Stewart took off the glasses and turned around with a raised eyebrow. She wore her jet black hair short in the CSF fashion, and eyed Jan with rich, chocolate eyes under a slight epicanthic fold.
Lopez saluted, and Jan followed suit. Stewart returned the salute and turned to Lopez.
"Recruit Jan Childers, Ma'am. Recruit Childers, Lieutenant Commander Bo Stewart."
"Pleased to meet you, Ms. Childers. I've heard a lot about you."
"None of it's true, Ma'am," Jan blurted out.
Stewart started, and then laughed, a happy, bubbling sound.
"Well, we'll see. Mr. Lopez, take Recruit Childers' duffel with you to the shuttle, please. Dismissed."
Lopez saluted, picked up Jan's duffel bag, then turned and left. Stewart stood up, and she was impossibly tall. She was also shapely in the "causes riots wherever she goes" fashion, and in dress uniform. There couldn't be a more marked contrast between two people than between her and Jan, short and scrawny in her unadorned shipsuit.
"Follow me, Ms. Childers."
Stewart led the way into the restaurant, where they were expected, and to a quiet table to one side.
"Have a seat."
Jan sat bolt upright in her chair, somehow managing to stand at attention while seated. Stewart laughed again.
"At ease, Ms. Childers. This isn't inspection."
"Ma'am, you don't understand. I'm scared to death of screwing up. I escaped Earth, and the last thing I want is to go back."
At the mention of Earth, Stewart looked up. Jan followed her gaze, and froze, mesmerized. She had not noticed the ceiling of the restaurant was a patchwork of skylights. Earth hung in the sky above, the size a one-foot-diameter ball on the floor would appear to a standing person. Hawaii, on the left, was just passing into twilight; the lights of the metroplexes of the Americas were strewn across the night side like diamonds on velvet. Jan spotted the Houston Metroplex and shuddered.
Stewart cleared her throat. Jan tore herself away from the view to look at Stewart, and reddened.
"Where are you from, Ms. Childers?"
"Houston Metroplex, Ma'am. Right there above the Gulf of Mexico."
"Well, you're a Commonwealth citizen now, and, even if you wash out of the CSF, you'll never go back unless you want to."
"I can't imagine ever wanting to, Ma'am. It was, um, not pleasant."
"So I understand. I should tell you Lieutenant Commander Murdock and I are old friends. Dick and I were at the academy together. He knew I was on the Aquitaine and he called to tell me about you. You impressed him a great deal, Ms. Childers."
"Lieutenant Commander Murdock is a very nice person. He was very kind."
"Yes, he is. Even so, Dick Murdock does not impress easily. I guess that's why I wanted to meet you. And also to tell you you're among friends here. You have a great deal of slack, you might say. You are not yet expected to meet military courtesies and standards. At the same time, you have both chosen and qualified to become one of us, which we appreciate and respect. So you can relax. Please."
Stewart laughed again, and Jan finally smiled. The woman's laugh was infectious.
"That's better. Now let's see if we can't get some food."
The menu was bewildering to Jan. There was an insane variety of choices, literally dozens of entrees, plus sides, plus drinks. She goggled at the menu until Stewart rescued her.
"If I might suggest something?"
"Oh, please do, Ma'am. I'm new to all this. At the consulate, I simply ate whatever they put in front of me."
Stewart ordered for them both, and Jan's attention turned once again to the Earth above. So much heartache, so many bad memories. All wrapped up in that little ball. Her mind ran back over the death of her parents, her years of abuse at the orphanage, her life of hunger and terror and violence on the streets. All distilled into that little ball, now so far away. She heaved a huge sigh, and returned her attention to Stewart, who contemplated her in silence. Jan reddened again, and looked down at the table.
"That bad, was it?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Well, it's gone now. Forever. It can only affect you now if you let it. We all carry our pasts around inside, Ms. Childers. It's good to learn from our past, to contemplate it from time to time. But one needs to set their past aside to get on successfully with the present."
