Becoming Chosen

We’ll make it as short as possible, but the turn -over of the ship is going to be one of the most dangerous parts of the entire mission. Even with antimatter/matter annihilation as propulsion, turning a spinning cylinder, with more spinning cylinders inside, is going to take a considerable amount of time. Every second the ship is side-on to its direction of travel leaves open the chance for a catastrophic object impact. At a third of the speed of light, I have my doubts the hull could sustain its integrity if anything heavier than a gram or so impacts. But as with everything else on this project we must accept the risks we can’t mitigate.

- Expert from the Notebook of Foster Delhim, Sealed Archive

Miri was enjoying Ronan’s nervousness as they rode along in the tram. Today they had been summoned to the ships control center. While it was making Miri’s heart sing, her friend clearly didn’t feel the same way.

“Your tellin’ me you’ve never been to the Bridge? Really?” Miri asked for the third time in as many minutes.

“Yes, I told you,” Ronan said, his voice tight.

“Never once?”

“No! It’s not something most of the crew do. Only Bridge Crew or trainees go there, and they are all officers.

“Well, you’re an officer now, aren’t you?” Miri asked giving her best innocent look, complete with big eyes blinking.

“I am now, but,” Ronan began.

“Then there’s nothin’ to be worried about, is there?” Miri said with faux finality.

“I, uh, I, er,” Ronan stuttered. He looked hard at her, and Miri could no longer contain her laughter. After enduring it for a moment, Ronan smiled a rueful smile and said, “You know, teasing someone isn’t very nice.”

Miri punched him in the shoulder. “And who said I was nice, then?”

“In that case we could talk about your panic attack…”

The memory of the incident snapped the smile off Miri’s face like waving for a light to turn off. It was already a couple of days since the attack, but it still was fresh in her memory.

She’d been heading to the dining hall, when suddenly the halls all seemed too close. She had felt hot and couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs. Worst of all was the fear that sped her heart had been all consuming. Rushed to the nearest Med bay Miri had been mortified when the docs had told her it was a panic attack. Something to do with all the changes she’d been through combined with the lack of open spaces in the Tech areas of the ship.

“Sure, make fun o’ me for bein’ scared of somethin’ new,” Miri complained.

“Well, you were doing the same to me. Before you came I was not an officer, and even as a very, very junior officer, I’ve never been ordered to the bridge before. So, maybe we ought to just give each other a little room to feel what we feel, yes?” Ronan said reasonably.

“I guess,” Miri grumped. “Still, for someone who wants to change things, you get awful jumpy when they do change.”

Ronan didn’t rise to the challenge, he just smiled and accepted his win in their little joust. He went back to staring at the forward wall of the tram carriage.

Miri did the same, with a small smile of her own. Ronan was so different from any of the boys she had ever known. He was far more considerate of a person’s feelings, even when he was teasing. Instead of pushing until it got bad, he would get his shots in, then back off.

The way he acted was much more like one of the girls among the Chosen. Miri couldn’t quite figure out if it was a Tech trait or just Ronan. Either way she counted herself lucky to have such a good companion assigned to her. Life would have been completely miserable if someone like F.O. Nesbit was her guide. She shuddered at the thought.

The tram slowed as it came to their stop. Both got up and waited for the doors to open.

Every other time she had ridden the trams, the doors had opened in the middle of a long hall, with people moving along it to the left or right. This time there was only a short hallway, leading to a double wide set of doors.

When they arrived at the doors, a voice came from the speaker to one side.

“Name and business,” the voice demanded.

“Ensign Candemir, and Miri Blaylock, summoned by the Captain,” Ronan said.

“Hold one moment,” the voice said.

While they waited, Ronan pulled his jacket straight, and took a deep breath. It was really very cute how nervous he was. And even though he had teased her earlier, Miri didn’t want to leave him in that state.

She leaned in until she could whisper in his ear. “Don’t worry. You’re with me, and the Captain thinks I am most Righteous indeed.”

