She
sat in her heavily padded flight chair, and looked up through her diamond
flight carapace, the very last of the neutronium shutters sliding back,
into their recesses. The engines acknowledged complete driver coil
shutdown, the mass sensor now devoid of tracing signals, only the slight
depression of the planet above and its large primary moon, made any
curvature of the surrounding space. There would be no need to switch the
craft into silent mode as the populous below still wondered on the precise
orbits of their planets, and indeed their shape, however she would not
want to be disturbed by advanced races, who wondered why she would stop to
observe such a primitive race.
She
leant across her flight console and pressed the intelligence interlock,
the computer now took predominant control of the craft, she could still
command the ship from the ground by using her neural interface equipment,
but for the most part the ship would look after itself. The ship’s prime
drives switched from AM/M reactor, to its secondary fusion reactors,
compared to traveling space at above c, cloaking the ship, requires only a
negligible fraction of the energy expenditure, and the lower power drives
could be used, as these tend to be more reliable, and as hydrogen reserves
on this ship were plentiful, as opposed to the limited reserves of
antimatter, it is generally best considered to save these limited reserves
for trans c flight. The ship prepared itself to slip undetectably into its
final orbit, if it really was in trouble it could slip into phase space,
where it would be irretrievable to all but the most advanced species.
She
swiveled in her flight chair, un-strapping herself, and set about putting
on her equipment, she her outer flight coat off, that would double up as a
pressure suit if need be, and put on the ‘second shadow’ suit, she put
the large metal torus around her neck, and as soon as she pressed the
light blue chevron on its front, the tendrils of metal flowed over her
body, soon, a network of this flowing metal covered her body, and between
the tendrils, dark material intertwined, sealing the suit. Like her flight
suit, it could cover her face in the event of pressure loss, but at the
moment the material for the helmet remained as a thick opalescent golden
band around her neck.
She
walked to the back of her small vessel, and unclipped one of the black
boxes, inside arranged delicately on the shaped foam were a series of
either mat black, or gold, blocks, each one appearing to be individually
shaped, she picked up one of the blocks, and inserted it between the
spaces of the metal tendrils, each blocks performed a function, a sensor
module, a power reserve, a communications device, but each was unique in
shape and placement in the suit. After ten or so minutes both her arms and
upper torso were stocked with the modules. She let her neural interface
interlock with the suit, feeling and testing the resources present, after
running diagnostics on the suit, and allowing full motor interlock, she
walked over to the flight panel again, she checked system status, and
prepared for transport, the teleporter directly linking to her suits
transponder. She looked up through the screen to the large orb hanging
above, it looked remarkably similar to Earth, about the right ratio of
land to sea, same light harvesting pigments, same climates and landforms.
Before she would transport down, she unclipped her portable from the
flight console, the small computer popping from its recessed mounting. She
walked to the center of the small light deck, and disappeared in a flash
of light, her atoms being sent down to the surface, to be reassembled,
precisely in the same order as they were on the ship. The main cabin
lights onboard cut out, leaving the deck dark, apart from the glow off the
control panels, a whine could then be heard from the air cyclers, as they
shutdown, and the silver shutters clicking into place over the flight
carapace.
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