Chapter 10

…[ JACY ]…

Jacy was bored. Not bored bored, but… She had lots of things she could be doing. But she had scheduled this time as her rest time. She had already slept for more than twenty hours that she didn’t feel like she could sleep again for the next forty-eight hours. She had tried exploring the ship but given that they had spent days on days during the simulations running up and down the decks, there wasn’t much to explore anymore.

She already knew the full itinerary of the expedition, and every detail of the activities to be performed. She was scheduled to be on tens of exploratory teams. Most of them lasting hours, there was one that would go on for more than a day if the conditions allowed for it. And she knew every crew member she would be with in each of those exploratory teams. There was nothing new to learn there. She poked around the ship network, but her legs were screaming for her to stretch them. She put the desktop on standby, walked out of her quarters and started walking again aimlessly through the deck hallways.

She passed through the Entertainment and Recreational Deck without even paying it any mind. Down to the Kitchen Deck where she grabbed a muffin and fruit juice pack for snack. The things Mativo had insisted on having on the ship, they still amazed her. She had read on the early explorers of Earth. There ships over the oceans had some of the worst living conditions of their time. Robin was a luxury ship in her own right. It was easy to forget that they were on an exploration expedition. On that note, she decided to practice her exploration skills on the Moon, though it would be more of a tourist trip if she were being honest.

Jacy made it to the Shuttle Deck offices in short order. It might not have been her first choice, but it was something she could do. Bonus point, she would increase her flight hours on the shuttle. That was always a good thing. She buzzed the door, and it opened to let her in.

“Hi.” She greeted.

“Hi Jacy. What can I do for you?” Juan asked from his desk. He looked back at his screen and tapped. The sounded of shuffling followed. Passing the time by playing solitaire, Jacy couldn’t blame him.

“Requesting access to a shuttle. I want to orbit the Moon up close and personal without actually touching her.” She could have easily submitted the requested through the ship’s network.

“You could’ve—”

“I know, I know. But I wanted to stretch my legs a bit. And I thought why not, kill two birds with one stone.”

“Okay.” He turned to his screen again. “One shuttle. Leisurely trip of the Moon. I’m assuming you want to go alone?”

“If anyone wants to join, they are free to.”

“Wait time?”

“One hour.”

“Okay. You’re good. The shuttle should be ready by 1245 hours.” His Comms pinged as he finished speaking, assuring her that everything was set. She had to only eat away an hour.

“Thanks.” She left the office after he waved her out.

…

1245 hours found her in her allotted shuttle, all alone. There was still fifteen more minutes before she had to leave for the trip. She was hoping that no one really showed up, and the fact that no one had filled the departure rooster gave her hope. Of course, there were those who usually waited till the last minute to do something. Minutes passed as she waited, resting in her pilot seat, a country song she didn’t know of playing lightly on the shuttle speakers.

Three minutes. She started up the shuttle and started preparing for departure. The hangar doors opened on the one-minute mark, and by the time the clock read 1300 hours, she was meters out of the ship.

A lone trip it was. And she was glad for it. She could do anything, go anywhere, fly anyhow she felt like, and more. She quickly gained velocity as she approached the Moon’s surface. The shuttles had the same engine cores as the ship, only smaller, way smaller. So they could theoretically achieve similar velocities to the ship.

A test was planned for when they reached out into Neptune’s orbit. Four shuttles were scheduled to race out for 1AU and then back to the ship. She was one of four pilots that would be on that race. But it was not the race yet, she slowed down as she approached Capital Colony. She planned to zigzag all over the Moon for the next few hours, or until she got bored.

Jacy gazed out at the Moon’s surface, the ten or so Moon Colonies were said to be distributed all over the surface. And from what she could see, it was like they had literally build them equidistant from each other. It looked less like they were located were the resources were and more that they had been placed as far away from each other as they possibly could.

From up so high, it didn’t look like they could house the number they claimed to do. But given that they went down rather than out to protect from the radiation of Sol and the space itself, Jacy knew that to be true. Maybe she should land to see how they were built from the inside, she wondered. But that fanciful thought was not tempting enough. It might have been interesting to study the Colonies from up close, but the Moon was still the Moon. She stuck to her aerial observation as she moved on to her next destination.

..[]..

