by George Deeb
The main computer had also been making blind broadcasts since the accident. These were encrypted for security purposes, but official Rescue and Military personnel would have the ability to decrypt them. This was done for the safety of the crew and ship, and of course the profits. The problem with this galaxy was that there were no communications relays, and the chance of the Orysta's signals being received was very small.
There were bad actors out there that would love to find a crippled ship to scavenge, and the crew were never left alive. Mining ships were especially targeted, and best when their hold was full of cargo. Pirates often would stay hidden until the mining was completed, and then attack the ship – much more profitable for them. The penalty for piracy was summary execution. There was no discretion in the matter. Personnel of any IGT vessel that had captured pirates, be they Captain or cook, were legally required to execute them – in the quickest, and not necessarily the most humane manner. The act could not be countermanded by any authority on the vessel. This was normally not a problem since captured pirates only became prisoners because they were trying to kill you and the pirate was disabled in battle and immobile on the ground. In regards to pirates, captivity was a misnomer that usually meant the nearest crew member would, without regret, terminate the disabled pirate with the most convenient instrument at hand.
The encrypted transmissions were also a way for businesses to protect the location of their mining operation. New discoveries were usually distant from home base, and a lot of time passed between discovery and actually getting equipment on location. When a valuable deposit was discovered, the only real claim to it was when a crew was on site and working. Mining operations like this one did not file a mission plan, as civilian transports did. The filed plan would have alerted authorities if they hadn't returned home in the planned time frame, and initiated a rescue operation.
The mining company would eventually realize they were overdue, and send their own rescue ship, but would not immediately notify Rescue authorities – they would have to divulge the location of the find if they did. Better to check it out themselves and maintain confidentiality – there were a lot of reasons why a ship might be long overdue that were not life and death situations. Once the location was made public, and a rescue operation started, any of a number of other competitors would either send out a ship, or divert one in the area to find out if the product had been mined – and if not, they would mine it themselves, legally, saving the cost involved in finding it. Every crew member realized this when they accepted the job. So the Orysta crew members were not very worried or depressed about spending three to four times as long on the job as planned, because one way or another they were certain they would not have to make the whole journey back at sub-galactic speed. True, they would only earn base pay on this first trip, but if everything went well they would be back to complete the operation.
Inter-galactic transmissions were not possible from Vialactea, but there were relay stations established in every well traveled galaxy and every large void in between, and each relay station would re-transmit to the next, and so on until every galaxy in the IGT would receive the signal. Any inter-galactic ships that received it would relay the transmission as well – it was an automatic computerized protocol required by the SFT (Sanction of Free Transit clause) in the IGT. If just one relay or ship received the Orysta's signal it would get to the authorities and the mining company.
All of the crash pods on Orysta had been tested, and all were functioning – one for each crew member, and four spares. All equipment and supplies had been secured in the best manner possible. Communications to all parts of the ship had been re-established by one means or another. They had supplies to last them for quite a long journey home, which would probably be the case with the engine partially or non functional. Preliminary evaluation indicated that partial thrust could be achieved after some repair and modification – it was another good/bad situation. Good they would still be alive to make the journey, and bad that it would be such a long one if no one found them first. On the other hand, with the engine unable to develop full power, fuel consumption would be minimal, and there would be plenty of it to power all of their other needs. In all, they were in better shape than most case histories on the books. Good and bad. And there were a lot of other things that could prevent their rescue – but that was something to think about after landing.
4
This is not going to be a gentle landing
They still had too much forward momentum. There was no atmosphere on this moon, so there wouldn't be any frictional deceleration. The forward thrusters alone wouldn't have enough power to slow them down enough, so they were going to perform a maneuvering deceleration. This required that the ship be pivoted around in ninety arcleeson increments, and the thrusters on that part of the ship facing the moon would be fired until depleted. On the final pivot, the forward thrusters would be fired to complete the deceleration – as much as they would be able to. Some circumference thrusters would be needed for the landing maneuvers, and would be reserved and only used as necessary to position the ship for landing. All this would be done as the ship continued to move toward that moon. They would only have one chance to intercept it.
Even if everything went perfectly, they had no fine attitude control. Automatic control by the main computer had been damaged. Munen had never before given much thought to how many systems were routed through the engine compartment. With only partial computer control of the ship's systems, everything would have to be done manually. The main computer would monitor the approach, calculate the required maneuvers, and provide verbal and visual information and guidance to the pilots.
'Training – training – training.' he thought, as he looked over at Califas and gave thanks once again for the man he was working with. Intul-sil-Califas was as capable of flying the ship as he was, and no doubt would soon be offered the captain's chair on another vessel. They went through the practice scenario again.
