It had been a long time since Sidian had gone through the procedures necessary to start his ship’s systems manually. Trying to thumb through the instruction manual with the starsuit’s very thick gloves was frustrating him. He couldn’t seem to get to the next page and so he threw the thick, covered booklet to the deck.
Sidian sighed as he put an arm against the engine housing and rested his head on it. This only frustrated him further as the capaciousness of the starsuit’s helmet didn’t allow him to actually rest his head. He let out a slight growl as he whipped himself upright and turned to kick the booklet.
His lack of familiarity with the starsuit caused him to just skim the booklet with his boot, and when he looked at it more closely, he could see that it had turned to the page that he wanted. Literally, the final page of instructions for this procedure. He let out a short chuckle before crouching to pick it up.
Sidian sighed as he read the next instruction, but then soon got a chill down his spine as it was instructing him to open the cryon fuel line. His brow furrowed with concern, and he could feel his stomach starting to become upset.
“C’mon, Sidian,” he demanded of himself with confidence, “you can do this.” As confident as it sounded to him, it did little to motivate him. Even still, and even without the imminent rescue he was planning, he had no time to waste. He would already have to make a large roundabout maneuver just to get into the right trajectory and speed to attempt another slingshot around Kor’s Eye.
As infinitesimally small the risk is that something tragic could occur while simply turning a valve to open a fuel line, cryon always sends Sidian’s anxiety through the roof. It never fails to give him that tingly feeling throughout his extremities, and most times, upsets his stomach as well.
He even unconsciously put a hand to his stomach as he walked to the back end of the engine to turn the valve. He had to swallow hard to push back some reflux just as he put his hand on it. The junction itself is housed by an anti-cryogenic alloy. If the cryon were to escape, it could cause instantaneous frostbite.
Sidian took a deep breath as he turned the lever style valve handle ninety degrees to the open position. He was grateful that the automatic shut off sequence was able to close the valve. He had bought that emergency system from Zerk, and it was one of the rare times that he was suspect of its functionality.
With no mishaps, he sighed in relief and gave a quick thought about his father, remembering a time he had spent with him at a park. It would be a mundane experience to most, but it was rare for him to get that much time to spend with his dad.
He didn’t allow himself to reminisce for too long before continuing to finish up the procedure. He had but to prime the engine before turning a rather large crank that would start it up, and in turn, provide power to the other systems provided they didn’t get fried from the electromagnetic pulse.
Sidian headed back to the front of the engine and set the booklet down to put both hands on the crank handle. It seemed too easy to turn at first until it met with some resistance, and even with the rotary gears that amplify the power and speed, it took nearly all his might to get the crank up to a high enough speed to ignite the engine.
To his delight, though, it started on the first try. He half expected there to be some sparks flying, but there are no light bulbs to burst as most lighting utilizes a white liquid bio-luminescence farmed from algae that is found in the Vragor System. Alas, there were no foreign sounds, and for once, it seemed like things were going his way.
The cramped room soon filled with a deafening cacophony only slightly muted by the starsuit. It only added to his anxiety, but he didn’t allow it to affect him this time. He was quick to exit the engine bay to get back to the cockpit, anxious to assess the damage.
Going through this reminded him of the time that he was in the Tizhian System where the maren live. He was just leaving orbit of the second planet when their star had a rather sudden and large coronal mass ejection, and Sidian had delayed in turning on his shields. Except, that time, his ship was tumbling, and he hadn’t gotten his deck magnetized yet. He was definitely thankful for that this time around.
As Sidian reached the top of the ladder leading into the cockpit, the monitor was just turning on and several quiet alarms were beeping in tandem making a strange but patterned melody.
He quickly sat in the pilot’s seat and pulled the monitor and keyboard closer. The system was already doing a systems check as it was rebooting. He entered in some code functions to prioritize checking the life support system and smiled as he saw that it was at a nominal level and that the air had already been scrubbed.
Sidian relaxed in the chair with a sigh as he fumbled for the helmet release. He wouldn’t consider it a phobia, but really tight or crowded spaces raise his anxiety. He was grateful to breathe the air tinged with greasy metal. It was familiar to him, and it brought some much needed peace to his mind.
“System initialized,” his computer spoke, “Overall performance at seventy-one percent.”
