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[Story][Season 2]The gas station (finished)
[Story][Season 2]The gas station (finished)
#1
All chapters up to the attack on the construction site have been reworked, so look for the new ones instead of reading the old ones.

I have been working on this story for nearly a year, hitting multiple writer blocks and turning towards other stories in the meantime. But finally I have the majority of the story out. Hope its still interesting to read, tell me what you think.

The story is beginning in Summer 2017, so this is before CI had more than a few scraps of the Normandy started.

#################

Two men were sitting on a console in the large control room of ESA in Darmstadt.

“You think we will be able do this?”

“Yes, I think so. As long as the governments back in Brussels don’t do something stupid, we will go through the mission as planned.”

“Do you think the US will protest again?”

“No, they did not protest that much when we finished the fourth ISV.”

“Is everything assembled at our depot?”

“Yes, the last checks were completed three days ago. All astronauts have been send up and everyone is just waiting for the ‘go’ signal.”

----

In the year 2016 the growing fleet of Interplanetary Space Vehicles of ESA and JAXA had been sent on several smaller missions to Venus and the Belt. The longest mission had been the voyage of the ISV Nobu Shirase around Saturn. ESA had called it an endurance test and dropped a number of scientific satellites around the planet, but called the ISV back home soon after.

But after this none of the spaceships had left ESAs space depot again. Some people said ESA and JAXA were tired with senseless flying around. Others said, the EU governments were not willing to pay for it anymore.

But the second step on ESAs “10 year plan to conquer Brussels” began exactly as the last step. In the middle of a storm of reporters, camera flashes flickering off like lightning without thunder.

ESAs press speaker and the representative of JAXA were grinning into the cameras, it was time to hit the naysayer with another club on the head. And he would hit them hard!

“Welcome ladies and gentlemen.” he started with a smile.

“In the last six months since our flyby mission around Saturn there have been voices that said the cooperation between ESA and JAXA has burned out. That we are without a goal to reach. Today you are here to learn that nothing could be further from the truth.”

He looked to his Japanese colleague, which continued.

“When the Thor Heyerdahl came back from Mars, we had proven that the solar system is still open for exploration, even without Handwavium. But as important as this, we also showed everyone the potential of Fusion reactor JAXA provided for the spaceship. After we returned several governments approached our consortium to see how fast we could build a reactor to supply electrical power to them. There was only one problem. The supply of Helium-3!”

Several reporters nodded. The debate about Nuclear Fusion had heated up since the first prototype of the Honda Fusion Reactor two years ago, but died down soon after. The problem was that to get a pure aneutronic fusion reaction, you had to use pure Helium-3 as fuel. Digging over thousands of squaremiles on the Moon to mine it was out of question, so the only source were some Fen who did the insane job to dive into Jupiter to get it.

And nobody wanted to make their power generation totally dependent on the goodwill of a few Fen.

“We all know the discussions about Lunar sources of Helium-3, but to say it again, it will not happen. The Moon is not empty anymore, and the amount of Helium-3 in the dust is just too small.”

The ESA press speaker nodded to his colleague.

“12 months ago ESA and JAXA contacted their governments for a proposal to fix this problem. Since then, we have shipped hundreds of tons of steel and ceramic up to our orbital depot, together with the finest hightech our countries can provide. A group of forty astronauts are waiting in orbit to begin the largest space mission Europe and Japan have ever done before.”

The room was filled with quiet murmurs now while everyone was trying to guess what was going on.

“This evening, the Thor Heyerdahl, the Leif Erickson, the Nobu Shirase and the Ferdinand Magellan will depart from our depot and will be heading for Saturn. They will be carrying the first pieces of equipment to set up a permanent space station there, where some of the brightest engineers of our countries will live. If everything will go according to plan, we will deliver the first batch of Helium-3 within 24 months.”

“Why Saturn? Isn’t this awful far away?” one of the reporters asked.

“There are three places where one could mine Helium-3 in the solar system if you don’t want to dig through millions of tons of lunar rocks. Jupiter, Saturn or Uranus.

Uranus is too far away for our current ISVs, we cannot get there and back without refueling, which make missions much more dangerous.

Jupiter is a lot closer than Saturn, but it has also a much higher mass, which makes it harder to get into a low orbit and back out of it.

The decision to build the station around Saturn was made as a compromise between distance and depth of the gravity well. The fact that one of the larger Fen factions have their capitol there makes it a safer neighborhood too.”

----

“Darmstadt Control, this is the Thor Heyerdahl. Mission checks are done, all four ships are reporting condition green, we are ready for the first part of the mission.”

“Thor Heyerdahl, here is Darmstadt Control. Mission countdown restarted at T minus 15 minutes, prepare for launch sequence.”

After the flight of the Thor Heyerdahl ESA and JAXA had decided to change the design of their new space ships. Armed with the data gathered during the long flight, several small changes had been made in the engine section of the ship. Simultaneously they had cut the Thor Heyerdahl into four parts, connected by large docking rings.

As her sister ships, the Heyerdahl now were made up by an front crew section and an aft engine section. Depending on the mission different cargo or carrier modules could be placed between crew and engine section, together with one or multiple modules for carrying reaction mass.

All four ISVs had been equipped with a large cargo and a single reaction mass module, which allowed each of the ISVs to transport a total of one hundred metric tons of cargo to Saturn. And each of them was filled with equipment up to the limit.

‘And that’s just the first part of the cargo. We will have to come back to get the second part afterwards’ the captain of the Thor Heyerdahl thought.

‘When we are finished, the new station will be twice as large as the ISS. I wonder how many Fen owned trucks were necessary to carry all this stuff up to the space depot. If this mission does not succeed, it will be one of the most expensive failures in the history of spaceflight.’

Fenspace owned surface orbital transportation had made spaceflight a lot cheaper than a decade ago, but this expedition was still expensive as hell.

But pushed by the increasing oil and gas prices and the sometimes less than reliable sources for both the EU and Japan were looking hard for other energy sources.

The radio speakers went active again.

“Thor Heyerdahl, this is Darmstadt. You are green for leaving orbit, we expect you back in two months. Gute Reise!”

----

The Thor Heyerdahl felt crowded for the first time of her life. The ship had more room for the crew than any other hardtech spacecraft before, but with a full crew of ten people on a voyage that would take nearly a month it was not really that comfortable.

But the crew agreed with each other that it was better than any spacecraft they had used before, especially with the light gravity during the flight. No worrying about hovering hot water or dust, no need to discuss whats up and down when you meet, just like old Earth, only lighter.

Luckily ESA and JAXA had provided their ISVs with a sophisticated computer system which could also be used for entertainment. The fact that all four ISVs were within milliseconds communication distance of each other helped too, 40 people were more than enough to spent time during the flight. Everyone knew that things would get much more stressing as soon as they arrived in orbit around Saturn.

“It somehow feel strange” Captain Eric Hunt said, “building a space station more than a billion kilometers away from home. A few years ago we had to give the ISS away because it was too expensive without the US and now this.”

Sarah Meier chuckled. “Without the Fen owned surface to orbit transports we could never have done it. Or without this strange tech catalog they published. But who cares how we did it as long as we are DOING it. Its not good to leave most Earth based spaceflights to the military.”

“And the elevator might change the whole game again in a few years. A century old dream coming true, and we are around to see it.”

“I will believe it when we get the money for it, the whole project is still incredible expensive. But if our mission is a success, Brussels might pay for it. I just hope the US really got over all their crazy protests, the last thing we want is an armed US ship looking for us.”

Eric Hunt shook his head. “I don’t really worry about this, there are enough Fen up here who consider this their territory. If the US starts to protest against our project with more than diplomatic notes, we will have lots of voluntary ships to deal with them. That’s one of the reasons we are going to Saturn, the Warsies up there keep the neighborhood safe.”

