Station Alpha -- Earth Orbit -- August 26th, 2289
A light came on in the cabin of the transport ship indicating the pilot was speaking.
"Attention passengers, we'll be docking in 5 minutes. I’m now orienting us to the stations frame of reference," the pilot said over the speakers.
The captain was immediately startled awake.
"What was that? Was that the 15-minute mark?" Beavis mumbled while slightly looking around.
"No captain," said Jeremy. "That was the 5-minute mark."
The captain looked awake as could be.
“Well,” the captain mumbled, “get your shit together, we’ll be taking a tour and a looky-loo at the ship.” The captain said while brushing himself off. “Then we’ll get you squared away in your quarters for the night. Mission time will be tomorrow at 1500 hours. You got that Markus?”
“Sure do.”
“Great, let’s get this show on the road.”
Markus looked out the window and took a gander at Station Alpha. Station Alpha’s design was very different compared to Station Charlie. Station Charlie looked like a massive conglomeration of multiple layers of extension after extension. Originally designed to function as a massive ring for the implementation of artificial gravity and use as a commercial station, the invention and subsequent use of the Grav-Drive quickly saw its interior filled up to resemble a dinner plate. Over the course of its life, it then became one massive stack of circles with interconnecting sloped walkways and escalators. If Markus was being honest, it looked like it was trying hard but failing to imitate a stack of pancakes. The reason for this is partly because the counsil made to oversee the construction and subsequent oversight of the station was mostly in the hands of corporations. Not that that’s necessarily bad in Markus’ opinion, his company being represented by the freight union representative on said counsel, just that he felt that their avarice and lust for greed has blinded them to the needs and moaning and groanings of the station. The station was still controlled by the military, but some time ago some politician decided to hand over the station’s running and governance to a counsel for some reason or another. Station Charlie won’t be winning any beauty contest.
Station Alpha takes the beauty contest home by a mile. You can just tell it was designed with the Grav-Drive in mind.
Oriented upwards the space station looks similar to multiple umbrellas stacked within each other. Station Alpha held a massive, armored dome on the top that housed multiple weapon emplacements facing both the inside and outside of the structure. Just under the dome was a disk that held what seemed to be three to four floors of rooms, judging by the small glass port windows. There was a central spire in the center of this dome that shot all the way down to a much smaller, but still significant, inwardly facing dome that had contoured extrusions facing each 90 degrees. It looked like a fat plus sign. There are also many weapon platforms on it, as well as throughout the spire on what amounts to docking arms but for gun emplacements. There are also five mini spires off of the side of the main spire about two thirds up the spire that held their own small armored domes. they jutted out of the central spire and faced “upwards” as well.
About one third of the way up from the bottom of the spire was a ring-like docking platform that held something akin to a beach-side promenade. That is if you replace the shopfronts with docking clamps and ports, and the beachside view with a massive glass viewing panorama looking at the central spire. What seemed to be a lip was situated above and below the large glass windows, which was probably some form of blast door.
Markus Stepped off the armored transport and onto the docking arm of Station Alpha. The docking arm is a retractable airlock that attaches to other airlocks on ships to the ports. With him was Jeremy and the captain. With his small amount of luggage and Tempest being hauled behind him, Markus stepped out onto the promenade of Station Alpha. Around him were military personnel either moving goods on forklift like devices or walking to their station.
While there wasn’t much activity going on, there was a buzz of activity that Markus couldn’t quite put his finger on. He thought back to the latest news he had heard about any prosecutions going on in the courts or chatter from his military buddies of raids but couldn’t think of anything particularly important.
Before he could think any further on it, a couple of ensigns trailing a woman in a long grey military coat came out of the drum of activity and approached Markus’ group. Markus started to perspire at the insignia on her shoulders, indicating that she was a rear admiral.
“Hello boys,” the woman said stopping in front of the group. “I see you’ve already become acquainted with Lieutenant Jeremy, Captain Beavis. Am I correct in assuming that this man is Markus Carter?” she said as she turned and faced Markus.
“He is I,” said Markus. “It’s a pleasure to meet you ma’am,” Markus looked at the nametag.
|
Amelia H. Alderson |
|
RDML USSF |
Markus looked stiff. He felt stiff. WHY in gods name is there a REAR ADMIRAL HERE.
