“I’m not old,” Chief Beni shot back. “I’m just one of the few around here that has some caution. It makes me appear more mature and older than I am.”
Kris let the jokes fly freely for the next few minutes. Slowly, Cara got her color back, and even managed to inject a joke of her own about the music she’d be playing while they made the run, which drew a groan from her aunt.
When Maria looked like she’d settled into the idea of actually being a part of this and doing a mission with one of those Longknifes, Kris unbuckled herself from her chair.
“Folks, the sooner we do this, the sooner we get home. Anyone have a reason we shouldn’t do this today?”
No one did. Quickly, they all followed her lead, unbuckled, and pushed off for the drop bay.
There, Kris discovered that Nelly and several others, including Chief Beni, had been making preparations for some time. The Smart MetalTM from the Wasp’s protective shield had been drawn in and apportioned among the three launches that the chief in charge of boat maintenance assured Kris were in the best shape.
“No water weeds sucked up into any of these, ma’am,” he assured her with a nasty look at one of the bosun’s mates flying the mission.
The 1/c bosun took the ribbing with a good-natured but determined smile. He might have made a mistake on Kaskatos, but he was one of the five pilots chosen to keep the Wasp from being left a derelict in space.
Kris would have a copilot riding on her right hand, and three brains strapped in behind her. Chief Beni had specially rigged helmets for the brain-to-computer connections for those, unlike Kris, who did not have their computers plugged directly into their brains. The brain sensors that gave the computer access to its human, and let the human communicate with its computer, had been soldered directly into the helmet. And while the computers usually communicated on Nelly net, today they were hardwired into the Smart MetalTM cable, and a comm line was included in that as well. All of the computers as well as the launches would be able to communicate by line as well as net.
“Don’t know if the static of us passing through all that gas will kill our wireless net,” Chief Beni said. “With this hard connection, it won’t matter.”
“Belt and suspenders,” Professor Scrounger said. “Good idea. Might have saved one or two of my marriages if I’d worn suspenders as well as a belt,” he muttered only half to himself.
Cara got the giggles at the image. Maria blushed.
Kris cleared her throat, and said, “Excuse me, I’ve got a preflight to do,” and headed for her launch.
It was Launch 1, the lander that had sucked up water weeds on Kaskatos and changed Kris’s whole order of the day by not letting her run away from a fight. Everything had worked out in the end, but at the time, it had not been funny.
The bosun 1/c joined her as she walked around the bird. Everything that could come loose showed itself tight to her pull. The collar of Smart MetalTM was attached where the forward and aft sections of the shuttle were welded together, giving a strong bulkhead for the attachment. If any location on the launch could take the strain, that spot should.
Reaction mass was being pumped aboard as Kris watched.
“That’s the last water we got,” the chief in charge of the launches told Kris. “No showers until you get back. Not sure we can even flush the head, ma’am.”
“We’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Kris assured him.
As Kris boarded the launch, she made a final check of the engines. The antimatter containment pod had been attached as usual. Now it was held in place by steel cables that were welded to the aft bulkhead. That puppy was not going anywhere, no matter how much bounce was in the ride the planet below gave them.
Everything that could be done had been done. Now all that remained was for six pilots to do some of that fancy flying they boasted about at every opportunity. If Kris pulled this off, all those skiff race championships would be taking a backseat to this story.
A way-back seat.
“First, girl, you got to pull this off,” she muttered to herself.
“You say something, ma’am?” her copilot asked.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” she said, and shared a high five with him.
Jack, Penny, and Maria were already in their seats right behind the flight deck. Jack was on one side of the aisle, Maria and Penny on the other. The young petty officer seemed lost in thought as she and her computer hurried through the interface process. All aboard wore space suits with their own oxygen supply. The launch was pressurized, but no one was betting that that would last the entire flight.
Kris strapped in tight and began the preflight check with her copilot. The bosun 1/c knew his stuff, and the check went smooth and fast. When it came to a radio check, Kris found that Jack, Penny, and Maria, along with their computers Sal, Mimzy, and Sheri, were on the same circuit as the flight deck.
“We will be talking to the other launches by landline,” Nelly said. “Captain Drago wants to hold radio communications to a minimum. He doesn’t care what Ron says about the Iteeche not using this system. He insists it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“Smart man,” Kris said.
“So we’ll establish a Smart MetalTM link to each craft and the balloot just as soon as we launch. We can use wire after that.”
“We can do better than that,” Kris said. “Launch 2 and 3, you will fly wing on with the balloot. Two, you have the planet side. Three, you get the deep-space side. I’ll cover the low end. Let’s see if we can match up with the balloot and not break Captain Drago’s radio silence.”
With that, all preparations were done. Kris pressurized the launch, brought the engines up to idle power, and made her final check.
“Launch 1, requesting clearance for launch.”
“Launch 1, cleared for launch, and Godspeed,” came back in the skipper’s own voice. It was unusual for him to approve launching a longboat, but then, there was nothing usual about this mission.
Kris let the launcher shove her away from the Wasp before she applied any power to her boat. Using as little reaction mass as possible, she edged away from the Wasp. The other two boats followed her until they were drifting in echelon.
Several sailors were out, loosening the balloot from its lockdowns on the underside of the Wasp. The balloot looked for all the world like a butterfly net Kris had used to catch flutter-bys, then release them, for a summer before she lost Eddy and everything lovely disappeared from her life.
The balloot narrowed aft until it hooked into a feed line into the reaction-storage intake. For today’s mission, that aft end would be locked down. It widened gradually before it reached a shoulder well forward, then tapered a bit toward the mouth. During a refueling flight, the forward end would dilate open to swallow up the available gas.
Somewhere out of sight was supposed to be some kind of tongue arrangement that assured that whatever went in stayed in.
As the balloot drifted free of the Wasp, Launches 2 and 3 maneuvered to latch onto the shoulder. Wisps of Smart Metal TM reached out from the collar on the launches to catch on the shoulder collar of the balloot. The connection made, the two boats guided the balloot away from the Wasp. Kris brought her boat back into formation, taking the lower slot, and Nelly guided Launch 1’s Smart MetalTM connection up to the balloot.
“We’re all attached,” Nelly reported on the wire net. On the instrument panel before Kris, a flight path opened up on the central screen.