“Well to me, you’re still a Petty Officer First Class, Mr. Stark,” Hannah Richards said, “It took me twelve years to get to Biologist First Class. I don’t look down on you, or any of the ColSups for that matter.”
“Took me ten years to get to Geologist First Class,” Nancy Cartwright added, “We’re all family here. ColSup Chris Reese over there almost single-handedly loaded this shuttle. If anything, I was the one getting in the way – not him.”
“Well, I don’t know where I’ll fit in as a ColSup,” Renata added, “But I do know that I intend to pull my weight.”
“I’m sure you will,” Ensign Lopez agreed, smiling kindly.
The shuttle rocked again and as expected, we started hearing some random metallic thuds.
Sarai
Chapter Five
My only other command job was as the XO aboard the USS South Carolina – a freighter that doubled as a personnel carrier whose sole mission was to support the Europa Science Foundation which happened to be stationed on the sixth moon of Jupiter.
My two years on that ship was spent navigating the two-to-three-week journey to Europa, dropping off people and supplies, and then taking the two-to-three-week journey back, often transporting people from Europa to Earth. Then I’d get a week off to spend with Zane before I’d be on another two-to-three-week journey to Europa again. This was all I did for the full two years on that ship. It was tedious and mind-numbing being that the ship had a total compliment of only nine people. It had a CO, an XO, a Chief Engineer, three Machinist Mates, or engineers for lack of a better word, a Mess Chief, a Mess Specialist, or cook, and a Medical Assistant.
Needless to say, it was one of the simplest jobs I’d ever held. There were no obstacles between Earth and Jupiter because the asteroid belt was easily bypassed. Landing the ship on Europa was as easy as turning on an automated landing program. My ship never landed on Earth as it was too awkward in shape and size for atmospheric re-entry. So when we returned to Earth, it always docked at the orbital shipyard where a shuttle would take over from there. There was no way I could have done my job poorly.
Today however, I was co-piloting a shuttle through what had earlier appeared to be a field of mere dust particles surrounding KMA. As we got closer to our destination, it became clear that these weren’t dust particles, but rather rocks, stones, and sometimes small boulders. And avoiding them completely was proving to be an impossibility.
“What do you suggest, XO?” Engineer Second Class John Wolfe asked, “You’ve gritted your teeth or groaned three times now. No disrespect, but do you have another suggestion?”
“No, Wolfe, you’re doing the only thing possible,” I replied, “Short of descending at the poles where the debris is less prominent, there’s nothing we can do.”
“You’re not suggesting that, are you?” he asked, turning to me.
“Of course not,” I groaned, “The shuttles are thick skinned. Let’s just get this over as soon as possible.”
It bothered me for the first time ever that my involuntary gestures were making a crew member uncomfortable and could potentially cause him to second guess his actions. I’d learned long ago that it was important to guard my facial expressions and gestures especially when I was feeling worried or ill at ease around a crew member.
The shuttle was suddenly rattled fairly hard when he hit something substantial. I immediately called up the shuttle-integrity map on my command panel. Thankfully we weren’t losing any air pressure which would have already set off some audible alarms anyway. The outer hull hadn’t been breached either. The only thing I couldn’t verify for certain was whether or not we lost any of the ceramic heat shielding.
We shuddered again, accompanied by the rat-a-tat sound of three objects hitting us in rapid succession. I worried suddenly for those in the back. There would have been no doubt in their minds that those were the sounds of collisions. I hoped for a moment that Zane was assuring them that the shuttle could hold up under such stress. I would have liked to have some reassurance right about now.
“Tell me something good about the heat shielding on this shuttle, Wolfe,” I said, “Something reassuring because I’m not feeling very confident right now.”
“It’s good to know you’re human and not a robot, ma’am,” he smiled at me, “What I mean is that I’m glad to see you’re not going to pretend everything is alright.”
“Well that’s really what I’m asking, Mr. Wolfe,” I insisted, “Are we going to survive the atmospheric entry?”
“We’ve got the latest Stanton/Wright Impact-Resistant Ceramic Shielding on all four shuttles, ma’am. It doesn’t get any better than this,” he said, steering the craft suddenly to avoid a monstrous tumbling boulder, “But… I have to remind you that it’s impact-resistant and not impact-proof. The inner hull is also coated in the same shielding, so if a collision does chip off some of the outer shielding, we could very likely burn away some of the outer hull during the descent, all the while leaving the inner hull intact and all of us inside left very much alive.”
“You’re an engineer and you’re familiar with all this,” I said, “Give me something more reassuring than that. I don’t want to imagine the outside of our ship white hot and melting while we’re plummeting through the atmosphere.”
“Ma’am, I don’t like to lie and I especially won’t lie to the Captain or the XO. My duty is to report the full truth to you and others in charge no matter what that truth is,” he said, banking the shuttle quickly to the right.
Something hit directly beneath my feet and the thud resounded loudly in the cabin.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, growing more concerned.
