Frontier

by Patrick Chiles

  “Electrical, environmental, and comm are all in here,” he explained. “We can run everything from the control deck, but if something needs fixing this is your first stop. If it can’t be fixed here, your next stop is outside.”

  It seemed as patched together as the old International Space Station every new flight officer had been familiarized with. “All that plumbing’s internal for a reason. They need too much work to keep the feed lines outside. Every other compartment can be sealed off if there’s an emergency depress. It’s not perfect but they couldn’t come up with a better layout,” the chief said. He pointed back to the entrance, across the connecting corridor. “Over there is reactor control, computer network, sensors and weapons. Other than the server racks, there’s not much that can be fixed in there.” He floated past, back into the gangway.

  Marshall poked his head in and saw a much tidier version of the module they’d just left. Almost immediately, the chief’s feet disappeared into the next adjacent portal. “This is medical and suit maintenance.”

  Pulling himself inside, it was clear that the space was as much about suit maintenance than any medicine. Racks of EVA suits and helmets lined an entire half of the module; work benches and supply cabinets took up much of the other half. “Where’s the medical gear?”

  Garver pulled on a white panel with a Red Cross symbol to unfold an exam table out of one wall. As he locked it in place and unstrapped its zero-g restraints, a rack of patient vital-sign monitors and intravenous pumps embedded in the wall behind it switched themselves on. “All here,” he said, “including idiot-proof EKG leads and an auto-defibrillator. Theoretically any one of us can use these. I don’t pretend to understand what they do, but the rescue spacers can explain that better anyway.”

  “You’re not one?” Marshall asked, surprised. He noticed three more tables just like it folded up along the aft wall—realizing it was in case they had patients to work on while under thrust. Another panel embedded in the ceiling was labeled “IV Meds.” So that’s where they kept it all. Yet another access panel in the floor was labeled “First Aid.”

  “Oh, I’m cross qualified in three different areas,” Garver said. “Doesn’t mean I understand them all. My primary rating is propulsion and reactor systems.” He pointed to the massive inner door of the emergency airlock at the far end of the module, beyond the racks of EVA suits. “My medical training is just enough to get a person through that ’lock and plugged into one of these beds without making matters worse. The rescue spacers are the real docs.” He floated back into the connecting tunnel. “We’re headed for their berth next. You can see for yourself.”

  They briefly popped into a module filled with exercise equipment. Two men pounded away on treadmills embedded in the wall, each strapped to it with elastic cords. On the opposite wall were resistance machines. A large HD television screen dominated the far corner. “Rec deck,” Garver said. “Crew recreation and wardroom.” He pointed to a long table whose surface was embedded in the floor. “Double or triple use, just like everything else up here. We also use it for cards. Movie night’s on Saturday, otherwise you’re likely to find people in here running video game tournaments when they’re off duty.”

  Moving next door, Garver led him into the first crew berthing module. Three retractable fabric doors lined either sidewall, each decorated with personal photos, flags, and mostly profane messages. One featured an action-movie poster with someone else’s head cropped over the hero’s face. “Back on the boat, those would’ve been centerfolds and tool-calendar pinups,” Garver said.

  “Was that back when Noah was still a sailor?”

  “Seems longer than that,” the chief lamented. “You should’ve seen it back when they banned tobacco aboard ship. That was the only thing that kept a lot of us sane.” He pirouetted and headed back out, turning right. “Your quarters are next door.”

  The only difference between the officer and crew berthing was a larger compartment at the end of the module, which he guessed were the captain’s quarters. If the others weren’t much bigger than a closet on Earth, the skipper’s was at least walk-in sized.

  Marshall pulled open the folding door to his own compartment. On the ground it would’ve felt claustrophobic, but you could make more use of the same living space in zero g. Any surface could be a wall, as orientation didn’t matter except under thrust. To that end, he noticed his bunk (really a light sleeping bag) was along the aft wall, just as the chief had mentioned. So if he were in it during a burn, he’d be pressed into the padded sidewall behind him. The whole thing in fact looked like a padded cell.

