Outcast

by Guerin Zand

  “Oww!”

  “For once, could you try not to be such an asshole, Guerin?”

  “Where’s the fun in that, Milly? Besides, how would the rest of the station know we’d arrived?”

  “Oh, trust me. The whole station knows you’re here now. As the station’s Council representative, and your host, I’ve just about heard from the entire population of the station about your arrival. Come on. I’ll show you the way to your quarters.”

  “What? You don’t think I’m smart enough to find my own way?”

  “Guerin! If we had armed guards onboard this station I would have sent them. Someone needs to make sure you arrive at your quarters without starting a riot, a fire, or whatever dumb shit stunt you may have planned.”

  “Now you’ve hurt my feelings, Milly.”

  “Yea, right.” Milly reached down and grabbed Gamma’s hand. My little daughter was six years old now, but she looked older, maybe nine or ten since her initial growth was accelerated by the Alacians. “Let’s get you settled, Gamma. Maybe you can talk some sense into your father for me. It’s obvious he has problems understanding adults.”

  I ignored the comment as Milly led us to the nearest transportation tube. We all boarded a car and zipped off to the construction module. It was an average sized construction module used to make smaller ships like the shuttles. It was a 2,000-mile cube like the habitat module I visited on Bob’s station.

  “We’ve fitted the construction module we’re heading to with housing quarters on the top level for your stay. There is also a large conference room up there where we’ll hold the classroom sessions for your training. You might actually want to pay attention, Guerin, since it appears your piloting skills could use some help.”

  “What are you talking about, Milly. I docked that baby all on my own without a single scratch. Not bad for the first time I ever brought a shuttle into a spaceport.”

  “Dear God. That explains a lot.” Of course, she rolled her eyes to add emphasis to the insult. I simply shrugged my shoulders and ignored her.

  “Your quarters are pretty much identical to what you had back on the ship, Guerin, but with views of the construction area. Your family will be staying in the same quarters, including Prima. We have separate quarters for Huiliang, Steve, and Diane. There’s not much in the way of anything else in this module. You do have food synthesizers and beverage stations in your quarters as well as in some of the break areas. If you want to dine out, you’ll have to leave the construction module. The module next to it, on the side your quarters are located, is a typical habitat module as you call it. There is plenty to do over there including a lot of fun places for you to play, Gamma.”

  We arrived at our destination. As we stepped out of the transportation car our new cruisers were floating out in the middle section right in front of us. We were a little above the ships and we looked down at the distinctive planform of my first starship design.

  There had been more than a few design changes since my original drawings. Milly had taken my suggestion and offered a design challenge to the Collective engineering schools. They had the limitation of having to use the standard shuttle main internals, the power plant, drive, environmental, and control systems. They were allowed to design the hull from scratch and based their designs on my initial drawings. The teams were in constant talks with me over the stream to help in each of their designs. The winning design was chosen by the Collective lead design engineers.

  The final design was not the original cylinder of a shuttle with a new nose cone and wings attached. The cruiser was what we would call a blended body design with a similar appearance to a cranked-arrow delta.

  The overall length was only 20 meters longer than a shuttle at 320 meters. The center fuselage now had an elliptical, versus the standard shuttle’s circular cross-section. The height of the fuselage was still a constant 50 meters along the majority of its length, but eccentricity increased from 0.4166 at the nose to 0.7454 at the tail. For those of you mathematically challenged readers that meant the width of the fuselage at the start of the newly added nose cone was 55 meters and 75 meters at the tail of the starship. The elliptical fuselage blended smoothly into the ship's wing. This elliptical shape in the main fuselage resulted in the increased cargo and passenger capacity of the Zand class cruiser. It could carry 28 crew / passengers comfortably, not counting the bridge crew. There was, of course, the new command bridge, galley, mess, and lounge additions.

  The maximum wingspan at the tail of the cruiser was 180 meters. The tips of the wings curved slightly downward from the center. Two 35-meter sections of the trailing edge of the wing, one connected on each side of the fuselage, were articulated control surfaces that could be oriented independently to control pitch and roll in atmospheric flight. They could also be canted up to a maximum of 45 degrees to provide horizontal stability as well as yaw control. In their default neutral position, they were indistinguishable from the rest of the blended wing. It was a planform design I had come up with as part of my senior design project in college.

  Obviously, you needed a large area to land a starship this size on a planet, but the gravity drives allowed you to set it down vertically. You didn’t need a long runway. There were plenty of places on Earth, the main runway at the Kennedy Space Center, Edwards AFB, Groom Lake, and many others, with enough room to set this size craft down. The spaceports on all the planets I had visited also had room for something of this size. Although you could land a Collective shuttle on a planet, it wasn’t something that was normally done. They’d use transit portals to send people and cargo to and from a planet’s surface.

  Part of this ship’s design was the ability to disguise itself as an Earth ship and hide the Collective technology. That was why we added the Earth designed star drives, and why we planned on regularly landing the cruisers on a planet’s surface. We had set up strict guidelines for the use of transit portals. Portals would only be used in an emergency, to quickly remove people in danger on a planet’s surface, or when we wanted to get people in and out without being detected. They’d be used for long-distance travel and transition our cargo ships to distant locations, but only outside of a system to avoid detection of this technology.

