KILLER GAMERS

by D Gemcats Purcell

  Two days before the trip, Six met over at Jessi’s home and bundled into the merkaur and went back to Escarpment park where they had first knowingly met Jongi. This was a relaxed jaunt but since there was hardly anyone there, it turned into a fun run up and down the hill with them taking turns to levitate each other up and down sections of the trail. They just had to make sure that the general public couldn’t see what tricks they were up to. They followed that up with a fun blast in Jace’s simulator in Jessi’s basement. They had all had the opportunity to experience it before and they could now more fully appreciate it’s utility and realism too. They just all had a blast truly. After that it was lemonade and hard sweet buns provided by Susan Jessi’s Mom, by the poolside under the enclosed deck with music in the background. Arthur and Adrianna from Five had joined us for that part of the informal get together along with their spouses Cherese and Mader respectively. The gathering broke up around 9pm to prepare for the next day and pre trip preparations.

  16. REUNITED WITH CELESTE

  At Pommerose Air Force base Team Six, the two teams of three technicians each led by Ritchie and Sonia plus Charlie, Captain Ronald all met each other. Captain Ronald was obviously beaming with pleasure. We had gotten a hint form his son Josh, so it wasn’t altogether a total surprise, but we did not say that to dampen the man’s feeling. He was obviously a bit euphoric about going up with us on this trip. It was a genuinely wonderful thing to think that we would be getting to travel in space with him with his incredible spaceplane the Celeste. Hopefully in a year or so, the second in the series of that version of spaceplane would be ready for its trial run as it was under construction presently at the MCOS. Goodness knows what name the second one would be given, maybe some important person’s daughter’s name. The Celeste, I have to say did have a special place in the heart of everyone of Six’s members and particularly Mader who had contributed, by his research, to the extraordinary speed capability of the spaceplane. The whole group was all looking forward to being back within her fold. We knew that lots of folks were counting the days for us in Six to get to Threeme and solve this mystery crime wave. As we were boarding, Cherese reported that she had mind talked with Jongi and she’d sent her best wishes for our safety and speed in solving the crimes.

  Finally, we were all suited up and strapped into the very large transport (VLT), along with another eighty other workers, technicians and a few actual tourists too. Jonah had made sure to be able to touch one of the consoles and run his own safety inspection. Charlie anxiously watched him, knowing well what he was doing. So when Jonah disengaged and caught Charlie looking intently and inquiringly at him, he gave him a thumbs up. His other members in Six knew all looked well from non verbal communication. They knew that all Jonah would have had to do was press a button on the console and the countdown would have been paused instantly to allow him to communicate his concern. The launch team knew that the crack team Six was onboard bringing extra observations to the table, even if they did not specifically know how Team Six did their diagnostics. They were all on candid camera too of course. There was a shudder and thunderous roar as all forty rockets burning oxygen and methane ignited and after a moments hesitation, they felt movement. It wasn’t long before they were hammered into their reclining seats and all of Six was following the various phases of throttling of the engines and the orientation of the VLT as it climbed. There was the tilt and throttle back with all engine parameters displayed on the screens in front of them looking acceptable. They were watching fuel flow, pressure and the switching of tanks and finally with a thud, first stage separation. It was a marvel to the first timers to watch all this feed and to actually feel the sensations too and to know that they are on and in the stack! Despite his nervousness, Charlie was totally engrossed in the dance. Finally they were separated from second stage and things became a lot quieter as they could now look back on the emerging curvature of the beautiful globe that was Toigan beneath them, already more than half way across its globe and still climbing toward the parked main control orbital station (MCOS) up at 500 miles. Captain Chu would be waiting to welcome us all aboard. We understood that he was going to be one of those rotating off with the returning VLT leaving Captain Rosalind in charge for the next three months. All of the stages of the VLT were self-landing and fully reusable of course.

