Peacekeeper: 2nd Edition By Paul Haedo Chapter One: — selected excerpt Chapter One: The bulkheads always sing in warp. They creak, they stretch, they moan under the toil, yet they sing, almost as if they are capturing the music of life, the music that can be heard only at FTL. The drive itself I cannot hope to comprehend; it is a box of mystery, known only to the Basque teenager who discovered its intricacies all those years ago, and to the specific engineers who can understand her riddles and her tricks. Either way, the music of the bulkheads is our melody, the peacekeeper melody. We listen to it during briefings, we listen to it while we rest; it even creeps into our dreams, if we are lucky enough to get them during FTL. Any worry that we may have washes away at her sound; the song of the drive gives us strength, it cleans the mind of the ill parts of the job; it is the greatest shrink that any soldier can have. © Paul Haedo. All rights reserved. Author-supplied manuscript; opening selection beginning at paragraph 1. Paragraph numbering follows non-empty body paragraphs in the supplied file. Authorized short excerpt; full manuscript is not exposed.