Captain?? Me? But this is Dad’s ship! The patch felt like it weighed a ton, hanging from the front of my jumpsuit. Even if it was only a temporary thing, the responsibility that my father was entrusting me with was threatening to choke me. I couldn’t let it, though. I needed to show everyone that I wasn’t just the captain’s daughter. Even if everyone already knew it, I still felt the completely unignorable need to prove that I could handle the title that patch signified.
Expected or not, this was the day that I had trained for since I was old enough to understand that I actually did want to follow in my father’s footsteps. Him and my mothers had always been very adamant that I would not have to take any more responsibility than I was willing to, but after growing up around the Ratatosk and the Sleipnir before that, I wanted nothing more than to be sitting in the center seat on my own ship. Mom hadn’t been entirely thrilled that I was so adamantly chasing after becoming another spacer in the family, at first, but she never tried to stop me from trying to be just like Momma M or my father. I’d always been a Daddy’s girl, even before I really quite realized the ‘girl’ part.
While we waited for final preparations to complete, I, my family, Great Uncle Jay (as I had been told to call my father’s godfather), and Adresta all went to the conference room next to the captain’s office. Dad had pulled out his special bottle of whiskey and led a private toast to ‘the newest Captain Erickson’. With a wink, he poured me a double shot. My grandfather humorously warned me that drinking on the job was usually frowned upon in our company, but an exception could be made for the occasion. I wasn’t arguing, either. My nerves were burning with anxiety, but the liquid fire going down my throat somehow seemed to counteract the opposing flames.
Walking the corridors that I knew so well felt different suddenly when we finished with the family affair. Crew were scurrying around in well organized chaos as they went about their jobs, but none of them missed an opportunity to acknowledge me as ‘Captain Erickson’ or, in an effort to separate me from the two other captains Erickson that were with me, ‘Captain Callisto’.
I rather liked my nickname, originally earned because of my habit of repeating my father as a kid, I’d even taken to introducing myself with it to most people after getting older. But oh, Captain Callisto Erickson had a nice ring to it.
Memories of little Callisto crawling into Dad’s big fancy chair burned in my mind as the adult me sank into the well worn synth leather seat on the bridge. The entirety of the room was arrayed around me and the main viewscreen was central in my view. I’d seen other ships that had the captain’s chair elevated on a small platform, but Dad had never liked being above everyone. He’d always been a captain of the crew, elevated in position, but he had also made it a point to show that he was never unreachable or untouchable. His ship ran like a radioisotope generator: simply, but incredibly reliably.
Now though, it was my bridge, my ship. And for the moment, my bridge was packed with people.
The navigation console directly in front of me was turned off for the time being and just about the only non-occupied space in the room; we wouldn’t need it until after we had cleared the gate in Sol and even then, it wouldn’t be used for long. In my mind’s eye, I could almost see Drin, a member of Gil’s crew, at the engineering station behind me. He was doing final flight checks with the chief engineer via internal comms. More easily seen off to the side, Geri looked to be watching the chatter coming in from traffic control at the comms station. My old friend Casey had pulled an extra chair from somewhere and was sitting next to my girlfriend who sat in the enby’s usual seat at the helm. Addy was nervous, and really wasn’t very good at hiding it, but I was confident in her skill.
Much more imposing though, were the others on the bridge. Momma M was at the operations console to the left of the viewscreen, double checking everything, as was her job as first officer. It felt bizarre that she was actually, technically, my subordinate as long as I sat in this chair. Stuck standing behind me, though, were both of our guests for the trip plus my father and birthing mother. All of them were watching proudly as I and the crew prepared for departure.
I took a deep breath and tried to channel the cool and calm demeanor of my father into my voice. “Readiness report?”
“Engineering reports secure for departure.” That would be Drin.
“Flight plan is filed and approved, sensors and comms suite are at ready.” Geri said from his console.
Adresta called back, “Helm at the ready, Captain.” Like me, she seemed to be at least attempting to sound calm.
First Mate Orzhov swiveled to look back at me. “Cargo holds are secured and all hatches are sealed. Departure at your command, Captain.” My other mother’s face would have been the picture of professionalism if not for a gleam in her eyes. Despite being on the clock, as it were, I could feel her pride towards me just as strongly as I did from the rest of the family from behind me.
The whole crew was acting a bit more formally than was required, but their professionalism was doing a lot to soothe my nerves. It was my first run as a captain, but I knew this ship. I knew her crew. And we all knew what we were doing.
Feeling a bit better, I waited a moment to make sure no one else would speak up before giving the order. “Geri, get station traffic control on the horn, if you would.”
“Yes Ma’am. Onscreen.”
No sooner had the crewman spoken the words did the viewscreen flash from the forward view to a look into the operations center on Illume Station where the head of operations had apparently taken this call personally. That the viewscreen was even being used for this conversation was unusual. Departure requests typically were audio only. Both the man on screen and Geri obviously had known about the plan beforehand. ‘Void…’ I thought to myself. ‘How many people does Dad have in on this?’
“ICV Ratatosk, this is Illume Station space traffic control.” The ops director was a man of similar age to my parents and, like many of the important people around Erickson Enterprises and the station as a whole, I’d spent a lot of time rubbing shoulders with him growing up.
