Chapter 23

Zeke had to think about what he wanted.

“Hum, do you know if a spare pilot wants to just fly one to me? I can keep them employed for a couple of weeks, and they can catch a lift back with Dallas.”

“Tean Connors flew a runner to the Belt for me. I’ll give her a call.”

“Good, if she is willing, get her to fly a Z4 to me, but don’t put in the back seats. Raul wants to dump one of the seats from his Z4. We will put it in the new ship. I suppose I’ll have to call them Z3s,” Zeke laughed.

“Funny you should mention that. We have only been building the Z4 models and only putting the extra seats in half of them. Those clip-on rails make it so easy to pop the seats in and out, and they aren’t a trip hazard.”

“Maybe we should stick to that, Wayne. Just call them Z4s but sell them with two seats at the Z2 price, then charge extra for the number of seats they want. The whole idea of the rails was so people can just swap out old seats, or we could put in the colour they wanted.”

Wayne agreed, “In our case, it also makes it easier if they need the space, and only have one or two people on board. It makes them very versatile.”

“Oh, I’ve commissioned a design on a variation. A girl I met, Jasira Marsh, is designing a slightly bigger runner that seats six and has a proper, extendable airlock compartment.”

“If I like her designs, she could do a Z3A or Z2A with the airlock. I think I left enough space to mount the inner doors inside. You just can’t have that fourth seat, as it has to be wider. I think prospectors and maintenance people will love it.”

Wayne groaned. “Zeke! Damn you, I’m going to be dreaming about how to do it, now you’ve mentioned it. I just bloody know it will sell, even here on Mars. The Asteroid mines will love them.”

Zeke laughed. “Oh, did you get my design for the clip-in racks?”

“What?”

“Yeah, Raul and I worked out that if we toss his fourth seat, we can clip a set of racks in place behind either of the front seats. They should be in your email.”

Wayne sighed, “Maybe you should be doing my job.”

“Nah, you love your job. I’m just the ideas-man. Anyway, see if the Connors’ girl wants to go on a joy flight. You can always stick a fourth runner on Gail’s ship for Burnie to display. It will give him the incentive to meet our standards.”

Wayne laughed, “I’ll flip you a message as to who will deliver the runner.”

Zeke didn’t wait for the message as he went to bed.

Zeke had four hours of refreshing, undisturbed sleep.

While he woke in the usual state of a healthy young man, he ignored it as he dressed for the day. It had taken him several years to work out how to constantly pull a trickle of magical energy to keep himself topped up. It alleviated unwanted sexual tension after using magic unless he used a lot.

Even so, he carried around a lot of De Ray crystals. He had also developed a habit of sending a trickle of energy into any De Ray crystal in his vicinity. He had often wandered around Bella, topping them up and unconsciously checking the spells.

However, Freya didn’t have crystals everywhere. She was too new. Zeke couldn’t help himself. He stopped in every access way and placed small crystals and the appropriate spells. For good measure, he added intruder alarm spells, or no access spells with a turn-away spell depending on the room.

Each access received a spell to activate a shield should the air pressure change suddenly and to repair the seals if the door didn’t seal. While the shield on the outer hull defected unwanted foreign objects, it didn’t stop things from going wrong inside.

He also added a spell that let him through if he was wearing his space suit. That spell had taken him some time to perfect. It even came in handy if he had a set of cargo bay doors open.

Raul probably thought Zeke had depressurised the hold when pulling the containers in and out. The truth was that he had simply turned the gravity compensators off and activated the airlock shield spell before opening the doors.

As he passed bits of equipment and new walls, he added extra repair and kept clean spells. His ship had a dust extraction system as part of his airflow system. They were linked back to his R&R unit. The spell directed the dirt to that system.

A special intake removed any foreign bodies and unwanted elements or compounds. It then sterilised the air, added the missing elements, such as free oxygen or nitrogen and pumped it out to recircle the ship. The R&R unit recycled the unwanted elements and sent them to storage.

Half an hour later, Zeke had reduced his personal supply of crystals by a tenth. It worried him a bit, but just walking around the ship felt so much better. He reasoned that the crystals could recharge themselves better by being spread out.

“Captain, did you just do an upgrade to my core processing unit?”

Zeke frowned, “Um, no, Freya. Why do you ask?”

She didn’t answer immediately. When she did, she said, “It’s alright now, Captain. The system is fully functional. The spells you placed fixed some minor flaws. All systems on this ship are now working at plus optimum levels.”