Been a bit out of it for the last couple of days.  So just going to leave a snippet here today.

Just after Conestoga et al left orbit, but before the arrival of the group headed by Sheppard, I got pulled off groundside work and sent back up into orbit to help get De Ruyter Station set up.  The Admiral had already changed her orientation to the planet, and once we got the modules on her reconfigured, she’d start spinning in order set up artificial gravity for the crew who’d be pulling shifts on board.

With a logistics crew of ten, six women and four men, I reported to the hut that was designated for orbital operations. There were a few others besides logistics folks going up, because there were about twenty people total in the ops hut.  Most of the others I knew in passing from training or had worked with while we were loading out for the mission.  With just over one hundred people on the first mission, we were a group that pretty much knew each other.  Prescott Harrison and his pal Bobby from Ride were there, waiting with their suit bags.  At this point in the mission, the suit bags were pretty much the only luggage we had, so they went everywhere with us. 

“Pete, my man.  You get a chance to look into what we discussed?”

“Yeah.  Put it in my report.  Right now the report is still sealed though, waiting on final approval from Mission Control on Earth,” I said, dropping my bag to the deck.  I’d looked into his complaints.  Almost all of them had to do with how he was treated, quality of food on Ride, overwork and under pay, and so forth.  Out of the 327 complaints he had filed with HR by turnover, I found none legitimate.  HR didn’t either, but from what one of the guys in HR told me, that didn’t keep him from filing complaints.  He actually complained that one of the other guys in his section had poor hygiene habits on a low water ship.  Some folks just look for things to bitch about, I guess.

“I understand.  Look man, me and Bobby here are going up to the Admiral.  You on that team as well?”

We hadn’t helmeted up yet.  I raised my right eyebrow at him and gestured at my suit.  “No, just thought I’d get all dressed up formal like and wander around on my off time.”

“Uh . . . ok,” he said, giving me a look most people reserve for someone whose sanity is questionable.

At this point we didn’t have a lot of down time – we were mostly pulling twelve hour days seven days a week – you could get down time for religious reasons, and most of us took one day in fourteen “off”.  Most people spent that time in their quarters, because except for suiting up and wandering around outside (which wasn’t encouraged in groups of less than three for safety reasons) there wasn’t one hell of a lot to do.

I was saved from further conversation when the crew from the shuttle came wandering over. 

“You guys headed up to the Admiral this morning,” one of them said, looking at a tablet.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m Brumbar.  He’s Harrison, and this is Bobby. . .”

“Robert Flack.”

“Dave Jones.  Glad to meet you guys.  I’m loadmaster on this trip, so dump your bags out on the table over there and we’ll poke through them then get em over to the can so they don’t depressurize on the way to orbit.”

“Poke through them,” Flack asked as we headed over to the table.

“Yeah,” Jones said, “things in orbit are a bit tight right now – we’re shorthanded with everyone down here working dirtside, and we’re enforcing dry ship rules on De Ruyter so we can get work done in the minimum amount of time.”

“I see,” Harrison said, surreptitiously opening his bag and pulling a bottle of “mouth wash” out and tossing it at the recycle bin. 

Jones raised an eyebrow at me and gave me a half assed grin.  He didn’t find anything questionable in Flack’s gear.  I waited while Flack repacked everything, then dumped my bag out.  Since all I was carrying was my tablet, toothbrush, and a few clothing items, it took even less time to go through my stuff than it had Flacks.  I flipped everything back in, then tossed the bag over in the can that was going to ride up to orbit. 

Harrison dumped his gear on the table.  There was a lot of stuff there.  Multiple changes of clothes, two tablets, and a box with what I can only describe as a pharmacy – there were more pills there than I had seen in one place outside a ships sick bay since we left Earth. 

“They’re all legal,” he said “Mostly analgesic pain killers and some anti nausiants.”

“Yeah, I see that,” Jones said, “but do you need so damn many?”

“Well, they didn’t tell us how long we’d be in orbit, so I erred on the side of caution.”

“Ok.  Pack this shit back up and toss it in the can then,” Jones said, looking at Harrison and pointing with his thumb.

“Right folks, let’s get this brief underway,” a second figure said, stepping out of a small room at the rear of the shack.  We all gathered around him.

“My name is Francis Turner, and I’ll be your captain for this flight.  Please be aware that this is a no smoking flight, and there will not be a meal service, so if you’re hungry grab something now.  Otherwise you’ll be waiting till we get over to the Admiral.”  He tossed around some hard copy checklists.

“Hang onto those and review them on the way up.  In the event of a water landing, be prepared to be surprised, cause that means we’ve fallen through a wormhole and, in the words of Dorothy, are no longer in Kansas.  We’ll be going up under pressure, so once we get everything sealed, you can take your helmets off and stow them.  However, in the event of a cabin loss of pressure incident, be ready to jam that bad boy back on while breathing out so your lungs don’t turn to jelly.”

We were all chuckling at this point.

