Pangaea

Chapter 2 The Voyager

The spaceport orbited suspended above their heads and Voyager was barely visible inside the atmosphere, like an enormous, metallic, white and smooth moon.

"The haze in the upper layers of the atmosphere does not allow you to appreciate our flagship." Lieutenant Desirée Famo was written on the tag on the uniform of the beautiful brunette girl who appeared behind them. The air force cap hid her hair, which was supposed to be long. He made his way with authority into the group of university looking at them all as if to start studying them. "I am the helmsman Desirée Famo. Now we will board Voyager, but first I have to make a recommendation. Voyager is a non-protonated ship. What you will find on board has been built, so the law of regeneration does not apply. If you get hurt, you pay the consequences."

"Why?" a student asked.

"We had difficulty imagining all the characteristics of the materials we needed at the same time, but we didn't have any to build them. On Voyager there are environmental protonators, but there is a lot that is not protonated. I wouldn't play with something and then find out it's a non-protonated object and end up in the infirmary. Furthermore, the ship would disappear if we passed into space not covered by the protonator. For five days you will be soldiers. Do what you are told, otherwise you will be sent home with a bad report." The girl smiled affably, but you could sense an iron will behind that friendliness. "The transfer point is one meter to my right. Copy my identification card and welcome aboard." The first boy approached and studied the tag. Even though Desirée had pinned it on her chest, she noticed that the boy, behind his glasses and was actually studying the nameplate, his big brown eyes had not been distracted on the girl's physique, even if he had focused a lot. He copied it and walked away. "A moment." Desiree stopped him. "Turn around." she wathched. "As I imagined. You are?"

The other looked at her surprised. "Vincenzo Caragiulo, why?"

"Copying the plate means with the necessary corrections, unless you want to be called Desiree Famo." The boy looked at his nameplate, realizing that he had copied it completely, including the writing. He immediately made the corrections, to everyone's laughter. "Silence. I want to see if anyone else gets it wrong." the woman said in a cordial tone, but one that brooked no replies.

"One thing escapes me. You said everything on board is built and you're making us protonate the tags." Roy said.

"The tags contain my code, which allows access to the ship. On board you will have your uniforms with the chip and you will no longer need them. For the first access the system "expects" many Lieutenant Desirée Famo. If it happened at any other time the culprit would have the security team on him. Cards will be deprotonated upon arrival."

Caragiulo appeared annoyed. "So if I had left your name—"

"It wasn't wrong... technically... but it's better to immediately make clear the efficiency needed in the fleet. An oversight can make the difference." the woman added.

The lieutenant got on last, delaying a few minutes both to check that everyone was getting on and to give them time to settle in, but also so as not to immediately return to being the group's nanny. "Follow me! Now we will assign you accommodation, you will leave your personal effects and I will take you to the canteen for a small welcome cocktail, then a free afternoon." the lieutenant said after quickly verifying that the access tags were missing.

"Can we go anywhere?" Caragiulo asked.

"The unauthorized accesses are equipped with protonated gates that conceal them. They will be shown to you as needed, so the official answer is: You can go anywhere. In the accommodation you will find the uniforms of your size. You have five minutes to put them on, then gather in the external corridor."