  When Diane’s star drive was activated, our ships were undetectable since they no longer actually existed in normal spacetime. There was no way for any observer to determine the actual speeds that drive was capable of. It’s also why I wanted to know if we could use a transit portal while the ship's star drive was active. For now, we determined that would not be a good idea. That meant we would have to return to normal spacetime before using the portal drive. This left a small probability of this technology being detected at these times.

  “BITCHIN!” I cried out.

  “I’m glad you approve.” I turned to see Diane walk up from behind us.

  “Oh, definitely. What do you think, Steve?”

  “Time to kick the tires and light the fires!”

  “Hold on you two.” Milly’s tone of voice had changed to something that eerily sounded like my mother’s. “They’re still running system checks on those ships. You both need some time reading up on the operations manual and in the classroom. You can’t just…”

  “Oh please, Milly. It’s nothing more than a slightly modified shuttle and I already know how to pilot one of those obviously.”

  “Well, there are a few controllers who would like to argue that point with you.”

  “A bunch of sticks in the mud. I’ll admit, we still have a few details to finish up. You need to paint the name on my ship first. Ryvius. I also want the name underneath in Japanese as well.”

  “DAD!” Maria’s eyes lit up. “That’s perfect!”

  Everyone else looked confused by the name.

  Milly decided she should ask if she wanted to know. “What’s so special about that name, Guerin?” Maria decided to answer for me.

  “Infinite Ryvius. It was the title of a Japanese sci-fi anime that my mother used
to watch with me when I was a little child. It was how she helped me to learn Japanese. We’d often sit around as a family and watch the show over and over again. It was my favorite anime of all time when I was little! The spaceship’s name was Black Ryvius, if I remember correctly.” Maria couldn’t hold back showing everyone how happy that name made her.

  “Well, since it’s painted black, I thought adding black to the ship’s name would be a bit redundant.”

  Maria came over and gave me the biggest hug I’d had from her in a long time. She kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you so much, Dad. That name never even crossed my mind when I was thinking of names for the ship. I’m so glad you remembered.”

  “How could I not remember? We only watched that show non-stop for about a year or so.”

  “We didn’t watch it that much, Dad.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “We have to get copies of the show for Gamma to watch.”

  “Already ahead of you, daughter. I downloaded them to Gamma’s node before we left the Earth ship.”

  “Have you decided on a name for your ship, Steve?”

  “Not yet, Milly. I guess I’ll start working on that.”

  “Well, just let me know when you decide. Tomorrow I’ve arranged for a tour. You can check out all the specifics then. We made the modifications to your suite as you requested, Maria.”

  “Wait a minute. What modifications? What suite?” These people had the nerve to make modifications to my design without checking with me?

  “Seriously, Dad? You expected me to live in those quarters you had set aside for me? What’s wrong with me adding my own touch to my quarters?”

  “Well, you should have had the design changes to MY ship approved by me first. And what’s this suite nonsense?”

  “Whatever, Dad. Besides, it’s already done, you heard Milly. When you design your next starship, I’ll be sure to inform you of any changes I make.”

  I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to tour the Ryvius. I don’t think I was the only one. “Couldn’t we take a tour today, Milly? It’s early morning here and I don’t want to sit around all day thinking about tomorrow’s tour.”

  “Ok. Why don’t we get you all settled, and we can have breakfast first? Can you wait that long, Guerin?”

  “I guess.” I pouted, and Milly chuckled. I didn’t care what she thought. It was Christmas day and I wanted to open my present NOW! We grabbed a transport pad to take us up to the temporary living quarters.

  After everyone unpacked, we met at my residence for a quick breakfast. Milly was right. Our quarters were identical to the ones on the Earth ship but without the glass windows in the back. The front did have windows overlooking the construction area and our new cruisers. I liked that. I hurried through my meal and impatiently waited for everyone else to finish so we could start the tour. Finally, everyone finished with breakfast and we walked out the front entrance. I grabbed Gamma and lifter her in my arms. Even at her current size she still expected me to carry her everywhere. We boarded the transport pad that was waiting. Milly piloted the pad and we entered the cargo bay of the Ryvius through the opening at the top back of the fuselage.

  We walked down the main hallway on the upper level through the cargo hold until we came to a door on a bulkhead. The door opened to reveal the crew lounge. It was exactly how I imagined it, plus some. Instead of a moonroof and a few viewing windows, the entire top of the lounge was one solid piece of their diamond glass.

  “Ok, I wasn’t expecting this. When did they make this change to my design?”

  “Everyone agreed that a moonroof didn’t really make much sense. They could just as easily make the entire top section of the lounge out of what you call diamond glass. It was no more difficult than making the outer domes on the main ships. They also thought you’d like it better, so they wanted to surprise you with this change.”

  “What about blast doors?”

