Chapter 2
I climbed out of my town car at the port the next morning and pulled my weekend bag out of the trunk then sent instructions to return to my apartment. I could use my com.d when we returned to tell it to come get me. I walked over to the hanger and opened the side door. I found Alex inside but he wasn’t alone. “Alysha, Emily what are you two doing here, I thought you were studying for the exams”. This question I directed at the Filan redhead checking the wings for damage.
Filan were humanoid cat people from one of the first semi developed world humans encounter once they got onto the gate network the felines were hampered from developing due to their sun constantly throwing off solar flares so only the most hardened buildings had electronics but they had a gift for languages and through all the efforts of their race managed to get a small hardened space station into orbit before the first encounter, early explorers had a rule apparently based on a old flat screen show that they wouldn’t make contact with any species without space flight. The Felines were able to see the gate from ground side observatories and awaited the explorers arrival.
They quickly picked up Standard from the explorers and after diplomats met with humans on Centauri and realized their sun was abnormal there was a mass migration with human assistance to another more stable system. Add a few hundred years and some light genetic modifications and Felines were uncommon but not rare; most colonies outside the xenophobic Theocracy had a few. “ An availability at the testing facility opened up yesterday and I took it and found out I passed last night when I comm’d Alex to see what he was up to. He mentioned you two had a trip planned. I was hoping it would be alright if I tagged along. Alex said I had to ask you.”
I hesitated but only for a moment, Alex and Alysha had been dating for five years and the wedding was in two months. She got a degree in business law to help with the company “ no worries Alysha your family you're always welcome. Her tail happily flicked behind her as Alex walked around from the back of the craft “someone’s happy” he said rubbing Alysha’s head between her ears “ hey stop that we’re in public!” she yelled, swatting at his hands. Emily rolled her eyes and yelled at her brother and soon to be sister-in-law “ get a room!” causing Alysha to stop and blush and me to chuckle.
“ Are you coming to Emily?” I asked my other cousin. “yep Grandpa doesn’t want any funny business in his shuttle so I’m chaperoning” she said loud enough to be heard by the couple “he did not!” Alex defended indignantly, Emily chuckled “ maybe he did maybe he didn’t do you really want to ask him?” Emily liked giving her brother a hard time but I knew she was really happy despite being younger she was actually Alysha’s friend before Alysha met Alex and she was happy her best friend was marrying her brother “anyway, Pre flights done let's load up”
Everyone climbed onboard and Alex pointed me to the left hand seat. “ You're qualified now and this was your idea, take us out.” I smiled and sat down on my first non training flight as a licensed pilot. Alex used his Com.d to open the hangar roof while I turned on the radio and listened to the weather brief which was clean and clear. “ Paledes Orbital control this is shuttle Golf niner five eight seven Charlie Papa requesting clearance for vertical takeoff from Jamestown hanger row thru orbital to gate we have India”,” Golf niner five eight seven Charlie Papa confirmed weather is India you are clear vertical to orbit join orbital path three then follow the buoys out contact Gate control on this channel when one hour from gate how copy” it was the standard departure pattern so I keyed up the com “ Golf niner five eight seven Charlie Papa copy all, out”
I slowly lifted the shuttle clear of the hanger then when I reached about 200 feet rotated the engines down and added power while we climbed out of the atmosphere. “ and we are in space deflector coming up” I hit the button and the green field shimmered and solidified around the shuttle. Deflectors were of course the lighter version of shields that civilian ships used only really good at stopping fast moving small rock and keeping dust and debris from scraping the paint but their most important role ,through physics I didn’t understand, was providing gravity. Alex checked his copilot read outs “deflector at full, auto pilot course laid in for gate” being the P.I.C or pilot in command everyone’s lives were my responsibility so even though I trusted Alex’s calculations I double checked his course plot before locking it in.
“ Alright, that’s done four hours to the jump gate” I said, turning in my seat to talk to the rest of the group as they got up to stretch Alex looked over at me “ remember to set the proximity alert?” I nodded back “yep, doing that now and moving the com’s to overhead” the League law that Paledes also followed stated that small craft either had to have someone at the helm or were allowed to be on autopilot so long as a collision avoidance system was set and someone monitored the com’s grandpas shuttle had a proximity alarm built into his auto pilot and he taught us to have both the avoidance software and alarm set if we were going to be away from the controls so a real human could make the call on how to avoid the possible collision.
We sat down at the table and Alysha brought out the breakfast she had packed for us and we dug in. We were just finishing up and were about to discuss the reason for the trip when suddenly the overhead trilled an alarm three times. Alex cocked his head “ that’s not the proximity alarm” I was already out of my seat and running 30 feet to the pilots station Alex was only a second behind me when he realized what I did. someone had triggered their emergency beacon. “Paledes control to shuttle Victor five three eight four Tango Zulu, we have received an emergency beacon activation are you in distress?''