With a resigned sigh, I looked at the screen and pulled my mask of professionalism back together before speaking. “This is Captain Erickson of the ICV Ratatosk, requesting departure clearance.”
The man grinned broadly and nodded. “Captain Erickson, you and your ship are cleared for departure via the Tango five space lane towards the gate. Stars guide you on your journey, Miss Callisto.”
“Thank you sir,” I responded. “I’ll be sure to return your poker buddy in one piece.” Even with the serious and important situation, I was unable to resist the urge to lightly tease my father and his long time opponent at the card table.
I heard echoed laughs from him and my father behind me. “See that you do. Go get’em kid!” The channel cut and I took another breath. Time to do this for real.
“Mo- er, Miss Orzhov, disengage docking clamps and cut umbilical power.” To her credit, my second mother only let slip the tiniest of smiles before doing as requested and replying that the task had been completed.
“Helm, engage thrusters, move us away from the station.”
Adresta, whom just a couple months ago I was having to worry about dying from a horrific attempted murder, was nearly as nervous about this trip as I was. Despite that though, her skill as a pilot and her slightly insane work ethic combined to entirely offset her nerves as far as her performance went. With only a slight jolt betraying her inexperience with the ship, I felt the Ratatosk hum and watched the station shift smoothly out of view as we moved away.
Momma spoke up again once the ship came to a relative stop again. “We are cleared of all moorings.”
“Thank you, Miss Orzhov. Helm, all engines ahead, one quarter impulse.”
“Aye, Captain. One quarter impulse.”
We were on our way.
Haha, couldn't help but think of the scene in Galaxy Quest where the ships side scraps the side of the dock with a high pitched metal on metal squeal all the way out.
Love that movie! Adresta is a bit better pilot than that though... in that she is Actually a pilot and not a literal paid actor
I don't think the cat wants me to write currently as she keeps on trying to lay on my keyboard.
Get a fake keyboard. She can be her own little businesskitty.
Fake, decoy, w/e
Unfortunately I dont think that would work since she specifically wants to be on top of my hands for some reason lol
I've been sleeping on this story until I had a block of time to devote to it. It was time very well spent. You have a very strong narrative voice, I can clearly see all of the characters and the world(s) that they live in. In addition to that, you added a compelling trans narrative that avoids most of the cliches while still being all too relatable.
Thank you for the love!
No ATC readback? Unacceptable.
you know... yeah, I should have included that lol
@JessicaRae there is a YouTube channel VASAviation if you want to listen to some ATC conversations. Usually clearance for takeoff would include confirmation of a flight plan, environmental conditions and any other spacecraft traffic that might conflict with the takeoff.
Do the spacecraft in this story have future space drives that can just brute force a burn directly to the destination? In space most objects are orbiting something else and to break orbit you have to pick a vector and perform one or more burns to change your orbit. Even with an unobtanium space drive a commercial cargo vessel would want to use an economical course. So doing a burn for the entire trip would probably expensive, also does the spaceship have to slow down to enter the gate? If so the faster a ship boosts towards the gate means they would have to slow down the same amount before getting to the gate.
Playing around with a game called Kerbal Space Program is a great way to understand orbital mechanics.
@mort if you look at previous chapters where this chatter occurs, I brought up at least in the comments that I was once a pilot and have personal experience with ATC. I've taken elements of that and simplified them for this story simply for readability. In case of this chapter, it can be pretty easily construed that this was a special occasion and that normal practices were set aside for this exchange.
As for your question, yeah, I've played KSP a ton! Love that game! The ships of slipspace mostly use a fusion reactor to power high efficiency plasma pulse engines. For additional thrust, raw fuel from the reactor can be fed to these engines to effectively create a hybrid plasma/ chemical rocket, greatly increasing thrust at the cost of terribly inefficient (by comparison) fuel consumption. This additional power makes the task of escaping a planetary gravity well much easier. Deceleration is achieved simply with fore thrusters and inertial dampeners. It's scifi tech for sure, but slipspace is indeed scifi.
As for brute forcing through orbital mechanics? Yes, they certainly are, but standard space engines are not how they usually accomplish that task here. On board star drive are.
While the gates are the ticket for crossing vast sectors of the settled systems, each interstellar ship also has its own star drive, an Albuccierre style warp drive much like the ones used by star trek. In the slipspace universe though, their drives are not nearly so advanced. Ships can not reach such high factors of c and are comparatively inefficient. So long distance travel by use of an on board star drive is much less preferable than the gate network. The cost of a gate is prohibitive however so the gates are used like hubs so that any important system is never more than a week's cruise away.
Hopes that answers your questions!
@JessicaRae thanks for the response, I did not catch that you were a pilot. I used to read a lot of hard sci-fi and guess I get nostalgic for the nerdy details of spaceflight.
@mort Yeah, if you go back and look at some of the early chapters, including the very first, theres a lot of fairly concise traffic control chatter. I just don't want to over use it in the story where most of my readers are not going to really get it as much. This is a work of fiction written for entertainment, so why let realism get in the way of that when I dont need to?
@mort that being said, this is still fairly hard scifi and is certainly very hard scifi compared to what authors from my usual communities write.