“Well,” he responded, “seventy-one percent is nominal enough.” He then checked each system. Only two were offline: the artificial gravity generator and the waste management system. Neither are critical for flying, and so he ran through an abridged pre-flight check as the person in the other ship will no doubt have very little to no oxygen left, and that’s if they haven’t frozen to death already.
Even though life support had already warmed the environment to a comfortable enough temperature, Sidian got a chill thinking about how he had just narrowly escaped death yet again. Not something he would normally allow himself to think twice about, however, as he gets older, he finds that it happens more often.
He blames it a bit on Minxie with how she’s always talking about settling down somewhere and raising a bunch of kids. Something his mother always nags him about as well. He’s not looking forward to that rant.
With the half-ass pre-flight check done, he snatched the yokes and pulled them into a comfortable position and quickly got his ship turned in the right direction, as all of the ship’s had begun to be pulled in by the strong gravity of Kor’s Eye. He had to make a slight adjustment to get around the orkk shuttle that was headed his way, but now came the tricky part.
The other ship was tumbling faster, as though the pilot had tried to make a getaway at the last second. Sidian’s ship is not equipped with an attractor beam, and the ship is tumbling too fast to attempt locking on to it’s portage bay. There is a solution that Sidian has done before, but it does have risks.
There was a time when a fellow courier had had a critical systems failure, and they didn’t have time for an easier solution than for Sidian to write a program for the artificial pilot to match the tumble of the ship, and with it’s assistance, would allow Sidian to fly in closer and touch hulls to slow the ship’s tumble enough to lock bays.
It works, although, not without considerable damage to the outer layer of the hulls that are made of mostly overpriced alloys. Zerk believes that it’s a conspiracy to keep the average broodling from being able to afford their own starvessel. He claims that there is no scarcity of metals, and that proprietary alloys matter not when it comes to the singular process necessary to make them space-worthy.
Sidian doesn’t normally buy in to Zerk’s often outlandish theories, however, he has seen several forges that do the same exact process that creates the incredibly dense patina necessary to block neutrinos and other cosmic rays. He’s also seen some of the bigger mining operations and has discovered that there is quite a lot of ore to go around. Especially in the asteroid belt in the Greddeck System, which is the largest star system in Starbrood.
He set the auto-pilot on so that he could type and set up the program to execute from one of the triggers on a yoke. To make this work, he was going slow so that the reverse thrusters won’t affect the other ship, possibly making things more difficult. The artificial pilot will be using the inertia generator by itself, which is usually used in tandem with thrusters.
Sidian took a deep breath as he typed in, ‘execute’, and then pressed the, ‘New Line’, key. As the artificial pilot took over, slowly matching the speed and tumble of the other ship, he took the opportunity to do a close range scan to find that there was only one pilot; a female. There was some kind of interference keeping him from getting a more detailed scan to know if they’re still alive or not.
Sidian raised an eyebrow. Not that it’s unusual to see a female pilot, but she’s all alone in orkk space. He was nervous enough being here, and he would be even more surprised if she’s an orkk herself as it’s quite rare for them to be found outside of the house.
He was watching the monitor and could see that the ships were almost lined up for the approach. He could easily have the artificial pilot do this part as well, but his ego wanted this one. He’s been told that he has a surgeon’s touch. Sidian put his hands on the yokes and did not hesitate to begin simulating where the controls needed to be to maintain mirroring the other ship.
It didn’t take him long to find it and he immediately began to use the reverse thrusters. He didn’t use much thrust but a dorsal thruster was somehow getting powered and was causing him to spin on his z-axis. He had enough inertia to get into locking position, but he would have to make a last minute adjustment, but not before shutting down the malfunctioning thruster.
“Ten meters and closing.” The computer suddenly announced. Even though Sidian knew it would do that, it still made him jump a little. He took a deep breath to calm himself as he waited to be within five meters.
“Five meters until impact.”
Sidian watched his monitor closely, waiting for what he was calculating as the right moment before firing a keel thruster just enough to line up the ships all while maintaining mirroring it’s speed and tumble that was slowly accelerating.
There was a brief moment that he thought he had gotten it wrong just as the two ships met with a moderate collision as his auto-locking system engaged upon impact. He quickly typed in a command to get the ships outside of orbit. Sidian took another deep breath in relief and let it out slowly. He was a bit nervous, worried that they might already be dead.
It was only months ago that he had seen his first dead body, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. It had left him with a chill. He took a much deeper breath as he put on his gloves and helmet to prepare entering the other ship.
