17 - Crew gathers

Chiyoko – Accelerated learning facility 87, Tokyo

The girl was watching the recording with a grin on her face. She had been tasked with analyzing and assessing the training that was being done on the future crew in Antarctica. This meant that in the span of a few days she had gone from knowing next to nothing about space missions to delving neck deep in books on the subject.

Some books even decades old from when NASA was doing its missions, others older still. The oldest were almost a century old, from the time when mankind first stepped on the surface of the moon. But this training was going to be so much different than that, that studying old documents was only the beginning.

Those had been useful when making up the protocol for the TSA missions, meaning the civilian side of the space operations that the Empire was about to begin. Now, however, she had to perfect the whole protocol for the TDC, the military branch.

Civilian missions normally require safety training and regulations, the expertise on the myriad of ways space tries to kill human beings and knowledge of the procedures for the specific mission about to be done. This? All the same, but better. And on top of that all that comes with trying to wage a war on an unknown enemy.

Weapons training. Offensive weaponry and how to use it in space against various types of enemies. Even against force fields, if need be. Defensive point-defense and lasers to avoid direct hits from enemy missiles or to deflect railgun shots. Algorithms to predict relativistic kinetic missiles, although thankfully those were left to Eve and the engineers to develop. But there was a need for a protocol in case said projectiles hit the ship, in this or that location, or perhaps critically damaged the comms or the reactor.

Chiyoko was handling it all. Not by herself, of course, and she wasn’t expected to provide neither the right answers not the definitive protocols, but her ideas when pooled together with all the others would make up what was going to be the first manual for space warfare. For that kind of hulls, anyway. Corvettes, apparently.

Mutiny? There was a protocol for that. Contamination by an alien agent, infection or mind-virus. Protocol. Sci-fi inspired emergency situation? There must be a protocol for that as well. And all that must be easy, foolproof and easily accessible to the crew even in case Eve went offline or was unreachable.

Those were going to be long days of work with little sleep and high stress. Chiyoko had never been happier or more fulfilled than this. She now knew just how wrong was her idea to try and run for secretary-general.

The thought itself made her giggle a little. How naïve had she been, she wondered if Eve actually laughed at her when she asked to run for the position. Maybe, or maybe not. It didn’t matter now, considering the fact that such a decision, so stupid in hindsight, had brought her here anyways.

Where she was happy. Where she could make a difference. And she was still at school, who knows what the future could hold in store for her?

There had also been funny moments among all the work. One of them had been when Eve trolled, ehm tested, Eric with that jumpscare that took even her by surprise. It was fun, but was it the best way to instill the instinct of putting on the helmet as fast as possible?

Her mind began churning numbers and theories once again. She would have to investigate this later, so she made a note about it. There was a book she read about something similar, although it was about basic animal instincts. Perhaps she could adapt it to humans.

Eric – Antarctica summer camp

The day came to an end, somehow. In truth, it had seemed impossibly long. Eric spent hours upon hours practicing with his suit, putting it on and then taking it off until he was so familiar with it he could do it with his eyes closed. Then with only one hand, and then with only one leg and eventually with only one arm and leg. It wasn’t the end of it, he was sure, but right now he wanted to make the most out of the five hours of sleep he had been granted.

He hadn’t met anyone else from the crew yet, making him wonder whether they had yet to arrive or if they were each in their own wing on the complex. Or maybe he was the only one being trained this way, the others all together already. He had no idea.

The night was, thankfully, uneventful. Well, apart from the regular nightmares of course, but those were irrelevant to his training. He feared they would make him practice emergency protocols even at night, and again he was sure that they would come eventually. Not tonight.

The bed he slept on was surprisingly comfortable, considering he expected something akin to concrete. But, he realized, there was no difference between an uncomfortable bed and a nice one in terms of furnishing a spaceship. Better to have the crew sleep well rather than the opposite. It wasn’t as if the TDC had money issues so bad they had to cut their expenses when it came to bed accommodations.

He washed himself as best he could in the tiny, cramped bathroom of his room and came out as soon as he was done. There was no actual time limit except for the fact that he had to be in the meeting room at 0700. He was fast nonetheless, not wanting to spend more time than necessary inside that small closet they called bathroom.

He understood the need, really, since in space they actually had to conserve space as much as they could.

The meeting room was inside an isolated building of the compound, meaning that in order to get there he had to put on his suit. He did so with practiced ease, courtesy of yesterday’s massacring training, and walked out of his wing. On the way he noticed several doors leading to rooms presumably identical to his. There were fourteen in total, perhaps then the other members of the crew had yet to arrive.

The landscape outside was covered in white. Snow and frost encroached the buildings and covered the windows, making the whole place look like it was literally frozen in time. Immobile, peaceful. Like outer space.

An illusionary peace hiding death behind the thinnest veil.

He approached the door to the room and opened it without really thinking about it. He turned the round handle and heard a loud hiss as the pressure equalized. This is when he realized he was basically repeating the same scene from yesterday, just it was him entering an empty room this time.

Except it wasn’t empty this time.

“Dead. You’re all dead.” Said a harsh voice. Eric recognized him as the instructor, while he also scanned the room as he noticed a dozen different faces looking at him like he was an alien. He supposed they were not completely wrong, given his semi-frosted suit left nothing for the eye to see but white tints.

“Good morning, sir.” Eric said, and after closing the door and removing the helmet made his way towards the only empty seat. There was no military salute or anything here, it was not the standard stereotype army, but he had no idea how the instructor was called.