"Yes, Ma'am. I'll try to remember that."
"It will get easier with time. And practice. But for right now, let's eat."
CSS Aquitaine
As the Aquitaine came around in her orbit, they prepared to meet it with the shuttle. The station had a tangential velocity in its orbit of 8400 mph, give or take, while the Aquitaine, orbiting as a free satellite in the other direction, had a tangential velocity of 6200 mph in the other direction. They would drop off the satellite, and then accelerate up to the Aquitaine's velocity as it came up behind them. Even at 1g of acceleration in the shuttle, it would take more than ten minutes to make up the 14,400 mph change of velocity.
The shuttle was docked to the bottom of the station – the side away from Earth – and they had made their way through the bewildering corridors to the correct docking port. There was a steep ramp deployed down to the side door of the shuttle. The little departure room they passed through was apparently the airlock. When they got into the shuttle, Lieutenant Commander Stewart waved her to a seat by a portside window, and then sat inboard of her.
"This your first time in space, Ms. Childers?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Did you take the weightlessness meds in the elevator?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"How long ago?"
"It would have been maybe ten hours ago by now."
Stewart reached into her jacket and pulled out a small bottle of the pills. She shook one out for Jan and one for herself.
"Here you go. Until you know whether you need them for sure or not, on a shuttle you want to be safe, not sorry."
"Thank you, Ma'am."
"About a third of people can never get used to weightlessness. Maybe you'll be lucky. Unlike me."
They waited maybe fifteen minutes before they undocked from the station. They launched from the station by the simple expedient of letting go. The station continued around the Earth on its tether, while the shuttle now went straight at its tangential velocity. What it looked like from inside the shuttle is they simply dropped from the bottom of the station. They were immediately in zero-g, in freefall.
"Urp."
Jan grabbed at the chair arms, as if to stop her fall.
"Sorry. I should have warned you, Ms. Childers. To launch from the station, we just let go. It seems like we just fell, but the reality is we're now going straight and the station is still going in circles."
"Yes, Ma'am. I knew that, but often the knowing and the experiencing aren't the same."
Stewart laughed her happy, bubbling laugh.
The pilot reoriented the shuttle in the direction the Aquitaine was orbiting and initiated the drive. Jan could see Earth out her window, and the Quito Station rapidly moving away from them. The apparent gravity in the shuttle quickly came back up to one g, this time toward the seatbacks, so it felt like they were seated facing up. They had been accelerating at this rate for ten minutes or so when Jan saw the Aquitaine slowly come up alongside, between the shuttle and Earth.
A space-based warship looks nothing like a shuttle, or an airplane, or a seagoing ship, or a quadcopter. For one thing, there is no such thing as 'up' in space, there is only where you've been and where you're going. So while a space ship has a definite front and rear, the concepts of left, right, up, and down are right out the window. It was clear the Aquitaine had a bow and a stern, and was roughly a long, irregular cylinder between them. She orbited the Earth what some might call sideways, because her long axis was oriented along a line toward the Earth, rather than in the direction she orbited. Jan wasn't sure which end was the bow and which the stern, but she knew the shuttle bays should be in the front, so she
assumed the end toward her was the bows.
The second thing is there is no air resistance in space, so there is no need to tuck everything in or cover over all the gangly bits with smooth slabs of sheet metal to reduce air resistance. The result was the Aquitaine appeared never to have been finished, like they got all the framing and hardware in place and never covered it over.
From the bows back, first there were two rows of large storage containers that ran around the ship like belts, the first one of which, at least, was two deep. The containers were long frames of square cross-section, each with a cylinder enclosed. Next came the three guns – more properly the beam emitters – on their massive struts located equally around the ship, and between them three crew quarters, large cylinders sticking out at right angles to the ship's axis. Each of these cylinders was anchored in a massive yoke, so that they could rotate back against the ship underway. The central spine of the ship beyond those was a rat's nest of tubes, pipes, spheres, and boxes, as if all the access and cover panels had been removed from some splendidly complicated piece of machinery. Standing high out of all the plumbing were the radiators, four large black rectangular fins on the stern used to dissipate waste energy.