  If the room wasn’t any bigger than a closet, then it wasn’t furnished much more than one either. Small drawers were embedded into one wall, mounting brackets for a tablet computer and keyboard faced his “bunk,” while the adjacent wall was bare. From what he’d seen, most crewmembers filled that blank wall with personal photos. He realized he hadn’t brought any and wondered if he’d have enough time to spend in here for it to matter. He imagined the guys with families back on Earth probably had. Would that make a stint up here harder or easier? He wondered.

  It wasn’t long after connecting to the ship’s network that his tablet and phone began pinging him with backlogged messages. Most were anodyne administrative notices from Fleet HQ, thrice-sent confirmations of his duty assignment, forwarding addresses, generic safety briefings, though it was the next-of-kin designation form that got his attention. A formality, but still . . .

  He was grateful for the distraction when his phone buzzed with a raft of incoming texts from Roberta, starting two days ago. Her hyper-staccato texting perfectly mirrored her bouncy personality.

  U wont believe this. They got me operating X37s!

  Hope ur job at the Wing isnt too boring.

  DUDE where r u?

  U ghosting me? SRSLY?

  OK man, now u got me worried. Its been 2 days. Where u b?

  Had it really been that long? Things had happened fast. How to answer her? There wasn’t anything in his assignment notice or onboarding brief about secrecy. Coming here was unexpected, but it wasn’t classified either.

  Hope your job at the Wing isn’t too boring. Yeah, about that . . .

  He began thumb typing and almost sent his phone flying away with a screen full of garbled text. His usual light grip wouldn’t work up here; one more minor adjustment he’d have to make in zero g. This time he made sure it was wrapped firmly in his hands and tried again.

  Not ghosting u. Sorry. Been a busy week.

  And it was only Wednesday, he realized. He kept typing.

  Got my assignment. Not what I expected at all.

  The familiar incoming message bubble appeared on screen. It hadn’t taken long for her to reply.

  Its all good. Hope ur well. Remember the worst job in the SF is still better than the other branches. So what r u doing?

  That was Roberta, always trying to lift his spirits, but in this case not really necessary. How to answer that? He found it was always best to get to the point . . .

  Nothing much. Hanging out on the Borman. Rode a Specter shuttle up here yesterday.

  Marshall sent it, checked the time and wondered exactly how much her eyeballs must have been popping out of her skull at that moment.

  U @$$hole!

  So, about that much. He stuffed his small pouch of personal effects into a drawer and secured his duffel bag inside the sleep restraint. He could unpack later. The chief was giving him a tour of the ship because that’s what was customary, but now he was expected to report to Captain Poole.

  The control deck felt cramped compared to the layout he’d studied so much. The diagrams and virtual models had looked so much more spacious, but Marshall soon realized that was because they weren’t occupied with people.

  Half the crew was on duty at any one time, and most of them were in here. Two pilots floated above the flight station, one stood in front of the reactor systems panel with his feet hooked into restraints in th
e deck. Another hovered in front of what Marshall assumed to be the EVA management station, watching a monitor which showed the two crewmen in yellow spacesuits still working on the sensor suite. Two sets of legs dangled out of the observation cupola mounted in the overhead. One of them belonged to Captain Simon Poole.

  A voice boomed from the cupola. “That you, Chief?”

  “It is, sir.” Garver straightened perceptibly. Marshall strove to do the same.

  “Got our new nugget in tow, do you?”

  “Aye, Skipper. Just finished giving him the ship’s tour.”

  “That should’ve taken all of five minutes,” Poole said, not moving from his spot in the dome. “What’d you do, fold his clothes for him?”

  Garver checked his watch. “Five minutes, twenty seconds, sir. And the young ensign stowed his own gear.”

  Hands reached around the lip of the cupola, and a stocky form in a gray flight suit floated down into the control deck. A black ballcap embroidered with the spacecraft’s logo and captain’s scrambled eggs on its brim covered Simon Poole’s bald head.

