The last month of Copernicus and Genesis projects were boring for me and my friends. I guess I should say that those projects were boring, but we weren’t exactly bored. Ivanka was working on some crew relations project that I couldn’t tell if it was legit, or her excuse to sleep with as many people as possible. Petra, on the other hand, was designing electrical systems for atmospheric craft in extreme circumstances. I told her I would only help with spacecraft and not whatever hyper-nationalist Earth-bound garbage that she wanted to prop her country up with. She pouted, but then realized that all she had to do was design a craft that was capable of both. I ended up helping her with some printed designs that maximized heat distribution for wiring and structural components.
The Admirals were not as easy to satiate. They were pressing hard for me to help with their terrestrial propulsion designs and I told them plainly that the testing I wanted to do to then minimize structure, had to do with potentially annihilating large swaths of space, aka whole buildings or more, with uncertain destination vectors. I declined and then sent them some of my space recon vehicle designs with fusion power systems so that they would have to fiddle with making that work before they could build any of them.
LT Sato qualified as a navigator with a desire to learn more about the propulsion systems, and Katie decided to double-down on supply and learned the ins and outs of the autonomous reclamation vehicles and how they transmute asteroids and comets into usable material. I agreed to work with her on our drone pilot certs once we get onboard.
I never met any of the Captains again, nor have I spent any time with the mysterious third and fourth Commanders for our crew. Curiously, the Captains that I met have been picked for commanding one of the four commissioned ships (ISV’s Copernicus, Galilei, Kepler, and Brahe), but the four commanders are all supposed to be on our crew. Captain Morris had my back, so I hope the Aussie ends up commanding Copernicus.
Then, a week that felt almost as bad as the month that I thought Katie was going to dump me, we spent a week suffering through meetings, tests and interviews. And paperwork, so much paperwork happened over those last few days.
Which brings us back to today: meet the ship day!!
“I’m practically vibrating I’m so excited.” I even squeal a little.
“Maybe you should put that energy to good use.” Ivanka purrs.
Katie glares at her, but I reply before she can hiss “I would, but we’re about to be in close proximity to our whole crew, and I doubt LS2 O’Connell wants that kind of attention.” I hip bump my girlfriend. She looks horrified at the thought of having sex in public.
Our crew module is attached to resupply and equipment modules as well as a booster/thrust module to get us to the Copernicus. We’re going approximately ten times further from Earth than we already are, but we don’t need to fight near as much gravity. It’s still going to take us four plus hours to get to the geo-sync ship. Apparently we won’t get to see the geostationary shipyard with Kepler and Brahe being constructed, but seeing Copernicus in it’s star-blanketed orbit will have to be enough.
/Preflight com check for crew Copernicus/
Two minutes later: /73 checks confirmed. Commence Pilot and Engineering Checklists/
I expected to be pegged for the flight engineer position with Baiul again and it happened. I complain, but I do feel a professional glow that they trust me; little, old, overeducated me to be a systems expert to get nearly a hundred people safely to a spaceship, from a space station. I am so pumped to be in SPACE! The remaining 140 shipmates are already onboard. Lucky bastards.
Space.
Childishness aside, the thrust components aren’t new, so I code in a pre-launch warming routine for the separated fuel. On checking the other maneuvers I don’t love the tiny thrusters on the crew module with the reversal maneuver that we have to use to get off the ISS and in line with the Copernicus. I petition to use two of the six rapidly deployable thrust modules and attach them to the crew module, but I was shut down with a price tag and a low-risk probability.
Fine, screw me for wanting to be safer.
/Commence crew loading and compartment checks/
And so starts the fifty minute wait and five-hour flight to my next duty station. My widdle baby engine is waiting for mommy. Don’t worry honey, mommy’s coming.
Seating humans in a cube is much easier with no gravity.
/Mercer, Baiul, this is ISS Control. You have been assigned Emergency Assist Override control. Please confirm/
/Compartment pressure . . . .SAT/
/Navigation path optimization. . . .SAT/
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/Pilot control check. . . SAT/
/Emergency control check . . . .SAT/
/Ready debarkation procedure/
The . . . whatever this collection of parts is called uncouples from the ISS and initiates a reversal maneuver after two kilometers of drifting. Commander Nugget leaves my warming routine alone this time and the booster responds as designed to send us on our way to a technological marvel.
Commander Zhao uses voice comms to tell us the general layout of the ship, the HAB portion, the forward section and the engineering sections of the ship. Apparently, artificial gravity tech isn’t where it needs to be to gravity the whole ship. So, they instituted a watch and gravity rotation that keeps enough people around to maintain watch readiness while also minimizing our bone loss by getting us in the hab ring a few months of the year.