“Well, I’ve read up on the shielding and was impressed with the tests they performed. But ma’am, remember the one hard impact earlier? The one that caused our ears to ring? Well, I can’t say that I believe with certainty we didn’t lose a good portion of the shielding on that one. I’d bet money on it that there’s a pretty good dent in the ship and the shielding, no matter how impact-resistant it is, doesn’t have a tendency to dent. It cracks, chips, or breaks.”
I sat back, closed my eyes, and breathed out slowly. I’d piloted shuttles before and respected his desire not to sugar-coat what we were facing. And even before I’d asked him to lie to me, I had my beliefs after feeling some of those impacts, especially the impact he was referring to.
“We’re going to make it, XO,” he said, looking over at me, “I’m just telling you that the shuttle’s going to be pretty ugly when we get down there. I didn’t want you to see it and get mad at me for pretending everything was just perfect.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wolfe, but I was still hoping maybe you’d have lied to me,” I said with a smile of reassurance, “Are you sure that the dent we may have probably received didn’t chip the inner shielding as well?”
“Ma’am, let’s please not-” he stopped suddenly and then burst out with an expletive as his eyes went wide.
I turned to see what had drawn his attention and I caught the final moments of a slow-motion explosion against the backdrop of KMA. Five fireballs with white trails spread outward in opposite directions from a central black cloud. It looked like an insect being drawn overtop of the moon.
“No…” I hollered, tears instantly clouding my vision, “It wasn’t… it couldn’t…”
“Captain Murphy’s shuttle,” he choked out.
He was crying as well, still trying to maintain a safe trajectory. I dropped my face into my hand, unable to control the sudden wave of shock and hurt. Before I realized it, I was uncontrollably sobbing like a child.
“They were the fir… the first to begin their descent through the atmosphere, ma’am,” he said, still trying to choke back his tears, “He was only five minutes ahead of us.”
“There were eight people on that shuttle!” I cried out, still staring at the five smoke trails that marked the flaming portions dropping to the surface, “Eight living people who were trustin
g us to get them to the surface.”
“And we’re going to do just that, ma’am. We still have control over a shuttle of nine and we need to somehow keep it together. I’d like us to get to the surface.”
His blunt statement brought me back to reality. Our vision may have been blurred due to the tears, but we still had a job to do. We literally didn’t have the time to mourn the others because we were still rapidly drawing closer to our destination. I needed to plot a course through the atmosphere because we were about to lose all manual control during about five to ten minutes of the descent. I wiped my eyes, but still couldn’t stop crying. I performed a final scan of the moon and then plotted the atmospheric descent.
“Please check the course and confirm if you agree,” I said, my voice cracking, “
He looked down at his navigation terminal and then hit the confirmation key.
“Confirmed, Captain,” he said, “We’ll be entering the outer atmosphere in seventy-three seconds.”
“Captain…” I repeated, “Don’t do that, Mr. Wolfe.”
“It’s a fact, ma’am, and you need to be prepared for that when we get down there,” he said.
Chapter Six
I mentally went through the roster of that shuttle as we began our controlled plummet to Kepler 963a’s closest moon. I called it a plummet because of the fact that as of this moment, no human had ever successfully landed on Kepler Moon Alpha and the first one to try disintegrated in the atmosphere. We landed two robotic probes on the surface several decades ago without a single hitch, but the first time a human attempted it, eight people died. We were going to be the second attempt with two others following close behind.
The shuttle began vibrating steadily shortly after we surrendered the controls to gravity. We lost visuals shortly thereafter, both through the front windshield as well as any electronic means. Rather than worry for the next ten minutes, I decided to compare notes with the pilot.
“The captain’s wife was on that shuttle also,” I said, “They planned to start a family here once everyone was settled. He told me that they weren’t even going to wait for the weather to improve. He called his future child the ice-age baby.”
“My boss was there also. Lieutenant Junior Grade Mohammed Bin Haddad. He was the head of Colonial Engineering. The ‘Chief Engineer’ but without that title. Never did understand why the Navy did away with that job title for this trip,” John Wolfe stated, “I thought we’d work well together because of his sense of humor.”
“I think the Agricultural Chief was on that shuttle as well,” I added, “I think I remember seeing Ensign Rodney Long get on that shuttle before I did my rounds.”
“Yes, he was on that…” an alarm interrupted us all of a sudden, “We’ve got an outer hull breach! Dangerous temperatures reaching the inner hull!”
I grabbed the communication mike and switched it on, “All hands stay clear of the bulkheads. Outer hull has been breached and we’re already recording dangerous temperatures on the inner hull.”
“You didn’t need to do that, Captain,” he growled, flipping several of the emergency cooling switches, “The interior temperature has gone up by twelve degrees in less than a minute. They know we’re heating up back there.”
“No,” I croaked, witnessing the same numbers that he was seeing on the command panel.
It was already nearing ninety degrees inside the shuttle and someone back there had already texted that the walls were hot to the touch. The heat-resistant ceramic should have prevented any drastic changes in the temperature of the bulkheads. If the walls around the fuel cells or the engineering units were getting that hot, we only had seconds before destruction.
“All cooling units are online and working at maximum capacity,” he hollered.
Dear Lord!!
I was neglecting my duties while Mr. Wolfe was saving the ship!
