The Alpha's concubine (Girl x Werewolf)

Chapter 74/Orbital mechanics is a savage Mistress

A/N [ We would like to Welcome NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley back to earth after their first ride on a SpaceX reusable space ship. While we nerd out a bit - also huge hugs to SpaceX for finally launching and landing a small 6 story office building-sized tank to 150meters. As SciFi nerds we like it when people make just wondering about the future obsolete ] RK&Reb

The Empress dropped into a tight orbit around Callisto. Sounds easy, but it isn't; orbital mechanics is a complex savage mistress, a bit like me really. Then again, we had the space equivalent of Tesla Autopilot, so it was (easy). I felt relaxed after a shower and a good night's sleep ready for mission Save mom and dad.

When I got word from Bex, we dropped the Sea Urchin of Vengeance off, leaving the much more massive Empress in orbit. Victoria wanted to show off her piloting skills to her dad, so I just watched the Moon go by on the window screens. The Moon looked like a white billiard ball that was tortured in a candle flame for too long. Black and brown splotches covered most of the world. The closer we got, the more I noticed the surface was nearly entirely dominated by white spots.

"Looks like this moon could use like a trillion bottles of Biore," I said, looking at the relentless pitted surface. As we approached, I could see the whole place was incredibly ancient. There were craters on craters which had smaller craters in them. Some of them you could see in high relief as the sun cast sharp shadows over portions.

We sat in a smaller backup emergency flight control room of the Sea Urchin of Vengeance. The bridge we sat in was like the Empress's control deck except for this time shorter and slightly more utilitarian. By this, I mean were are no coffee cup holders, and the number of buttons saying 'die' was about half. Still, there were plenty of screens enough to get lost in the data. The ship its self had that classic Lycan made from interchangeable parts and ugly. So ugly, you avoided having any sharp pens around uncase you succumbed to the desire to poke your own eyes out in horror.

I sat, as we all did, strapped into chairs at stations looking at screens. It felt weird, and it took me a while to figure out why. It suddenly dawned on me that this was almost exactly like going on a road trip vacation with my parents and sister, except no Disney DVDs. I mean, a massive jump in technology and the experience was practically the same. Sitting, waiting, looking at screens. Once I thought this, I couldn't unthink it. I couldn't feel that space travel was like light-years or whatever better than a road trip back home. I consoled myself that I had both zero gravity and a set of very nasty weapons at my command. That said ,I still wanted to say 'Are we there yet?'.

Peter, was very irritated to discover the ships' weapons would only work for me. He sat disgruntled like a toddler who wasn't allowed to watch his favorite show while his Aunt came to visit. We all wore our morphing spacesuit backpacks. On the plus side, Peter had a very dangerous powerful hand weapon which( opps) I had forgotten to charge.

I looked at the world below then pointed at it while speaking to Bob, "You live on that planet you're braver than I thought. it looks like it's been used for target practice for millennia."

"It has," Bob said "The big planet pulls things towards us. Sometimes collisions are large enough to dislodge ice from above. It took us about twenty thousand years for our... I guess you would call them scientists, we call them girl Scouts. Any way twenty thousand years before we realized there was more above us than the solid sky."

I was instantly full of questions - like on what planet could your scientists emerge from the Girl Scout movement? Well, obviously, Callisto. So I know this question kind of answers it's self, but It made me realize it things were about to get very alien. There was me thinking the werewolves were weird. Before I could ask Bob if they had any Daisy badges, Victoria butted in.