  Marshall pulled himself to attention to the extent possible in zero g and saluted. “Ensign Hunter reporting for duty, sir.”

  Simon—Captain Poole, Marshall had to remind himself—made a show of looking him over before returning the salute. “Welcome aboard, Mister Hunter.” He waved a hand dismissively. “And at ease, for God’s sake. Got your service record?”

  That Poole could’ve just as easily pulled it up on the tablet in his hip pocket signaled that he still preferred to go about this the old-fashioned way. Marshall handed over his own tablet, his service record already displayed. He shot a glance over at Chief Garver, silently thanking him for the heads-up, and realized this was no doubt a standing routine between the two. He wondered if that was behind the chief’s many trips to and from Earth—suiting up and flying into orbit with each new crewmember, with an introduction to the Borman following naturally—and made a mental note to find out. If he was right, five launches seemed like an awfully low count.

  It was obvious Poole leaned hard on his senior NCO to break in new crew, especially officers. Especially extremely junior officers he’d known since they were children.

  “So you got the chief’s tour—think you can find your way around my ship without breaking anything?”

  “I’ll do my best, Captain.”

  “I’m sure you will. And if you don’t, I’ll be busting both of your asses.”

  “I’ll keep him out of trouble, Skipper,” Garver said. Marshall laughed nervously.

  Poole swiped through the pages in his records. “Aced your suborbital pilot quals, good scores in space ops concepts—so you might have a decent chance at orbital quals.” He continued. “Double majors in Astro and Mech E,” he read aloud, though he already knew that story. “So if you break something, you have some idea how to fix it.” Poole closed the file. “Mister Hunter, know this: there’s no way to learn this business without doing it. You’ve had a good start, but you’re about to find out how little they teach in school.”

  “I had a taste of that in orbital mechanics, sir,” he said, hoping he wasn’t digging himself a hole. “I didn’t really get it until I played a couple of PC games.”

  “That old one with the little green men who build rockets?” Poole laughed. “The crew runs a tournament on Thursday nights. Best way to learn until you get up here to actually do it. I’d rather you blow up something you built online instead of my ship.”

  “I will endeavor to not blow up your ship, sir.”

  “Don’t crap where you eat. Always a good idea.” He swiped across another page. “Mister Hunter, you’ll be the division officer for the EVA specialists. Finish stowing your gear and report down to their spaces.”

  “Yes sir,” Marshall said, silently eyeing the pilot’s flight station over Poole’s shoulder.

  Poole followed his gaze. “Looking for something?”

  “No sir.”

  The captain arched an eyebrow. “Do you understand the mission of this vessel, Mister Hunter?”

  He tried not to sound like he was repeating the stock answer that had been drilled into him during basic officer school. “Sir, the Borman is a spaceborne medium-endurance patrol vessel analogous to a US Coast Guard national security cutter. Our mission is to protect US assets in orbit, ensure freedom of navigation in cislunar space, and rescue spacecraft of any nationality in peril. Sir.”

  Poole smiled. “Congratulations, you paid attention in class. What that means in real life is that we’re one ship with an overly broad mission and a small crew. Everybody here is dual or triple qualified, Mister Hunter, including pilots. Outside work is one area they can’t train you for on the ground, I don’t care how much time you spend in the tank.” He pointed to the crewman at the EVA control station with a headset jacked into the panel, intently focused on the video from the spacewalkers’ helmet cameras. “Petty Officer Riley here is their NCO in charge.” Poole looked up into the cupola at the pair of feet jutting out from its opening. “Lieutenant Flynn had been their division officer until now, but he’s rotating back into engineering. He’ll show you the ropes.” Poole gestured for Marshall to join him.

  Even with one crewman inside, the cupola swirled with activity. The dome was less than two meters across, ringed with six trapezoidal windows around a central round window. Laptops jacked into the ship’s network were strapped beneath the windows with Velcro. Flynn, short with a close-cropped head of red hair, watched the spacewalking crew outside. He spied them through a pair of binoculars on the rare instances when he thumbed the mic on his headset to speak with them, apparently choosing to leave the running commentary to Riley down at the control station. He nodded, silently acknowledging Marshall before turning back to watch his men.