  When finally we caught up with the MCOS six hours later and after everyone, particularly the new to space brethren had gotten to float off their seats and gotten to experience true weightlessness, it was time to be transfixed again as we slowly drew closer to what started as a bright dot with sunlight gleaming off it to later a giant colossus of interconnected lattice like structures. This is a combination destination for tourists, engineers, specialized factory workers, researchers, private enterprise companies who owned their own compounds and government functionaries. There were the few agents like us who did not fit into any of those neat categories of course. It was fascinating to watch the slow methodical dance as the VLT neared the port built just for it. The cameras showed the accordion-like protrusion of the docking ports of the MCOS ooze out to make contact with a similar extension from the VLT. Then the cameras switched to the inside view which showed the door open at their locking point and verified carefully before additional doors opened further down the corridors on both sides of the mating. This was our first time up top this way with the VLT and so it was new to us.

  After our cabin doors were opened and attendants came in to welcome us, we had to take turns slowly filing out onto the station where we were reunited with our personal very large backpacks and brought by an anchored golf cart like transport down the what seemed like miles of corridors to the lock with the Celeste. Captain Ronald went through first to get welcomed and briefed by his compatriot, then came the time to disembark the six technicians and Charlie as well as Six. This was familiar territory for us and we made it to our bunks in record time, while guiding the techies and Charlie along. So far no one had gotten terribly sick, helped no doubt by the good orientation and the simulated gravity on the Celeste. Lieutenant Kelvik who we had worked with before on the Celeste came to say hello and bye since he along with the Captain Gus, being relieved by Captain Ronald. They were disembarking to the VLT back to the surface and he introduced Six to his replacement Lieutenant Mark. Then Six did a walk through with Lieutenant Mark and the six techs plus Charlie. At periodic nodes of communication and at every terminal the walkabout stopped so that Jonah and the team could pause and run the wires and electronics to look for anomalies. Lieutenant Mark seemed well briefed on Six’s skills by presumably Lieutenant Kelvik as he seemed quite clear about where we needed to go and what we were doing. The techies were initially puzzled, but Charlie said to them, “Just watch and learn, this is what Jonah and Six does.”

  We discovered three anomalies and Lieutenant Mark who had an underling following close by, promptly told him to have in house engineers address those. It turned out that one of those anomalies was responsible for critical valve switching of hydrogen from one section of high pressure pipes to another after it got superheated by the onboard fusion engines or alternately by either onboard nuclear engine or heat from whichever star they were close to. The Celeste was designed to slingshot around the star if going to another solar system or far out into the edge of our the system, or to use internal heat generation methods. The hydrogen came from multiple sources including harvesting from moons, meteorites, the surface of the planet, wherever. It was stored aboard compressed and super cold. When vented through tiny pores after intense heating, the result was explosive speed up to 0.7 speed of light so far tested but likely more could be attained under the most optimal conditions. Once the velocity was attained, it would maintain unless affected by gravity of other bodies along the way really. So detecting issues with the propulsive system or its precise control and vectoring was crucial. Overall, the Celeste was well maintained and safe, was the conclusion. The results of their examination would be fed into the onboard AI
after testing and cross testing to build a testing pathway for AI to diagnose such issues by itself now that Six had found it by their unique methods.

  All of the reprogramming computers were now safely onboard and verified with backup parts stowed. The planets of Baclet and Threeme already had either developed their own proprietary diagnostic testing or had used the information shared with them by Toigan to scan and diagnose the affected folks brains. What therefore we were sending them with our techies to operate it, was the reprogramming units. These would essentially rebuild the damaged memory scaffolding, thus replacing the previously damaged areas. First stop Baclet, leaving in the morning should all check out ok with the Celeste. All night long the crew will be running their checklists and preparing for the launch. Six took off by themselves to give each of the mini spaceplanes their usual electrical and electronic scan, just in case. By the time they returned the six techies had eaten, cleaned-up and were strapped into their bunks. Six had previously shown them the ropes with toileting and body cleansing to further hammer home the orientation they had gotten on the ground. Things were definitely different up top with lots of basic issues! We consoled them with the fact that when on the surface of either Baclet or Threeme, things would be a bit more normal if not necessarily exactly what they were used to. They all seemed to be coping well in low gravity too, using the strap on shoe covers which helped to anchor their feet to the magnetized floor almost everywhere in the Celeste. It was fun to see the newbies drinking water globs.