“There’s got to be a crack in the heat shielding on the inner hull. It’s the only explanation,” he said.
“Why are we still alive?” I demanded, watching the interior temperature now rise over a hundred degrees.
“Are you disappointed, Captain?” he turned to me, unable to hide his frustration.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m panicking,” I sputtered, bursting into tears all of a sudden, “Now you see why I never made Captain.”
He visibly softened in spite of our current situation, “You are ‘Captain’ ma’am and you’re also human. We’re not dead because I believe the inner shielding is cracked instead of shattered or missing altogether. Even a hairline crack permits heat to get through to the steel wall beneath and we all know that steel radiates heat much too well. You hold a blowtorch to a single spot on a giant steel plate and eventually that whole steel plate will be hot.”
“So we’ll survive,” I said, trying to control my sudden wave of crying.
“If my theory is correct about the crack, then yes as long as we don’t cook inside this oven,” he said.
Just then, Mr. Wolfe took the controls and nodded toward the windshield. The view before the shuttle was slowly beginning to clear. He changed the angle of the shuttle and then struggled with the yoke as he converted the shuttle’s freefall into a high altitude flight. Moments later, the shuttle’s wings were fully deployed and riding the air like they were designed to do.
“We made it past the worst of it,” he said, “We’ll vent this shuttle the moment we are low enough to take in some breathable air.”
“Mr. Wolfe…”
“You’re human, Captain,” he inserted, “The only thing anyone here will ever know is that you and I kept a level head and did an awesome job bringing the shuttle safely to KMA. They will still trust their captain completely.”
“You were the hero, Engineer Second Class Wolfe,” I said, “I deserve none of the credit on this one.”
“But alas, you will take credit because these people need to have someone to turn to. I’m not a leader and never will be, but you are and people trust you. They need you more than ever now that they just lost a full shuttle of friends and leaders,” he said, “Be a hero to these people. You’re still the hero who saved me from being stuck in a Delayed Aging Chamber for eternity.”
“It’s just not right,” I muttered, shaking my head.
“It’s perfectly right if you want to see people come together and succeed as the Earth’s first extra-solar colony,” he said, “Once some years have passed and we’re surviving and thriving down there, I’ll gladly accept a trophy or some honors for this little miracle here. Until then, how about I take a back seat, ma’am?”
I looked at him for a moment and could see the sincerity in his expression. He was much smarter that I’d taken him for earlier. I’d not forget this – not now and not some years later when it was time to bestow some honors upon him. I nodded and returned the smile he offered me.
Zane
Chapter Seven
I knew for certain that we were going to die. We were going to die and all these people would be glaring at me as we disintegrated in the atmosphere – all the while knowing that I had lied to them. I had told them we were going to be just fine, but the smoking, bubbling paint on the bulkhead behind us said that no amount of heat-resistant ceramic would protect us now.
The sweat had been dripping from my face as I leaned forward, trying to get as far as I could from the hot wall behind my seat. Renata reached over to take my hand. At first I pulled away just slightly, then realized that this was a frightened girl who didn’t have a father figure in her life for who knew how long. She needed a father to assure her that it was going to be okay, even if we’d actually be dead in the next thirty seconds. I’d lied before, so now I decided to lie again. I took her hand and squeezed it, turning to her.
“They’ve got it under control, Renata,” I whispered to her, “You can hear the ice cold air being pumped in through the vents beneath our seats and from the ceiling. They know it’s hot in here and we came prepared for
it.”
Those cold-air vents were never turned on full blast like this unless it was hopeless. It was a last ditch effort to save the ship from the inside, but basic physics would tell you that you could fill the ship with pure liquid nitrogen and it wouldn’t save you from disintegrating when you had no shielding left.
We had all loosened our safety belts so that we could lean forward with our heads between our knees. The wall behind us felt like an open oven door, so we were only doing what we could to survive, even if it meant we were no longer safely harnessed in our seats.
“I know we’re going to die,” Renata whispered, “You’re lying and I can feel it in the way you’re squeezing my hand.”
“Don’t say that,” I growled quietly, “You are ColSup. Colonial Support. Negative comments like that doesn’t support the colony.”
“You’re ColSup too and you’re the only one I’m saying this to,” she argued, “We can talk about this freely and just be honest with each other. It’s probably the last words we will ever speak, so what does it matter?”
“You’re right that we can be honest with each other, but…” I leaned toward her, “There’s no need to hide your feelings and thoughts. But negativity can destroy a colony. You and I need to be positive. In private, where no one can hear us, it’s okay for you to tell me your negative thoughts and I’ll be there for you. We’ll discuss it and I’ll offer you my advice and help.”
“No one can hear us,” she whispered, “Look around. People are praying, crying, and shutting down. They have no idea that you and I are talking.”
“Well, let me just say that there’s nothing you and I can do right now. Our lives are in the hands of the two people flying this shuttle. The only thing we can do is sit here and pray,” I said, squeezing her hand in mine and kissing her on the thumb knuckle, “Are you okay with that? Are you okay with you and I holding hands until we land on KMA or even holding hands as we die up here on entry?”
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