Hope

A Normal Alterday on Hope

Hope. The Alliance Ship One, or AS-1 as people often referred to it, was a mammoth undertaking. The ship itself was over three kilometers in length. That was as much out of necessity as it was for the ship to carry all the probes, skiffs, mining equipment, etcetera. That included the entire automated ship, Proxima One, which was designed to explore the vicinity of an object two tenths of a light year away from Hope's primary target.

That also did not include the gigantic container of water ice that the ship had to push in order to reach its cruising speed and then over forty years later, its terminal velocity. That would put the starship in orbit around its primary targets of study.

To put it simply, Hope was humanity's first starship.

'And I'm going to be on it,' Cooper thought as she looked at Hope through a viewscreen on the Sendai. 'I can't wait to step foot on the completed ship,' she reflected as she cut off the viewscreen. She and the rest of the command staff had just finished a grueling six months of testing on the USS Lexington. Two months of last-minute of training had then followed as the Sendai transported them to the current location of Hope.

To be truthful, there wasn't much to see since the engineers had covered the exterior of the ship with interwoven carbon composites to protect it from micro meteorites. It also added some stealth capabilities to the ships. The Sendai, like many of the newer ships in the Alliance Navies, was also covered in similar hull plating. Even older ships like the Lexington were slowly getting retrofitted with the composites.

Other than the fact that it blocked out the stars behind it the only thing visible from the Sendai's location were the lights used by the repair crews. After all, the ship's tanks were currently being topped off while in the orbit of Ceres in the main belt. Since they had constructed the starship in orbit of Pallas that meant that the ship had already had enough of a shakedown cruise to identify some last-minute issues before official launch.

'I think I will have less to do on Hope despite being the XO of the ship,' Cooper thought as she put on her uniform and rushed towards the bridge. 'Only two more days until we dock with Ceres station,' she thought. 'Then we will have a couple of weeks of familiarizing ourselves with Hope before the official launch.'

'I just can't wait!' she thought as she entered the bridge.

---

Two days later, the Sendai docked at Ceres station.

Ceres station was quite small. It had started out as an Alliance military base studying the Main Belt's largest asteroid. However, after only a year or two of study, the scientists had discovered huge deposits of water ice just under the surface of the dwarf planet. So much ice, in fact, that it was roughly the equivalent of all the fresh water found on Earth.

Soon afterwards, Ceres became the largest source of propellant in the Belt. While it was a smaller amount than the water ice in the permafrost of Mars, it was much more economical to get the ice into space here because of Ceres' extremely low gravity. There were even preliminary plans to build a space elevator to lift the harvested ice to low orbit. In the meantime, small linear accelerators located all over the surface of Ceres got the job done.

Once civilian mining operations began on the surface, the military had handed the small orbiting station over to the civilians. After all, the ice needed to be processed to remove the naturally occurring deuterium. This was most easily done when the H2O was in a liquid state, so they had changed the orbiting base into a water refinery.

They had also changed the spaceship docks to handle the water freighters. These freighters took the fluid water to various bases throughout the Belt. That was where the propellant was distributed to ships like gasoline was distributed back on Earth in the mid to late twentieth century.

The Sendai had docked at Ceres in order to fill its tanks directly from the source, as did many other Alliance warships. By doing this, the military cut out the middleman. This, in turn, saved the military a lot of money.

The officers of Hope had disembarked the Sendai to the station where a skiff was scheduled to pick them up and ferry them to Hope itself. During the transition on station, there were bound to be some reporters waiting for a photo op.

That was why Cooper had done her dark hair up in a simple French braid. She had also put on a little makeup along with a touch of green eye shadow to match her eyes. Normally she didn't wear any makeup, but she knew that there were going to be cameras everywhere. Needless to say the command crew were of Hope were all wearing their black aand white dress uniforms.

She was right. The minute that she cycled through the lock there were reporters in every direction. Cooper smiled and waved as she went through the crowd. Finally, she found a familiar face. She pushed her way through the mob of reporters until she was next to Lieutenant Commander Anderson.

"How are you doing? Blondie?" Cooper asked, using her friend's nickname.

"Hiya Coop!" Anderson responded. "Can you believe all of this?" Anderson asked as she motioned to the reporters and their cameras. "If they are this excited to see the section chiefs and the XO what are they going to be like when Simmons arrives?"

"I think we are about to find out, because here he comes," Cooper said as she motioned towards the airlock that she had just come through.

Following the shift of her hand, both Anderson and the reporters saw Simmons emerge from the 'lock. Suddenly, the two of them were totally ignored and the crowd of journalists surged towards Simmons.

Once the mob of reporters went towards Simmons, Cooper caught sight of Lieutenant Commanders Watanabe and Kobayoshi, who had been abandoned by the broadcasters as well.

Cooper waved and motioned for the two officers from the Empire of Nippon to come over and talk with her and Anderson.

"Watanabe! It feels like I haven't seen you in a month," Cooper said as she hugged her Asian friend. Then she bowed to Kobayoshi as was the custom in his country.

"Thats because you've been on the Alterday shift and we have been on the Mainday shift on the Sendai," Kobayoshi replied before giving Cooper an even deeper bow.

"It is very good to see you Cooper, and you as well, Anderson. It's been a little lonely." Watanabe admitted.

"Well, you had Kobayoshi and Simmons to keep you company," Anderson replied.

"It's not the same as having female friends to chat with," Watanabe explained.

"Well, you are going to be in charge of engineering during Alterday on Hope, so we will be on the same shift. We can catch up then," Cooper said.

"I would like that very much," Watanabe replied with a smile.

"Hey that will leave me out of the loop!" Anderson complained.

"I can talk to Simmons and we could come up with a way to rotate the command staff every couple of weeks. Then no-one will feel left out. I am the XO after all."

"Thanks for coming up with a fix so quickly," Anderson said with a bright smile.

"Well, we were thinking of doing a crew rotation every six months. That way all the Mainday and Alterday staff will get to know each other better. After all, we will all need to work together during an emergency. I just sped things up."

"Well, I deeply appreciate it," Watanabe responded.

"You're welcome."

"Oh, look who decided to join us," Cooper teased. "If it isn't the man of the hour. Did you tire of the reporters?"

"I wanted to share the love a little," Simmons retorted. "Besides, they wanted to get a picture of the command staff all together in front of the airlock. I convinced them to give me five minutes to round everybody up."

"Theres no rest for the wicked," Cooper said after a long sigh. "Come on guys, let's go get a group photo."