#5, Mercury to Judy
Darling,
I’m so happy to be writing to you now, we’ve made it away from the outlying asteroid belt in the Drasto system and are now on a sub-hyper-speed cruise to the main star. We soldiers are basically off for the next month, so I’ll be able to write more often and tell you about all the crazy things that are happening in this rusting tin can of a ship. I’ve heard about the looting in the Southern Work Area and the floods, please write and tell me you’re ok. I don’t know what’s going on in the gov’t down there, but I think the President might have to get his mind off — and the Virgo system and attend to domestic tranquility! Information is scant up here, please tell me my sweet girl is alright!
I was telling you about my wrecked recon mission to an asteroid last time, let me finish that story and then tell you about the ongoing fallout. So, we were in an expedition ship on the expedition deck, getting ready to take off. Our initial orders for when we were on the rock were being rolled out on the mission screen. I was the backup pilot in case the autopilot failed. The ship would drill a hole in the rock and Nebs would oversee me and Dixon while we took soil samples and installed monitoring equipment. We’d be getting regular updates on the situation around the rock from the crew back at the Cruiser, in case there were any hostiles, which there obviously wouldn’t be. At the end of the roll out, we got a first update from Private Grecian (a minor friend from Basic Training days): he puts on his best walkie-talkie voice, “over over, currssht, all clear to approach the rock. Not a hostile for 200 lightyears! curssht! over” He was making fun of us for being greenies at real missions. All this was all very exciting for us, on supply line runs, we just start up the ship and fly out manually, no Designer Corps auto-programming, no mission roll out.
So the ship fires up and flies into the airlock, spins around and starts firing it’s engine to keep us up. The way this works is that as soon as the air lock opens up, we’ll get sucked out since the ship is spinning around to “make gravity”, so the ship starts firing towards the hatch as it opens, and we’re eased out. When we get out there, we see the Drasto star, DS-3, shining blindingly white, and the rock is lit up on our windshield by the Nav computer. First odd thing I notice is that there’s two escort ships hovering around the rock already, which seems unnecessary.
So we hover towards it for ten minutes or so. Dixon, Nebs and I look at each other. I don’t think anybody wanted to admit they were nervous. Dixon tried to spin a coin in the air, Nebs just sat surveying the screens. I was probably a little clammed up because I had to go out onto the rock, and I got to admit crazy Designer Kong’s warnings about fuzzy objects were getting to me. Anyway, as we’re hovering, Grecian gives an update. He actually just comes on the radio and you can hear him talking to what I gathered was one of the escorts. “How’s everything look up there?…Should we go ahead?” Silence. “Alright guys, the environment looks clear, confirm readiness to proceed.” Confirmed. We belt-in and Nebs hits execute. The thing fires up and we rock violently, then descend rapidly to the rock. As we get close to the rock, the ship jerks again as engines blast downward to start digging a hole. The Designers have scoured the rock for the right point and usually get the details right, so we get a good-sized hole that’s easy to access. Then we land with a bump, landing on the ships four outstretched legs, and the ship digs into the rock with the drill while firing directly upwards to keep us down.
After several minutes of sitting in this violently shaking ship, hovering just away from the edges of the cockpit but still shaking ourselves, and playing the usual and very against regulations game of putting a drop of water in the air to watch the waves shape it, the drill shuts down and there’s suddenly complete silence. At this point Dixon and I had to suit up and go into the bottom airlock, while Nebs stays there watching.
Long story short, we’re down there in our suits hooking up magnetic equipment to monitor the rocks energy potential; Dixon’s bolting one of the sides in, the explosive bolt explodes and hits a tube on the outside of Dixon’s suit. I get a signal that he’s in distress, code for breathing problems. Nebs dispatches the rescue pod, which jets down. I start jetting back up with Dixon and the pod, and we reach the bottom of the ship. At this point, the pod goes off to the side to ease Dixon into the airlock. My role in this scenario is to oversee his insertion into the airlock. Suddenly, the pod stops, Nebs and I get a computer message saying that we should revive him in place due to the risk of tube rupture in the airlock during the “whoosh” when the pressure changes. An arm from the ship extends a tube covering and I try to use it to plug the leak. Dixon’s losing air fast and suddenly grabs my arm and the tube cover flies off and starts slowly descending into the hole. I tell Nebs to send me another covering device and some air. He says that’ll take him 2 minutes because he’s got to get it and load it into an extension arm. I plug an external air hole into Dixon’s suit and he revives a bit. I then have to make a decision: Dixon’s weary, but he’s in command. I have to issue the order to Nebs to open the airlock instead of waiting to repair the tube rupture and risk him losing pressure in the whoosh while the airlock fills. Nebs says “are you sure? We lost a guy in training that way one time, his lung exploded.” I actually get tweaked and yell back “we’re both gonna run out of air before you can get us extra tubes!” He opens it, and we both go in with me hooked up to him and us both losing air quickly because of the leak. I cram my fingers around the thing during the whoosh and can feel the edges of the tube pushing against my glove. We just get through the whoosh and then it’s all over.
While we were reviving Dixon, we get a message from the main ship with the usual check in, request for incident overview, etc.. We then get an order that I should go back down and finish bolting the magnetic device in, and retrieve the tube-saver! I say to Grecian that Dixon’s on the edge and we should revive him. I hear him click out for a sec, then he comes back in and says “command” wants us to continue, doesn’t even name the colonel demanding I go back down while Nebs deals with Dixon.
In the end, I of course suit up and descend back down through the airlock. I finish bolting in the magnetic device and hit the initialization code on the control panel. I then have to grab some rock in a container. While I’m doing this, Grecian gets on the radio and tells me to hurry up, “we need you to vacate the area soon so we can move on”. I wonder what the hell the rush is. Finally, I go poking around a little cave area that looks like it was there before the drill. The tube cover is lit up on my screen, sitting there. When I get to the thing, I see, swear to god, something on the ground, just a little patch, but it actually looked like fur! Just like designer Kong said. Crazy.
So I get back into the excursion ship and we head back to the cruiser. We get a full debriefing when we get there. There’s the customary dressing down of Dixon, should have followed proper bolting procedures, didn’t wait for area clear signal from me, blah blah. They’re light on me, surprisingly, they even say I made the right decision to open the airlock. I think I could sense they were annoyed that I asked Grecian to let us go back before finishing installing the equipment, though. I felt it was the right the thing to do, but I guess the mission comes first! A guy named Roby then debriefed each of us individually. This seemed excessive, but then I guess I’d never been on a real mission before run through the broader military command. Supply stuff has its own command, and we got a reputation for being a bit less serious! I was glad we got to be real soldiers for a day at least. Roby asked me a bunch of questions about the nature of the rocks inside the drill hole, what all I saw, probably to give the Designer Corp data to analyze mining potential.
So that was our crazy first mission. It was dangerous stuff, though not like real combat, obviously. The soldiers who were in those skirmishes with the Virgo solar bands get to hold their heads a little higher for that, I guess. I guess I shouldn’t want to see war, but that seems to be part of what helps you hold your head high around here.
Anyway, baby, I hope you’re sleeping well and dreaming of me, and I hope you’re handling the floods alright. Write me your stories, I want to know what’s been happening in these past months while we’ve been in the time warp. And it’s getting damned boring again up here!
With Love,
Mercury