The shuttle hangar doors opened as she approached. By the time she had slowed down to a cruise that would allow her to land lightly, the doors were open more than half way through with space enough for three shuttles placed side by side. She glided in as they started to close.

She quickly made her way to her quarters. The call with Frea and Kacy she had scheduled for was less than thirty minutes away. She passed by the Kitchen Deck to grab another snack. The trip had left her a little famished. On second thought, she grabbed a bigger meal. She wolfed it down fast and proceeded to her quarters as she had planned, arriving with minutes to spare.

As she caught her breath, she sent a request for a communication line. Immediately, her desktop pinged. Huh, they must have been waiting. She quickly accepted only to be greeted by Kacy alone.

“Don’t look so disappointed to see me.”

“It’s not that.” Jacy quickly defended. “I had thought if anyone would greet me alone it would be Frea. Without her, it felt like something wrong had happened.”

“Oh! So you wouldn’t have worried if I hadn’t been here?” Kacy looked very offended.

“What? No! Of course I would have worried. It’s just that we are we. And me and Frea are, well me and Frea.”

“She outranks me?”

“Yes.” She answered hesitantly. It could easily go wrong, but she felt like the truth was more important here.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to change that.” Kacy said, somewhat shyly.

“I don’t think she would like that.” Jacy smiled at her. It was nice seeing her bold like that.

“But you’re okay with me outranking her?”

“Eventually, yes.”

“Okay. Your previous transgressions are forgiven.” She glazed to her left, then faced the camera again. “Why do you look out of breath?”

“I ran here from the Mess.”

“You forgot about the call?”

“No. I went for a Moon trip and cut it too close coming back. I grabbed a meal before coming here because I would have been too lazy to go back down after getting to my quarters.”

“You know, there are people here claiming that your ship was a hoax. That you guys didn’t leave at all. Some are claiming it was just a hologram.”

“They are willing to accept there is technology to create such a hologram, but not to create an actual ship? Wow! The lengths people would go to deny the truth.”

“Yeah. Anyway, there was this… oh! Here comes Frea.”

Frea came into view as Kacy moved to her right to create room for her. “Hi Jacy. Missed you. How is space? What have you guys been talking about?”

Before Jacy could say anything, Kacy answered. “Sexy-talk.”

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“There was no sexy-talk.” Jacy was appalled. This was what happened with Frea around, Kacy’s confidence always went through the roof.

“She wishes there was.”

The conversation continued, talking about nothing in particular, for more than an hour. They eventually said their goodbyes and promised to talk again later. She planned to call them again after her first expedition. At first, she had thought of talking with them before the expedition, but she realized that might make her more nervous. Besides, it would be less than twenty-four hours before the expedition. What would there be to talk about?

The trip had tired her somewhat, and the call had not helped matters either. There was still more than ten hours before they had to leave. She decided to take a quick bath and grab a few hours of sleep before they departed. She was on the first expedition when they arrived at Jupiter. She needed to be well rested by then.

…[ MATIVO ]…

I had slept for forty-two hours. Technically, I had stayed in my quarters for the whole forty-two hours. I was not sure that I had managed to sleep the whole time. There had been bathroom breaks, mandatory no matter how much they disrupted my sleep. Better interrupted sleep than a wet bed. Even I couldn’t figure out a way to come out of that one. Urea was a hard friend to hide.

Then came the snack breaks. The one thing the body couldn’t allow you to do when it didn’t have enough energy, was rest. I don’t care what all those other researches claimed, I knew through every cell of my body that if I was ever without enough energy, I wouldn’t be able to rest. And if I somehow found myself slipping into a restful state, then it would be the kind one doesn’t come back from.

So, I had stockpiled on snacks before secluding myself. I had near used up my allotted snack allowance for a twenty-four-hour window. From sugary treats such as juices, muffins, heart cakes, to healthy whole meal packs. I had taken it all. Though, those juices might be why I kept feeling the need to pee every two three hours.

When I finally decided that I had had enough rest for a while, I found myself a disgusting human being. I was smelly on all parts of my body that could get smelly. Yes, those too. My scalp was itching like crazy. I wasn’t due for a shave for another month, but if I had stayed in bed longer, I might have done it just to get a peace of mind. My skin felt sticky, and if I rubbed hard enough, a brown muddy thing would form into small ribbons. And the worst of all was my mouth. There was nothing to say other than I kept it closed up until I made it to the toothpaste.