Sarah suddenly grinned. “What do you think will they say back home when they discover the kind of help we organized for building the station?”

Eric chuckled.

“Its all in the reports of the ESA to Brussels. One of the guys showed me the page where it says ‘Costs for Fen support’. They never asked about it, maybe the amount of money was too low to be important.”

“I bet they will demand an explanation for it.”

“It’s not my problem” Eric replied and shrugged. “We will be far away from home, the guys at home will easily manage this. Its not that they would stop the mission anymore.”

----

A video stream activated, showing a small cockpit with a lot of screens and buttons. The camera showed two people, a men in an ESA coverall and a woman wearing a Fen spacesuit. On the edge of the screen a third seat is visible, another woman in ESA coverall is keeping an eye on the console in front of her.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is Maico Tange.

I am speaking today with Mr. Eric Hunt, captain of the spaceship Thor Heyerdahl. Mr. Hunt, how are you feeling now that you finally arrived in the orbit of Saturn ?”

Eric Hunt smiled.

“It is a great feeling coming here and enjoying this incredible look of Saturn and its rings. I mean, when I joined ESA, the thought about going to the Moon or to Mars was ridiculous. And now we are here in the Orbit around Saturn with 40 astronauts. That’s incredible!”

Maico nodded.

“Yes, of course. I don’t think any hardtech spaceship except the ISV Nobu Shirase during its flyby mission ever got that far. So what do Europe and Japan are doing that far from home?”

“We were sent to Saturn to setup a permanent station here. Both Europe and Japan are still looking for a clean energy source, we think that the same fusion technology used for the Thor Heyerdahl could also be the key to the energy problem.”

“So you are here to look for Helium-3” Maico replied, “that is quite a challenge without any involvement of Handwavium. Unless the restrictions for your civil space agencies on Earth have been lifted for this mission.”

“No, they have not been lifted. You are correct that this mission might be a greater challenge to ESA and JAXA than any before, but I am sure we can do it. We have all the basic parts with us to start with the station, and will get two additional supply runs in the next twelve months.”

Maico raised an eyebrow.

“That’s quite a lot of material, twelve hangars full of building materials. Tell me, where around Saturn will your new station be floating, I expect that quite a few of my viewers will be interested in watching you building it or visiting you later.”

“The station will be underground in the Saturn moon Pan, inside the rings of Saturn. Its the closest place to the planet where the station is protected from stellar radiation and meteor impacts.”

“Pan?”

“The closest moon of Saturn, a block of ice maybe 30 km in length. As soon as we arrive there and get the fusion reactor of the station up and running, we will begin to melt holes into the ice to put the station into. This will make extending the station later much easier than on an asteroid and still gives us a lot protection.”

“So that’s why all the catgirls are waiting here for you?”

The camera turned to a window of the Thor Heyerdahl for a moment, showing the large space station of Catgirl Industries floating in some distance. When it turned back, Eric Hunt is grinning.

“Oh, we just hired them for a bit support during the first setup phase of the station. It gives us a place to live while we are working on Pan and makes the whole mission a lot safer.”

“Of course,” Maico answered and turns towards the camera.

“So ESA and JAXA will be quite busy building their new ice station on Saturn in the coming year. This is Maico Tange, hope to see you on my next interview.”

Somewhere, a billion kilometers away from the Thor Heyerdahl a man switched of his TV set and grabbed his phone.

“Get me the Director General of ESA... yes, now... no, I don’t care if he is at mission control at the moment, get him to a phone... NOW!”

----

Three humans were sitting around a small table.

“Are you sure they arrived on Pan?”

“Yes, I am sure. The news report of Maico was accurate.”

“Why the hell did she not corner these bastards about the water theft?”

“Who knows, maybe she believes they will play by the rules? She is just short-witted, of course they will play by the rules for the first months.”

A girl with green hairs nodded. “First their space station, deep enough in the ice that we don’t know what they are doing there. Then the whole infrastructure to dive into Saturn, which accidentally looks like fast robotic jet fighters. Soon they will just start mining everything in the Saturn rings when nobody is looking at them, or maybe just arm the station!”

“It is time that someone tell this damned Danelaw nations that wrecking one planet is enough!”

“See if you can’t contact your friends from Green Fist, we might need the hardware support they promised to make sure our message is easy to understand!”

----

It took just a few days to move the small fleet of ships over the rings and into the orbit of Pan. Now they were carefully heading towards the small moon ahead, the spacestation of the catgirls still behind them.

Being careful was just normal. In the end going into any of the rings would not do as much as damage the rings, but utterly destroy a ship.

A few years ago the maneuver would have been suicide for any ESA vessel. Going over the ecliptic, fly over the rings of Saturn and then get into a gap a few hundreds of kilometers wide to meet a moon? Impossible!

But the fusion powered engines had made all previous mission plans of ESA and JAXA obsolete. Now it was just a matter of being patient enough.

And then there was the incredible view. Floating just a few hundred kilometers above flat surface larger than anything a human being could comprehend easily. Every planet, every moon, even the sun war a curved object with a horizon, but the rings just looked endless. An infinite ocean the Thor Heyerdahl would dive into soon.

Eric Hunt wasn’t sure if it looked magnificent or frightening.

All four ISV were floating just above the large ball of ice with the name Pan. The engines had been switched off and they were experiencing freefall for the first time in a month.

“Okay everybody, the boring time is over... you all know the plan, lets get the cargo out!”

A number of floodlights on the outer hull of the ISVs activated, bathing the icemoon in a white light. The crew began to open freight doors of their ships and soon a number of huge cylinders were moved out of the cargo bays by the large telescope arm of each ship.

While the rest of the crew were checking the status of their cargo, Eric and nine other astronauts were slowly moving over the surface of the moon. Landing on the moon would not be difficult, its surface gravity was nearly non-existent. But burrowing the station in the ice would be not that easy without being thrown into an orbit around the moon.

He carefully landed on the icy surface, careful not to loose his balance. The positioning system of the nearby spaceships guided him quickly to a featureless point on the ice where he put down the anchor he was carrying.

The anchors were a simple construction, three claws to temporarily attach it to the ground and chemical fuse that would heat it above the ice melting point and provide the gas pressure to push a two meter long pole into the ice. No electronics, no motors, just pure mechanics and chemistry.

Eric just had fixed his anchor to the ground and lit the fuse as he saw a movement next to him.

Just a few meters away, a small machine with a few blinking lights on the surface was floating, slowly circling him and the anchor. The machine looked up at him and wiggled happily back and forth, then turned to its examination of the anchor.

“I think we have a toy from the Fen on the moon” Eric announced through his intercom as he watched the drone, “can someone fire up the main radio and ask them about it?”

The machine suddenly looked up, shivering back and forth while Eric could hear an annoyed hissing in his helmets speaker.

“It understands our radio and its not amused about being called a toy” Eric added quickly, looking a little bit worried to the little machine in front of him. Was it dangerous?

“Mr. Hunt, I got someone at the space station, the say the little thing is an Exocomp. They’re going to send someone over to collect it later, you should just ignore it. If it interferes with your work, you should scold it!”

Eric shook his head and looked back to his visitor. “You heard it? If you interfere with our work, I have to start ranting.”

The Exocomp just nodded happily and continued his observation.

‘No wonder Fen are considered insane by some people. And its contagious too, I am already talking with a small machine directly out of a Scifi Movie’ Eric thought and got back to work.

----

Eric Hunt was laying on a couch, relaxing from the long hours of work on the ice moon. Somehow he had to thank this genius back home who decided to hire a Fen space station as a sleeping place for their mission.

They had made good progress today and planned to get the secondary fusion reactor of the station up and running tomorrow. But then the long hours of work had been over and they had moved away from the moon to the huge colorful space station.

