I felt the ship slow down. The stars and Searcher were still coming toward us, but not as fast. I lined up the cursor with the back end of Kymm’s shuttle. I held my breath. I adjusted the cursor just a tad. Don’t know why I did. It just felt right. I had to aim and time this perfectly. Well, at least as perfectly as a human could. I pulled the trigger. I took a breath. All I could do now was watch and hope.
I focused on the view screen. Sure enough, Kymm’s shuttle had started to pitch upward. I had hit it. Now the question was did I hit it right? Was I able to deflect it over the Searcher?
We all held our collective breath as Kymm’s shuttle rose higher and higher while at the same time moving closer and closer to the Searcher. It was going to be close, really close. The shuttle passed over the top of the Searcher. It caused a few sparks when it clipped the top ever so slightly, but that was it. We had done it. We saw it plain as day in the view screen as Kymm’s shuttle passed mostly harmlessly overhead.
“We did it!” Zenna shouted.
“Turn!” GiS shouted. “Turn.”
Sure enough Searcher was growing ever larger in our view screen, which meant we were getting ever closer. In fact the Searcher now filled our view screen. Which meant we were way too close.
“I’m turning! I’m turning!” I shouted back.
I jammed the control stick to the right. The ship rolled to the right so hard I thought I was going to put us into a tail spin, but somehow I managed to keep us from flipping. I had to keep her steady now until we shot past Searcher. We were probably close enough to Searcher to reach out and touch it, but the important thing was we weren’t touching it. The force exerted on my ship was incredible, but I knew I had to keep her straight.
“Tell me when we have cleared Searcher,” I yelled.
“I will,” Elvin yelled back. There was silence. There was more silence. Still more silence. Finally Elvin yelled, “We’re clear!”
“You know, there’s no need to yell, you two,” Zenna noted. “You’re both less than three meters from each other.”
“Good point, sis.”
“Sorry, just got lost in the moment,” I said, while holding the control stick firmly to keep the shuttle straight, but gently enough to be able to respond to anything that might pop up.
I took a deep breath. I slowed to sub-impulse speed. I took another deep breath.
“Nice job, team,” GiS said. “But before you get too cocky, remember that all we really accomplished was to not kill ourselves or blow up our ship within the first hour of our mission. In fact, our problems have now put us fifteen minutes behind schedule.”
“Fifteen minutes and twenty two tics,” Elvin corrected.
“All the more reason to regroup and prepare,” GiS said.
Part of me felt like telling GiS off. We had done more than that, I thought, but thinking a bit more, I knew he was right. All we really succeeded in doing was not ending our mission before it started.
“Where’s Kymm’s shuttle?” I asked.
“I was able to get reverse thrusters online so they have come to a complete stop. They are in section 23.7 of this quadrant. They are a mere 1001 kilometers away,” SC answered.
“Actually it’s 1001…,” Elvin started to say.
“Actually, Elvin that super exactness gets old really fast,” I said.
“Agreed,” SC said.
“I’m forced to agree with Baxter, Elvin. There are times when we need to be exact, but we don’t need to be exactly exact all the time,” GiS stated.
“It’s about time you guys told him that!” Zenna chimed in. “It’s not like this is rocket science.” She stopped to think about what she said for a few tics. “Okay, maybe it is rocket science, but it’s still annoying.”
GiS and I nodded our heads in agreement.
Elvin shrank back a bit. “Sorry, sometimes I may get a nano, quantum, wee bit carried away.”
“No problem,” I said.
Kymm’s voice came booming over the intercom. “While I hate to break up your little love fest, my shuttle is dead in the water here and I’m going to need a tow into dock.”
I looked up at the intercom.
“Right, Kymm, I’ll be right there.”
“What does she mean by, dead in the water? We’re in space.” Zenna said.
“Figure of speech, Zen,” I said.
Zenna smiled. “Oh right, I knew that!”
After what we had just been through, it was easy to use our tractor beam to tow Shuttle K-II into the Searcher. I had towed shuttles in simulators at least a hundred times. The last ninety of them I had done it flawlessly. Even though this wasn’t a simulation, the simulators were surprisingly accurate, so I was prepared. Towing is actually an easy procedure. Just latch on to the ship with your tractor beam, stay 100 meters behind the ship and 30 degrees above it as you guide it to its destination and then gently push it in. Then, after the landing bots roll it out of the way, you drop down to landing level and then land yourself. Easy as pie, or in Elvin’s case, pi. That’s what I kept telling myself.
