Carpathian Forty-Three

Carpathian Forty-Three - Part 22

Shaking. My view of operations is blurred from the shaking. The line of led lights mounted along the walls dance, streaks of blur that should be subtle glowing. I feel the ship protesting, the inputs from Carpathian Forty-Three map to my joints, my spine. I creak as the ship creaks. It's not unbearable pain, my implants are polite enough to filter most of the ship's screaming, relaying enough to register the dire circumstances.

"Thirty seconds," I hear Miri's voice on the comms. She's executing the brake, telling the ship how to move, how to respond, how forcefully to fire the main engines. In this case, rather more forcefully than we're used to.

"Three Gee," Voclain grunts from the Command Module.

I hear the pain in their voice, their Spacer spine compressed painfully under the stress of gravity. Voclain and Rhianu aren't used to gravity, certainly not to the onslaught that assails them now. Can they last another 30 seconds?

Something in my spine snaps. No. The ship's spine. Two thirds of the way down the spine, well past The Hump, Carpathian Forty-Three creaks, protests, finally succumbs to the stress of the braking burn. The ship disconnects from me, sparing me the input of pain that it feels as the drive section plows through the rest of the ship, venting The Hump to vacuum, tearing The Ring to pieces.

"End Simulation," Fort's voice says calmly.

We haven't changed the vocal output for the simulator Fort left for Miki. It was jarring the first few times I heard it. Now it's just a reminder of our failure. The Simulated Operations compartment, torn, open to space, fades out of view. Reality returns, the normal, quiet blinking and whirring of the ship.

"What happened?" I ask. It's not accusation, more curiosity from a professor.

"Overcompensated. I'm impatient." Miki says.

There's only the hint of shame there. We're practicing. Fort's simulation is throwing the worst-case scenarios at us. Miki's made a successful orbital injection burn over a dozen times now, they know the process. The echo of Fort is covering all the bases.

"Didn't help that we started twelve minutes late," I say.

"The Twins were repairing those thrusters. We couldn't start until they were safe aboard." Miki says.

"Hmmm." Even as an echo, Fort's smart. Miki's guilt at throwing Beta off the ship weighs on them. It wasn't their fault, not really. Beta's fine. Voclain and Alpha saw to that. Still. Miki is compensating for the incident.

"Write up the after action and I'll check in later," I say.

I blink a few times, the mini chorus with Miki disappears. I stand up from my seat in Operations. I stretch, willing my spine to decompress after the imagined high gee burn. It wasn't real, the implants made it feel real.

The Ring isn't big, not like a space station. The curve of the donut we live in is readily evident, sloping away from you. You can't see more than eight meters before the horizon rises to obscure your view. My Velcro shoes tug at the carpet as I walk. I don't need them here on the Ring, the centripetal force holds me to the floor, but they're habit, and comfy.

"Getting anywhere?" Thak asks from their quarters.

The Martian curmudgeon has their door open, working at their desk, figures and tables of numbers spread out over the surface. Thak's quarters are cramped, not for the size of them, but the clutter of a life aboard Carpathian Forty-Three, the souvenirs they've acquired over that life. The bed is a slab with a thin pad, Martian fashion. The chair that fills one corner though is wooden, polished dark mahogany, upholstered padding and bronze capped finish nails. It's wildly extravagant for a cargo ship that charges by the gram. I detour from my walk and settle into the chair.