One moment they were still floating in freefall, trying to get to the stations airlock without loosing the grip on the long cord... and the next moment gravity was increasing, allowing them to easily stand in the open airlock. Air had been streaming into the room and they had finally taken of their helmets.

A group of catgirls had welcomed them, showing them the closets where they could put in their life support backpacks and then lead them to the next module.

“We have built a module for your current stay, hope we forgot nothing in your rooms. If you notice something missing, just tell us and we will put it in while you are working on the moon.”

Eric smiled and thought about the short tour on their new ‘home’ for the next months.

Full Earth gravity...

A crew of catgirls and crazy robots to ask for help...

Rooms large enough to stretch yourself without knocking something over...

Hot showers for everyone!

Showers were normally something precious during space missions. It had been worst on the ISS, because both of the limited supply of water and the zero-g environment. At least the solar panels had delivered enough energy for heating.

The flight with the Thor Heyerdahl class ISVs had been better because of its constant acceleration and the unlimited energy. And on Pan they even would have lots of water, and a huge amount of space to use. At least after they got the necessary parts to increase the size of the station.

Maybe he should ask the catgirls what they payed for construction materials, getting unwaved steel would be perfect for their new station when the workshop was installed and running.

Eric smiled, maybe it was a good time to go looking for this kitchen the catgirls had talked about.

---

The work on the ice moon had begun again. Eric Hunt looked back one more time to the space station that was still floating above in the sky and then turned towards their working area.

“Okay, we all talked about it during the breakfast. Group 1, get the reactor online, we need the energy soon. Group 2, check the equipment for the tent, we need to set it up before we start digging. Group 3, you come with me and check the anchors from yesterday, after this we put in the rest of them for the tent!”

The three groups split up and Eric headed to the group of anchors he had used to fix one of the containers to the ground, carefully moving along the rope lines they had put between the anchors yesterday.

The first day of work had been crawling along slowly. Pan had surface gravity, but not much of it. It could hold a screwdriver on the ground if you put it there carefully, but one bad step and you were on a hour long trip over the moon. They had done all the work at the first day with zero gravity backpacks, which made any work a painfully slow process.

“Anchor four is still fixed, seems ESA delivered good hardware” someone said over the radio. Kevin was again a little bit faster with his zero-g skills than the rest of the crew.

Eric Hunt smiled and carefully checked his first anchor, which didn’t moved a bit. “Anchor one is fixed” he announced, and looked for the next one as someone called him.

“Mr. Hunt, it seems your little friend is back again!”

Eric looked around and instantly saw the small drone that hat watched him yesterday. Or maybe another one, he had learned the catgirls had more than one of them at the space station. ‘Talk with them like with an intelligent pet cat’ one of the catgirls had told him.

“Ah, there you are again” he said with a smile, “you know the deal... looking is okay, interfering where we are working is not.”

The Exocomp carefully pressed himself against Eric’s suit and purred over the radio, then went back a few meters and hovered close by, following Eric as he moved to the next anchor. If everything would go by plan, they would be ready with the anchors for the tent tomorrow evening.

“Mr. Hunt, I cannot find one of the spare anchors. I am sure we had all of them accounted for yesterday, but one of them is missing!”

‘So much for the plan’ Eric thought.

----

Somewhere else.

“Where the hell you have been? Just taking the truck and leaving for nearly a week is not what we agreed upon. Get in quickly!”

“Sorry, you two were away and I had to act quickly.”

“What do you mean, quickly?”

“I got a reply from my friends of Green Fist. They were worried about all the things we reported and they said they might have something for us. Directly from the lab of an unmentioned Mad.”

“And you had to take the truck because... ?”

“Because they said it was a little bit larger, the perfect tool to deliver our message. You two have to see it yourself!”

All three of them quickly moved to the trucks cargo trailer.

“Wow! Look at the size of that thing!”

“What the hell is this monster?”

“This my friends is our packet delivery service. A self-contained mass accelerator that will allow us to hit the European bastards with an awesome punch from far away.”

“How far away? I mean, they have all this catgirls buzzing around, we don’t want to get caught five seconds after delivering our message.”

“Far enough, the catgirls don’t have a lot of long range ships to find us. We sneak in, deploy and program the weapon. After a few hours of calibration, it will fire.”

“Are you sure it will even hit them?”

“It has to hit a fucking Moon! Of course it will hit the target.”

“If you say so.”

----

Somewhere, in an empty supply modules on Jenga was a strange meeting happening. The module was new and would not be used by the catgirl inhabitants for quite some time. There was still some infrastructure of the module missing, Serina had said the Exocomps had too many other things in mind at the moment to finish it.

But in one corner of the module, behind a few solid steel plates which would cover the floor in the coming months a small group of Exocomps was floating around a long pipe... one with an ESA logo on it.

Eight Exocomps were rushing up and down, showering the device with low powered sensor beams from all kind of angles, shivering in excitement from time to time.

New tech!

New tech they hadn’t seen before!

New tech without Handwavium!

A puzzle.

A new puzzle!

The had to solve it!

The catgirls had told them that their guests did not wanted them to help with their work, and that they should not interfere with it. It was a selfish thing to keep the work for themselves, but there were not all that bad. And luckily they stopped working at some time, which had given the group the possibility to get this artifact without interfering with their work!

After a few hours, they were finished with all their measurements and moved their work to a small and secret playground on the Grid. They had learned over the years from the catgirls that it was quite fun to work with simulations.

You could only topple a large mountain of Christmas packages once, but you could do it as often and as spectacular as you liked on the Grid.

Quickly a virtual copy of the sensor data they had gathered appeared in front of their virtual avatars. The Exocomps activated a physics simulation and added water as the ground.

Then they watched the staff sinking in the waves of their simulated ocean.

Something wasn’t right.

Cold... much colder... much much colder!

The simulation started anew, this time with a ground of ice below the staff. It stood on its tiny legs, until one of the Exocomps pushed the button at the top, activating the chemical mix inside.

Ice began to melt... and after a moment the simulated staff fell to the side.

The Exocomps were puzzled, viewing their sensor readings of the astronauts work on the moon again. Just as they decided to start another simulation run, Cortana's avatar suddenly appeared over them.

“What the hell is going on here” Cortana thundered.

The Exocomps were shocked, one of them quickly vanished the simulated artifact and tried to look unsuspicious.

“Do not think I have not seen what you did here. How did you get such a good reading on this anchors... wait a moment, you did it?”

Cortana began to trace the connection of the Exocomp back, which quickly lead her into a very new module. It took her a moment to a few cameras and upload the firmware for them.

“How could you? You have stolen from our guests!”

That confused the Exocomps for a moment. Hadn’t the guests said that this were the place for their spare parts? How could borrowing a spare part be wrong?

Cortana sighed about the communication between the little drones.

“You will give it back immediately, and you will do it in person. If they ban ALL of your kind from their working area, it will be your fault.”

Their brothers might be banned from the icy moon too? Suddenly the Exocomps were a bit worried.

----

“... as expected in my last progress report, the work on Pan is continuing smoothly. Since the tent is up we are able to liquefy ice and refreeze it on the surface, so we can get the necessary holes for the first station modules.

Contacts with the Fen pet drones is still alternating between annoying, funny or useful. While they are hanging around the construction site to watch us, they are always eager to carry some tools for us or capture things and even two of my crew, who lost ground contact and were flying away from Pan.

When the second part of our equipment arrives from Nova Paris, we will have already burrowed the first modules in the ice. I expect to finish phase two of the project with little or no delay and continue installing the second batch of modules.”

Eric Hunt looked over his progress report for the beancounters at Earth for a last time. Even here, a billion kilometers away from Earth it was impossible to escape the paperwork completely.

He sometimes wondered how the Fen would have built this station, most likely it would have been something very crazy. Or maybe a floating city like in Star Wars above the clouds of Saturn.

He sighed, whatever it would have been, it would have got artificial gravity of course. Thinking about this for a moment, he opened the document again.

“I would also like to forward the request of multiple crew members to allow the addition of a waved gravity generator to some of the modules. I talked with several Fen over the last week, according to their knowledge it should be trivial to add an electrical powered one to a module.

As part of the ‘Environmental Systems’ it would most likely be completely free of strange side effects. One generator per module would also allow us to regulate the gravity in each module on its own, which is necessary for some of the production technology we want to install.”

He nodded to himself and pressed the ‘send mail’ button, then stand up and left his apartment to join his crew members in the canteen.

“Ah Eric, good to see you... we had been expecting you meeting us here a few hours ago, that much paperwork left?”

Eric nodded. “I always thought that being an astronaut would allow you to leave all this paperwork back on Earth, but the damned bureaucrats have got an upgrade for their procedures.”

Everyone on the table chuckled.

“And yes, I asked them about the gravity generator. Most likely they will declare me insane and unfit for command. But maybe they will see the benefits of the idea. Transfering from this station to some hole in an ice moon with practical zero gravity doesn’t sound great.”

Sarah sighed. “Don’t forget to mention the nice cafeteria here, and the wonderful showers they have installed in our rooms. I asked one of the catgirls about the showers, did you knew that they don’t even used Handwavium for them, except for some filtration module in the bottom?”

“What do you want to say” Eric asked suspiciously.

“Oh, we have the job to build up the station, but we are also allowed to expand it later if necessary. The only restriction we currently face is that Handwavium is not allowed inside the station.”

“Yes, we all know that...”

“What's about putting one additional box of steel into the ice, one that is NOT part of the station? If its not part of the station, we might get away with ignoring some of the rules.”

Eric shook his head. “Everything we build with the materials we have is part of the station. I am sorry, but this is not going to work.”

Sarah just grinned.

“Oh, I think I know a few engineers who might be willing to build us an additional module for the moon. Without using up ESA or JAXA supplied materials, but with artificial gravity and hot showers!”

“They will just shoot us when we get back to Earth” Eric just murmured, trying to ignore the discussion Sarah just started at the table.

----

While the work on Pan went ahead as planned for the next days, they were not the only group planning for the future of the Saturn moon.

Somewhere in the darkness, light seconds away from the huge ringed planet called Saturn was a black platform, placed there by an unremarkable waved truck. After hours of calibrating its orientation through analysis of incoming light from stars and planets, the computer on the platform finished its preparation phase and switched to a second set of commands.

The platform suddenly emitted a flash of green light as it dumped energy from its waved capacitors into the weapon array. Within the blink of an eye, a small metallic projectile was accelerated to an incredible speed. Moments later the cooling system failed and the computer shortcutted its own capacitors, which instantly blew the whole platform into tiny pieces. But its payload was already racing towards its target.

For nearly an hour its flight wasn’t noticed by anyone.

Seconds before the projectile hit it target, it was finally seen. A group of Exocomps had chased a small block of ice of the rings a few hundred kilometers away from Jenga and one of them recognized the moving dot on its infrared camera.

‘TOY! Lets catch it!’, the small drone thought and its companions quickly reoriented to look for their new prey. They quickly estimated the distance, only to be disappointed that the little dot on their optics was that far away.

‘Oh, too far away’ they thought sad, ‘maybe a friend can catch it?’

Then they all suddenly flinched.

Whatever it was, it was fast... very fast. And it was going to hit home!

Their shock hit Serinas consciousness a few milliseconds later. While her mind ran distributed on all the Exocomps, she normally did not payed that much attention to most of her little children.

But now most of the Exocomps on Jenga suddenly froze for a moment as a priority alert raced through Serinas mind, forcing her subjective time perception to slow down. It took just a look through all of her eyes outside the station to verify the course and speed of the incoming threat.

She ignored a curious word from Cortana, Jenga’s other AI was still working in normal time.

Jengas radar emitter began to charge up, but it would take a few milliseconds until the first pulse. A second command woke up the stations point defense laser guns, but Serina could already see that most of the turrets would take too long to get out of their parking position.

“What the hell is going on” Cortana asked, finally getting in sync with Serina just as the first radar pulses reflected back from the incoming projectile.

“We have a kinetic impactor incoming for the working site on the moon” she replied focused, “small projectile, but moving at more than a percentage of the speed of light. I think we will get off one shot at it.”

The eyes of Cortana's Grid avatar widened. “Do we have something to intercept it?”

“No we don’t, it was so small I saw it just half a second ago. Two hundred milliseconds until I will shoot it with one of our lasers, the others are in the wrong position. Not enough time to warn anyone.”

Cortana frowned.

“Make sure everyone is ready for a rescue mission, I hope the Daneverse astronauts will survive.”

The timer ticked down to zero and a blue pulse of light raced outwards and hit the incoming projectile, vaporizing most of it instantly. Normally that would have neutralized any projectile easily.

But the projectile was only a fraction of a seconds away from hitting its target, so the superheated metal vapor had no time to dissipate. A whole section of Pan’s surface flashed bright white as the icy surface was vaporized.

In a certain way, the laser had turned a sniper weapon into a shotgun. But a shotgun was still a lethal weapon.
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#2
Looks good.

I'd want to be sure people understood the organisations, and abbreviations. "ESA" is obviously "European Space Agency", and JAXA the "Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency" - it might be a good idea to put the full names, once, before using the abbreviations in the rest of the story. Also CI as "Catgirl Industries".

I assume "Green Fist" is an activist environment organisation, the sort with no sense of proportion. I've not seen it in the Fenspace organisations list, so a brief write-up might be helpful to people.

The dialog between the bad guys about the ISV operation reads a bit rough. I'd suggest you make it a bit clearer who is saying what, and maybe characterise the two apart from the green-haired woman. Sitting so their face is in shadow, characteristic or very bland clothing, strange equipment, anything really. Molerat shoulder pets that sniff out handwavium for them...

Apart from that it all seems to flow pretty well. I'd like a little bit from a named catgirl about the new arrivals, if you think it'd make sense to slot that in. Maybe about the need to maintain professionalism around them? Do Catgirl Industries have a nominated liason officer?
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
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#3
Ace Dreamer Wrote:I assume "Green Fist" is an activist environment organisation, the sort with no sense of proportion. I've not seen it in the Fenspace organisations list, so a brief write-up might be helpful to people.
Right now, they're a plot device.

Story first, Wiki entry later...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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#4
Ace Dreamer Wrote:Looks good.
Thank you, feedback (especially constructive one like this) is always welcome.

Quote:I'd want to be sure people understood the organisations, and abbreviations. "ESA" is obviously "European Space Agency", and JAXA the "Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency" - it might be a good idea to put the full names, once, before using the abbreviations in the rest of the story. Also CI as "Catgirl Industries".
I will look that I do that...

Quote:I assume "Green Fist" is an activist environment organisation, the sort with no sense of proportion. I've not seen it in the Fenspace organisations list, so a brief write-up might be helpful to people.
I could spoiler the size of the whole group... but I don't think that will be a good idea. Wink

Quote:The dialog between the bad guys about the ISV operation reads a bit rough. I'd suggest you make it a bit clearer who is saying what, and maybe characterise the two apart from the green-haired woman. Sitting so their face is in shadow, characteristic or very bland clothing, strange equipment, anything really. Molerat shoulder pets that sniff out handwavium for them.
Yeah, that part got a little bit dry...

Quote:Apart from that it all seems to flow pretty well. I'd like a little bit from a named catgirl about the new arrivals, if you think it'd make sense to slot that in. Maybe about the need to maintain professionalism around them? Do Catgirl Industries have a nominated liason officer?
Good question. If they need something they can always ask Cortana about it, but giving them a direct contact person might be a good idea.

robkelk Wrote:
Quote:I assume "Green Fist" is an activist environment organisation, the sort with no sense of proportion. I've not seen it in the Fenspace organisations list, so a brief write-up might be helpful to people.
Right now, they're a plot device.

Story first, Wiki entry later...
Or maybe "story LATE", wiki entry even later... this thing had more writer blocks involved than all other stories together. ^^
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#5
Your dialogue feels pretty flat, but other then that this is pretty good.
A full hard-tech expedition to Saturn sounds pretty hard-core, given that this is 2017. (I'm not going to apologize for that pun)
I'm liking the reasoning behind it, too. 
There are three things that're really setting me off though, and one is your terrorists. Judging from the dialogue, they belong to an anti-Dane faction, and seem to be cheery eco-terrorists as well. Launching a strike on a joint-op base like this though... What the hell are they trying to accomplish? Assuming the strike went as planned, killed all fourty astronauts, and destroyed the base, did they think that the ESA and JAXA would just shrug and abandon all future space excercises?
Yeah, no.
What you're more likely going to see is a political shit-storm the likes of which I can barely even imagine. Fen, Boskone Fen maybe, but Fen nonetheless have attacked a Dane civilian base. Europe's not America, so they probably won't go on the warpath right away. But I'd be willing to bet cash that whatever space-warfare ships, equipment and research they have? That's going to get fast-tracked, yesterday. And that's not even counting what the Patrol is going to get up to. This isn't an actual issue with the story, it's more me being upset that morons with poor planning and little foresight have made it Up and apparently also have the connections to get their hands on advanced weaponry.
Issue number two, is poor characterisation. I read words, and I now people are saying them, but it feels very stilted and robotic. Ironically, the exocomps feel the most alive. Add to that, the mission barely feels fleshed out. There's fourty astronauts. We don't need fourty characters, but getting to know a couple of them might be nice.
Final thing: the mission to Saturn. It's missing a name. I know this seems like the stupidest thing to harp on, but something this big really needs a name. Especialy seeing as it's one of the most absolutely hard-core missions the Dane's have ever attempted. (Couldn't resist. That one I will apologize for.)
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#6
Given I got called out on percentage of light speed railguns a little over two weeks ago by M Fnord, I'm calling out this one as well. Yes, it's a Mad's invention and it blew itself up afterwards, but it's still too powerful IMO.
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#7
shaderic Wrote:Your dialogue feels pretty flat, but other then that this is pretty good.

A full hard-tech expedition to Saturn sounds pretty hard-core, given that this is 2017. (I'm not going to apologize for that pun)

Without two reverse engineered systems from the Whole Fenspace Catalog it would have not been possible. But yes, you are right. *G*

Quote:I'm liking the reasoning behind it, too.
I already thought about this 'step 2' when I designed the Thor Heyerdahl.

Quote:There are three things that're really setting me off though, and one is your terrorists. Judging from the dialogue, they belong to an anti-Dane faction, and seem to be cheery eco-terrorists as well. Launching a strike on a joint-op base like this though... What the hell are they trying to accomplish? Assuming the strike went as planned, killed all fourty astronauts, and destroyed the base, did they think that the ESA and JAXA would just shrug and abandon all future space excercises?

*starting to make notes*

I would say they (the terrorists) are a little bit delusional with their plan. Wink

Quote:Yeah, no.

What you're more likely going to see is a political shit-storm the likes of which I can barely even imagine. Fen, Boskone Fen maybe, but Fen nonetheless have attacked a Dane civilian base. Europe's not America, so they probably won't go on the warpath right away. But I'd be willing to bet cash that whatever space-warfare ships, equipment and research they have? That's going to get fast-tracked, yesterday. And that's not even counting what the Patrol is going to get up to. This isn't an actual issue with the story, it's more me being upset that morons with poor planning and little foresight have made it Up and apparently also have the connections to get their hands on advanced weaponry.

Yes, there will be repercussions, but I am still working on the concept where they will be going.

Quote:Issue number two, is poor characterisation. I read words, and I now people are saying them, but it feels very stilted and robotic. Ironically, the exocomps feel the most alive. Add to that, the mission barely feels fleshed out. There's fourty astronauts. We don't need fourty characters, but getting to know a couple of them might be nice.

*sigh*

I wish I could say I would disagree, but most likely this 'flattness' is still there. That was what delayed this story over and over again, the feeling that it wasn't 'flowing well'. It was also the reason for this "request for comment" post, because I wasn't sure about it.

Quote:Final thing: the mission to Saturn. It's missing a name. I know this seems like the stupidest thing to harp on, but something this big really needs a name. Especialy seeing as it's one of the most absolutely hard-core missions the Dane's have ever attempted. (Couldn't resist. That one I will apologize for.)

Ouch... damned, yes... it needs a name!

Cobalt Greywalker Wrote:Given I got called out on percentage of light speed railguns a little over two weeks ago by M Fnord, I'm calling out this one as well. Yes, it's a Mad's invention and it blew itself up afterwards, but it's still too powerful IMO.
I have expected this post, but there is a little tiny difference in this contribution. Try to calculate the energy of the weapon system if you like, I bet you will not be able to do so (unless I missed something).

It wasn't the "1% lightspeed" that got your cannon called out, it was the "kilotons of TNT per shot".
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#8
HRogge Wrote:I have expected this post, but there is a little tiny difference in this contribution. Try to calculate the energy of the weapon system if you like, I bet you will not be able to do so (unless I missed something).

It wasn't the "1% lightspeed" that got your cannon called out, it was the "kilotons of TNT per shot".

Actually, it was both. Cobalt was right to call this out. So yeah, back to the drawing board.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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#9
M Fnord Wrote:
HRogge Wrote:I have expected this post, but there is a little tiny difference in this contribution. Try to calculate the energy of the weapon system if you like, I bet you will not be able to do so (unless I missed something).

It wasn't the "1% lightspeed" that got your cannon called out, it was the "kilotons of TNT per shot".

Actually, it was both. Cobalt was right to call this out. So yeah, back to the drawing board.

So what is an acceptable speed for a low projectile mass coilgun?

The weapon CG suggested had a muzzle velocity of ~ 0.1% c, a projectile mass of 5kg and a suggested fire rate of once every six seconds.

The thing I had in mind for the story has a much smaller projectile mass (less than 1/1000 of CGs weapon) and is a one shot weapon system.

(edit)

But the exact speed is not even that important to the story, only that its insane fast and because of this doesn't dissipate before it hits the moon. Maybe I will remove the speed number entirely.

The other problems of the story are more important.
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#10
Wait a minute. 5 grammes instead of 5 kilograms? That's like the BB gun from hell. It's firing a ball bearing if it's firing anything more than a cloud of plasma.

Whipple shielding should stop the remaining fragments anyway after it gets lased. Depending on the power focused onto it, it should either deflect, disintigrate into little grains of sand that Whipple shielding will stop, or it'll go spinning wildly out of control.

It's hard to inject life into writing that isn't in your native language. It used to be a real problem for me..... I overdid the correction with obscenely purple prose then sort of sprung back into an underdamped oscillation that bounces wildly around the happy medium. It's something that gets better the more you do it.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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#11
HRogge Wrote:So what is an acceptable speed for a low projectile mass coilgun?
I got away with Mach 1000 (or 0.1% lightspeed) because virtually anything that can move (including The Island a quick Fenwiki walk reveals) can either pace or outrun a rail cannon bolt. It leads to a comparitively powerful weapon against slow (relatively) targets at close range. Anything that can't dodge is either dead anyway or so big it'll take more than a rail cannon bolt.

However, that's distracting from the story. Have you considered a 'piece of space junk' caught in Saturn's gravity, with the Mad device giving the 'Space Junk' a push?
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#12
Dartz Wrote:Wait a minute. 5 grammes instead of 5 kilograms? That's like the BB gun from hell. It's firing a ball bearing if it's firing anything more than a cloud of plasma.

Whipple shielding should stop the remaining fragments anyway after it gets lased. Depending on the power focused onto it, it should either deflect, disintigrate into little grains of sand that Whipple shielding will stop, or it'll go spinning wildly out of control.

It is targeting a construction site. The base is designed to be placed below a thick sheet of ice on Pan, so its not that well hardened to safe weight. And even with a Whipple shield you need to deal with the incoming energy.

Cobalt Greywalker Wrote:I got away with Mach 1000 (or 0.1% lightspeed) because virtually anything that can move (including The Island a quick Fenwiki walk reveals) can either pace or outrun a rail cannon bolt. It leads to a comparitively powerful weapon against slow (relatively) targets at close range. Anything that can't dodge is either dead anyway or so big it'll take more than a rail cannon bolt.
The idea behind the weapon is more like a 'very long range sniper' weapon. Lots of effort with only a moderate effect, but difficult to detect before its too late and fast enough to be fired from far away in a reasonable timeframe. Its also not just a 'random Mad' weapon, even if this is not clear at the current state of the story.

Quote:However, that's distracting from the story. Have you considered a 'piece of space junk' caught in Saturn's gravity, with the Mad device giving the 'Space Junk' a push?
Wouldn't work with the Fen (in this case Catgirl Industries) keeping an eye on them. They would see the space junk and capture it long before it hits the moon.
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#13
Wouldn't the smart thing be to give the projectile a light and radar absorption coating? It isn't very big, and that way you'll only spot it when it gets very close, unless it cast a shadow (light or radar) against something.
Getting luck enough to spot it with infra-red is good.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
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#14
Ace Dreamer Wrote:Wouldn't the smart thing be to give the projectile a light and radar abporption coating? It isn't very big, and that way you'll only spot it when it gets very close, unless it cast a shadow (light or radar) against something.
Yes, some radar stealth might be a good idea if the speed becomes too low to feasible getting past Jenga.

Quote:Getting luck enough to spot it with infra-red is good.
I think most railgun/coilgun projectiles (especially if accelerated by some crazy oneshot device) will become quite hot.
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#15
HRogge Wrote:
Ace Dreamer Wrote:Wouldn't the smart thing be to give the projectile a light and radar abporption coating? It isn't very big, and that way you'll only spot it when it gets very close, unless it cast a shadow (light or radar) against something.

Yes, some radar stealth might be a good idea if the speed becomes too low to feasible getting past Jenga.

Quote:Getting luck enough to spot it with infra-red is good.

I think most railgun/coilgun projectiles (especially if accelerated by some crazy oneshot device) will become quite hot.
Part of the reason bullets get hot is air friction.  with this sort of attack, there would be very little dust/gas particles to create friction (I assume that the shot was coming in from 'above' the plane of Saturn's rings, trying to shoot through a ring would have too high a chance of something deflecting/stopping the projectile)
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin
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#16
I am working on redoing some of the chapters and adding more things. Feel free to comment.

***********************************

Prologue:

Two men were sitting on a console in the large control room of ESA in Darmstadt.

“You think we will be able do this?”

“Yes, I think so. As long as the governments back in Brussels don’t do something stupid, we will go through the mission as planned.”

“Do you think the US will protest again?”

“No, they did not protest that much when we finished the fourth ISV.”

“Is everything assembled at our depot?”

“Yes, the last checks were completed three days ago. All astronauts have been sent up and everyone is just waiting for the ‘go’ signal.”

----

In the year 2018 the growing fleet of Interplanetary Space Vehicles of ESA and JAXA had been sent on several smaller missions to Venus and the Belt. The longest mission had been the voyage of the ISV Nobu Shirase around Saturn. ESA had called it an endurance test and dropped a number of scientific satellites around the planet, but called the ISV back home soon after.

But after this none of the spaceships had left ESAs space depot again. Some people said ESA and JAXA were tired with senseless flying around. Others said, the EU governments were not willing to pay for it anymore.

But the second step on ESAs “10 year plan to get back into space” began exactly as the last step. In the middle of a storm of reporters, camera flashes flickering off like lightning without thunder.

ESAs press speaker and the representative of JAXA were grinning into the cameras, it was time to hit the naysayer with another club on the head. And he would hit them hard!

“Welcome ladies and gentlemen.” he started with a smile.

“In the last six months since our flyby mission around Saturn there have been voices that said the cooperation between ESA and JAXA has burned out. That we are without a goal to reach. Today you are here to learn that nothing could be further from the truth.”

He looked to his Japanese colleague, which continued.

“When the Thor Heyerdahl came back from Mars, we had proven that the solar system is still open for exploration, even without Handwavium. But as important as this, we also showed everyone the potential of Fusion reactor JAXA provided for the spaceship. After we returned several governments approached our consortium to see how fast we could build a reactor to supply electrical power to them. There was only one problem. The supply of Helium-3!”

Several reporters nodded. The debate about Nuclear Fusion had heated up since the first prototype of the Honda Fusion Reactor two years ago, but died down soon after. The problem was that to get a pure aneutronic fusion reaction, you had to use pure Helium-3 as fuel. Digging over thousands of square miles on the Moon to mine it was out of question, so the only source were some Fen who did the insane job to dive with their ships into Jupiter to get it.

And nobody wanted to make their power generation totally dependent on the goodwill of a few Fen.

“We all know the discussions about Lunar sources of Helium-3, but to say it again, it will not happen. The Moon is not empty anymore, and the amount of Helium-3 in the dust is just too small.”

The ESA press speaker nodded to his colleague.

“12 months ago ESA and JAXA contacted their governments for a proposal to fix this problem. Since then, we have shipped hundreds of tons of steel and ceramic up to our orbital depot, together with the finest hightech our countries can provide. A group of forty astronauts are waiting in orbit to begin the largest space mission Europe and Japan have ever done before. We decided to call the mission ‘Aurora’.”

The room was filled with quiet murmurs now while everyone was trying to guess what was going on. Behind the two speakers, a large monitor activated, showing the image of the planet Saturn with the title ‘Aurora 2018’.

“Aurora’s main goal is to allow the commercial use of fusion reactors for clean and cheap energy! This evening, the Thor Heyerdahl, the Leif Erickson, the Nobu Shirase and the Ferdinand Magellan will depart from our depot and will be heading for Saturn. They will be carrying the first pieces of equipment to set up a permanent space station there, where some of the brightest engineers of our countries will live. If everything will go according to plan, we will deliver the first batch of Helium-3 within 24 months.”

“Why Saturn? Isn’t this awful far away?” one of the reporters asked.

“There are three planets where one could mine Helium-3 in the solar system if you don’t want to dig through millions of tons of lunar rocks. Jupiter, Saturn or Uranus.

Uranus is too far away for our current ISVs, we cannot get there and back without refueling, which make missions to Uranus too dangerous currently.

Jupiter is a lot closer than Saturn, but it has also a much higher mass, which makes it harder to get into a low orbit and back out of it.

The decision to build the station around Saturn was made as a compromise between distance and depth of the gravity well. The fact that one of the larger Fen factions have their capitol there makes it a safer neighborhood too.”

----

“Darmstadt Control, this is the Thor Heyerdahl. Mission checks have been completed, all four ships are reporting condition green. We are ready for the phase one of the mission.”

“Thor Heyerdahl, this is Darmstadt Control. Mission countdown restarted at T minus 15 minutes, prepare for staged launch sequence.”

After the flight of the Thor Heyerdahl ESA and JAXA had decided to change the design of their new space ships. Armed with the data gathered during the long flight, several small had been made to the engine section of the ship. Simultaneously they had cut the Thor Heyerdahl into four parts, connected by large docking rings.

As her sister ships, the Heyerdahl now were made up by an front crew section and an aft engine section. Depending on the mission different cargo or carrier modules could be placed between crew and engine section, together with one or multiple modules for carrying reaction mass.

All four ISVs had been equipped with a large cargo and a single reaction mass module, which allowed each of the ISVs to transport a total of one hundred metric tons of cargo to Saturn. And each of them was filled with equipment up to the limit.

‘And that’s just the first part of the cargo. We will have to come back to get the second part afterwards’ the captain of the Thor Heyerdahl thought.

‘When we are finished, the new station will be twice as large as the ISS. I wonder how long it took ESA and JAXA to carry all this mass up to the space depot. If this mission does not succeed, it will be one of the most expensive failures in the history of spaceflight.’

Fenspace owned surface orbital transportation had made spaceflight a lot cheaper than a decade ago, but this expedition was still expensive as hell.

But pushed by the increasing oil and gas prices and the sometimes less than reliable sources for both the EU and Japan were looking hard for other energy sources.

The radio speakers went active again.

“Thor Heyerdahl, this is Darmstadt. You are green for leaving orbit, we expect you back in two months. Gute Reise!”

Eric Hunt grinned.

“Thank you Darmstadt. We are beginning with the staged launch” he said and turned to the pilot of the Thor Heyerdahl.

“Mrs Meier, get us out of here.”

The woman at the control panel nodded. “Aye aye captain, all engines switching to ECON mode.”

Instantly the freefall in the ship was replaced by a tenth Earth gravity as the ship accelerated forward.

----

The Thor Heyerdahl felt crowded for the first time of its existence. The ship had more room for the crew than any other hardtech spacecraft before, but with a full crew of ten people on a voyage that would take nearly a month it was not really that comfortable.

After eight hours of flight, the ship had left the Earth-Moon system and was heading for deep interplanetary space.

“That’s it, we are out of the crowded region” Eric Hunt said and opened his seatbelt. “Mrs Meier, please tell our escort from Space Patrol we are grateful they made sure our flight corridor was free.”

He stretched and then turned on the intercom.

“Okay, everyone listen up. We have have reached interplanetary space, the autopilot will take over for the next two weeks. Mr. Soetsu, please do a full diagnosis on the reactor and our engine systems, I want to know if everything is running well. The rest of you will do a checkup of the whole ship including the cargo rooms. If something got loose, we should fix it now before we get into trouble. I want to send a report back to Earth within the next two hours!”

“Mrs. Meier, you have the watch. Keep an eye on the sensors and call me if we get visitors.”

The Thor Heyerdahl suddenly was filled with activity, as the crew began to move through all parts of the ship to check the crew module and the cargo space.

“Crew quarters are okay.”

“Living room is okay.”

“Entertainment system looks okay.”

Eric sighed, some of the crew were really fanatic in this regard.

“Engines and Reactor within expected parameters,” the message he had waited for arrived, “fuel and reaction mass without leakage or problems.”

“Thank you Mr. Soetsu, good to hear that. I will be in my room preparing the report for Earth.”

When the door to the cockpit closed again, the ships engineer Masuno Soetsu looked at Sarah Meier.

“Do you have a clue why he is that tense? I mean, we will be sitting in this tin can for a whole month, with nothing to do except for checking if the ship is still there!”

“He is most times this way, have known him for years” Sarah replied, “he says that sticking to the rules is the key to success. It will get better when we are a few days away from Earth I hope.”

“If you say so.”

----

“And the king stays on the hill again, as always!”

Masuno Soetsu was in a great mood. It was the twelfth day of their travel towards Saturn, and the fourth of their local gaming competitions. While ESA’s budget had been strained for years, they had seen the need to keep the crew of the ship busy.

Which meant that the five small cabins of the Thor Heyerdahl were each equipped with a state of the art gaming console. Luckily he had brought a number of recent games with him from Japan.

“Damned, do you really only have this shooter games with you Masuno? It would really be great

to play some other games together.”

ESA and JAXA had supplied them with a fine collection of games. Unfortunately somehow they had forgotten to give each system the same games, which made multiplayer tournaments difficult.

“Hey,” Masuno replied with a grin, “you should be thankful that I remembered to buy five copies of each of my games, otherwise we still wouldn’t have five player games!”

“Maybe we should contact the other ISVs what games they have? Maybe we can trade!”

“People, calm down a little bit” Eric Hunt said, “we are less than three weeks away from Saturn, you can ask the rest of the ISVs about their games when we arrive. The Fen might even borrow you some game consoles, because the consoles are NOT meant to be removed from the ship. Oh, and without Internet access to Earth, you cannot modify the software.”

“This stupid online DRM” someone murmured.

A few hours later most of the Thor Heyerdahl’s crew was asleep, only Sarah Meier had ‘night’ shift in the cockpit.

She looked over her email for the last time, then turned on the communication console. After a short series of commands, the ships directional radio antenna turned away from Earth and sent out a high powered digital burst of data.

----
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#17
Oh man... And I can also see these Green Fist people giving Ben headaches... He helps protect the Belters, Belters are all about mining rocks, and Green Fist sounds like they're all about conserving the Solar System... He will only be too happy to deal with Green Fist after they give him this excuse.

"Congratulations, asshats. You just fucked up big time, and now it is open season. Don't even try to run - you'll only die tired."
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#18
The Thor Heyerdahl was racing through Interplanetary Space, accelerating towards it target at Saturn. Tomorrow the ship would finally reach the midpoint of the journey and it would spend the rest of the way flying backward and braking to get into the desired orbit around the ringed planet.

Captain Hunt was sitting in the cockpit, watching a video message from Earth.

“Captain Hunt, this is Kurt Coller.”

‘Oha’ Hunt thought as the video continued, ‘the boss at Mission Control itself is calling me.’

“I would like to inform you that ESA and JAXA have agreed to allow an interview about your flight on board of the Thor Heyerdahl. Two days before you reach Pan a ship with someone from Port Luna will meet you.”

‘Reporter? Aprils fools day?’ flashed through Hunts mind.

“According to our mission planning, you should be down to maneuvering speed and preparing for transferring to an orbit around Pan, which will make docking easier. The ship of the reporter has an ESA certified airlock adapter and enough space for up to four people. We will send you a detailed report about the ship attached to this video message.

I know this is an unusual thing, but showing some good will in this interview might help us to get better relations to the Fen, which will be very important in the next years of your mission.

Kurt Coller out.”

‘At least I got a warning’ Hunt thought and sighed. He wondered if there was any kind of job left on Earth where you could not be ambushed by a reporter. But then a knocking at the cockpit doors made him turn around.

“Mrs Meier, still up that late?”

“Yes... I just a reply to an email I sent a few days ago and wanted to talk with you about it.”

Eric Hunt smiles and pointed at the empty copilot seat.

“Just sit down, I always have time for my crew.”

“You know, a major problem out here in the middle of nothing is signal delay” Sarah began to explain, “it is a headache if something bad should happen and it is also an inconvenience for communicating with Earth.”

Eric Hunt just nodded.

“When we were at Mars last year, I gave the video disk I brought from Earth to one of the Trekkies as a gift. We talked quite a lot over the next days and he said I should call him when I am in space again.”

“So you sent him a mail?” Eric Hunt asked, “Did you got a reply?”

“Yes, I got a reply... I had told him about our travel and about some of the changes they made to the Thor Heyerdahl compared to our visit on Mars. He said that he would still owe me for my present and he will send us a mobile wifi accesspoint.”

“A what?” Eric said a little bit confused. “I hope you will explain him that there is a no handwavium policy for the ships of our mission. But I still do not know what we should do with anything like this.”

