The main casing for the suit's computer-memory center was just below the oblong shoulder pack that ran the small army of cameras and antennae with which the suit -- and thus, Pieter -- looked at so much the outside world. It was removed along with a half-dozen screws and three safety interlocks.

“Making love”… While no Nietzschean ever tends to use that Human euphemism, my grandfather, Temujin II, would say that no man is to be trusted who doesn’t subsist on a steady diet of sex and violence as well. Of course, from a Nietzschean perspective, no man is to be trusted regardless, but why waste a perfectly valid turn of phrase for the sake of a technicality? My grandfather, whom I admired, was a bit of a Dragonian lunatic, if I may use it as a term of endearment; a less extreme incarnation of his old namesake, Temujin I.

For Moments at Seventeen
(Because the Commonwealth is human-centric, and everything is measured in Earth years. Silly, yes?)

Brian went off to tour the rest of the ship. The hydroponics bay, which was both a source of extra food and the control center for plumbing, took him about a half hour to glance over. Michael Dougal, the Life Support officer, knew his job, nothing was going wrong there. He found about half the crew, ship’s and construction, in the rec room, attention about equally divided between the game system, some network feed from Earth, and an interesting ping-pong game. His second in command, Shawn Henderson, seemed to be using the personal comm for an interview as well. Brian decided to listen for a while.