Katie felt herself color. “Sorry, Mom, Dad,” she replied. “Thank you.”
“I wish you hadn’t felt it necessary,” her mom sighed and looked past Katie briefly. “Maybe we should have trusted you more and supported you better too. Water under the bridge again.”
“But?” Katie knew there was going to be a “but”.
“But people won’t necessarily be so understanding in the future,” her mother said. “Usually when you break trust, hard and fast rules, or laws like that there are consequences. Severe consequences. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am. Understood,” Katie answered.
“I’d have rather not mentioned it, but I’d have been failing you not to,” her mother said. Her father nodded in glum agreement.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“You’re welcome, dear,” her mother said. Her father smiled wryly. “Your ship leaves this afternoon?” her mother continued.
“Fourteen-thirty hours,” Katie confirmed. “I’m all packed to go. Going to have lunch with Calvin and then I’m off.”
“Well, we won’t keep you,” her mother said. “Love, dear.”
“Love, Katie,” her father echoed.
“Love, Mom. Love, Dad,” Katie replied.
And they broke the connection.
* * *
Lunchtime. It’d be Calvin’s last lunch with Katie for years, he suspected.
She was going to be buying the burgers, fries, and milkshake to share this time. The “just like in an Earth diner” milkshake. Calvin liked them, even though Katie thought it was some sort of snotty scam.
It occurred to Calvin that Katie would soon have the chance to see what a real Earth milkshake made from real, fresh cow’s milk was like. He’d have to remember to ask her to write and tell him what they were like.
Calvin would’ve also liked to have asked her how things were going with her parents. He didn’t quite dare. He wasn’t clear on the details of the chicanery she’d gotten up to in her efforts to expose Guy Boucher’s smuggling. But he had a feeling she’d abused her power over the Dawn Threader’s accounts. If so, her parents had forgiven her. Forgiven her to the extent of allowing her the funds to pay for the meal they were about to have. And to the extent of paying for her trip to Earth and her stay there prior to reporting to the Academy.
Calvin’s parents had never said as much, but he knew they thought Katie’s parents’ hands off approach to raising Katie had verged on neglect. All the same, it was obvious they loved her and were willing to do all they could for her.
That was good.
He would miss her. Here Katie was going off to her future as an independent person, and he’d never given the issue of what he planned to do as an adult serious thought. He guessed he’d been thinking he’d hitch his wagon to Katie’s, and follow her where ever she went. Hadn’t thought that through. That wasn’t happening. Oddly, he felt a sense of relief.
It seemed harsh to think it explicitly, but he figured now that friends, family, and loved ones would always take second place in Katie’s life. Second place to whatever mission she thought she was on.
It wasn’t that she was a bad person. It was that she had priorities.
He wouldn’t bring it with up her, but she was leaving her parents somewhat in the lurch. The two of them couldn’t keep running the Dawn Threader on their own. He’d have to talk to his folks about it. Maybe he could talk the Kincaids into giving him an internship as a crew member or something. Him and one or two of his sisters, perhaps. That way it wouldn’t be like they were hiring strangers as crew.
It was a whole new world, and he had a lot of thinking to do.
He was still grappling with the enormity of it all when Katie appeared.
“Hi!” She gave him a big grin as she sat down. “The works?”
Calvin grinned back. It didn’t take that much effort. “Sure. Bacon cheeseburger, large fries, and a large chocolate milkshake to share.”
“Sounds great.” She waved the waitress over. In contrast to the last time they’d been here, the waitress appeared without significant delay and wearing a warm smile.
Once they’d ordered Katie looked at Calvin. “Wow. It’s really happening.”
“Don’t imagine you’ll be getting back often,” Calvin said.
Katie made an effort to look sad. She was too excited to make it convincing. “Nope, Space Force will reimburse us all the costs of my travel to the Academy. Heck, all the costs of my outfitting even. There’s a chance they’ll even pay for my acclimatization period. But not trips home, even if there was time.” She paused.
Calvin took the opportunity to get a word in edge-wise. With Katie wound up, he wasn’t going to get many of them. “That’s very generous all the same.”
Katie shook her head slowly, like she was baffled or annoyed or both. “It is. Isn’t such a big expense for most candidates, and to be frank, most of them are well enough off to afford it anyways. Only I guess from what the Commander has said the Academy wants it to look like it’s open to every one equally even if they’re not well off or live out in the boonies.” She frowned. “Politics,” she said with disgust.
Calvin had never been much interested in politics himself. His parents made a point of discussing them, both the general civic kind and the office politics kind, at the dinner table. They said being a responsible adult meant paying attention to politics. Paying attention and considering them even if you didn’t actively engage in them. Guess it was getting to be the time both he and Katie needed to start paying attention. “They’re part of life,” he said.