During the speed reduction maneuvers, they also had to change the ships direction slightly. To take every possible advantage of all the influences affecting the ship, they had to point the nose of the ship against the direction of the moon's rotation, and change the longitudinal attitude so that the top of the ship pointed in that direction of rotation. They would then perform a flare maneuver at the correct altitude, to change the direction of momentum to match the rotation. This would reduce their speed relative to the moon's surface. It wouldn't be a major reduction, but every little bit would help in the final outcome.
Then there were the constantly changing factors that would affect their landing. As they got closer to the moon, the pull of its gravity would accelerate the ship – the opposite of what they needed. As they got even closer, the gravity of the planet that the moon orbited would also affect them, adding to the acceleration force. They would in fact be carrying too much momentum. With the present orientation of the ship, the moon's rotation was from right to left. The ship had to be pointed to the moon's right edge, and rotated axially ninety arcleesons. When they flared, the bottom of the ship would be facing the surface of the moon, and the nose would be pointing in the direction of rotation.
Every loose item on the ship had been secured by the crew. By any definition, this was going to be be a crash landing, but the impact should be survivable. In fact, if everything went correctly, the damage to the ship should be minimal. However, it would be a shame to survive the landing, only to be injured or killed by a flying gorbel racket or bliml pitcher. But something would break loose, no matter how careful they were – it was Ilmert's law - “If it can go badly, it will go very badly”. All the equipment, tools, and various objects on the ship were designed for normal environmental forces, but the abrupt deceleration of a crash landing was not normal.
As an extra precaution, all crew members would be wearing environmental suits. All crew members that were not necessary to perform the landing would also be in their designated crash pods. These pods were
designed to surround the person with impact absorbing material and could supply air and communications. In situations where the crew member sustained radiation damage, the pod became a medically sterile environment where life functions could be reduced to near death levels. This would sustain the person while minimizing tissue death, giving them a better chance to be rescued and treated. Normally, even the flight crew would be in the pods, but this was going to be a manual landing without either an engine or full systems control by the computer. The flight crew had to be at the helm for this one. Although the command and engineering seats had full body restraint capability, they had no life support functions. If the helm was breached, or lost normal life support, the pilot, copilot, and engineer would be killed.
5
Form follows function
The Orysta was a beautiful ship. Beautiful, that is, in the eyes of those who understood its function. Shaped like a rectangular box with tapering ends, on a width to length ratio of five by thirteen, not counting the overhanging extension above the helm view port, the engine nozzles at the rear, and extensible thrust directors around the periphery of the rear, it was designed to haul cargo - lots of cargo if they were successful. Mainly it was a huge empty box wrapped by equipment bays and living quarters with a very powerful engine attached. It was up to the crew to fill that box with valuable materials. The amount of room taken up by the habitable spaces for the crew to live and work, was very small compared to the overall size of the ship.
An inter-galactic mining ship had no need of aerodynamic sophistication. There was no pointy end or large lifting surfaces to restrict internal space or add weight. It only traveled through an atmosphere when the destination made it necessary, and then it only needed to be a powered glider. Maneuvering was achieved mainly by using the tremendous thrust of the engine. In an atmosphere, the Orysta produced a lot of drag, which it used in conjunction with that thrust to turn, slow down, and stop very effectively in tight surroundings. It also had retractable airfoil surfaces that extended along the full length of the bottom edge on both sides. Looking extremely stubby when compared to the overall size of the ship, these could supply enough lift to take some advantage of atmosphere for large radius turning. This technique was used when surveying vast land masses for raw materials. In fact, since they ran the entire length of the ship, the total effective surface area of the airfoils was very large. No, the Orysta was not designed for atmospheric travel – that was a secondary consideration. But in open space, where it spent most of its time, there was no drag to fight or use to advantage - only mass to move. In open space it didn't matter what shape that mass was.
The Orysta's landing gear were large and extremely strong structures. They consisted of hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical sub-assemblies that worked together to protect the ship. For those who appreciated what was involved, they were true works of engineering art. Often a mining operation required landing the ship on very rugged, broken, non-level terrain. The gear had to take the abuse of landing on these uneven surfaces, and then support the ship with its often heavy loads. Looking like hairy skids attached to shock absorbers, they were designed to gradually dissipate landing impact forces before damage occurred to the superstructure of the ship. The “hair” like structures were long, and strong fingers made of gordaelate, which dissipate energy by flexing, and pushing against each other to catch and hang onto pointy surfaces such as jagged rock faces. Both hydraulic and pneumatic absorbers softened the contact and settling of the ship's weight. These could be adjusted to level the ship in two axes, up to forty arcleesons. When the gear performed their job, the crew would only feel and hear the bump-and-thump of a normal landing.