The Aquitaine also slowly rotated, those big cylinders pinwheeling around. In the center of her bows, in the middle of the double belt of containers, the two shuttle bays did not rotate. The shuttle bays were not actually bays at all. They had no doors or walls or anything, they were just a single rack that stuck out on the front face of the ship. Jan could see a shuttle on one side of the rack, its roof latched to the rack. The other side of the rack was empty and was lit by spotlights.
"Wow."
"Beautiful, isn't she?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
Beauty, Jan thought, was definitely in the eye of the beholder.
As the Aquitaine came up alongside, the pilot played around with the throttles and thrusters until he had achieved a completely stationary position with respect to the Aquitaine. They were both in freefall in the identical orbit around Earth now, and Jan was back in zero-g. The shuttle bay rack on the Aquitaine slowly rotated to match the orientation of the shuttle as they watched, which put the open side of the rack on bottom from Jan's point of view, with the other shuttle upside-down on the other side. Then the shuttle pilot docked by the simple expedient of using side thrusters to slowly push the shuttle into the open bay. He was in no hurry, and it took several minutes to get the shuttle in place and latched under the rack with several loud clanks.
Jan felt a shudder run through the shuttle, then she felt a push toward the back of her seat. Looking out the window, she saw the front of the ship sliding past as it rotated, but it looked like it was slowing down. She looked across the shuttle and out the windows on the other side, and saw the stars starting to rotate. The stars rotated faster past those windows, and the side of the ship moved slower past her window, until the ship's side stopped entirely. The shuttle bay was now rotating with the ship. A tube extended the few feet from the bow wall of the Aquitaine to the shuttle door and latched onto it, sealing the connection. The feeling of motion had stopped, and she felt a slight apparent gravity towards the deck.
They let the other crew members who had made the trip across get off first, while Stewart and Lopez waited with Jan. They floated as much as walked in the low gravity to the shuttle door and disappeared down the boarding tube.
"OK, Ms. Childers, we're going to go now. We've let everyone else go, so we're in no hurry. You haven't had any shipboard training, so I'm going to sort of tow you along. Ensign Lopez will bring your duffel behind, and round you up if you get away from me. OK?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
Stewart produced a string out of her pocket, no more than six feet long, with a loop at both ends. She held one end out to Jan.
"Hold this in your hand. It'll be easier to round you up if you go flying away. The trick is to shuffle your feet, so you don't create a vertical push. All right?"
"Yes, Ma'am. I think I can do that."
"OK. Here we go."
Stewart made her way to the doorway, with Jan following. Only once did she float up off the deck, and Stewart hooked a toe under a seat support frame and reeled her back in. They passed through the shuttle doorway and into the boarding tube, and emerged into a little room with a stair well.
"As you go down these stairs, the gravity will increase. The trick is not to fall, because you will accelerate faster as you fall. There are handholds on the sides. Use them as you go down so you can catch yourself. You sort of have to pull yourself down the first few steps. Ensign Lopez will go first. Watch carefully. OK, Mr. Lopez, down the stairs the way they teach it in school. No fancy stuff."
Lopez shuffled up to the stairwell, Jan's duffel on his shoulder, and pulled himself down the stairs with the handholds. He went slowly, and was careful to keep his feet on the treads as he went. Farther down, he was going more normally.
"Good, Mr. Lopez. Ms. Childers, can you do that?"
"I think so."
Jan mimicked Lopez's actions, although even slower, and eventually found herself at the bottom of the stairs with a grinning Lopez. Her weight was maybe 0.1 g, so still very light, but much better than zero-g.
"You did it! Most people at least stumble the first time. Some fall," Lopez said.