The only problem was my nerves. We had locked on to Kymm’s shuttle easily enough. Towing it to the sphere wasn’t much harder. We were in gravityless space. The weight of the shuttle we had locked our tractor beam on made little difference in the handling of my shuttle. I just had to remember that there was another shuttle being pulled in front of us that I had to guide into the docking bay. Whenever my nerves would kick in, telling me this wasn’t a simulation and if I mess up we’re dead, I would imagine I was still on the simulator. I know it seems lame but it worked for me. (Once I tried picturing Commander Jasmine in a bikini, but that didn’t turn out well at all.)
The landing bay door on the base of the sphere opened once we were within a kilometer of the Searcher. The Searcher, while not being a floating city in the sky like our base, was still quite large, the size of a big hotel. After all, it was meant to house a couple of hundred beings on long-term missions. The landing bay also wasn’t as super humongous as the one on the base but it was still large enough to house at least a dozen shuttles.
“Ease her in carefully,” GiS said, using his best mentor voice.
I fought back the urge to say, no kidding.
“When the towed shuttle is within 100 meters of the bay, cut all engines, activate the stabilizers, then slowly push her in.”
“No kidding,” I said, failing this time to fight back the urge.
“I know you know this,” GiS said, a bit testy. “I’m just reinforcing it. It’s my job to make sure you do your job right.”
“I’ll tell you when Shuttle K-II is within 100 meters of the Sphere,” Elvin said. He looked at his console and started counting down. As he counted down I lined up our shuttle with the door.
“500 meters, 400 meters, 300 meters, 200 meters, 100 meters.”
I cut our engines and hit the stabilize button. The ship rocked a bit and then came to stop. I could see into the landing bay through the view window. The other shuttles were lined up perfectly.
Elvin looked at his console. “Kymm’s shuttle is 2 degrees off center to the right of the optimal landing spot,” he said.
Okay maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough.
I looked at the intercom. “Are you ready, Kymm?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she responded. “This is easy, Moon, just guide us in and let us go.”
“You can do it, Bax old buddy,” Chriz said, apparently for once in his life not wanting to tick me off.
“I didn’t think you liked Baxter,” Lobi said, apparently forgetting that we were in communication over the intercom.
“Ssh, you fool,” Chriz said.
“Quiet both of you,” K-999 ordered. “Scout Moon needs to concentrate.”
I decreased the power of the tractor beam. Their ship started to pull away from us toward the Sphere. As I continued to slowly cut the power of the tractor beam their shuttle moved closer and closer.
“We’re in,” Kymm said.
Elvin looked at his console. “My readings confirm that,” he said, apparently not trusting Kymm’s eyes, bionic or not.
I cut the tractor beam power. Through the view screen I could see Kymm’s shuttle drop to the floor like a big expensive brick.
“Are you guys alright?” I asked through the intercom.
“We’re alive,” Kymm said. “It could have been softer, but we’ll walk away and like they say…”
“Any landing you walk away from is a good one,” I said completing the sentence for her.
“Who’s they?” Zenna asked.
“The landing bots will have them moved out of the way in 300 tics,” SC informed us.
I pushed the handle down just enough to drop our shuttle into line with the bay door and waited. For once in my life I didn’t mind waiting. It gave me a chance to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my hands.
I turned and looked at my squad.
“We did it,” I said.
Elvin and Zenna both smiled. GiS pointed forward to the bay door.
“They are ready for you to land now,” he said.
“That is correct,” SC confirmed.
“Then let’s bring her in,” I said.
I turned off the stabilizers and nudged the control stick forward. We were so close to the Searcher I didn’t need much power. I just floated her in.
I turned off my shuttle and looked around. I couldn’t help smiling. I had towed one shuttle and landed my shuttle on a real warp-capable Searcher-class space sphere. We had been on simulator versions of Searcher before, but this was the real thing. Now there would be no imagining I was on a simulator. I wanted to soak it all in. I deserved it.