“The pleasure is mine.” Alderson said. “And please, none of that ma’am stuff, call me Alderson or miss Amelia if you must. I’m here to give you the tour of the facilities you need to get acquainted with, as well as to introduce you to our science team and get you up to speed on the mission details.” As Markus felt some incoming neural stack information, Alderson turned to one of her attendants. “I’ve taken the time to give you a data packet of where on the station everything is. Xavier here will bring your personal effects to your quarters, and if you’ll follow me, we can get to meeting the science team behind the amazing innovation you’ll be handling.” Alderson said while walking towards a small transportation vehicle.
Markus nodded towards Xavier as he passed him, thanking him for his work. Xavier grunted in acknowledgement and started hauling the luggage towards a small cart.
With that taken care of, Markus, along with Jeremy and the captain, all hoped on Alderson’s transportation cart. “As you may well know Markus,” she said while moving the cart along towards one of the spokes in the wheel of the promenade. “Construction of Station Alpha started a few decades after the invention of the Grav-Drive. With respect to the engineers who built Station Charlie into what it is today, It’s honestly a shithole. If I didn’t have a view like this every once in a while, I would be liable to kill someone.” Alderson said while driving out into the spire.
Seeing it from the outside doesn’t do it justice.
Close to 50 yards of empty space going all the way up to the top of the station was what greeted Markus, with only a small central glass tower breaking up the emptiness. Inside were 8 elevators transporting people up to the central offices, which was what Markus had seen when on approach to the station. Twisting around like a barber’s pole was a collection of five ramps. They all ran to the right, or clockwise, slowly raising as the ramps progressed upwards. Along the way were some glass and metal walkways that allowed access to the central elevators at differing elevations.
“Did you know that at the top there’s actually a massive elevator that takes up the whole towers size?” Jeremy said.
“No.” Markus said. “That was only in the planning stages when I was here, They implemented that?”
Amelia started the vehicle on a climb up one of the ramps of the station.
“Originally,” Amelia said, “the engineers designed the entire middle structure to be one giant maze of interconnecting hallways and mazes. The problem with that is that in combat and siege simulations whenever the power to the Grav-Drive was cut the advantage always favored the attackers and the defenders could only last 20 or so hours longer after that. So the engineers kept redesigning it over and over again, trying to account for every angle. After a couple of weeks, they just said screw it and made a giant hole in the middle and ran it through the simulations. They found that it was extremely hard for the attackers to make any headway up the central spire no matter the conditions, and found that the defenders could hold indefinitely. Kind of hard to lose a position when possibly thousands of weapons can be aimed at a single break through point.
“The multiple ramps also give us a lot of counter play in the event of anyone attempting to take the station.”
As she finished up her explanation the vehicle came up to a flat portion in the ramp. On the left was a corridor that ran off into one of the smaller iron domed areas. In front of the corridor was a small guard station.
The whole group had to show their credentials while Markus and Jeremy were given guest cards with their identity on them. Markus was in the process of pulling out his old military ID card when he was handed the guest pass. Jeremy said his goodbyes, as well as Captain Beavis, saying they had other orders to attend to.
Amelia turned to Markus as they walked down the hallway.
“As I’m sure you’ve had the time to check the data packet I’ve given you on the ride up here, you’ll be staying in a guest quarter here until the start of the mission tomorrow.” Markus gave a nod and grunt of affirmation. “In the meantime, I’ll have one of the science officers give you a tour and explain some of the aspects of the mission. While we have this time however, we’ll go over the general strokes of the mission.”
Markus perked up at that. “I take it it’s going to be a new station, or something similar?”
Amelia nodded. “You will be the first to carry out a mission while using this new jump tech. We call it the ECLIPSE-A-Drive, which stands for Energy-Conversion and Light-speed Interdensional Propulsion System for Exploration dash Advancement. A bit of a tongue twister, but a hell of an acronym. I believe that Jeremy has talked about its history somewhat?”
Markus answered in the affirmative.
