Handwavium comes in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, ranging from simple black cubes to a weird sort of guacamole-like ooze.
What?
Yeah, once upon a blue moon an associate got drunk enough to think switching the stuff with our dip was a good idea. The less said about that and its results, the better, though for some reason I seem to have come out of it the way I'd been when I'd come in.
The chunk that I called my own above all others was sitting smugly underneath the Uncertainty's table, humming away softly as it fed the drive-sails and pretty much everything else on board that required power.
It really was amazing. Such a little thing, and so much potential ... some used it better than others, though.
Speaking of which ... I shot a look at the navigational holosphere - formerly a disco ball, now hanging from the cabin ceiling - and grinned.
Energy sails are nifty ... or, you know, for me anyway. I don't know if anybody else has gotten these results. They don't really allow for a lot in the way of manouvering in the same way that the baseline handwavium gravitics do - changing their vector is a bitch and a half, for example - but for pure acceleration they're worth their weight in gold. Still, getting too close too anybody with them online is asking for trouble.
That's mainly why we didn't lift any old sailboat/freighter relic and try fitting it with those when Hermes Universal Deliveries was considering upscaling our little flotilla of associates with something that could carry bulk.
We were still mostly in the business of subcontracting those big jobs to people who've got the patience to maintain something big enough to pull them off, but we'd gotten our own hauler somewhere along the line.
And if I was reading the manifests right, it was heading for Phobos for some reason. I queried its Majordomo for a manifest, and found its cars loaded down with the sort of stuff you'd expect to be delivered for a ...
...
Oh, frag. I'd been wondering why I'd gotten so little mail in the past week.
"Trigon."
"Hmph."
"My mail. Now."
"First, it's 'hold all communications'. Then, it's suddenly 'my mail'. Humans. Make up your damn minds, worms."
Well, there it was. Huh. Been a while since I'd last gone to Convention, though seeing as this time I was at least heading in the right direction, more or less ...
Ah. Why not? There were no express deliveries going on that weren't being handled already.
I plotted the appropriate course adjustments into the 'helm', then reconsidered. I'd be there early if I really punched it, but what was I supposed to do with my time then? Terraforming wasn't really my cup of tea, you know.
Meh. Might as well try the long way around.
I hit the commo, and called up the space-train.
"Uncertainty here. Hullo hullo, Galaxy Express. I'm reading you've got some free space on you. Mind giving me a piggyback ride to Phobos, Maetel?"
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm