Homebrew - a NaNoWriMo Novel - Day 15
And by the skin of my teeth, I managed to add 1,908 words on Day 15. Started a new chapter as well. Enjoy!
It ain’t Much to Look At
It's dependable and not much to look at but it's mine, it's paid for and it's the only way I can get to work!
-Sanchovilla
December 23, 2011
Points of hard light scattered across his vision, as if a careless jeweler had tossed a bucket of diamond dust on a jet floor. Random specks of red, orange and even blue brightness lent a variety to the image. A white, puffy cylinder drifted into his view. Despite being only eighty-feet by forty feet in size, he couldn't shake the feeling he was staring up at a giant Sta-Puff marshmallow ever so slowly falling down to crush him as he would an ant.
Unlike working out on the OPS power arrays, which were so large as to stretch from one edge of his vision to the other, as J'Shawn approached the closest of the four Genesis III orbital habitats he and his friends had purchased so many months ago. Out here, he had discovered during O2O flight school, where nothing could block the vastness of space, he felt the loneliness so many of the writers, poets and the older astronauts spoke of. This is where he most felt displaced, unsure, as if he didn't belong. He had been raised in apartments, had been crammed into a dorm room for years. Even on his own, he'd found a single bedroom apartment. Small quarters and tight spaces had defined all of his life, walking or driving outside, he had rarely left the canyons of the city in which he'd been born.
Here, the emptiness, the magnitude ripped from the depths of his mind a fear, and a drive for self-examination he'd never quite known before. The fear came from seeing and understanding the total lack of anything within range of his orbital transfer vehicle. At times, he felt a desperate need to talk to whoever was listening on his assigned channel; he'd even experienced an occasional inability to engage the OTV's engines, to leave the docking bay. Each time, he had managed to calm down by re-doing his voyage checklist, focusing completely upon the task, not hesitating to run the 'execute' command.
Once he was moving, the fear disappeared. But the nature of orbit-to-orbit transfers was such as to ensure plenty of time for introspection. With the sheer simplicity of the OTV design, it could be handled by a single operator/pilot. And UN-OPS chose to specify all but the longest trips be conducted by one pilot, unless the cargo required special handling, in which case a technician rode 'shotgun' in the fold-out jumpseat.
On this trip he was the 'mission specialist', the technician hitching a ride. Along with the four habitats and their attached booster units and storage/garage modules, the sale price had included four older, but quite serviceable crew towboats and two OTVs. According to the manifest transmitted by the sales agents, this habitat held one OTV inside, complete with two grappling arm units. The OTV bringing him out here also carried fuel for his OTV. They would unload the fuel tanks and their shade screen, haul out the OTV and do whatever else was necessary to bring it online. They would also check the habitat's environmental systems.
"Coming up on your new home." Ryk Spoor's voice crackled through his helmet speakers. "Sure is pretty. Say, what do you guys plan on doing with these things? Weren't they part of that orbital hotel that Bigelow Aerospace runs?"
"They were. But Bigelow stripped all the furnishings and most of the room dividers out of these before they let us have them." He paused, wondering just what else he could safely say. Dora had cautioned him against letting people know their plans. "We haven't really decided what we're going to use them for. We've got a few wild ideas, but until we get a better look-see inside, we don't really know."
"Well, if it involves doing a little orbit-to-orbit work, I wouldn't mind picking up a few hours on the side," his fellow OTV pilot said, "strictly cash, if you can afford that."
"Is that you talking... or your bookie?" Ryk was well known for his habit of betting on any professional sports event - and losing so regularly as to leave him borrowing money from any fellow worker who he could badger into it. He had even bet on the outcome of a curling match.
"My bookie, of course." For all his abysmal judgment of sports teams, he was a skilled OTV pilot. They docked at the storage module docking port with the barest of jars. "All out for space habitat G-III 384. Please fold your chairs into the stored position and take all personal luggage with you. Thank you for flying OPS Space Lines."
"Dude, you must have been saving that one for years. If you happen to have any more, please remember, they're not helping your chances of moonlighting for us."
"Duly noted and logged." Spoor completed his shutdown and followed J'Shawn through the top-mounted hatch. "Do you want to check everything out on the hab first, or do you want to pull the fuel tanks and get them stored?"
"Let's get them stored. We'll want them offloaded before I fuel up my OTV, so it makes sense to move them into position now."
"You're the customer." With that, they floated over to the open-frame cargo bay and hooked the pallet containing the fuel canisters out with the articulated arm. Working slow to minimize the probability of damaging the canisters, OTV or habitat, they finished moving and shading the fuel can in a little more than forty-five minutes.