Zhao then starts talking about random other rules like food areas and locations where magnetic anchoring is not allowed. How did she expect anyone to listen. This was premier nap time for anyone not feeling like their waiting to get to a theme park. She does mention that cumulative crew awards, promotions and assignments will be designated in the receiving bay once we arrive.
The Admirals informed their aids that my promotion was already signed on paper, which makes me feel like I cheated my way to MM1, but I can’t exactly get the influential position they want without the appropriate rank. Getting me to Chief was strictly untenable as I haven’t put in six plus years of exemplary service. It’s almost been three years though. Wow. That’s weird to think, and I’ve been dating Katie for almost a year of it. Beside that week in DC we’ve had to fight for each moment of time together though.
How am I going to make her feel loved if we’re on vastly different crews? Damnit. Not sure why we didn’t talk about that before boarding the mini-van, but we’ll have to steal a moment or two before they separate us into crews. Come to think of it, how are the major players on board going to cycle?
I like numbers, but seeing nothing but numbers in my HUD is boring and I’m starting to gloss over the changes. May as well play with the layout while I track the engines. I take the diagram of the fuel and thrust system, truncate the piping and overall simplify it with tanks and cones, valves and pumps. Slap on some numbers on capacity, color-code some warning thresholds and put a button to hide or show data or diagram and save that as my Propulsion review display. I check navigation and find some target boxes some cross hairs and telemetry data. Oof, this thing needs some shapes, guide tracks and alpha levels on imagery. Whomever left an object oriented interface customizable deserves a raise.
/Mercer, this is Houston. You are currently editing global settings for everyone onboard./
/Houston. I’ll be done in like ten minutes. Can one of your engineers create me a personal profile and migrate it over and then reset the global settings afterward?”
/Mercer. DE Houston, copy, wait./
I keep trucking along and make a low-alpha ‘ideal’ track in white, and guide lines I, yellow and red for deviations. Keep the cross hairs on docking location and low alpha a grey ship shape. Speed, distance to target, and closure rate in large letters with color coded tolerances. Our closure rate was deep red but our distance was green and our speed was green. Hmm, overall approach health? Yeah, telemetry and closure data compared to expected plan data. Colored, saved and button added to the plain as heck main screen. I then ad a mode to make a screen in screen for the thrust health diagrams while navigating. I like this. I want this on the Copernicus.
/Houston, DE Mercer. Finished with layout. Thanks for the access./
/Mercer, DE Houston. Copy. Migration and reset initiating./
“Mercer! Are you messing with our displays again?” Commander Nugent accuses.
“I was sir. Houston is creating some personal profiles so that we can modify them as we desire. I didn’t know I was editing the global. My apologies sir.”
/Mercer, DE Houston. Migration and reset complete./
“I liked the visual track with the thrust sub-display. Send that to me?”
“Aye aye sir.”
I get a slap to the side of my head and I turn to find Ivanka gesturing the same desire. I can’t help but laugh. How was I the only one bored enough to mess with shit? Maybe I’m just the self-important ass that changes everyone’s displays while on a risky space transit because I’m bored. Meh, turned out well, no harm no foul.
/Houston, DE Mercer, Request better Nav, Thrust, and overall Mission health calculations for display. These are . . . quick and dirty./
Instead of typing they sound ping my headset. That’s annoying as hell, but I get why.
When we get within 1000km of our target, I write a little threshold code to pop my picture in picture to main the outside cameras and the small inset as the thrust diagram for when the visual of our target takes up 20% of the view angle. At 10km out, it’s hard to pay attention to anything but the magnificence of the space vessel before me. From stem to stern it’s about a kilometer long and twenty decks tall, besides the HAB and accelerator rings. Both sets of rings are about 200m in diameter inline with the ship. She’s beautiful and enormous. The aft section is riddled with thrust cones, and the three main annihilation cones are partially enclosed with a shielding cone, to prevent and re-direct some intense forces from reaching the rest of the crew.
I can see now that the spinning rings for habitat have passageways on either side to a front sensor and command section of the ship, connecting to an aft life-support and mundane engineering such as our receiving and machining bay. This mundane engineering, or engineering forward, is detachable from the accelerator rings in case of emergency. There are two other separatable compartment cutoffs before reaching the Reactor Compartment and Engineering Aft. The reactor compartment is oddly placed inside the ring portion of the ship, well odd to a bystander, but to me it makes perfect sense because the accelerator is meant to fuel the Annihilator. Finally comes my widdle baby in the Engineering Test compartment. It’s double hulled filled with fuel oil, with depleted Uranium shielding to keep the hyper zoomies from everybody’s bodies. The Annihilation propulsor is a recklessly irresponsible piece of engineering that seems to be predictably irresponsible in the aft direction. The “test” part of this engine is if the translocation portion works with a vessel this large.
A chill shoots down my spine as our docking target comes into discernable shape on our view screens. It’s a sense of thrill, a sense of purpose, and most importantly; a sense of coming home.