GiS must have seen the look on my face. “Wipe that silly grin off your face, Scout Moon,” he ordered. “We’ve just started this mission and we’re already behind schedule, and we may be one shuttle down. To make matters worse we have no idea what went wrong with that shuttle.”
I released my flight harness and stood up. I wanted to tell GiS to lighten up. He always had a way of finding the worst in any situation. The thing is, in this case he was right and I knew it. Last week I probably would have argued for the sake of arguing, but not today. This wasn’t the time. We had a mission to accomplish. This was my first real mission and I was determined to make it a success. Even if that meant not arguing with GiS.
“You’re right, again, Commander,” I said, hanging my head just a bit.
GiS unbuckled his harness and then just stood there. He was dumbfounded. He wasn’t expecting to me to agree that easily. It threw him off stride. He adjusted his uniform and straightened up.
“Of course I’m right,” he said.
He patted me on the shoulder with his foot.
“You did good, Baxter.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Of course with all the time I’ve spent training you, you better do good,” he added, though I swore he wasn’t quite as dead-on serious as he usually was when he said these things. “Now come on, we’ve got a job to do!”
He walked off the shuttle.
I looked at Elvin and Zenna. I shrugged.
They shrugged.
We followed GiS out of the shuttle on to the deck of the Searcher’s landing bay. You know how they say if you’ve been in one landing bay you’ve been on them all? Well, that doesn’t hold true when you are on a warp-class Sphere’s landing bay. Though it looked like a smaller version of the space station’s landing bay — a big open area surrounded by launch door — the thing was, knowing that this landing bay was inside a sphere that could go faster than light and travel to other galaxies made it special.
We had all been on simulated Spheres before, but none of us, not even GiS, had ever been on a real one.
“Zap!” Elvin exclaimed. “We’re on a real intergalactic faster-than-light sphere!” he said, echoing my thoughts.
GiS looked around unimpressed. “No big deal. We’ve done this simulation module enough so you should all feel right at home.”
I just looked at him.
“Okay, maybe not right at home,” he admitted. “But close enough to get the job done.”
We walked over to the exit elevator door where we were met by Kymm and her team. They looked a little shook up, but not much worse for the wear. It’s not like Lobi and Chriz were that much to look at even when they were at their best.
Kymm extended her hand to me. “Nice work, Moon,” she said, “though I would have done the same for you, only with a smoother landing.”
“A much smoother landing,” Chriz added.
Kymm shot him a look. He sulked back. Yep, she had a thing for me alright.
I shook Kymm’s hand. All I said was, “You’re welcome.”
“Do you think what caused the malfunction on our shuttle could be related to what happened to Axel?” K-999 asked GiS.
GiS rubbed his chin with his foot. “I don’t like to speculate,” he said.
“Then just guess,” Zenna said.
“I’d guess yes,” I said.
GiS looked at me. “It’s still too early to know.” He looked at his watch. “It’s 0900 now; report to your quarters. We’ll meet in the conference room at 0930 to discuss options.”
“That’s in thirty minutes,” Zenna whispered to me.
“Thanks, I figured that out,” I told her.
We all stepped on to the elevator.
“SC-711, what floor are we staying on?” K-999 asked.
“I have assigned you all adjacent rooms on level 13.”
“Now, that’s an omen if ever I heard one,” I mumbled.
“Will we have single rooms?” Kymm asked as the elevator started to rise.
“Yes,” SC answered. “The rooms here are much smaller than your quarters but they are single occupancy. This sphere has room for up to two hundred crew and a hundred passengers, and since there are only eight of you, I thought it was logical to dedicate a floor to you.”
“Good computing,” I told SC.
I personally was thrilled to have a room to myself. It probably stems from me being an only child back at home. I respect my crew and I’m use to having them around me all the time, but there are times when it would be great to have my own space. I looked at Zenna. She had that look about her, a cross between her trying to think and being worried.
“What’s wrong, Zen?” I asked.
She looked down and lowered her eyes. “Uh, nothing.”
Then it hit me. Zenna, being a twin, probably had never had a room to herself. She was scared. Bloop, I had never seen Zenna scared before. I’ve seen her confused many times. I’ve seen her baffled. I’ve seen her confused and baffled, just never scared.