After brushing my teeth and tongue, I prepared myself a bath and submerged in for ten minutes before I started scrubbing myself. The water got muddy fast enough, and I had to drain it, clean up the bathtub and prepare another. I repeated the process three more times until my skin felt raw and tender. I dried myself and applied oil all over my body, unscented of course. Any scented one would give me headaches. Actually anything on the positive side of the scale usually gave me headaches, some negatives too. Things like high temperatures, strong smells, loud sounds, and more.

After all that, I was clean but my body was still sluggish so I went to the gym. Yeah, I know. But I still did. A five-minute jog, another on plyometrics and finally yoga poses, and I felt limber as ever. I went back to my quarters, took a shower this time and prepared myself for hours of manning a ship.

By the time all this was done, there was still more than four hours before we had to depart for Jupiter. The first thing I did was check on my messages. There was no way anyone was going to arrange a call with me. I was averse to those, and I made sure anyone I worked with knew that. Anything important was sent through a message. And there was a lot of them. It had been more than seventy-two hours since I last checked them. What with departing on this first of a kind expedition, followed by my self-imposed forty-hour sleep.

My family had wished me luck, then followed that up with asking how space was. That felt like a question everyone asked anyone who had left for space. It was too generic, and it took a lot from me not to reply with a generic response to all of them. Some were unlucky though.

Then came the reports from my companies. It had been three days only, so I didn’t expect much had changed and they proved me right. Even my security guards hadn’t made any leeway on the quest of who was behind my kidnapping. That still left a sour feeling in me. I had been trying so hard never to be in a situation like that. And still happened. I liked to think I was better prepared to protect myself, but maybe I wasn’t as good as I had thought I was.

As low as my mood felt, I still responded with positive replies. It wasn’t that hard, I had a long list prepared. I just had to choose which felt appropriate for the situation and then paraphrase it. One of the main reasons why I didn’t like calls. It was hard to do that on the fly.

Having caught up with my correspondents, I roamed the ship from top to bottom, and back up again. I greeted anyone I met on the way, and stopped those who didn’t look to be in a hurry for a few meaningless stupid words. My management books said that was how to build a healthy relationship with my subordinates. It was hard and exhausting, and absolutely rewardless. Normally, I used proxies for management duties while I focused on growing my wealth, power, knowledge and deadliness.

By the time I made it to the Bridge, less than two hours were remaining. I was exhausted, and I could feel the beginnings of a headache. Remember those headache inducing extremes I talked about? Interacting with people was one of them. I thought of taking a short nap, either before we left or after we arrived. Those always seemed to chase the headaches away.

The Bridge was full, well except for me. And I had just arrived, so, yes it was full. They were busy with their idle chatter. They seemed so relaxed, in fact, relaxed enough that they hadn’t noticed me walk in.

“How long have you guys been here?”

“Ahh! Don’t you make any noise when you walk?” Cindy nearly jumped from her seat. It would have proved unpleasant if she had. The others didn’t fare any better. In fact, I might have heard a squeal somewhere.

“I’m used to trying to draw as least attention to myself as I can.” I replied as I moved around the Bridge. I wasn’t ready to get on that Command seat yet. It would be for a shorter duration compared to the previous course, but still.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve always been like that. Besides, in the last few years, I was trying to amass enough wealth for something like this without drawing attention.”

“Why?”

“It meant that no one was ready for me, so they couldn’t offer resistance to my progress when I inevitably came to their attention.” I tried to change the topic then. “So, what were we talking about? What have you guys being doing for the last forty-eight hours? Me, I slept for forty hours. Someone else, go.”

“You cannot be serious, that is impossible.”

“Of course, I woke up to go to the toilet. But otherwise…”

“That’s still impossible.”

“You don’t know how to rest, do you, Navigator?”

“I don’t think I could ever sleep for that long. Don’t you get tired?” When I shook my head, he continued. “I spent the first day here since I was on duty. Then the rest of the day on the Gym Deck with some of the guys. The second day? I’m not sure. I think I did the same thing as the first day. It’s all a blur.”