It would be the landing gear that would get the worst of the impact forces when they contacted the moon. Once the ship had been maneuvered into the correct orientation, there would be no way to stop its motion other than contact friction with the surface. If the touchdown area was a smooth, prepared surface there would be no problem at all, but this was a rough, uneven surface, pocked with craters and rocks of varying dimensions. The area selected was the best one available under the circumstances. There were no large protruding features or crevices – large being a relative description. Since this would be a three to six larn long traveling landing, the landing gear would be impacting an unknown number of surface imperfections before the ship's momentum was dissipated, and they came to a stop - not the type of landing the gear was designed for.
6
Contact
The ship's main computer communicated with almost all of the systems and sub-systems on the ship by multiple methods, depending on how important the system was considered to be to the safety of the crew, and success of the mission. Modern Systems Control and Communications was a technological wonder, and a challenging career field in itself. Communications channels on the Orysta consisted of highly multiplexed, and highly encrypted, super-high frequency signals that were sent by electromagnetic transmissions, fiber optic cables, induced gravity waves, and even some electrical signals over metal conductors (which even included using parts of the ship's structure). These multiple channels of communications gave redundancy when needed, and encryption gave protection from unexpected interference. All of these systems usually involved some sort of computer processing.
Backup systems, especially those that no one ever expected to use (like the emergency thrusters) had no multichannel redundancy and no sophistication. They were manual operation only, single circuit systems which meant that a crew member had to take complete control of their use. Even the control panel display with which the operator would activate these, was basically just a fancy looking face on a switch that connected two wires together to complete a circuit. There wasn't even any monitoring capability by the main computer, although it could measure the thruster force on the hull and could therefore determine if they were firing or not. By timing the length of the activation, it could calculate the effect on the ship.
The display screens at both pilot stations and the engineering station showed a diagram of the external view of the Orysta. Dark blue dots on the diagram indicated the location of each emergency maneuvering thruster. They could be fired and shut down with a touch of a finger on the screen. Touch one or more dots and those thrusters fired, and the blue dot turned bright red. Touch it again and the thruster would shut down, and the dot turned blue again. It was a simple toggle signal – touch once and it's on, and touch again and it's off. Since these were rarely used backup systems, they were not under the control of the main computer. The signals were routed from the display console to a demultiplexer which then sent them via individual wire signal paths to the associated thruster. All of the thrusters would be tested during the braking maneuver – those not actually needed for the maneuver would be initiated for a very short burst to confirm they were operational. The consumption of the small amount of thruster propellant was a price that had to be paid. Calculations were based on known available thrust, so they had to know if there were any defective units.
Califas would be controlling the thrusters. Munen would act as backup, and Plessa would be keeping an eye on the ship's systems and thruster functionality. The main computer would monitor all sensors and report verbally and visually how the ship was responding. Hull pressure sensors in the vicinity of each thruster would measure the force generated by them, and from that the actual thrust could be calculated.
“Confirm all crew secured in their pods.” said Munen.
“All crew members secure in crash stations,” said the computer, “except for the Captain, First Officer, and Chief Engineer.”
Munen noted that the main computer's voice had changed again into the very commanding male voice. This meant the computer had marked this time as the beginning of a dangerous event. It was. Even if everything went as well as was possible, the ship was going to be damaged – and if the ship was damaged, the crew would be in danger. He realized how much more he preferred the computer's female voice.
Their speed was increasing now, even though they were not generating any thrust. The ship was being affected by the combined gravitational pull of the planet and its moon. Both spacial bodies were in line with the ship's path, and their combined gravitational influence was at its maximum – Ilmert's Law. If they were to hit the moon at this speed it would be unsurvivable. It was time to decelerate the ship.
“Initiate lateral pitch – ninety arcleesons.” commanded Munen.
“Lateral pitch plus ninety arcleesons.” replied Califas, as he touched the appropriate indicators on his control panel screen. The lower front and the upper aft thrusters fired.
“Terminate thrusters now.” said the computer, and Califas quickly touched the same indicators again, shutting down the thrusters. They had only fired for a fraction of a fracin. The ship rotated around its lateral axis, accelerating briefly and then slowing until it stopped.
“Plus zero nine zero arcleeson rotation.” said the computer.
It was a perfect burn. Both pilots looked at each other, surprise and delight showing in their expressions. They had expected it to be close, but not dead on. What they had not realized was that when the ship's main computer calculated the burn time it was taking into account Califas' reaction time, based on his medical records and the continually ongoing physiological monitoring. It had factored in not only his physical state, including level of fatigue, but also the time it took the electrical impulses traveling from his brain to reach his fingers. The computer knew the mass of the ship, and measured its acceleration as it was rotated by the thrusters. It then calculated the amount of time it would continue to rotate before stopping. From all the information available, it then calculated exactly how long after he had initiated the thrusters to notify Califas to shut them down.