Ronan started a little at the whisper, but turned so he could look right into her eyes. After a second he grinned.

“Oh, aye, that’ll make everythin’ better,” he lilted in a fair imitation of one of the Chosen.

Both of them had big smiles on their faces as the double doors slid open to reveal the Bridge of their starship.

Before them was a large room; three tiers of consoles sloping down. All the consoles were manned. A quiet susurration of murmured questions and answers filled the room with the impression of competent, focused action.

On the far wall was a huge square, black as anything Miri had ever seen, peppered with bright white dots. The image was so good it felt like it went on forever. As she looked closer, Miri saw more and more of the dots, behind and fainter than the ones she had first noticed.

It was so engrossing she did not even notice the Captain walking over to them.

“Do you like the view?” the Captain asked.

“Yes,” Miri breathed, as Ronan came to attention beside her. “What is it?”

“It’s an image of what lies in front of the ship. A composite image, from three camera’s peeking over the front shield. Of course, the image is color corrected for the blue shift from our velocity.”

Miri wasn’t quite sure what was meant by ‘blue shift’ but she filed it away for later. Somedays it seemed half her time was spent looking up words and concepts the Tech used so casually.

“What are all those dots?” she asked.

“Those are stars,” the Captain told her. He pointed to a dot that was slightly bigger than the others, right in the center of the display. “Do you see that one?”

Miri nodded.

“That is going to be our new home. We are just under five light-years from it.”

“They are all gorgeous,” Miri said, feeling a little overwhelmed at seeing outside the ship.

“They are,” the Captain agreed. “Though the incoming radiation cooks the optical sensors so quickly we don’t use them very often.” He noticed Ronan standing stiffly at Miri’s side. “At ease, Ensign.”

Ronan relaxed, a little.

“This is your first time on the bridge, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. It is.”

“And what do you think?”

“It is as amazing as I always imagined, sir,” Ronan told him.

The Captain smiled at them. “I remember when I felt the same way. Come over here, the both of you,” he said, and gestured to a seat in the dead-center of the upper most tier. There were three holographic screens clustered around it, the information clear on each of them, but not fully obscuring the view of all the other stations below.

Sitting down in the big chair, the Captain typed a command and the center screen changed to a wire-frame image of the ship.

Miri had seen it before but not so often that it failed to amaze her. The vessel they traveled in always reminded her of a bar-bell from the Tech gym. At the front and rear were two thick disks, rising a quarter mile above the surface of the main hull. The forward one was blank, with a fringe of large reaction bells just below the inner side.

There were a matched set around the rear shield. Beyond the bulk of rock were a set of fifteen truly gigantic reaction bells of the main drive. The scale on the display was big enough to see other structures on the surface of the hull, but not so big as to be able to make out what they were. The whole thing was rotating on its longitudinal axis, just like the real ship.

“Miri,” the Captain began, “We are about to take the first step in slowing down to arrive at our new home.” He waved a hand, and the image highlighted the smaller reaction bells. “These are the maneuvering jets. We are going to use them to turn the ship around. Once we are facing away from our direction of travel, we can use the mains to start knocking down our velocity.”

With a quick set of typed commands, the image changed. A bright line of a light stabbed out from a reaction bell on the left side of the forward thrusters, as it rotated even with the midline. A similar line came from the rear thrusters, but on the right side.

The animation continued, with opposing jets firing as they came even with the midline of the ship. Very, very slowly, the rear of the ship made of light slid out, and the front slid back. Again and again and again, the jets fired.

When the ship was sideways to its direction of travel, the front jets switched to firing as they came to into alignment on the right side, with the ones in the rear switching to left.

“Why do they do that?” Miri asked, entranced by the animation.

The Captain looked up, then nodded to Ronan, “Well, Ensign, why do they?” he asked with that twinkle in his eye.

“Sir. We fire the jets to get the ship turning, but once it is turning it would keep spinning unless we take the acceleration we’ve applied back off. In space, once you start something going, it will keep going that way until some other force acts on it.”

“Well said, Ensign,” the Captain allowed.

“Are we doin’ that now?” Miri asked.

Both the Captain and Ronan laughed, but not unkindly.

“No, not yet. There are a great many checks and rechecks which must happen before we fire up the jets. We use antimatter, but it is not our friend and any mistakes could be our last.”

Miri nodded. She had been so impressed by the Fuel Facility that she had been doing a lot of reading about antimatter.

“When the checks are done, then it goes just like that?” she asked pointing to the simulation which had reset and was running again.

“Like that yes, but much slower,” the Captain said.

“Why?” Miri asked, then remembered her manners and added, “Sir.”

“Well, our ship is very heavy. Even as powerful as antimatter is, it takes a lot of effort to change direction.”

“How long will it take?”

The Captain looked over to one of the officers seated to his left, “Phil? What is the current estimated turn time?”

“Nineteen hours, Captain,” the man replied. “That’s the nominal projection. It could vary as much as five hours if we run into problems.”

The Captain’s eyebrows bunched together. “But you will see to it that there are no problems, yes, Commander?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Good, that’s why we have you running these simulations. I expect nothing short of perfection on this operation.”

The man nodded and went back to his work.

“Our turning the ship is the reason I asked you here, Miri,” Captain Candemir said looking back to her and Ronan. “When the jets begin firing, there is likely to be some vibration in the Habmo’s. Rather than the Town telling the Chosen what is going on, I’d like it to be you who explains.”

Miri could feel her eyes getting wide. She had known the plan had always been for her to return to the Chosen, she just hadn’t thought it would be so soon. Captain Candemir spotted her surprise.

“I know you’ve only been with us a little while, but you bringing the news of the end of our journey and the changes to come is one of the most important jobs right now. Just think of how frightened everyone in the Habmo’s would be if they didn’t have someone they trusted explain it.”

Nodding, Miri tried to stich a convincing smile together. There was a serious twang of guilt running through her soul. Many times, she had started to broach the subject of her complete lack of status among the Chosen, but fear of losing her position had stopped her tongue. Now she was going to have live with the results. If people like Uncle Fergus didn’t listen to her, all her talking and explaining would come to nothing.

But if there was one thing she’d learned in her time with the Tech, it was when a senior officer gave an order, there was only one acceptable response.

“Yes, sir, I’ll do my best. When do you think I will head back to the Habmo’s?”

“Tomorrow morning. That will give you three days to talk to folks before the turn starts.”

Tomorrow! The word sent a chill down her back, she’d hoped it would be a couple of weeks, but the flat statement didn’t offer any room for argument.

“Yes, sir,” Miri said, squaring her shoulders and trying to stand in something close to the attention posture the Tech took with officers.

Captain Collins studied her for a long moment, then put one wrinkled hand on her shoulder. “I know this might be a daunting task, but I have faith in you, Miri Blaylock. It may have been chance that brought you to our attention, but I wouldn’t have been able to pick a better ambassador to our fellow travelers. You can do this, and do it well.”

Looking into those pale blue eyes, and hearing that tone of utter conviction, Miri could almost believe it herself. If someone like that Captain believed in her, well, that had to count for something, didn’t it?

“Thank you, sir. I’ll try not to let you down.”

“I know you won’t. Now, go and get ready. Gather whatever you think you need to make your mission a success. You are both dismissed.”

Vince Tolland had been carefully eavesdropping on the Captains conversation with the youngsters. It had been a real challenge, keeping up with his cross-checks while listening, but what he heard was worth the effort.

Pulling up a standard report form Tolland used the special embed code he’d been given by F.O. Nesbit. When the sub-window opened, Vince used it to write a terse version of the conversation. This had always been a sticky place in Nesbit’s plan. The exact timing of the Chosen being made aware of the true nature of things. This could very well change the timing of the plan.

Once the hidden message was set, Tolland wrote the most boring report he could and sent it to the F.O.’s in-box. His duties as a spy satisfied, the junior conspirator returned to his work. He had no idea what he had set in motion.