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The orbital control officers' bored voice sounded of a memorized and clearly often spoken sentence; most beacon activations were accidental and so long as the pilot answered and wasn’t in distress everything would go back to normal shortly. “hell… hello, is someone there please help my grandpa fell over and isn’t getting up? '' the voice of a little girl came over the com. When a beacon was activated the com automatically transmitted everything it heard so the pilot could focus on flying the ship and not trying to work the com properly.
The operator's voice came back sounding much more invested. “ Hey there, sweaty, what's your name?” Alex pointed at the screen and I cursed under my breath. The shuttle in distress was just short of entering the atmosphere, maybe four minutes out and we were the only ship anywhere nearby. I missed the girl's reply but caught the station's response “hello Megan I’m Paul is anyone else on the shuttle?” The little girl spoke again, sounding very scared, “no just me and Grandpa.” I cursed again and called back to the lounge in a tone I rarely used'' secure all loose items and strap in” I heard Emily and Alysha grabbing the plate and shoving them into the cabinets. “o.kMegan, can you tell me if a big red light is glowing on the controls.”
The big red light was the autopilot indicator on most shuttles and by now orbital control would have pulled up the shuttle make and model to check that it had that layout if auto pilot was on it would be a simple set of instruction to allow the station remote access to pull the shuttle into a safe orbit if not then there would be trouble. “no the light is turned off” Megan’s trembling voice came over the com again she had clearly realized something was wrong. Without a pilot or the autopilot engaged the ship was likely to tear itself apart on reentry Alex thru a timer up on the cockpit main screen three minutes thirty seconds. I looked at Alex and he looked at me, neither of us were sure what to do.
I had a thought grandpa had bought his shuttle second hand from a large freighter Alex and I went with him when he picked it up it was lock to the deck with magnetic landing gear because freighters had to drop their deflectors to on and off load cargo and the original owner didn’t want to strap it down all the time so upgraded the landing gear I had a plan but needed to ask Emily if it would work. “Emily if two similar sized deflector fields were it bounce into each other what would happen?” my little cousin and our resident engineer called back. “ assuming both have been maintained properly they should both shut down to avoid blowing out the emitters… why?” she called back sounding suspicious. I looked at Alex with a grin starting to form on my lips he shook his head in resignation “you were always the better pilot I’ll handle coms”.
He keyed the com while I firewalled the throttle adding more gravities than the deflectors could offset. “Orbital Control this is shuttle Golf niner five eight seven Charlie Papa on emergency band be advised we are going to attempt a rescue.” A disappointed and resigned voice came over the radio “ we appreciate the offer Golf niner five eight seven Charlie Papa but we checked earlier and our records don’t show your shuttle having any recovery equipment or a deflector distorting docking collar and we can’t get Megan to turn off the deflector or activate the autopilot” I got us behind the shuttle luckily it hadn’t started to tumble I matched speeds then bumped our speed up a little so we were gaining out the shuttle I lined us up directly above the shuttle checked the clock one minute tell entry it was now or never. I shouted “brace, brace, brace”
then activated the maneuvering thrusters on the roof at full emergency power our two deflectors collided with a jarring impact bouncing us off forty-five seconds I gritted my teeth and did it again this time there was a resounding pop sizzle and we kept going I quickly cut thrust and let our momentum carry us and activated the magnetic landing struts there was a definite crunch but I just had to hope it wasn’t something vital on the other shuttle. I started a slow lumbering roll to get our shuttles pointed away from the surface checked the clock thirty seconds I firewalled the throttle again this time without the deflector active the G-forces were almost unbearable my vision narrowed as I took short rapid breaths and locked up my muscles as my vision narrowed the edges going red all I could see was the speed gauge.
I waited until the negative indicator went to zero then finally positive and I was finally able to back off the throttle “status” I asked the crew the only response I got were groans “Charlie Papa to orbital control we got them” Orbital control responded immediately “copy Charlie Papa League frigate Defiant is two minutes out to render medical aid what’s your status” I looked around everyone looked messed up I had forgotten about the felt G-forces without the deflector up. “ we are a little banged up orbital control we may have had a few blackouts “ someone in the background of orbital control could just barely be heard saying “ no shit, they were pulling 9 G’s at one point”
Before being shushed by someone “ copy black out information forwarded to medical staff on Defiant transferring you to their com channel now, godspeed Charlie Papa '' the next two hours were a whirlwind the Defiant docked with the shuttle we were magnetized against. to rescue the girl and her grandpa while a suited medic came to our airlock with a lieutenant. I let them in while the medic checked us over and the officer got copies of our data on the accident their engineer deployed a few maintenance drones to check us over and with everyone’s approval and a quick nanite injection to help Alysha repair some mild eye damage and a promise to take it easy for a few days and we were sent on our way.
“ magnets released, and we are clear” Emily had taken up the third slot in the cockpit and made a improvised engineering station out of the screens “ deflectors back up stable the emergency shut down seems to have worked perfectly” I acknowledged her report and pulled away from the frigate and other shuttle once far enough away I put the shuttle back up to cruising speed and settled into the hopefully boring 10 hour flight to Sedona III.