuals. Get familiar with the specifications and tolerances of the emitter array."

"Manuals?" his face lit up.

Hudson called up the specs on his datapad and fed his display to the large screen. Next to the screen was a shelf full of think binders with colour coded laminated pages. She pulled the first volume off the shelf and dropped it on to the table with a heavy thump.

"Digital or printed?"