By then, both their air tanks had dropped to less than half of rated capacity. It had been a major design change, but the first work crews had demanded, and got an external connector and an internal pressurized air canister on the later model OTVs. Both Ryk and J'Shawn topped off their breather pack tanks before moving to the individual-entry hatch mounted in the cargo bay hatch. It was a matter of minutes for each to pass through into the bay.
"Wow. This is dark squared." J'Shawn whistled softly as his external helmet lamp painted a small circle of light on the bay's far wall. The rest of the bay, except for the wandering circle formed by Spoor's lamp, remained black, sucking the photons from their lights into the pitch darkness.
"I hope you remember where they put the light switch, because I don't see one."
"Yeah. It's over here, about two feet to the left of the hatch we just crawled through." He turned, scanning the cargo bay's hatch frame. "Here it is, one standard keypad and environment control panel. Lights are now..." he keyed in the correct code, flooding the chamber in harsh brilliance, "on!"
"Geez! You could warn a guy before doing that! I'll be seeing spots for the rest of the trip ho... holy crap!" At that, J'Shawn whirled around. And stopped, facing the object which had caused such eloquence from Ryk.
"Man. Punch me, quick! I'm not seeing what I think I'm seeing am I?"
"If you aren't, J'Shawn old man, you must be delusional, because I'm looking at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries OCV 800, Series B, I think."
UN-OPS had chosen to accept the bid from Renault for the construction of the two generations of OTVs. Renault had created a very basic orbital transfer vehicle, capable of hauling approximately 1 metric ton of cargo in the open rear bay, room for a pilot and mission specialist in the unpressurized cabin and having two bow attach points for articulated arms and tow claws. Pushing a five metric ton object, it could thrust for 240 minutes at it's max Isp.
The Mitsubishi OCV 800 resting before them had room for three times the cargo in it's rear bay and had four attach points on the bow. It also featured a command and passenger cabin capable of being pressurized and carrying four passengers plus the pilot and mission specialist. Further, the cargo bay could hold a separate-environment passenger cabin with life-support for 72 hours for eight passengers. And it could boost at max Isp for up to 960 minutes. Looking past the OCV, which held the closed-environment cargo insert, J'Shawn could see one of the passenger modules.
"I don't think you asked for enough fuel."
"No, I didn't, did I?" J'Shawn floated over and ran his gloved hand along it's flank. "I'm going to need a new paint job."
"Paint job? Why in Hell would you want to mar that pristine beauty with a different color?"
"Not color. Colors. I want flames. And an eagle's beak." He rounded on Spoor. "You're not looking at OCV 800 - 1857A."
"I'm not?"
"Of course you're not. You're looking at Screaming Eagle One." J'Shawn turned back to the craft. "And you're mine, all mine. Aren't you baby?"
Ryk's cough brought him back to the present. "That's all well and good, but we've got to get it out of the bay, fueled and we've got to check out the habitat. And we don't have that much time before we both have to return to OPS-1. Are you still planning to fly that one back to the station?"
"Yes, so we better get started."
Opening the cargo bay's main hatch took far less time than they anticipated as the main power system had been in sleep rather than completely powered down. The power meters on the batteries read 143 hours capacity at full load. Which was good because that meant J'Shawn could expect over ten weeks of capacity in sleep mode, plenty of time to install and fuel the fuel cells they had purchased.
Once outside, the two of them drained all the fuel from the canisters into the OCV's tanks.
"Can I watch as you work through the power-up checklist? I've never seen the inside of one of these babies."
"Sure. In fact, I was planning to ask you for help. I figure if you do end up working for us, it would be better if you were checked out on our orbital craft." He opened the hatch and pulled himself inside, saying, "Welcome aboard Screaming Eagle One."
"Thanks."
J'Shawn was relieved to see the control panels layout was the same as the OTV's. He'd heard Mitsubishi had submitted a bid for the OTV contract, but now he had confirmation.
"I wonder why UN-OPS didn't go for this vehicle? It clearly meets the needs of the OPS crew."
"J'Shawn, you haven't lived in Europe, so I can understand why you've never experienced this. The UN doesn't like giving contracts to the 'big boys' based in Japan, the US or England. And the only other serious bidder was from France. France is a big deal in the UN, despite everything it does to frustrate the UN's basic goals."
"Then they're stupid."
"How long have you worked for UN-OPS? And you're just now realizing that the UN is stupid?" J'Shawn heard the humor in Ryk's voice. "But there's hope for you. You have me to explain everything."
"Good thing. Because I've never understood the European mind."
