Adiamante by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

be difficult.”
    That was the understatement of the millennium.
    â€œHere’s where I leave you two.” With a raised hand in half-salute, Lieza took a smaller side tunnel that slanted at an angle of thirty degrees to the right off toward one of
the quarters sections. While there were several hundred almost luxurious apartments there, not to mention the thousands of bunks in the lower-level caserns, only a handful had been used in centuries, although all were maintained.
    Elanstan and I continued moving along the main corridor toward the control center, past the closed doors that contained who knew what. I’d studied the layouts for quarters and systems, not the plans for the entire station. Finally, I asked.
    â€œAre all those rooms empty?”
    â€œMostly. There are several dozen storerooms with enough dried and sealed food to feed a fleet for a decade, if you want to call fortified and enriched sawdust dating from five millennia back ‘food.’”
    â€œIt’s still nourishing?”
    â€œThe ancients were good at preserving just about anything, except taste and themselves.” Elanstan tossed her head and her short niellen hair sprayed away from her face.
    Ahead, I could see an area of brighter lights.
    â€œThat’s the central hub,” Elanstan pointed toward the increased illumination. “We’re stopping here.” She touched the lockplate for a hatch on the left side of the corridor, and I followed her through the adiamante-armored double locks.
    â€œI thought you’d be here.” Rhetoral rose from the central console as we entered and the inner door hissed shut behind us. “Do you want the board? Or do you want something to eat first?”
    â€œBoth. A quick scan of the board, then some food, and then an in-depth immersion.”
    â€œTypical intuit,” laughed Rhetoral, through the net, his amusement enhanced by Elanstan, and even by Lieza, from wherever she was.

    â€œDamned comps,” I complained, even as I eased into the control chair and spread my senses through the local net.
    The upper channels and the outer beam guides felt chill, sluggish, but that was to be expected. We couldn’t heat the unused components too quickly, not with decades or more between power-ups.
    My mental fingers flipped through the maintenance files. A minimum of another two days before all the systems were close to optimality—except for Delta and Kappa. Even for the online systems, a week or more would be better. I’d suspected as much. We just didn’t use the old systems that much.
    Even through the multiple links, I could smell the age of the massive, web-linked, not-quite-in-real-space systems, and I wondered how long before we would again have to rebuild and reconfigure them.
    My head swam, and little white spots danced across my mental screens.
    â€œEcktor!”
    I broke the connection and looked up at Elanstan and Rhetoral. “How about some food?”
    â€œIt’s about time you had something to eat. You look like a cyb ghost.”
    â€œThat good?”
    At least they grinned. But I worried. Twelve big adiamante-hulled warships was a lot for an ancient system—even one as well-designed and redundant as this relic of the Rebuilt Hegemony—and we needed every station, one to match each of the Vereal ships. I still wanted to do an in-depth, comp-like analysis, but that needed to wait for bodily maintenance.
    â€œOnce there was a complete recycled hydroponic biosphere here,” said Elanstan, “but it would have taken so much effort to get it back in place that we didn’t bother. What we have is pretty limited.”
    â€œNot so limited as starving,” I quipped back as I stood.
My eyes watered, and a few more white spots danced across my field of vision.
    â€œI’m not sure,” groused Rhetoral, his blue eyes glum. “Goat cheese as solid as nickel-iron, dried fruits with the consistency of