What the Stars May Bring

Heavy Rotation

Cooper couldn't help but smile when she thought back to the three days of rest that Lieutenant Commander Marshall had arranged for her. 'I sure wish that I was still serving in engineering. As tiring as the work was, I had a connection with the crew in that department,' she thought as she robotically ate what the cook had left for her.

While the taste of the food had mattered when they first boarded the Lexington, it didn't matter anymore. 'Heck, I've lost five kilograms of mass over the past three months. That's even though I force myself to eat two full meals a day,' Cooper thought.

It had not pleased Captain Wilson when he had learned about the three days of 'light duty' that Marshall had assigned to her and Simmons. In fact, by all accounts, he had gone nuclear when he read the weekly personnel reports. It wasn't long after that incident occurred that the daily rotations began for the six candidates. 'As if two shifts in a single day could give us a handle on how things work in a given department,' Cooper thought as she shoveled another fork of food into her mouth. 'I can barely remember the names of the crew I work with, much less what they do.'

It didn't help that they were now located in the outermost group of Jupiter's trailing Trojans. That meant that all the crews were busy doing their jobs. 'They simply don't have the time to train someone as green as we are.'

When she realized her plate was empty, Cooper quickly got up and put her tray away before heading to the drone control room. Since it was in the opposite Arc, she had to hurry if she was going to make it in time. 'Of course, it couldn't be on this Arc today,' she thought as she rode the lift to the hallway with the connecting lifts. Then she entered another elevator to take her to the main hull. Once there, she had to hop in the elevator opposite of her to take it to the secondary Arc. Finally, she had to change over to the local lifts to take her to the proper level.

'Four separate elevator rides just to get from the mess hall to the drone control room,' Cooper thought while carefully walking in the somewhat lower gravity. Unlike the bridge and the mess hall, this level was closer to the main hull than to the outer rim. 'We're lucky that Hope only has a single ring. We won't have to struggle with changes in gravity like they do on this ship.'

As she entered the office, she could hear Lieutenant Smith on the comms, apparently with the bridge. "Commander Jaques, I agree the trojan is a class C type and that it probably contains water. My concern is that the low mass of the rock in question means that it is probably a rubble pile just waiting to shatter."

Cooper winced at the thought of trying the mine water from a rock like the one in question. 'Rubble piles' were a pain to mine since they fell apart easily. They were basically mountains of little rocks that were held together by each other's gravity. 'One wrong move and the asteroid in question could disintegrate, scattering bits of itself throughout the Lagrange point,' Cooper thought.

"Yes, sir, will do," Lieutenant Smith said as he shut off his headset. He then hurled it across the room in the low gravity. "Shit!"

"Umm, pardon my intrusion, but I'm Cooper. I'm supposed to report here for the day," she said in a friendly manner, hoping to defuse the situation.

"Oh, that was today?" Smith looked at his daily calendar via his workstation. "Yep, today is the day."

Cooper held out her hand for a shake.

After shaking her hand, he said, "Nice to meet you. I'm Lieutenant Smith."

"Nice to meet you. Now what can I do to be of assistance?"

"Well, first of all, you can help me find my headset."

---

The reason that Smith had gotten so upset was a mid-sized carbonaceous asteroid.