To Touch the Stars (Founding of the Federation Book 2)

by Chris Hechtl

  “Well, maybe we'll talk more, catch up when I get up there,” Amelia said.

  “Um …” Isley blinked and stopped pacing her tiny room. “Come again?” she asked, turning to the camera in confusion. Finally it caught up with her as Amelia grinned and nodded. Her eyes widened. “You don't mean …”

  “That's right. Slow girl, you are slowing down,” Amelia teased maliciously. Isley snorted. “Yeah, blame it on the lack of caffeine if you insist,” Amelia said, waving a familiar excuse away. “I'm coming up there; I was hired on to help in the Neo Clinic. Hannah gave a good reference as did a couple of my teachers. The professors and staff at Mars General are sad to see me go, but I'm not. I'll miss them, especially Ezra and Emi, but I'm going onward and upward.”

  “Congratulations!” Isley said with a grin. She grabbed a teddy bear and hugged it. “This is just a stand in. When you get here, you'll get the hug bruises for real!”

  “Glad I'm a medic I guess,” Amelia replied dryly. Both ladies chuckled. “I won't be cramping your style?”

  “Are you kidding me? I miss having someone other than Hannah to chat with. She's so busy half the damn time we can never get our schedules to meet up …” Isley shook her head. “I'll love it, kiddo.”

  “Good. I'm not sure yet, but I may need to bunk with you for a day or two until they get my room straightened out,” Amelia said. Isley froze then shrugged. She'd dealt with Hannah; she could deal with living with Amelia as long as it was temporary.

  “When are you coming up?”

  “In, oh, fifteen minutes or so,” Amelia said, looking at the clock. Her eyes widened comically. “Which means I've got to scoot! Later cous!” she said hastily as the connection terminated.

  Isley snorted, then shook her head, hugging the teddy bear once more. She stroked it, then got up and went to work cleaning for her guest. She didn't have a lot of time; she had to be on shift in … she looked at the clock on the wall and frowned. “Frack, an hour. I can't even pick her up at the port! Damn you cous, you would give me last minute notice,” she sighed in frustration, ruffling her hair. She shot an email to Hannah to see if she could be there for Amelia and then jumped in the shower to get ready for work.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Bret Castill frowned thoughtfully as he worked. He loved his job, even more now that he was in the yard proper. He was a ship fitter, technically still a journeyman, but he was working his way up the chain of command fast. Diagnostic and repair was a tricky department. Not everyone liked being in it but he did.

  He'd thought he'd done well at station 11, but apparently he had been a bit too successful. Too much zeal or so the old hands had told him. He'd quadrupled their output which had made the others look bad … which was why he'd been transferred. At least they'd taken his wishes into consideration and transferred him to the yard instead of one of the Bespin gas mining platforms the company had orbiting Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn. Or worse, been stuck in some dead end maintenance job on a station like the L-5s or the one out beyond the heliopause of the system.

  He was pretty sure his old bosses had thought he'd fall on his face but so far he was holding his own. Not without a lot of retraining, but he'd gotten through it. His edict memory had helped a lot in that regard. You really could teach old dogs new tricks. Or make old yard dogs, he thought with a slight quiver of his lips.

  The joke was on them; scuttlebutt said station 11 had changed hands. Just about everyone had been transferred out. Apparently corporate was consolidating its stuff in the L-5 or Mars and beyond. Corporate had also sold its interests in the lunar mining interests to the Chinese. Apparently they were liquidating everything near Earth or at least most of it. He wouldn't be too surprised if they eventually did away with the L-5 stations. He'd seen the stations they were building in Mars orbit. Two new ones, both rocks that were being inflated into Bernall sphere habitats. He counted his blessings that he wasn't mixed up in that rat race.

  He'd had a hand on Icarus, but now that she was buttoning up he'd been transferred to retrain as a communications fitter for the Prometheus. That hadn't lasted long though; once the powers that be had figured out he had a special thing for diagnostics, he'd been transferred again to his current posting. He'd enjoyed Isley's company while on Icarus; she'd helped him settle in and let him burn off some of his loneliness by going out to the bars or playing sports. She'd made a couple half drunken passes at him, but he'd refused to take her up on her offers. They'd parted as friends, which he considered a good thing. But now things were looking up; he had a couple of the ladies in mind for the dance coming up Friday night.

  The yard was much like groundside wet navy yards, but in three dimensions. A wet navy yard was laid out in linear fashion, spread out in wings as blocks were constructed and then fed into larger assembly areas, and then passed on to the next staging area to be assembled into still larger blocks, and then grand blocks, which were sections of the ship.

  He could safely say he'd worked just about every position down the line. When he'd first come on board, he'd done his time on the factory floor, feeding the machine as they called it. Workers, human, neo, and robotic fed material into the various machinery and then pulled parts out the back end. Since he'd been so picky on station 11, he'd been in quality control, testing everything. It hadn't been a fun experience; it had been dull, repetitive, and boring. Fortunately the computers did most of the work for him.

  Fabricators, 3-D printers, even the newest generation of nanofactories were employed to build the starships. He wondered why they took so long to build Icarus; after all, they'd built enough parts to build three Daedaluses apparently …. He'd thought about it for some time until he'd asked his foreman at the time. Joe had explained that the ship had evolved since it had been constructed and a lot of the parts were out of date. Some had been sold off to other companies, others had been recycled. He was pretty sure some penny pinching accountant somewhere was having a tizzy over all that wasted money.

  The newly made and finished parts were either stockpiled in warehouses to be drawn on by the block builders or sent directly to them if they had run out. He hated when they ran out or ran into a problem. That meant they pressured him to give everything a free pass, which he had stubbornly refused to do. It was better to get it right the first time than turn a blind eye on something and get bit on the ass when it had to be torn out. He'd heard stories about such things.

  When he'd gotten stale, his foreman had shifted assignments to put him on quality control of the metals coming in from the orbital smelters. Some of the metal was destined for the electronics, but a lot of it went through rolling mills, stamper presses, and cutting tables to be formed into the various pieces of equipment and bulkheads. He'd quickly found himself in over his head. Metallurgical chemistry had been way over his head, and he'd known it.

  He'd moved on to setting up jigs for wiring harnesses, then on to welding briefly before he'd ended up in the assembly room. He'd had a couple close calls. The guys and robots manning the equipment that moved the big pieces around were safety conscious, but they were on tight deadlines. He'd gotten out of there after his third close call and never regretted it.

  Working in the grand block assembly area had required that he wore a suit. That hadn't been fun, but it had let him finally see all the hard work starting to come together. And then now, his new job in the fitting yard, making the final connections and fixing any teething problems that inevitably cropped up.

  “You got the wiring to the galley fixed yet?” Joe, his gorilla boss, asked through his radio.

  “It was a couple of connections that hadn't been made. All fixed and tested,” Bret replied.

  “Good. Don't dilly dally. We need to sort out the fiber optic lines to the port data center. Some idiot cut them a centimeter short and also somehow splintered one of the cables in the process of plugging them in.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Afraid not. And to add insult to injury he rubbed the markings off
when he installed them, so we need to go over every connection by hand from both ends,” the gorilla sighed.

  “And I got picked for this? Wait, who found the problem?”

  “Bill. But he's gone off shift,” the gorilla replied, sounding annoyed. “The bastard just dropped it in my lap. So, you know the rule, shit rolls downhill. Catch!”

  “Lucky me,” Bret muttered as he pulled up the deck plan on his tablet and then turned as he oriented himself. He stepped back and flattened himself out of the way of a couple of workers moving equipment in. It looked like furniture wrapped in plastic. A girl came darting past as well, jumping over the knee knockers and dodging through the exposed piping. Bret flicked the deck panel down to protect the valve assembly near the foot. She stepped on the plate making it clang then kept going.

  “You're welcome,” he said, shaking his head. “Hey wait, shit may roll downhill, but we're in a space station!” He growled.

  The gorilla was still on the line. He chuffed a laugh then disconnected the circuit.

  “Joy,” Bret said with another quiver of his lips. Diagnostic and repair, his specialty, he thought as he checked his tool belt and then whistled happily as he moved out.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Amelia settled in rather comfortably, more comfortably than Hannah had, Hannah thought jealously. Of course the younger woman had an advantage; she had been working with Neos since she'd started on her path to medical training.

  “It's really too bad Isley can't be here for this,” Amelia said as she sat Indian style eating her ice cream. “Of course, she'd want us to eat her share and tell her all about it later,” she said with a grin.

  “Sure she would,” Hannah drawled, chuckling.

  “Boy, this brings back some memories,” Amelia said.

  “What, all of a year or so ago?” Hannah teased, poking her.

  Amelia snorted. “No, further back. I had pig tails and was a general pain in the ass to Isley while she babysat us. Of course I didn't know it at the time,” she said with a grimace. “I'd been told I was her helper. They even paid me.”

  “Sneaky,” Hannah replied with a grin as she cleaned Yorrick's face.

  “How'd you get this duty anyway? You'd think the family would have I don't know, a whole staff or something,” Amelia said, indicating the modest Lagroose suite around them.

  “I volunteered. And since you need to get to know the neighborhood, I volunteered you too,” Hannah replied.

  “Gee thanks. Remind me to thank you properly. You know, with boiling oil or something appropriate,” Amelia mock growled.

  “Oh shut up and eat your ice cream,” Hannah retorted. She caught a squirming Yorrick before he could run off and finished cleaning his sticky fingers. Then a couple shrewd tickles sent the little imp scampering off with a giggle. “He's a handful,” she said, sitting back.

  “Unlike some people?” Zack asked, looking at her.

  “You, I can handle any day of the week. Your brother is stockier than you, and he's rougher.”

  “I'm also a martial arts expert. I could tie you in knots,” Zack teased.

  “That too.”

  “Threats, threats, nothing but threats,” Amelia said mournfully as she got up and policed the empty bowls. “Is that all there is here?”

  “If you want action, I can always see if Yorrick is ready for a rematch,” Hannah said, eyes gleaming with challenge.

  “Don't you dare!” Amelia replied with a shudder. When Hannah opened her mouth, she snatched up the woman's spoon and practically force fed her, which led to a bit of horseplay until Zack cleared his throat.

  “Are all adults this bad? Or just you two?” he demanded airily.

  The two ladies exchanged a look, then a slow lurking smile. They turned, eyes gleaming, hands curling into claws. Zack's eyes widened comically and he scooted back on his pajama covered rump. “Now … now wait …” he stuttered, kicking to fend them off. Amelia pounced on him as Hannah caught his feet. He howled as her expert fingernails dug in, tickling him until he started to guffaw uncontrollably.

  Of course Amelia hadn't been just pinning him down the whole time. She'd pinned him, yes, but her fingers had shrewdly attacked his flanks, armpits, and tummy until he was snickering uncontrollably.

  Both ladies let him slip out of their clutches as he retreated, crawling under the coffee table. Amelia made a snatching motion at him, and he bumped his head. He yelped rubbing it, but continued on, dashing past Amelia to scamper down the hall to his bedroom. They heard his door slam as he locked himself within.

  “That'll teach him,” Hannah said as Amelia dusted off her hands.

  “So, now that the competition is otherwise occupied and or ducking for cover,” Amelia said as she flounced down onto the couch. “Isley's been … busy. What's going on with the other people around here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” she waved a hand. “Is this all you do?”

  “It's not like there are dance clubs and stuff here Amelia,” Hannah reminded her. There were resort hotels in orbit but the recreation centers on the Lagroose habitats weren't really party places. “I suspect you know this since you were bored to tears, or so you said when you called me earlier this evening,” she reminded her.

  “I know. I'm just … bored. Yeah. And I wanted, I don't know … something more.”

  “A night life?” Hannah asked, gently probing. Amelia nodded. “Kid, you can still hop a shuttle to a resort like I said. Maybe catch a flick, go groundside and see the folks, whatever.”

  “When my schedule permits. And it costs to go up and down,” Amelia said, making a face.

  “Too true, but it's not that bad,” Hannah said. “I tell you what. We'll find out when Isley's off next time and then see if we can rearrange our schedules to be off at the same time. It might take a month to get it right,” she warned, holding up a restraining finger as Amelia inhaled in excitement. “But if, and I do stress if, we can pull it off, I think we should treat ourselves to a spa or night out at a resort dancing,” she said.

  “Hmmm …” Amelia said, pretending to be thoughtful. She couldn't hold the exuberance for long though, she finally bounced off the couch and practically landed on Hannah as she hugged her. “I'm in!”

  “I thought you'd like that.”

  “Can we maybe invite Ezri too? I'd like you to meet her. She's an old friend. A nurse. She's a bonobo, sweetheart. Sooo cute,” she said.

  “We'll see. Just remember, the more players in girls’ night, the harder it will be to get everyone's schedules to match up,” Hannah warned.

  “Oh, oh! And maybe next time we can do a movie too! A movie, dinner, ooooh, this is really something to look forward to!” Amelia squealed.

  “Glad you like it. Wait, next time?” Hannah asked with a sinking sensation as she realized what she'd gotten herself into.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Two months after Amelia settled in, Mario Irons, last of the founding Irons on Mars, passed away in his sleep a month after his 150th birthday. The Mars planetary mourning and moment of silence spread into a solar system wide brief memorial ceremony. Jack Lagroose ordered a halt to all work to observe the ceremony.

  In a quirk of nature, it rained across the north. The storm fell onto the first landing site and the vaults Mario and his team had built and lived in. Some said it was appropriate that even Mars was crying for the loss of such an intrepid explorer and soul.

  Isley, Amelia, and their family were subdued by the death. Hannah called both ladies to pay her respects. Isley wasn't tearful; the family had expected it for years. Death was inevitable; they all knew that. Mario had lived a long full life. “He was always a weird one. Grandpa Luigi wasn't as hyper. Mario loved to tinker and loved pranks.” She rolled her eyes. “We could tell you stories. He loved to mess with people. He had a trick with air compressors and cups that would scare you sill!” She looked away sadly. “It would have been nice for him to hear how Daedalus had done. See her return.
”

  “Are you going down for the funeral?” Hannah asked softly.

  Isley shook her head. “We've been offered the time off but …” she squirmed a bit. “Great granddad insisted on a small ceremony. He's being cremated and his ashes will be scattered into the winds like the others in the family.”

  “Oh.”

  “He insisted on as small a ceremony as possible. He didn't want everyone making a fuss, and he said he didn't want anyone taking time off from working on mankind's future to see him toddle off into the great beyond.”

  “I see.”

  “I'd rather remember him here,” Isley said, tapping her heart. She looked off camera to Amelia who was sniffling. “I think we're going to take a day or two off to get our heads on straight though,” she said.

  Hannah nodded. “Okay. I'll stop by and see you two later.”

  “Good,” Amelia said, leaning into the camera. “Granddad … I mean great-granddad was a real character. Maybe we'll tell you some of the stories,” she said with a wan smile.

  Hannah nodded, observing the signs of crying in her new assistant. “I'd like that,” she said softly. “I'll be by as soon as my shift ends,” she murmured.

  “See you then,” Isley said as she cut the circuit.

  Chapter 25

  April 2165

  Nak'nak'chick flinched when another contraction hit her. She had wondered why they'd gone through the natural birth at all until she had become pregnant. The great Doctor Lagroose, godmother of all Neos, had told her with an enigmatic smile that she'd understand once she became pregnant. She hadn't, at least not at first, but then after talking with a few other dolphin mothers it had been explained to her in more detail. They were right; there was a sense of … completion, of being a mother. Of bringing new life into the world. It wasn't without risks, something she worried about, but that was why there was a medical staff on duty.

  She thrashed her tail, moving her flukes more to flex her muscles than to stay in place. “Better here. No water,” Tw'tw'ch'ka taunted her through their sonar.