Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) (14 page)

‘So… you mean, effectively,’  Mako said, slowly, ‘we’re sitting on thirty eight super-powerful bombs, each one of which has the potential to destroy a planet, and we are going to allow them to very nearly explode in order to get the ship superlight?’

‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’  Buzz agreed, cheerfully.  ‘Don’t stress it, though – we’re spacers, okay?  We do this all the time.’

Mako nodded acceptance of the reassurance.  ‘But you’re telling me that entirely unqualified people can go out into space on ships that are that dangerous?’  His voice rose incredulously.  ‘That is
insane
.’

‘Constitution Three, Mr Ireson.’  Buzz reminded him.  ‘The third device of the Constitution, ‘Space within the League shall be free and common to all, without let or hindrance.’ 

‘It was about four hundred years after the Founding that that began to be an issue.  Up until then the only starships in operation were either corporate or government owned, and they, naturally, ensured that their crews had the highest possible training.  But then a private company set up manufacturing the first star-yachts.  The first legal wrangle on this issue established that the authorities had no right to require that anyone owning such a yacht must obtain a license before they were allowed to take it into space.  They could, at most, refuse access to launch tunnels on safety grounds, which was immediately overcome by owners hiring a pilot to be aboard for the launch.  The first superlight collision between starships happened within a few years of that, a yacht that went out of control and crashed into a freighter.  There have been hundreds of such accidents since.  And when the starseekers went on sale, around ninety years back, spacers took one look at the specs and groaned. 

‘They are a
menace
, no two ways about it.  They are designed with flight consoles that are so much like those of aircars that even complete beginners feel confident that they can handle them.  It’s often only when red lights are flashing and the help screen is giving instructions for immediate action that they don’t understand, that they realise how far out of their depth they are.  I would be surprised, myself if we got as far as four hours out on the Karadon route without encountering at least one starseeker making a distress signal.  

‘People are laughing at that,’ he explained, as there was sniggering amongst the crew, ‘because while this issue of unqualified owners breezing off into deep space with no idea what they’re doing
is
very serious and all too often tragic, the reality that we experience is that ninety nine out of a hundred distress calls are idiotic. 

‘Every spacer has a wealth of starseeker idiocy stories, they’re a genre of spacer humour in their own right.  The classic for starseekers that have recently launched is a red life support board and a wailing siren because they haven’t repressurised the airlock after launch. 

‘The Fleet has
begged
Starseeker to change the software so that it just explains calmly and clearly what to do, but they are very well aware, of course, of what we think of their ships so the relationship is not as productive as it could be.  At any rate, I would say from experience that there is a more than fifty fifty chance of us encountering a starseeker at some point this evening flashing a distress signal and in a right state because their life support is screaming ‘Airlock pressure differential!’ at them and they think the ship is losing air.  And when we tell them, you know, just press the green button next to the airlock hatch, and send them yet another copy of the Fleet’s very helpful handbook for starseeker owners, most of them get mad at us, as if it’s
our
fault they’re out there with no idea what they’re doing.  But there is nothing we can do about that, other than advise in the strongest possible terms that all starships have a properly qualified pilot on board.’

‘Incredible that that even needs saying.’  Mako observed.  As he was speaking, though, a cheer went up through the ship, at which he looked enquiringly at Buzz.

‘Engineering has passed the skipper’s inspection.’  Buzz explained, indicating an entry that had just appeared on the ship’s log.  Even as he spoke, Alex von Strada was swinging lithely off the zero-gee ladder, coming over to join them with a look of approval as he saw that Buzz was evidently helping Mako to get to grips with at least the basics of starship operations.

It was fascinating, too, for Mako, observing the process of ‘lifting orbit’, with the ceremony of firing a salute to the system, and the ship beginning a stately vertical ascent.  At least, it seemed stately to Mako until Buzz showed him their speed on sublight screens.  They had, it turned out, been hypersonic within seconds of leaving their parking station and were powering up out of the plane of the system’s disc at a speed, now, surpassing that of a tenth the speed of light.