“Yeah, and if I want to make a difference, I know I’ll have to get involved,” Katie said. “At least as a cadet and junior officer I'm supposed to look apolitical. From what the Commander says, I’ll have to start paying attention right away because I have a lot of catching up to do. Guess politics is like cleaning the sanitary facilities, it needs to be done, but it’s not clean or pleasant.”
“A fine topic for the dinner table,” Calvin said deadpan.
Katie giggled. Calvin thought he could maybe count the number of times he’d seen Katie giggle on one hand. “Like sports, I guess. Everyone has a team, and there’s lots of complex detail to argue about. Oh, Calvin, I don’t know anything about Earth sports and I’m told everybody has to participate in them at the Academy. I was so focused on getting in I never thought about what it would involve.”
“Not much zero-Gee racquetball on Earth, I guess.”
Katie looked blank as she considered the issue. “Nope, swimming, football, basketball, and track and field mostly, I think.”
“I’d give that some thought,” Calvin said.
Their food came at that point and the conversation languished as they both ate and considered the enormity of what Katie faced.
After they were down to the milkshake they were sharing, Calvin was the first to speak. “You’re going to be incredibly busy, if not completely overwhelmed,” he said.
“Looks that way,” Katie agreed. “I’ll make a point of staying in touch. Short messages periodically, at least. You do the same.”
“I will.”
“Good.”
“I’ll keep an eye on your parents, too. Don’t imagine they’ll be willing to tell you if it gets rough for them.”
Katie grew solemn. “Nope, Pollyanna’s their role model. Worries me. Appreciate it.”
“Maybe me and some of my sister’s will beg them for an apprenticeship. Sell it like they’re doing us a favor. Truthfully, they would be even though they need the help too.”
“I hope that works out.” Katie sighed. “I don’t want them running my life. I don’t want to run their lives. I do worry.”
Calvin knew altogether too well that Katie would make hard choices in order to pursue what she thought was important. He refrained from pointing that out. “You have plans to do something with your life that requires going away,” he said. “We all understand that. We all wish you the best.”
Katie smiled sadly. “Thanks, Calvin, you’re a great friend.”
“I try.”
The milkshake was gone. The waitress came, and Katie paid the bill. She didn’t have that long before she needed to board her transport, The Solar Star. She didn’t want to be late. “Guess that’s it,” she said, standing.
Calvin stood too and took a step towards her. She gave him a hard, sharp hug.
“Miss you,” she said.
“You, too,” he answered.
And with that she turned and left.
* * *
They were finally on their way.
Katie had mixed feelings.
They were leaving Ceres. As much as the Dawn Threader, Ceres had been Katie’s home. Not one she’d liked much, but still home. The place she knew. The place she had understood after a fashion. The place she was now leaving and wasn’t going to see again for years, if ever.
The dining room and lounge of The Solar Star was a beautiful space. Clean and bright, it was capable of masquerading as any number of things it wasn’t.
A metaphor for much of life, Katie couldn’t help thinking. She’d thought she’d understood Ceres well enough. As well as she understood the maintenance routines and safety protocols on the Dawn Threader.
She’d been wrong. Her lack of understanding had almost cost her her life a couple of times. Almost cost her her chance of going to the Academy several more times. Now that she had time to think back on it, she was appalled.
There had to be a lesson or lessons to be learned. She’d thought there was one right of thinking about things. One reality, that once you understood it, you could manipulate at will. Only it turned out everybody had their own reality that they only partly shared with others.
The lovely, pleasant space she was now sitting in while watching Ceres dwindle in size was a good illustration of that fact.
Most of the Solar Star’s passengers were earth-born bureaucrats of some stripe, and their families. They’d call the sides of the lounge walls, a ceiling, and a floor. Not port side, starboard side, aft, forward, top, and bottom side like a spacer would. Certainly not the bulkheads, deckhead, and deck labels that an old-time sailor, of the sort Katie so liked to read about, would have used.
For the lives they lived, each point of view made sense.
As did taking the illusion the “wall-sized” screens on those sides projected at face value did. The screens could and would project cityscapes and great natural views from Earth, but right now they were projecting the illusion of being in an observation lounge in a spaceship steadily pulling away from Ceres.
Not entirely inaccurate.
Not if you were willing to overlook the minor facts that The Solar Star had no large transparent viewports in its hull and that the whole lounge was spinning around the central axis of the ship. This last being necessary to the illusion of there being gravity in space.
The idea that what was illusion and what was true was relative and depended on who you were, and your circumstances was not one Katie was comfortable with. She was well educated enough to know theoretical physicists might disagree with her, but as far as Katie was concerned there was a real world. Not one where everything relative and everything depended on who was observing it and where from.
Only it was glaringly obvious she needed to do more by way of taking different points of view into consideration.
She’d unintentionally hurt the people who loved her the most. Her parents for sure, and she still worried about them, but Calvin too. Maybe Sam also, but mainly she suspected she’d frustrated him with her obtuseness. Not much better.