And soon the idle chatter was back, but I couldn’t take that nap. The minutes slowly trickled down until,

“Thirty minutes to departure for Jupiter System.”

We started settling into our seats as the chatter started to die down as system checks were conducted. I got up from the low step of the Command Platform where I had spent the time at, staring at the front. My ass was sore from the prolonged exposure to the hard surface, but the seat would take care of that.

Mũsango took control of the ship and started to deorbit from the Moon as she aligned the ship to head towards Jupiter. We were going to put some distance between us and, the Moon and Earth before we accelerated to 0.9c. As we exited the Moon orbit, she steadily accelerated to 0.0003335c in around five seconds. Slower than Robin had done it, but that had been planned. We maintained that velocity for around thirty minutes, putting us around six times the distance away as from Earth to the Moon.

“Two minutes. Light-speed shield Activated.”

“Crew. This is Mativo speaking. We are about to accelerate to 0.9c. So, prepare yourselves to experience the fastest ride known to humans. Or cease to exist in a little white dot. Mativo out.”

“That was nice. I wish I had recorded it.” Cindy said.

“I record everything.”

“Please delete that, Robin.”

“Authorization required.”

“It is me!”

“Authorization failed.”

This reduced the crew to a bunch of laughing fools. Stopped only by Robin’s commentary.

“Thirty seconds.”

“Wow! I’m about to fly a ship to near the speed of light.” Mũsango exclaimed from her seat.

“Fifteen seconds… nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”

The countdown always made a little anxious, even during the simulations. I had asked why we couldn’t remove it, but everyone else had said it helped them concentrate. So it had stayed. Jupiter was now at the center of view. With Robin highlighting it with a bright green halo.

“Cruising velocity of 0.9c attained. Estimated time to arrival: 40 minutes.”

I still hadn’t felt anything. And Mũsango had been faster this time. Less than a second, the acceleration had been. There wasn’t much to tell about the view. The stars were visibly moving past us and if you were observant enough you could tell that Jupiter was slowly getting bigger. But that was all.

“Crew. This is Mativo speaking. We are now cruising at 0.9c. Congratulations, you didn’t cease to exist in a little white dot. Forty minutes to Jupiter System. Mativo out.

“So, now we wait?” It was a stupid question but I had to get people talking. “At least we are still here.”

“You know it’s called the Jovian System, right?” Matt asked.

“Matt, I’m going to ask you something and I need you to give me an answer without thinking much about it. Okay?”

“Okay...?” He sounded anxious.

“Orbit around Sol. What is it called?” I started simple.

“Solar orbit.”

“Orbit around Luna?”

“Lunar orbit.”

“Orbit around Jupiter?”

“I see what you did there. It is the way it should be. The people who—”

“For people to understand something, it needs to be easy. Simple. The only thing Jovian has in common with Jupiter is the J. It is easier for the common human to associate Jupiter System with Jupiter, than it is for them to associate Jovian with Jupiter.”

“But all the scientific literature calls it the Jovian System.”

“You know what, you call it Jovian and I will call it Jupiter. If you don’t understand what I mean when I say Jupiter System, ask me to explain.”

That little stint had soured the mood, but not by much. And I wasn’t going to let it sour further. “Robin. Play ‘Nothing I Can Do About It Now by Willie Nelson’.” And immediately it started playing.

“For a moment I thought it would an upbeat song.” Cindy said, as she slightly swayed her head to the beat of the song.

“You think it doesn’t fit the moment?”

“Nah! It’s alright.” Her noncommittal answer made me look ahead again, and that’s when I noticed.

“Robin. Are you playing to the whole ship?”

“Yes.”

“Ahh. I meant for the Bridge.” I groaned as the rest of the Bridge laughed. This was not what I wanted when I tried to lift their moods.

“Should I stop playing to the rest of the ship?”

“No.” There was no point cutting it now, it would just make the whole thing weird. “But for future reference, unless otherwise stated, play all media for the Bridge only.”

Minutes passed with periods of high chatter interspersed by low or no chatter at all.

“We are currently at the Asteroid Belt.” Matt announced.

“Was it too much to ask to have one of the big ones near our path?” Mũsango asked from her seat. Looking from left to right, probably searching for asteroids sweeping by us.

But we continued without seeing any of the asteroids, with Jupiter getting ever bigger in our view.