He was, however, unable to watch any longer than that, as Dr Tekawa came to get him to be suited up.  Nobody else was suiting up yet but they could all do that in seconds, where it would take time to help him into the suit and make sure he knew how to operate it.

It was not really what he’d been expecting.  His idea of a ‘spacesuit’ was of a hard-shell suit, which Dr Tekawa informed him were actually hullwalker suits.

‘We don’t use them aboard ship,’ he said.  ‘Quite apart from anything else, they are extremely bulky and we just wouldn’t have room on board to carry enough of them for the whole crew.  So we use these survival suits aboard ship.  But before we can get you into it, I do have to issue you with a rather less high tech set of underwear.’ 

As Mako gave him a speaking look, the medic laughed, holding up his hands in a gesture of appeasement.  ‘
No
offence!’  He assured him.  ‘This is something that is built into Fleet rig, okay?  Which we generally
don’t
talk about off the ship because it is a bit icky and not felt to show the Fleet with any dignity.  But the reality of it is that when you may be in these suits for many hours, in circumstances where you
can’t
take them off to go to the lavatory, some kind of provision has to be made for that.  So we do, see, have diaper linings in all our uniforms.  It’s not very glamorous and nobody likes them but it’s just got to be done.  They have built-in capillaries and a leg-bag that draws with gentle suction when activated by moisture.  There is no nice way to say this, so I’ll just say it straight – if you need to pee, you just have to wet yourself and let the capillaries draw it away into the leg bag.  If you can control the flow to keep it slow, the capillaries will keep up, but even you cut loose, they’ll have you dry again in two seconds.  Urine is sterile, so the only ‘icky’ issues with that are psychological. 

‘If you have to defecate, which is known to spacers as ‘making a crusty’, that will also be dried very quickly but will remain in your pants.  That’s obviously uncomfortable, physically and psychologically and has obvious hygiene issues, too.  So if circumstances allow, people are permitted to ask for a ‘time out’ from being suited up to make use of lavatories in a secured location. 

‘On Minnow, that’s here in sickbay.  Even in extended suit-drills, the skipper makes sure that everyone gets comfort breaks every couple of hours.  During a launch, though, that isn’t an option, and it isn’t uncommon for first timers to experience involuntary defecation – nothing to be ashamed of, honestly.  It’s entirely beyond your ability to control.  No matter how much you may know intellectually that the process is safe, your body has other ideas and may kick into fight/flight hindbrain instincts in which bladder and/or bowel cutting loose is built in at the genetic level as an extreme survival instinct.  Once you’ve been through it once, though, it’s as if your body learns that it doesn’t need to trigger that response – like, the first time you ride a rollercoaster is always higher adrenalin than the second.  I can, if you’re anxious about it, either prescribe you a mild sedative or create an isolation space for you with as much suppression of noise and vibration as possible.’

‘No, no, thank you, but I’ve decided to ride it out on the command deck,’ Mako said, in a tone which made it clear that that decision
had
been made.  Which it had, for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which was that he did not want to have to tell his kids that he had bottled out on the launch.  Privately, though, he felt that the person he had the most to prove to in this was himself.  

He had never felt that he lacked for courage.  He was a prison inspector, which required a good deal both in terms of being thick skinned in dealing with hostile staff and in working with and around some of the most aggressive, dangerous people in League society.  His kids teased him about refusing to go on high adrenalin rides when they went to theme parks and the like, but he had just never seen the point of terrifying yourself for fun and certainly had not considered them as any test of courage.

Now, though, his courage had become a very direct issue here, as to whether he would be treated like a poor helpless little civilian cowering on his bunk or would ride out the launch with the crew.  He was surprised to find how much that mattered to him.  He didn’t mind them laughing at him, really, recognising that many of the things he said and the questions he asked were hilarious to them.  Pride was at stake in this, though, and seeing that, Rangi Tekawa smiled.