"And I've never understood how you Americans can drink American beer. I guess we all have our personal ideosyncracies."
It ain’t Much to Look At
It's dependable and not much to look at but it's mine, it's paid for and it's the only way I can get to work!
-Sanchovilla
December 23, 2011
Points of hard light scattered across his vision, as if a careless jeweler had tossed a bucket of diamond dust on a jet floor. Random specks of red, orange and even blue brightness lent a variety to the image. A white, puffy cylinder drifted into his view. Despite being only eighty-feet by forty feet in size, he couldn't shake the feeling he was staring up at a giant Sta-Puff marshmallow ever so slowly falling down to crush him as he would an ant.
Unlike working out on the OPS power arrays, which were so large as to stretch from one edge of his vision to the other, as J'Shawn approached the closest of the four Genesis III orbital habitats he and his friends had purchased so many months ago. Out here, he had discovered during O2O flight school, where nothing could block the vastness of space, he felt the loneliness so many of the writers, poets and the older astronauts spoke of. This is where he most felt displaced, unsure, as if he didn't belong. He had been raised in apartments, had been crammed into a dorm room for years. Even on his own, he'd found a single bedroom apartment. Small quarters and tight spaces had defined all of his life, walking or driving outside, he had rarely left the canyons of the city in which he'd been born.
Here, the emptiness, the magnitude ripped from the depths of his mind a fear, and a drive for self-examination he'd never quite known before. The fear came from seeing and understanding the total lack of anything within range of his orbital transfer vehicle. At times, he felt a desperate need to talk to whoever was listening on his assigned channel; he'd even experienced an occasional inability to engage the OTV's engines, to leave the docking bay. Each time, he had managed to calm down by re-doing his voyage checklist, focusing completely upon the task, not hesitating to run the 'execute' command.
Once he was moving, the fear disappeared. But the nature of orbit-to-orbit transfers was such as to ensure plenty of time for introspection. With the sheer simplicity of the OTV design, it could be handled by a single operator/pilot. And UN-OPS chose to specify all but the longest trips be conducted by one pilot, unless the cargo required special handling, in which case a technician rode 'shotgun' in the fold-out jumpseat.
On this trip he was the 'mission specialist', the technician hitching a ride. Along with the four habitats and their attached booster units and storage/garage modules, the sale price had included four older, but quite serviceable crew towboats and two OTVs. According to the manifest transmitted by the sales agents, this habitat held one OTV inside, complete with two grappling arm units. The OTV bringing him out here also carried fuel for his OTV. They would unload the fuel tanks and their shade screen, haul out the OTV and do whatever else was necessary to bring it online. They would also check the habitat's environmental systems.
"Coming up on your new home." Ryk Spoor's voice crackled through his helmet speakers. "Sure is pretty. Say, what do you guys plan on doing with these things? Weren't they part of that orbital hotel that Bigelow Aerospace runs?"
"They were. But Bigelow stripped all the furnishings and most of the room dividers out of these before they let us have them." He paused, wondering just what else he could safely say. Dora had cautioned him against letting people know their plans. "We haven't really decided what we're going to use them for. We've got a few wild ideas, but until we get a better look-see inside, we don't really know."
"Well, if it involves doing a little orbit-to-orbit work, I wouldn't mind picking up a few hours on the side," his fellow OTV pilot said, "strictly cash, if you can afford that."
"Is that you talking... or your bookie?" Ryk was well known for his habit of betting on any professional sports event - and losing so regularly as to leave him borrowing money from any fellow worker who he could badger into it. He had even bet on the outcome of a curling match.
"My bookie, of course." For all his abysmal judgment of sports teams, he was a skilled OTV pilot. They docked at the storage module docking port with the barest of jars. "All out for space habitat G-III 384. Please fold your chairs into the stored position and take all personal luggage with you. Thank you for flying OPS Space Lines."
"Dude, you must have been saving that one for years. If you happen to have any more, please remember, they're not helping your chances of moonlighting for us."
"Duly noted and logged." Spoor completed his shutdown and followed J'Shawn through the top-mounted hatch. "Do you want to check everything out on the hab first, or do you want to pull the fuel tanks and get them stored?"
"Let's get them stored. We'll want them offloaded before I fuel up my OTV, so it makes sense to move them into position now."
"You're the customer." With that, they floated over to the open-frame cargo bay and hooked the pallet containing the fuel canisters out with the articulated arm. Working slow to minimize the probability of damaging the canisters, OTV or habitat, they finished moving and shading the fuel can in a little more than forty-five minutes.
