e – that wouldn't solve anything. Besides, the last time he did

n't really leave him any choice there – but a fat lot of good insurance was going to do him stuck ou

s he going to g

ike for real. Mykl turned on the emergency beacon – there was little else he could do. That at least still worked – and, seeing as he had to conserve as much energy as possible, h

der, and he started to fantasize about being down in engineering, trying to build a workable stardrive out of the parts of a landing thruster, a garbage compactor and the cheap Swiss watch on his wrist. No

es was a military ship in the Terran Space Fleet – a warship. Although not a new ship, she was one of the frontline service ships, pride of the Fleet. She'd been in service a good many years already,

lso to keep them as close to the most efficient and effective standard possible. Thus, technologically at least, Antares was currently one of the most advanced ships of the Imperial

ares' refit had been almost complete when the call from Fleet Command came through. As Exo, Ripley had been part of the refit management and planning team, and was intimately familiar with the progress on a daily basis. They were just two weeks away from final checks, with trials scheduled for the week after t

system failures of a wide variety, and finally – the Last Straw: a brand new coupling seal in the stardrive engine failed! Fortunately, the cut-out worked – or the whole of engineering would've disappeared in a flaming ball of anti-matter, and would probably have taken

had the offending unit stripped down and under repair. Even so, Antares was still underway – albeit at maxim

ing around the galaxy. Retirement was no longer mandatory – except for reasons of ill health, or when people reached the point where they could no longer meet the demands of their roles on the job. A lot of people lived beyond the 'magical number' of 100 these days, and still enjoyed very good quality of life. Some wanted to contin