“We’ll be travelling to orbit.  This may cause some of you some distress when we first take off, as I plan to do a fast burn.  You may actually feel briefly like you’re back on Earth, and some passengers have indicated that this causes a desire to evacuate their intestinal tract by the fastest means available.  We ask that you puke in the bags provided, otherwise Mr. Jones over there has to clean the crew cabin, and he hates cleaning puke out of the air filters.”

“Gets in ma hair,” Jones said, running his hand over his shaven head.

“Any questions?  Good.  Got any spare answers floating around out there?  No?  Well, get your helmets on and over to the transfer vehicle.  We’ll be leaving via the west airlock.  See you on board.”

I slid my helmet on and then checked the seal, and made sure the bottle was connected.  One of the ground ops guys came over and checked us all out, then led us to the west air lock.  It was connected directly to the airlock on the truck that would haul us across the field to the shuttle.  I grabbed a seat at the rear of the truck and waited a few minutes while everyone else filtered on.

Jones did a head count, signed off on the ground tech’s tablet and grabbed a seat next to me.

“Brumbar, right?”

“Yeah.  Must be.  Says so right here on my suit.  Otherwise I’m wearing his shit,” I said, grinning.

“Smart ass.”

“So they tell me.  How can I help you Mr. Jones?”

“Please call me Dave.”

“Not sure that I can do that Dave.”

“Funny.  Anyway, how well you know Harrison?”

“Met him in Houston, then ran into him on Ride after the trial, why?”

“Skipper thinks he’s being sent up to the Admiral to be somebody else’s problem.  You’re the only name that the Admiral herself commented on.  She said she’s glad you’ll be coming up, and she’s looking forward to continuing your discussion from before.”

“Figures.  Going to be defending my thesis again against an AI,” I said, shaking my head.

“So, anyway, based on her glowing recommendation, the Skipper wants you to be in charge of this motley crew.”

“More no good deed goes unpunished rewards?”

“Something like that.  You up for it?”

“Sure.  Someone’s got to do it, and I really don’t want to listen to Harrison bossing us around.”

            “Good point.  I’ll let the boss know you said yes.”

            We crawled across the field to the shuttle, where a tech hooked the flexible airlock to the truck.  We crossed over to the shuttle and found seats in the crew area.  This shuttle was one of the personnel only birds – designed to haul crew and their equipment to and from orbit, rather than one of the larger cargo shuttles that were landing and taking off over on the north side of the field.

            The shuttle itself was an oblate lifting body design, with canards and a fin for control in atmosphere.  Thrusters hung on the end of the ship like an afterthought, destroying the otherwise sleek lines that screamed power.  The only things breaking the overall black color scheme were the tail numbers of the bird – TD59847556. 

            Once on board, we settled in our seats, and Jones came through and checked that we were all strapped in. 

            The woman seated to my right offered her hand.  “Stephanie Baxter.”

            “Pete Brumbar.”

            “I’ve heard of you,” she said, settling into her seat. 

            “Yeah, I’ve had people say that before,” I said, grinning as I slid my helmet under the seat.

            “Nice.  Must be nice to be famous,” she said, squirming down into her seat.

            “Not really.  But it does get me into all the best clubs.”

            “So, you going up to run a pod?”

            “Yeah, you?”

            “Commo tech.  I get to bring the Admiral’s full suite of commo gear on line.  Should be interesting.”

            “Whyso?”

            “The Admiral tends to be a bit . . . pedantic.”

            “Tell me about it.  When we were finishing her load out, I spent hours defending my master’s thesis from her.”

            “I imagine that was less than fun.”

            “Yeah, she had access to the entire web at that point, and I was working from memory.  I will give her this much, she’s made a hell of a study in her spare cycles of modern naval development.”

            Laughing, she said, “Well, then, you can keep her distracted while I work.”

            “Probably so,” I said grinning.

            “Ladies and gentle beings,” Jones’s voice came over the speaker, “welcome aboard MarsAir Flight One to orbit.  We’ll be taking off shortly, and the Captain asks that you please return your seat backs to the upright position, and stow your tray tables.”

            The seats were stiff backed and didn’t move.  The closest thing we had to a tray table was a set of clips on the back of the seat in front of us for holding drink bulbs and food packages.

            “You’ll note the captain has lit the no smoking sign.  If you notice any smoking on this flight, please let the crew know, because it means something has gone the hell wrong and we need to know.  In the event of a loss of pressure during flight, make sure that you put your damn helmet on, cause the only thing worse than cleaning puke up is cleaning up freeze dried blood.”

            We were all chuckling at this point, except for Flack, who had turned a shade of green not seen outside of 1970’s home furnishings, and was looking for the vomit bags. 

            “Like the skipper said, in the event of a water landing, we’re no longer in Kansas.  I’m personally going to be looking for the White Rabbit to find our way home.  You can do as you wish at that point.  And now, I’m going to leave this channel open so you can listen to the Skipper negotiate with ground control for our release so we can go to work.”

            The voice shifted, and Captain Turner came on line.

            “Ops, this is Tweedle Dee, requesting permission to taxi to the lift point.”

            “Tweedle Dee, Ops, you’re cleared to taxi.”