  At 130,000 miles per second we would be at Baclet in less than two hours giving time to slow down and tuck into orbit for docking with BMOS. Then it would be another seven hours to Threeme at least. Tsatvik was only two hours from Baclet based on its then location in it’s orbit around Threeme at the time when Six had last gone there. It would have moved along that orbit since then and would be a bit further away now. Tsatvik held memories for Six and Captain Ronald since that was where Six had carried out the harrowing rescue of Captain Mischa months ago after his cargo pods were hijacked and he and his crew crashed on that moon.

  We conducted a mental discussion with Jongi who was a super powerful telepath and retired to our bunks. When our clock alarms went off the next morning the race was on to toilet, eat and freshen up before assembling on the main bridge. The techies and Charlie were brought to the secondary back up bridge where they could see the action on large screens while being strapped in. There was a smaller mirror crew there too, in case the main bridge was suddenly knocked out by an accident or other. All command and control systems were duplicated and running through different parts of the ship with command of a second fusion reactor etc. The ship could literally separate itself into two sub-ships each with three mini spaceplanes as well. No question that in the case of something catastrophic, like a devastating fire there was lots of built in survivability with isolating blast walls and self sealing corridors to boot. Frequent drills for crew and passengers guaranteed every individual slipping into the nearest spacesuit hanging from walls by simply stepping into it, pulling the headpiece over one’s head, shoving one’s arms quickly into the arm pieces and with a few quick snaps one would be in an almost fire proof and explosive puncture resistant covering able to sustain one’s life for 3 hours provided you slowed down your metabolism to minimize use of your oxygen and built in water. There was minimal propulsion capabilities too for grabbing hold of the hull and finding a way to get back inside if you got ejected. There were racks of those things all along corridors and in most rooms. All that was needed was to slide a door and there they were. We did a drill with the Charlie and the techies getting in and out of the spacesuits as much as to remind ourselves too.

  So after testing and retesting systems all night long with humans in the loop as well as by AI, all that was left was to disengage the locks and retrieve the extended docking port. That done, small maneuvering thrusters, oozed the Celeste away from the MCOS and started the spaceplane slowly away from it. Ten minutes later with the MCOS looking like a tiny clump in the distance, the heat engines were given full authority and this huge planet below us suddenly started to recede rapidly and in a flash there was only a pinprick of reflected light. The next moment it was gone. We were getting a taste of what a beam of light would see if it could be a sentient being. The location of the stars didn’t seem to change though, yet. We knew if we went far enough and for long enough the ones that were fairly close to our solar system would appear to walk across the sky a little. We flipped by several pinpoints of light which we had pointed out to us by AI as this moon and that moon. Finally after one hour twenty minutes, there were some deceleration burns that were like kicks to the stomach. A faint pinprick gradually grew into a large ball, the planet of Baclet and with more slowing, we dropped in closer. At our speed we caught up rather quickly with the BMOS (Baclet Main Orbit Station) and in hardly any time it seemed we were going through the process of extending our accordion like docking port and mating with theirs. They had moved rapidly to construct a docking station more suitable for the Celeste. They had been unprepared the last time we were here for the docking of such a large spaceplane. Three hours later all of the reprogramming equipment and three technicians including Ritchie were swallowed up into their latticework of a station and no doubt would be headed to the surface in hours rather than days. We learned that Commander Sveltna had switched out with Commander Ross of the BMOS who we were familiar with, just a week ago.

