Free Dreaming of Atmosphere by Jim C. Wilson

only being an intern who wasn’t yet certified as a watch keeper, held a two hour watch with me supervising.
    Everyone else had duties besides watch keeping as well, such as preventative maintenance, cleaning responsibilities, and any projects that Maxine had us working on. What we did with our time outside of these duties was up to us. The Dreaming had an area in the cargo hold set aside as a gym, and supply containers could be unsecured and moved to make room for a sparing mat. The main living spaces contained a dining mess compartment that could be used as a lounge and games area, which also featured a holo-projector for entertainment. Most people used their cabins a fair bit also, reading or watching films on their overlays.
    One of my responsibilities was to ensure that we maintained a constant state of readiness; that we were prepared mentally and physically for any eventualities that arose. To combat complacency and to maintain that edge, I ran periodic exercises. I worked with Eric to organise damage control events such as ship-borne fires. I worked with Fel to develop simulated combat scenarios to put the crew through. I’d drop the occasional fake emergency and time the crew getting to their stations. When the crew had time, I also ran short self-defence and weapons handling training sessions.
    We were nowhere near as drilled as a military vessel, but I used a lot of my experience as a Star Marine to instil an ethos into the crew that meant if they practiced hard, they could handle the real thing easy.
    Max had Eric and Cuts secretly searching for the charges, in hopes that we could at least get to the bombs if we ever got the chance to disarm them. We also needed to know for sure that the threat was real, we’d feel pretty foolish if in the end it turns out there were none. Jenner didn’t seem like the kind of guy who bluffed, though, and it was no surprise when Cuts found the first one.
    It was welded into the primary emissions coupler, which meant that if we tried to remove it, it would probably sense the lack of flow of emissions and detonate. It didn’t look too big a charge, though, and I guessed that if it did go off, the most damage it would do is make it so we couldn’t accelerate at maximum for longer than an hour before the radiation killed us all. They kept searching.
    Thankfully, Artemis had gone to bunk with Zoe after all, so I had my cabin back to myself. I used the extra space to take stock of my armoury, ensuring that all my armours were in good repair, and that I had enough batteries for my guns. I also asked Fel to see if he could put together another scrambler to replace the one I’d lost at the Crystal Lounge. I also downloaded all the information I could regarding Ambrose Station. I couldn’t get anything recent, of course, just reports and news articles from its early days during construction before the Ghantri took it over. I’d taken a print out of the station with me to mull over during one of my watches I kept with Zoe and after I watched her run through her check list we started to talk. As usual, it started with her asking questions.
    “What are the Ghantri like?”
    “What do you remember from the news?”
    “Not much, I was only a teenager when it happened, I was more interested in studying cybernetics than some distant war.”
    “Right, well, the Ghantri are actually two separate species.”
    “Ah huh, the Ghantri are the big ones, and the Jaani are the smaller ones!”
    “That’s right. I haven’t seen many Jaani, but I know they’re the technicians. The Ghantri tend to be the heavy lifters and labourers. They both evolved from primates, similar to humans, on their home world of Ghan. Although the Jaani are smarter on average, the Ghantri are the master race. The Jaani appear to have evolved alongside them in a kind of symbiotic relationship.”
    “Their big brothers.”
    “That’s one way of thinking of them. The Ghantri are predators, through and through, I