It would have helped to have better understood even the people neutral towards or hostile to her. She’d wrecked the lives of the crew of the Sand Piper. Was that fair? She didn’t know. However, she’d not even considered hinting to them they needed to be more careful or putting off making accusations of smuggling until after her return and further investigation. She’d leaped to doing what she was convinced was right without any consideration of all the consequences.
The Commander she’d paid a bit more attention to because she’d realized she needed his endorsement. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected she could have done better with him. If nothing else, she might have learned something by trying to understand him better.
If she’d made a better effort to understand Billy and his dad she might have sensed something was up with them much sooner. Even bad people aren’t just machines you pull levers on.
So, yeah, it’d worked out. Mostly. It could have gone better.
She was on her way to Earth and the Academy.
It was the first step in a long journey she’d planned out for herself.
It’d been a bigger, much more awkward step than she’d planned on.
Wasn’t likely the rest of the steps on the trip were going to be any easier. She needed to learn all the lessons she could.
She also needed to look forward. Much of what she’d known so far wasn’t going to apply on Earth or at the Academy.
It was going to be a long journey.
But she was on her way.
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Appendix A: Scout Courier Operations
Scout Couriers are each supposed to have three crews assigned which take turns deploying.
Due to the restricted quarters and lack of sustained gravity each crew gets one day leave for each day of deployment, this is in addition to time spent on "shore" tasks like training, courses, admin, mission planning, debriefings, base duties, and maintenance. Crews spend well less than half of their time deployed and usually less than a third of it. Deployments for scouting range from around a week to three weeks. Courier runs are much more variable running from less than a day to up to over three months if there's a need to make one to an outer system location.
Each crew has five members, two watches consisting of a pilot and tech officer, and a captain (by position the slot normally being filled by a crew member with the rank of senior lieutenant)
Watches are twelve hours on and twelve hours off with two person watches (1 pilot and 1 tech officer), the captain's schedule is floating.
Everybody is required to spend one hour a day in the exercise pods which they do at two standard times a day normally (usually ongoing watch exercises during last hour of off coming watch) due to the hassle that deploying the exercise pods represents.
Eight hours of sleep (in tube) is mandatory. The remaining 180 minutes in the day is split into roughly 45 minute sections. Main meal (dinner; lunch is eaten on watch), personal time, bed prep time (use facilities, wash, change clothes), and after sleep time, morning prep (toiletries, dress, breakfast)
Note: the Captain's routine is a little more flexible he/she floats monitoring the other crew, and taking up any slack their tight schedules don't allow for.
Despite the tight schedule the actual watches tend to be extremely boring particularly for the pilots and it's a constant challenge for the captains to keep crew engaged and alert.
Note this is a much higher manning level and more stringent routine than that followed by civilian ships. Also most Space Force officers are Earth, or at least Mars, born, unlike civilian spacers who tend to be born to spacer or Belt families.
Appendix B: The Sand Piper, a Bird Class Scout Courier
Crew:
Has a five person crew (captain, two pilots, two sensor/comms/weapons/engineering officers)
Has room for additional two passengers in two sleeping tubes with toilet tube and wash tube.
No grossly fat or even just large people need apply, tubes are too constricting just under meter diameter
Captain gets dedicated toilet & wash, plus, "office" tube.
Layout:
Approx 22 meters long
3 meter "bridge section" with stations for all 5 crew plus one passenger
/supernumerary station.
Bridge is special section (like snake head with transparent nose) ahead of main hull spindle
Main hull spindle is 16 meters long, has the shape of a cylinder with an octagonal cross section,
and has an 8 meter outer diameter and an 2 1/2 meter internal one,
Main hull contains:
3 meter living and utility section, weighted table and bench section can accommodate 4 persons at a time
Main air lock, emergency and EVA gear storage, Meal prep station, beverage prep station, meal storage bin, Access to rail gun interior portion and rail gun ammo storage bin.
5 meter cabin equivalents section. 3 cabin eqv consist of a pair of sleeping tubes, toilet tube, and wash tube, plus some minimal storage for clothing and personal effects, 1 cabin eqv for captain has only one sleeping tube plus an "office" tube.
2 meter exercise pod access and internal air lock section lies aft
Hull outside of living and cabin sections is bare except for antennas, sensors and maneuvering jets, and two exercise pods on cable containing booms that extend from 4 m to 8 m. Total radius for centrifugal boom is 24 m.
External fuel tanks aft of exercise pod section add two meters to girth of ship there.
Immediately aft of the exercise pod section there is 3 meters of storage for cargo when operating as courier.
Finally there is an airtight door and 3 meters of engineering space, consisting of control panels, accesses to ship's machinery, auxiliary machinery, and storage for spare parts and consumables. This is the last section within the main hull spindle.
Attached to the aft of the spindle are the main engines, consisting of five anti-matter catylzed fusion engines, they're mounted in a rectangular box like mounting structure with nozzles this takes up another 3 meters.
Katie Kincaid Candidate: Katie Kincaid One Page 23