  Six tried to say hello to Baclet’s Defnet boss Martinette and his sister Yodel. Amazingly they were able to and went on to have a good mental telepathy greeting session with them. No question that they had grown more powerful since Six had been last there with them on the surface. They did acknowledge too that they had known when Six would dock and planned to be ready to try to reach them too this way. ‘Birds of a certain feather think alike’ since we had had the same thoughts. Maybe that had helped in making the connection stronger and easier. They became tired quickly though and bid us a safe trip on to Threeme. Clearly too, they were not able to sustain that level of mental energy projection yet. Anyway it sure was fun for Six to be able to make contact that way with their friends on the surface. Next stop Threeme, and the Celeste was already cleaning up for that transition. They could see the docking ports retracting and shortly thereafter could feel the thrusters slowly taking them away from the BMOS until it became a small dot and they could see most of the sphere that was Baclet. Then with a bang their behinds were slammed into their chairs and there was only a brief moment of seeing the planet recede into a dot then it was no more. They barely noticed Tsatvik when the Celeste flashed by since it was now far away in its orbit from where it had been before when they had gone there months ago. As predicted, it took six hours and five minutes to first see the tiny orb in the distance growing rapidly. Then the Celeste went into slow down mode with their seat straps now holding them tight in the chair, preventing them from spilling face first. AI pointed to the HWJ sunlight beaming mirror complex that pointed additional sunlight down onto Threeme but all they got for their troubles was a momentary glint against the black of space. During the slack time that it took them to get to Threeme, Six had taken Charlie for some exercises with low gravity maneuvering that he and they thoroughly enjoyed. The corridors were large by spaceplane standards and quite amenable to such hijinks. They had taken him and the remaining techies to the observatory room to enjoy views of stars like they’d never seen before too. Six was able to do some teleporting exercises too while in their low gravity situation.

  As they now inched toward the TDS Threeme Docking Station, since they had never been there, everyone was on tenterhooks, from Captain Ronald down. Fortuitously, Threeme had taken to heart the possibility of this huge spaceplane having to visit sometime and they had gone into ‘full on build it mode’ adding a new docking port to their TDS in record time. So provided there were no errors or miscalculations, docking would be a cinch. What would normally take twenty minutes, dragged on
into one hour plus. At the end of it though, the Celeste was linked seemingly securely to the TDS. After a lot of ceremony and customs papers back and forth, the order came to disembark.

  Six would be meeting the chief of their Threeme Docking Station (TDS) Commander Debongo alongside their own Captain Ronald who would be acting as the diplomatic representative of the Toigan Government. Then Six along with the other two techies headed by Sonia plus Charlie plus all their equipment would be disembarking for the quick trip to the surface in Threeme’s sophisticated lander. They had already received a briefing on their mode of transport and as well as some briefing info as to what to expect while on Threeme. Most of that information had already been perused by Six in their prepping weeks before at home on Toigan. They seemed to have more sophisticated landers than Baclet used largely because they were more affluent and had a better space tourism business, making comfort and convenience quite important. So no landing by parachute this time. They would be flying to a runway after the fiery descent through the atmosphere.

  17. FINALLY ON THREEME

  Once landed in a base near the city of Wachimecan, they would be shuttled in their super high speed vacuum tube systems at faster than the speed of sound to the capital city of Donneborough. First though, they would be pulled into a hanger fully covered after noxious gases were vented and would be greeted by Superintendent Boggin and Chief Maitland plus the senior most ‘politician’ Chief Salefuuna. Interesting the way their Government is structured too, different from either Baclet or Toigan. The population was broken up into geographic areas encompassing 80,000 people who would put up a slate of representatives from two different parties. Two total, one from each party would win popular votes. So that would be twenty people chosen to represent the folks’ disparate views at the assembly. Often they would be the most ordinary of folks from students to super wealthy Industrialists and the population understood that these folks had to be chosen based on their ability to cooperate with each other to best represent them. They could each only serve one term ever and could be recalled if 10,000 of their constituents got together a signature roster. These 20 representatives got to interview candidates for Chief Minister on down and vote on who would get each post. So the actual people truly doing the work of organizing and governing were in fact technocrats who were experts in their fields and would take time off to serve their planet for eight years at a time and only once. Everyone of those technocrats could be recalled too, but only for good reason that was well spelt out in the constitution there. They did have some great ingredients to their political system allowing fantastic growth and arguably smoother progress than other planets. There was actual competition to get those posts and to serve because of the honor it brought to that individual and his family in keeping with the ethos of that whole Threeme thing!