“Back at you. Now, care to explain the issue to your crew members?” The instructor asked.

Eric sighed. Hopefully they would not hate him for this.

Eve

The crew was all gathered and training in antarctica, finally. It had been hard, finding the right individuals, and even harder selecting the best out of them all. But now it was done, and the thread of her consciousness was free to be put on some other task. She decided it was time to speed up the designing the ship, so she merged that thread with the other currently overseeing the project.

It would be a prototype design for a Corvette, the smallest of the mass-produced ships the TDC will employ in space. There was a huge benefit in having mass produced ships: speed. By sacrificing the ability to customize and tailor the ship for one specific need, there would be a massive bonus to building speed.

Of course, there were a lot of special, custom ships planned, but the backbone of the military would be mass-produced hulls. Of many sizes and varieties, and on which many different things could be mounted to meet specific circumstances, but standard hulls nonetheless.

And then there would be the truly special ships, made just for a specific purpose and capable to perform a specific task perfectly.

The standard hulls would become the main force, and the custom ships the elite.

For now, all she had to do was aid the engineers in designing a special kind of Corvette, made slightly different than the planned standard hulls just with this first mission in mind.

>Opening design
>Custom Corvette

Eric – August 15^th 2050 – Antarctica summer camp

The canteen had no cooks, that much should have been obvious from the start and yet surprised them all when they learned of it. Also, it did consist of dehydrated food rations like it will be when in space. And on top of that, they had to maintain their routine of not having anything unsecured around them. It was a form of training for when they will be in space, since their 1-g engine burn could cut off at any moment without notice. Any unsecured object could then turn into a deadly projectile during a high gee maneuver.

The surprising fact was that the food was delicious. Much better than what Eric could cook at home, and here it came in nice pre-packaged packs where the only thing he had to do was to add hot water. How awesome.

“Did you see the news?” Asked Ramirez, in an attempt to begin a conversation. She must have gotten sick of staying in silence, confirming Eric’s theory that she was just shy. She was one of the soldiers, a short brown-haired southern American who looked like she could tear off your head with one hand.

“You have to be more specific than that.” Replied Todds, the only male soldier at the table. It had been strange at the beginning, seeing four muscled women who they all knew were as dangerous as they looked, and then some. Todds was like a kitten in comparison. Another wrong assumption, they learned during mock combat.

Yes, they all fought, Eric included. One can never know when aliens get all violent.

“Mars.” Ramirez said, sparing nothing more than a glance towards the man. Her face lit up for a split second as her gaze rested on her food before returning to her usual frown. Or perhaps she was looking at someone, Eric didn’t know. Eve was unavailable, keeping up her pretense of being at 20 light-minutes of distance.

“Ah, right.” Eric chimed in. “I heard the Mars mission was a success. In and out in less than five days, how awesome. They gave the permanent camp its name just yesterday, didn’t they?” He said. He had watched with rapt attention as the final module of the first batch was being assembled. The images were late, of course, due to the light-lag but this didn’t make him any less tense.

“Dustown.” Ramirez said under her breath. “Stupid name.”

Todds chuckled a bit. The others were having their own conversations, despite all fourteen of them sitting at the same round table. It made things a bit awkward at first, making the whole thing look like a wedding lunch.

“Heh, I guess Luke had his fun.” Eric said, grinning.

“Uh, you mean the Emperor?” Came a question from the other end of the table, or at least from opposite Eric. It was Jackson, one of their two gunners. He was a short European guy, blonde hair and fair skin. Probably from England?

“Yeah, don’t tell him that, though.” Eric replied.

“You’re right, I heard he hates the title. It’s inevitable in my opinion, but he rejects it nonetheless.” Said Smith, the lead engineer.

“That he does. Remember how he joked about it at the press conference?” Todds chimed in.

“That guy and his jokes.” Ramirez rumbled again.

“You have no idea. Half the messages I get from him are nonsensical crap.” Eric said nonchalantly.

A silence descended at the table. A small sheen of sweat made itself known on his forehead as he felt the gazes of all thirteen people at the table bore holes into him. They had not yet made the connection, it seemed. Perhaps due to Eve being so far right now no one asked.

“What?” He asked meekly.

“You’re not shitting.” Said one.

“Is that why he’s the only one who we call by first name? What even is your last name, Eric?”

“Mittens.” Eric replied, somehow defensively. He was defending his own surname, madness.

“We have a fucking Machine-touched.” Ramirez rumbled again, without looking up. In truth, she had not looked at Eric even when he felt he was being watched by all of them, a few moments ago when the silence descended.

“Machine-touched?” The man in question asked.

“Yeah, it’s a slang we use to call the people who worked with Eve before she, well…” Said Smith. There was a frown on his face now.

“Died, man. She fucking died.” The navigator was fuming. A calm woman, usually, unless one touched her buttons.

“Wait…” A girl. The youngest of the group, who never spoke before suddenly raised her head. It was the medic. “Wait, shit, you’re that Eric. Now I understand a lot of things.” She added as realization dawned on her face. Eric was sure she had been putting her degree in psychology to good use with all of the people here, and this piece of information just made her whole puzzle fit together somehow.

“That?” Smith was now frowning furiously.

“The only survivor of the New Apollo incident, right Eric?”

Eric nodded slowly. Silence again reigned supreme.

“Shit, man.”

He felt a warm hug, arms like steel wrapping around him. Ramirez was crying on his shoulder.