“But really,” Puck went on, “the Tempus goes out to maintain the alert system. There’s a whole network of ancient alert buoys hanging out along the upward and downward stretches. They make sure it all stays shipshape.”
“And one crew takes care of all that?” Cavalon asked.
Puck gave a grim nod. “Yep, just the one. Only other ships we even have aboard are a couple Hermes-class vessels we ran charting missions with, years back.”
“Hermes-class? Isn’t that a civilian make?”
Puck chuffed. “Yeah, brass spends the big bucks on us out here. And even then—no warp cores. Only sublights.”
“What about jump drives?”
“Definitely not. No stars out here to charge ’em anyway.”
“So no FTLs?”
“Not one.”
“So, you have nothing faster than an ion engine?” Cavalon asked, raising his eyebrows. “Why?”
“’Cause then we could leave.”
“They think you’re all just gonna run off?”
Puck smiled. “Try saying that with a straight face in a month.”
Cavalon frowned, then looked out over the atrium as Puck gestured to the bottom floor.
“Quattuor’s mostly research and development,” he continued. “Tres at the ventral bow has all the fun stuff—mess, hydroponics, brig, medical, psych ward.”
“You have a psych ward?”
Puck shrugged. “Something about living on the edge of reality gets people anxious, I guess. Never bothered me. Just another empty place in this mostly empty universe, ya know?”
Cavalon nodded. “Sure…”
Puck gestured across the vestibule to the middle level. “That guy’s Duo Sector, which houses all the comms systems.”
“A whole sector just for comms?”
“Communication near the Divide gets tricky. We actually don’t have direct contact with the Core or Legion HQ out here. We have to bounce our comms off the closest Apollo Gate, and to accomplish even that, they had to retrofit the shit out of the whole system—half the hull on the starboard quarter is covered in comms arrays. Something about boosting the signal enough to overcome the interference. And even then, it only works half the time.”
Cavalon bit his lip. They were millions of light-years from anything that could even be remotely likened to civilization, so it really shouldn’t surprise him, but the idea of being so vastly out of touch with the rest of humanity still unnerved him.
“And last but not least…” Puck pointed across the atrium to another corridor on their level. “Unum leads to the bridge, brass quarters, and the EX’s office. That’s it.”
“Well, I won’t remember any of that,” Cavalon said, leaning against the railing next to Puck.
“Luckily they’ve posted helpful signage.” Puck smiled, then his eyes flitted to the new Imprints on Cavalon’s left arm. “You a lefty?”
Cavalon pulled his sleeves over his wrists to cover as much of both sets of tattoos as possible. “Nah, just … felt better on the left.” His gaze drifted to Puck’s arms. His sleeves were pushed up, and a single trail of obsidian squares ran down his right forearm from the elbow to the wrist. Cavalon cleared his throat. “What are they for, anyway?”
“I’ve not had the pleasure of experiencing what they feel like,” Puck admitted, “but it’s, uh … punitive in nature. Correctional. Or what the Legion likes to call a ‘vital peacekeeping safeguard.’”