‘Well, it only lasts half a minute,’ he observed.  ‘Though it will seem a lot longer.  That’s adrenalin.  If you can focus on keeping track of the time, hanging on for forty or fifty seconds, that might help.  But do, please, go change into this delightfully stylish and glamorous underwear,’ he handed him a packet containing a fibrous pair of knee-length body-snug shorts, and indicated the sickbay shower unit with a grin. 

Mako took care of business, emerging a couple of minutes later wearing the diaper shorts under his suit.  They felt strange but not too uncomfortable.  He was surprised, as Rangi helped him to get into the suit, how light and comfortable that was, too.  It seemed enormous at first, but pulling on tabs at the waist drew it in all over to fit snugly.  The gloves just astonished him.  They were more like surgical gloves than the kind of gauntlets he’d have expected on a spacesuit, with very fine tiny scales.  The fingers had a different kind of coating, almost metallic but so flexible it barely felt as if the gloves were there at all.  The real surprise came, though, when Rangi told him to feel a nearby surface and he found that he could sense it just as clearly as if the gloves weren’t there.

‘That bit is tech-classified,’ Rangi told him.  ‘I’m going as far as I can, there, in using the words ‘nanotech pressure sensors’ but they’re very good, aren’t they?  Excellent for starships, where rapid operation of controls or tech-repairs would be hampered by restrictive gloves.  So, let’s get your helmet on.’

That surprised him too by being more like a plastic bag than the kind of rigid helmet he’d expected.  It inflated and stiffened up once it was suctioned onto the suit’s neck-ring and when he touched it experimentally, he found it quite rigid.

‘Your face is protected by the visor.’  Rangi helped him to feel a slightly bulbous edge around the clear front of the helmet.  ‘Also high tech, though recently declassified for civilian production.  It generates an impact protection forcefield and has polarising protection to protect you automatically from any dazzling glare.  You will notice that you can hear my voice normally, too, though the audio will block out ear-damaging levels of noise, and there is
no
need to ‘speak like this!’’  He adopted a ludicrously earnest ‘talking through soundproof glass’ manner and Mako grinned appreciatively.

 ‘It feels fine,’ he said in his normal voice.  ‘Hardly as if I’m wearing it at all – you could forget you had this on, I guess, once you’re used to it.’

‘Yes, that’s very common.’  Rangi affirmed.  ‘People are always smacking their hand on the helmet because they go to scratch their ear or something without thinking.  But you do get used to them very quickly.  So, suit basics.’  He spent several minutes taking Mako through the suit functions and showed him how to recharge it at a damage control point.  To Mako’s relief, that was so straightforward even he could do it.

‘You
have
to suit up, of course, if an alert goes off which requires it,’  Rangi observed, ‘but if you are ever in any doubt about that, play safe and put a suit on, all right?  And do not, please, please, I beg and implore you,
ever
ignore an alert because you ‘thought it was just a drill’.’

‘Come on.’  Mako couldn’t help grinning at that.  ‘Even I’m not that dumb.’

‘Seriously, you would be
amazed
by some of the things passengers say,’ Rangi told him.  ‘I have friends who work on liners and some of the things they tell you beggar belief.  They swear its true that they never get through a voyage without at least one passenger complaining about safety drills and asking if they can turn off the alerts, and it is, apparently, quite common for them to ignore alerts entirely because, they say, they just thought it was a drill for the crew.  I know you won’t do that, really, but do just be aware that that is the all time number one passenger stupido.  In any situation where you are in any doubt about it all, put a suit on.  You can even just take one to practice getting in and out of it, that’s not a problem.  Just, as good practice, let the life support watchkeeper on the command deck know you’re doing that so they’ll log it as personal suit drill.  But how about practising taking it off, now?  Don’t worry, there’s time.  And if you are a normally constituted human being, even if you peed five minutes ago, putting on a spacesuit immediately makes you feel you want to go again.’