  “You don’t need blast doors, Guerin. This material is as durable and strong as the rest of the ship’s hull. Plus, the entire ship is protected by the same type of energy field used on the main ships as well. And,” Milly put her hand on a controller on the wall and the entire glass surface became opaque and the interior lighting came on. “You can filter out the outside light to any level you desire. It will automatically dim if you decided to head to close to a star to keep you from doing something stupid, like burning out your retinas. It will also prevent harmful radiation from reaching the occupants of the lounge while letting in enough UV light to get a good tan if you like.”

  Ok, now I wished I had known about this. I would have asked them to make room for a pool up here. I didn’t mention it to Milly. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. The lounge was fully furnished, and the bar was just waiting to be stocked. I cocked my head and threw Milly a questioning look.

  “Don’t worry, Guerin. The dock crew has already packed up the Vengeance liquor supply and they will be moving it over with the rest of the provisions before you leave with the Ryvius.”

  “Good. I spent several years collecting all that booze from around the universe. I was worried those dock workers were going to throw themselves a little party at my expense.”

  Milly just shook her head once more and tossed in an eye roll for good measure. “Come on. Let’s go see your new bridge.”

  She led us to the forward part of the lounge where there was an elevator off to the side. We headed down to the main level and walked forward down the hallway to another bulkhead. The double doors slid open to reveal the command bridge. I stood there for a while and just took in the view. The forward windshield was made in the same way as the dome on the lounge, and with all the same features, minus the tanning option. We could look out at the other construction projects in the module. The windshield was one solid piece of the alien diamond glass with a 270-degree panoramic view.

  As we entered the bridge I said, “Captain on deck.” I tossed Gamma into the Captain’s chair in the center of the bridge. I walked around checking out the different stations on the bridge. I then looked back at Milly.

  “Admit it, Milly. THIS IS COOL!”

  “Ok, you’re right. It’s very nice. Are you happy?”

  “YES!”

  “Actually, a lot of people have been interested in this project. Once we got the students involved it sort of became a big deal on the station. They took a lot of pride in this design and they really enjoyed working on it. It was a big change from their normal studies. We’ve had more than a few inquiries about whether we planned on making more than just these two cruisers.”

  “So? Are you planning on making more cruisers?”

  “Well, we don’t plan on replacing the shuttles with them. We are giving thought to making a version for crews that will be spending long periods out on surveys and other research studies. It would make staying away from a main ship, or station, more comfortable in those cases. We figure with a little redesign it might make sense.”

  “Plus, it would be a lot cooler than packing them all into those boring shuttles, right?” I always enjoyed these ‘I told you so’ moments.

  Milly ignored me. “Come on. Let’s check out the Captain’s accommodations”

  We exited the bridge through a door in the bulkhead located at the aft right corner of the bridge. This put us in a small office area where we could hold meetings, and I could surf the stream for porn in privacy. The Captain’s desk was towards the back of the room with several seats in front of the desk for visitors. Behind the desk, there was a wall with a door that led to the Captain's quarters. There was a large bedroom with plenty of closet space. In the back was a good-sized bathroom with a nice jacuzzi tub and walk-in shower. There was a door on the side that led to the main hallway for this level. Another door in the back corner led to the Captain’s mess. There was room for twelve people to dine there and again, off to the side, a door led to the outer hallway. In the back, a door led to the main galley.

  We entered the galley and the
first thing I found was the wood-fired pizza oven in one corner. I smiled a big smile and Milly just shook her head. At the back of the galley to one side was the double doors that led out to the main hallway and the open area that was the regular crew mess. There was also a dumbwaiter to transfer food from the galley up to the new lounge.

  So, you may wonder what was on the other side of the hallway from the Captain’s suite. In my design, there were three oversized crew quarters for the primary bridge crew. In this new design, oh well.

  Maria rushed across the hallway, barely taking time to check out the new mess hall with the rest of us. She opened the door across from the entrance to the Captain’s quarters in the main hallway. Her eyes brightened, and a big smile appeared on her face.

  “PERFECT!”

  I walked over to see what had my daughter so excited. I looked into the room and I saw the change they’d made to my design behind my back. The first room in my daughter’s suite could only be described as a cross between a living area and a lounge. There were couches and some very comfortable chairs set around this entrance. On the far side of the room was a dining area with a table, one larger than in the Captain’s mess I might add, along with a wet bar, food replicator, and beverage stations. Facing the front of the ship there was a wall with French doors leading into the bedroom, bath, and dressing areas. That’s right, she had a walk-in closet / dressing room that was as big as the Captain’s office. Her bedroom and bathroom were about the same size as the Captain’s.

  If all that wasn’t bad enough, you had to see how it was decorated to realize just how overboard she’d gone. It was like a princess’ room you’d see in some fairytale movie with a giant four post bed and all the frilly nonsense. There was a small seating area with chaise lounge, from that same movie, covered in stuffed animals. A giant soaker tub sat in the middle of the bathroom with candles and candle stands mounted all over the walls. For Christ’s sake. If you lit all those candles you’d be pumping out more BTU than my pizza oven. With all the mirrors in the room, it would probably look like you were in the heart of a star while soaking in that tub.