“Good, well there’s that. You will be tasked with using the ECLIPSE-A-Drive to jump enough materials and resources to the moon of Triton, which orbits Uranus. There, with the help of your ships AI and construction bots, you will build a small orbital station that will allow us to refuel our ships’ propulsion and act as a little R&D spot for future scouting vessels. We estimate a time to completion of about four weeks for the basic structure and eight on top of that for the completion of everything else required. If all goes well, we’ll have you jump back in twelve weeks with an asset we can use outside the asteroid belt. After that we’ll have the outer planets scanned and researched before the end of the century, with orbital colonization not taking longer than a decade after that.” At the end of the mission statement, Amelia turned around and clasped her hands together loudly in front of an open door, with what seemed to be laboratory equipment and people walking around inside.
Inside Markus heard some quite unusual slang being thrown around, as a pair of scientists walked out with a piece of equipment covered in a tarp on a rolling cart. They were both seemingly older gentlemen with graying and slightly balding heads of hair.
"e3f a1 to the 8g," the scientists that wasn’t pushing the cart said. "8g?" the scientist said while slowing down a little. "as to the 6v," the non-cart-pushing scientist said. The scientist pushing the cart had a look of understanding flash across his face. "ah 8g, 10-4" said the cart-pusher as he walked off down a side corridor. The scientist that was left standing there turned to the group and smiled.
“Ah, Amelia. Good to see you, who’s your friend?” the scientist said while looking at Markus.
Amelia smiled back. “It’s good to see you too, Rosenbaum. This is Markus Carter. Markus, meet Julian Rosenbaum, one of the project heads of ECLIPSE. Rosenbaum, give Markus access and a tour of the ship. Afterwards, send him to his quarters to get some sleep, big day tomorrow. I’ve got some orders to attend to, do get along with each other.” Amelia said while backing up.
Rosenbaum nodded his head. “Of course, will do.” The scientist turned to Markus. “Well if you’ll follow me, we can get an upgrade to your neural stack underway.”
Markus followed the scientist just inside the lab to a chair that looked like a salon station.
“Sit there while I get it set up.” Rosenbaum pointed to the chair. “This upgrade isn’t much of an upgrade really, just a way for you to parse our Quick speak. You know that conversation you heard earlier that I had with the cart pusher? I’m sure all you heard were some numbers and letters coming out, but we were discussing where to move the Destabilization Processor for the Eclipse Drive. This will allow you to parse what we say and understand it.”
Markus hopped in the salon chair. “Why not just speak English?” Markus asked. A couple of minutes later after Rosenbaum fiddled with the computer behind it, Rosenbaum dropped the dome onto Markus’ head.
“Well,” said Rosenbaum. “It originally started sometime during the third world war to stop agents from eavesdropping on conversations. Even with a group of experienced cryptographers, it was very difficult to parse any information, because the dialect updates and changes so frequently. Even in that small conversation we were having we changed the classification of the civilian modification lab from 6v to 8g. Even if you have the required tech, if you're out of the loop for long enough you have to get readjusted here.” As he said here Markus felt a small stab of pain in the base of his neck, indicating a connection to his neural stack was disconnected.
“That should do it. How do you feel Markus?” Enquired Rosenbaum.
Thinking back to the conversation between Rosenbaum and the other scientist, Markus was able to decipher it with the help of his neural stack.
the previous conversation was "move the Destabilization Processor to the new lab name" "new lab name?" "The Civilian Modification Lab" "ah the new lab name, understood."
“I feel fine. The Civilian Modification Lab? You’re not messing with my ship, are you?” Markus asked while standing up from the salon chair.
“Ah, no. No, we are modifying something else that you’ll probably find interesting. Follow me, we’ll go there now.” Rosenbaum said.
As they were walking down a corridor, Rosembaum asked Markus, “I believe your ship is the MK2 Epsilon with the freight hauling configuration if I’m not mistaken, correct?”
Markus answered in the affirmative.
“Well,” said Rosenbaum. “We’ve been working with the Mark 5 Epsilon with the Freight configuration, with the added drone port underneath. We decided to use this ship design over any other not just for its capabilities, but also for its familiarity to you.” As Rosenbaum finished saying this, he fished for his keycard to open the door in front of him.