By then, both their air tanks had dropped to less than half of rated capacity. It had been a major design change, but the first work crews had demanded, and got an external connector and an internal pressurized air canister on the later model OTVs. Both Ryk and J'Shawn topped off their breather pack tanks before moving to the individual-entry hatch mounted in the cargo bay hatch. It was a matter of minutes for each to pass through into the bay.
"Wow. This is dark squared." J'Shawn whistled softly as his external helmet lamp painted a small circle of light on the bay's far wall. The rest of the bay, except for the wandering circle formed by Spoor's lamp, remained black, sucking the photons from their lights into the pitch darkness.
"I hope you remember where they put the light switch, because I don't see one."
"Yeah. It's over here, about two feet to the left of the hatch we just crawled through." He turned, scanning the cargo bay's hatch frame. "Here it is, one standard keypad and environment control panel. Lights are now..." he keyed in the correct code, flooding the chamber in harsh brilliance, "on!"
"Geez! You could warn a guy before doing that! I'll be seeing spots for the rest of the trip ho... holy crap!" At that, J'Shawn whirled around. And stopped, facing the object which had caused such eloquence from Ryk.
"Man. Punch me, quick! I'm not seeing what I think I'm seeing am I?"
"If you aren't, J'Shawn old man, you must be delusional, because I'm looking at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries OCV 800, Series B, I think."
UN-OPS had chosen to accept the bid from Renault for the construction of the two generations of OTVs. Renault had created a very basic orbital transfer vehicle, capable of hauling approximately 1 metric ton of cargo in the open rear bay, room for a pilot and mission specialist in the unpressurized cabin and having two bow attach points for articulated arms and tow claws. Pushing a five metric ton object, it could thrust for 240 minutes at it's max Isp.
The Mitsubishi OCV 800 resting before them had room for three times the cargo in it's rear bay and had four attach points on the bow. It also featured a command and passenger cabin capable of being pressurized and carrying four passengers plus the pilot and mission specialist. Further, the cargo bay could hold a separate-environment passenger cabin with life-support for 72 hours for eight passengers. And it could boost at max Isp for up to 960 minutes. Looking past the OCV, which held the closed-environment cargo insert, J'Shawn could see one of the passenger modules.
"I don't think you asked for enough fuel."
"No, I didn't, did I?" J'Shawn floated over and ran his gloved hand along it's flank. "I'm going to need a new paint job."
"Paint job? Why in Hell would you want to mar that pristine beauty with a different color?"
"Not color. Colors. I want flames. And an eagle's beak." He rounded on Spoor. "You're not looking at OCV 800 - 1857A."
"I'm not?"
"Of course you're not. You're looking at Screaming Eagle One." J'Shawn turned back to the craft. "And you're mine, all mine. Aren't you baby?"
Ryk's cough brought him back to the present. "That's all well and good, but we've got to get it out of the bay, fueled and we've got to check out the habitat. And we don't have that much time before we both have to return to OPS-1. Are you still planning to fly that one back to the station?"
"Yes, so we better get started."
Opening the cargo bay's main hatch took far less time than they anticipated as the main power system had been in sleep rather than completely powered down. The power meters on the batteries read 143 hours capacity at full load. Which was good because that meant J'Shawn could expect over ten weeks of capacity in sleep mode, plenty of time to install and fuel the fuel cells they had purchased.
Once outside, the two of them drained all the fuel from the canisters into the OCV's tanks.
"Can I watch as you work through the power-up checklist? I've never seen the inside of one of these babies."
"Sure. In fact, I was planning to ask you for help. I figure if you do end up working for us, it would be better if you were checked out on our orbital craft." He opened the hatch and pulled himself inside, saying, "Welcome aboard Screaming Eagle One."
"Thanks."
J'Shawn was relieved to see the control panels layout was the same as the OTV's. He'd heard Mitsubishi had submitted a bid for the OTV contract, but now he had confirmation.
"I wonder why UN-OPS didn't go for this vehicle? It clearly meets the needs of the OPS crew."
"J'Shawn, you haven't lived in Europe, so I can understand why you've never experienced this. The UN doesn't like giving contracts to the 'big boys' based in Japan, the US or England. And the only other serious bidder was from France. France is a big deal in the UN, despite everything it does to frustrate the UN's basic goals."
"Then they're stupid."
"How long have you worked for UN-OPS? And you're just now realizing that the UN is stupid?" J'Shawn heard the humor in Ryk's voice. "But there's hope for you. You have me to explain everything."
"Good thing. Because I've never understood the European mind."
"And I've never understood how you Americans can drink American beer. I guess we all have our personal ideosyncracies."
posted by Derek A Benner | 4:14 PM
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