  Marshall floated behind him to watch the two spacers still working around the sensor module. Now over Earth’s night side, their yellow suits shone brilliantly under the ship’s floodlights. Beneath them, the planet sparkled with the lights of cities passing by. Ahead, the sky along Earth’s limb glowed with their reflection.

  “Must be hard to stay focused out there,” he offered, hoping it didn’t sound too lame.

  “You get used to it,” Flynn said, “and plans get filled up quick. Too much work to waste time looking around.” He lifted the binoculars and clicked his mic. “Rosie, how’s that P2 harness? Continuity’s intermittent.”

  A female voice crackled on the radio, frustration cutting through. “One of the cannon plugs isn’t seating. I’m about to disconnect and try again.”

  Flynn poked his head down into the control cabin. “Riley?”

  The petty officer at the EVA station answered. “It’s from that same batch that gave us trouble last month, sir. She’ll get it, it’ll just take some time.”

  Flynn checked his watch against an exposure table taped beneath a window. “Not too much time,” he said. “They’re going to be pushing their rad limits being that close to the reactors.”

  They couldn’t have illustrated Flynn’s point better if they’d tried: limited time, and every task outside seemed to be twice as hard as on Earth—or so he’d been told repeatedly. Panels stuck in place, cold welded to each other. Wire harnesses and coolant lines frayed from unexpected torque. Drop a tool or component in the training tank and it’d float to the bottom of the pool. Here, it’d go off in whatever direction it had been inadvertently pushed, forever.

  “Lowest bidder,” Flynn muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “Before John Glenn flew into orbit, he supposedly said he couldn’t help but think that every single part of his spacecraft had been assembled by the lowest bidder. Some things never change.”

  Marshall tried to sound savvy. “So you’ve got a set of spares giving you trouble?”

  “More than one. You can take an aircraft component that does the same job up here, but as soon as you put it in space it won’t work. I don’t think all of our suppliers
understand that yet. Sometimes it’s as simple as gas flow not working the same in zero g. Sometimes it’s the radiation environment, sometimes it’s thermal. Sometimes the thing just gets shaken up too much on the ride uphill and shits the bed. You’ll save yourself a lot of frustration if you just assume nothing works right out of the box.”

  Back in the EVA/medical module, Marshall watched as the two spacewalkers emerged, exhausted, from their external suit ports. Despite the already stringent exposure protocols—keeping their rad-hardened spacesuits outside the spacecraft in a dedicated shelter—the pair still had to go through a decontamination shower as one final step before entering the module. The complications of having even one normal shower functioning in space were daunting enough, having two sealed behind plastic screens just for deconning spacewalkers must have been a huge mass penalty.

  He averted his eyes when he discovered both were women, and not unattractive ones either. It didn’t help that they seemed to be getting a good laugh at his expense as they vacuumed away globules of water and patted themselves dry.

  Chief Garver had tagged along and tried not to look amused. “Everything okay, Ensign?”

  “Great, Master Chief. Awesome.” He shot a glance over at Flynn, who just shrugged and began making introductions. He was going to have to develop thick skin, and quickly.

  One dark-haired crewman—woman, he corrected himself—who seemed to be enjoying it the most made a halfhearted effort to cover herself up. “Petty Officer First Class Ana Rosado,” she said, and gestured to her partner. “And that there is Petty Officer Second Class Nikki Harper.”

  “Heard a lot about you guys but haven’t met any yet,” Marshall said. There were tall tales about the Rescue Spacers, their service’s equivalent to Air Force pararescue or Coast Guard rescue swimmers, “special operators” on par with the SEALs or Rangers.

  Harper pulled on a clean jumpsuit. “Guess there aren’t many of us to meet yet, sir.” She looked to her partner. “There’s what, a couple dozen of us?”