As the door opened in front of Rosenbaum, Markus was able to get a full look at the ship sitting inside the hanger. Markus was a little surprised that he didn’t see his ship, but instead one made much more recently. The ship was shaped like a massive half circle with a trapezoidal front piece on the bottom, which Markus knew to be the drone port. Above and below the ship were anchor points for freight crates, and on the front sides of the face of the ship were 2 separate docking ports with airlock doors. Above the ships drone ports sat the main cockpit. It had 3 outward bulging glass panes paneled together for the cockpit.
“This,” Rosenbaum led Markus towards the ship’s undercarriage where an extended staircase for the ship was, “is the ship that you will be flying and living in for the next few months. Inside, the ship is divided into 6 main parts with a hallway connecting. Across the back of the curved part of the ship is engineering one, two, and three. Engineering two is central to the ship and is where the Eclipse Drive will be situated, while engineering one and three are flanking engineering two. Ahead of engineering is a short hallway,” Rosenbaum leads Markus through the ship as Rosenbaum explains the layout, “that leads to the cockpit. In the hallway there are two doors that lead to personal storage on opposite sides of each other, while off to the side of the cockpit before you hit the captain’s chair are two doorways that lead to personal storage. I believe that most people make the first personal storage something of a living quarter while they make the second personal storage space just that, personal storage. For this ship however, we have a lot of sensitive devices in secondary storage, so you’ll have to make do with only the primary personal storage for this mission. Your ship’s AI has also been transferred to this ship and been given an upgrade. With the computational power needed to run the Eclipse Drive, your AI can now piggy-back off the needed computers required to operate the Eclipse Drive while they’re not in use. Those are located within the Eclipse Drive, by the way.”
“So, what do you think?” Rosenbaum finished while standing with Markus looking at the MK5.
“What do I think huh?” Markus said to Rosenbaum. “I think it’s a pretty big step up from my MK2. I mean fuck me my old ship didn’t even have an engineering one and three. I think I’m going to have to sleep on it if you want any other reaction out of me. No offense to you, I’ve just had a very long day. I was in prison when I woke up this morning, you know?”
“Of course. I’ll accompany you to your room. I know you probably got an upload along the way, but it can be a little disorienting.” Rosenbaum said.
Markus and Rosenbaum walked to Markus’ room and went their separate ways as they approached the door.
“Well, if you need to ask me anything about the ship or the Drive, feel free to talk to me in the lab.”
“Will do,” Markus called after Rosenbaum as he walked away. “And it was a pleasure meeting you.”
Station Alpha -- Admiral Picard
Fleet Admiral Picard was watching Markus and Rosenbaum walk through the Epsilon with some interest as Amelia walked through the door.
“Sir.” Alderson saluted and went to attention.
“At ease, Rear Admiral. Take a seat. What do you have to report?” Picard said.
“Well,” Alderson said while taking a seat. “Markus seemed quite taken up with being here, sir. It didn’t look like anything was amiss with the way he was acting. I think we have a pretty good candidate for this mission. Let’s just hope he doesn’t feel the need to check on the special equipment in the secondary storage for the months he’s there.”
Picard laughed at the idea. “Well if he did that, we might as well tell him we’re sending him to his death.”
“Sir?”
Picard decided it didn’t much matter if she knew, there wasn’t much that could be done at this point. “This entire mission is a hoax, Rear Admiral. We aren’t sending him to build a station, we’re sending him to make first contact. And if that doesn’t work, blow them to hell. Inside that secondary storage compartment isn’t ‘sensitive equipment,’ It’s a couple hundred nuclear swarm missiles, along with data banks scattered about the ship about our entire civilization. Should Markus fail to contact the aliens, we modified some underlying processors of the ship to launch those missiles. Failing the missiles and upon Markus’ death, the AI is programmed to transmit all relevant data to the aliens about our decision-making process.” As Picard finished, he stood up and went to grab some alcohol out of the cabinet to his left.
Alderson stood up from her seat, shocked and confused. “You never told me anything about the swarm missiles. Why the sudden change? I thought we agreed to come at this from a peaceful angle?”
Picard scoffed. “My boss,” he said with a tilt of his head towards president’s portrait next to the door. “Told me that we needed assurances. I disagreed. He gave an order. That was about it. It tickles me something stupid too, Alderson.” Picard downed the shot of scotch he had poured himself. “but them's the shits.”
He looked over at Alderson.
“You want some Rear Admiral?”