Stewart came down the stairs.
"Nicely done, Ms. Childers. From here out, you'll always have some gravity, depending on where in the ship you are. Guest quarters are outboard, so you get almost a full g out there."
Stewart had gone to report in to the captain, Captain Jerry Lutzdorf. Lopez showed her to her cabin, which was toward the bottom of one of the crew cylinders. The cabin had a single tiny bunk along one side bulkhead with a storage cabinet above. With the bunk folded up against the bulkhead, two chairs could be unfolded from the deck. They swiveled, so they could either face each other or a small writing desk that folded down on the bulkhead opposite the bunk. Folding the desktop down revealed a VR rig in the shallow cabinet behind it, as well as some small storage and a tiny sink. At the end of the desk, a pull-out divider hid the view of a small toilet.
The entire cabin was six feet deep and four feet wide at the door, maybe five feet wide at the far end.
"Sorry it's so small, Ms. Childers. Shipboard accommodations always are. But at least you have privacy," Lopez said.
"Actually, it's very nice, Sir. Not a problem for me at all."
Jan didn't have the heart to tell him, at twenty-seven square feet, it was about four times bigger than the hidey-hole in which she had lived for the last six months before she took the Citizenship Exam.
Seaman Recruit on the Light Cruiser
CSS Aquitaine
The cylinder Jan was in was the command cylinder. It contained the bridge, captain's ready room, navigation, plotting and planning, combat information center, communications section, quarters for all the officers aboard, the officer's mess, and the guest quarters. The other two cylinders were for enlisted spacers. One was primarily for ship and crew support, and included life support systems, ship's galley, sick bay, the armory and suit lockers, and crew quarters for all the various personnel required. The last cylinder was for combat and propulsion, and included the control rooms for the drive and the beam emitters, power management, machine shop, and crew quarters for all the personnel required for those.
When going from one cylinder to another, there was necessarily a lot of ladders involved when the ship was in orbit, because you had to go all the way up, cross around to the cylinder you wanted, and then go back down. Under way, with the drive generating apparent gravity toward the rear of the ship, the cylinders folded back to maintain the down direction in the crew spaces. Part of the mess of tubing behind the beam emitters were cross-cylinder hallways that would connect the cylinders at multiple locations along their length.
Jan had been encouraged to wander around the command cylinder as the ship was being prepared for departure. At an inch under
five feet tall, she was definitely the shortest person on board, or the shortest person she saw, anyway. People looked at her curiously, but not in an unfriendly way. Everyone had apparently been told about or heard through the grapevine about the new recruit being transferred to Jablonka, so she was not expected to provide military courtesies. That was good, because here in officer country she would spend all day saluting and never get anywhere.
"Just stay in officer's country for now, Ms. Childers," Lopez had said. "Under way, we can have one of the chiefs show you around the other two cylinders. Those two together are called 'below decks' for historical reasons, while the command cylinder is called 'topside.'"
That was fine with Jan. The cylinders were huge. She remembered a CSF light cruiser's normal complement was eight hundred officers and crew. She couldn't even imagine a battleship, with three times the crew complement.
The captain had invited Jan to meet with him in his ready room. He would be the highest-ranking CSF officer she had met. As she waited for him, Jan was petrified she might say or do something wrong.
Captain Jerry Lutzdorf entered, along with Lieutenant Commander Bo Stewart and a young lieutenant.
"Captain, Lieutenant, Recruit Childers. Ms. Childers, Captain Lutzdorf and his aide, Lieutenant Sanders Vander Linden," Stewart said.
Jan sprang out of her seat to attention, and cleared the deck by about 18" in the 0.4g at this level in the command cylinder.
"At ease, Ms. Childers. At ease," Lutzdorf said through his chuckle.
"Yes, Sir."
"Have a seat."
They all took their seats around one end of the conference table.
"The XO tells me you're bound for OCS."
Childers Page 4