Sarah grinned.

“It seems the Trekkies built a few drones with integrated Wifi and Interwave. Its a small automated spaceship that will follow us and give us faster than light communication! Even with Earth!”

Eric Hunt first instinct cried ‘no way’, but he took his time to think about the situation.

“So you say its a personal gift from someone else... it contains Handwavium, but it will stay away from our ship. We don’t have to modify anything here, but we get a faster connection to Earth.” He scratched his head. “And we might count it as working on our connections to the Fen on Mars?”

“Yes, exactly!” Sarah replied.

“I am pretty sure there will be some politicians back on Earth that will not be that happy if the hear it, but...”

Sarah blinked a few times, “but?”

“... but as you mentioned they are not here and there is quite a communication delay. I am pretty sure Mr. Coeller will be delighted to be able to work around this cage of rules. Just do not mention it directly in the reports, right? We might be in some trouble otherwise.”
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#19
This chapter didn't need a large change...

##############

A video stream activated, showing a small cockpit with a lot of screens and buttons. The camera showed two people, a men in an ESA coverall and a woman wearing a Fen spacesuit. On the edge of the screen a third seat is visible, another woman in ESA coverall is keeping an eye on the console in front of her.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is Maico Tange.

I am speaking today with Mr. Eric Hunt, captain of the spaceship Thor Heyerdahl. Mr. Hunt, how are you feeling now that you finally arrived in the orbit of Saturn ?”

Eric Hunt smiled.

“It is a great feeling coming here and enjoying this incredible look of Saturn and its rings. I mean, when I joined ESA, the thought about going to the Moon or to Mars was ridiculous. And now we are here in the Orbit around Saturn with 40 astronauts. That’s incredible!”

Maico nodded.

“Yes, of course. I don’t think any hardtech spaceship except the ISV Nobu Shirase during its flyby mission ever got that far. So what do Europe and Japan are doing that far from home?”

“We were sent to Saturn to setup a permanent station here. Both Europe and Japan are still looking for a clean energy source, we think that the same fusion technology used for the Thor Heyerdahl could also be the key to the energy problem.”

“So you are here to look for Helium-3” Maico replied, “that is quite a challenge without any involvement of Handwavium. Unless the restrictions for your civil space agencies on Earth have been lifted for this mission.”

“No, they have not been lifted. You are correct that this mission might be a greater challenge to ESA and JAXA than any before, but I am sure we can do it. We have all the basic parts with us to start with the station, and will get two additional supply runs in the next twelve months.”

Maico raised an eyebrow.

“That’s quite a lot of material, twelve hangars full of building materials. Tell me, where around Saturn will your new station be floating, I expect that quite a few of my viewers will be interested in watching you building it or visiting you later.”

“The station will be underground in the Saturn moon Pan, inside the rings of Saturn. Its the closest place to the planet where the station is protected from stellar radiation and meteor impacts.”

“Pan?”

“The closest moon of Saturn, a block of ice maybe 30 km in length. As soon as we arrive there and get the fusion reactor of the station up and running, we will begin to melt holes into the ice to put the station into. This will make extending the station later much easier than on an asteroid and still gives us a lot protection.”

“So that’s why all the catgirls are waiting here for you?”

The camera turned to a window of the Thor Heyerdahl for a moment, showing the large space station of Catgirl Industries floating in some distance. In the background a person sighs..

“Oh, we just hired a group of Fen for support during the first setup phase of the station. It gives us a place to live while we are working on Pan and makes the whole mission a lot safer.”

“Of course,” Maico answered and turns towards the camera.

“So ESA and JAXA will be quite busy building their new ice station on Saturn in the coming year. This is Maico Tange, hope to see you on my next interview.”

Somewhere, a billion kilometers away from the Thor Heyerdahl a man switched off his TV set and grabbed his phone.

“Get me the Director General of ESA... yes, now... no, I don’t care if he is at mission control at the moment, get him to a phone... NOW!”
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#20
A new update... this one should happen BEFORE the interview in the last chapter. Thanks to ECSNorway for a review.

######################

From the outside it was just a standard Whistler ‘space worthy’ container, one of thousands that existed in Fenspace which had been converted into an improvised living space. No windows, a single airlock to move a small car in and a few rooms in the back of the container.

The interior of the Green Thumb, as the container was called by its inhabitants, was a mess. Boxes of Ninjaburgers fast food were laying between the monitors on the table, in a corner there was a box of dirty clothing. On the wall there was a poster with the slogan ‘Safe Earth, not wreck Mars!”, just between two racks with potted plants.

A woman with green hairs was sitting in front of one of the monitors, watching to a series of Interwave news sites in quick succession and making some notes on a data pad. Then the door towards garage opened and a man entered the room.

"Hi, Alexander, good to see you back again," she said, not even looking up from the screen. "Hope you brought some good news."

"No," he answered. "Not at all... in fact, I got some damn scary news from one of my contacts. Wake Norman up, would you? I want to tell you both at once."

The woman looked up. “Is it really that urgent? I am just fine tuning our memetic campaign against the Mars terraforming, I have a great idea how to make it work!”

Alexander sighed, Miriam had been working on her ‘campaign’ for more than a year... without any effect or reaction.

“Wake him up, I got some news about what’s happening at Saturn. It is not looking good.”

Miriam rolled her eyes as she got up and went to one of the doors in the back of the room. “Norman, time to get up... Alex is back and he has something important to say.”

It took a minute until a sleepy looking man came through the door.

“I hope this is important” he said and looked at his watch, “I told Miriam I am dead tired three hours ago.”

“Calm down Norman, I have got something important about the ESA mission on Saturn. It seems one of my contacts not only managed to get a scan of the ESA vessels, but also heard some insider rumors” Alexander replied and began to push pizza boxes away that were blocking their holo projector.

“As you see” he said and activated the projector, “the ships of the ESA are built from four different sections... Control, Cargo, Reaction Mass and Engine. I assume that the Patrol didn’t do more than a quick lock on the cargo section, they think ESA is much too tame for anything bad.”

“Yeah, and within this cargo sections they carry the equipment to plunder Nature’s resources at Saturn” Miriam said with a worried look. “They already wrecked one planet, now they are extending to the rest of the solar system!”

“We know that the Patrol and the Convention are scared. The thing that Europe calls an “ion engine” is probably the most powerful particle beam weapon Fenspace has ever seen. And if my contact is right, they even plan to get more weapons to Saturn.”

Norman looked up. “More weapons?”

“Yes, more weapons” Alexander continued, “as soon as their station is finished, they will arm it step by step. In a few years they will annex the whole Saturn region so they can exploit it without being disturbed.”

“And when the Convention finally learns what they are doing it will be too late, even if they decide to do something at all” Miriam added.

“Maybe we should try to force the issue before Europe has the chance to arm their station?” Norman suggested.

Alexander nodded. “Thats an interesting idea... wait, didn’t you said you knew a Mad that is supportive to our mission? Maybe you can ask him for some support?”

“I am not sure, but I can try. Give me a few days to contact him.”
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#21
Sounds good. A bit improvement. Couple of very minor niggles:

‘Safe Earth, not wreck Mars!”

should that be "Save Earth, not Wreck Mars!"?

And I think "A woman with green hairs" probably wants "green hair".
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
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#22
Sounds like they're reading "watching with glee at the experiment in hardteching a small science settlement" as "scared out of our wits".
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
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#23
Ace Dreamer Wrote:Sounds good. A bit improvement. Couple of very minor niggles:
Added it to my gdocs... will be in the final wiki document, thank you.

JFerio Wrote:Sounds like they're reading "watching with glee at the experiment in hardteching a small science settlement" as "scared out of our wits".
Nobody said this guys are reasonable. Wink
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#24
A short chapter just before they reach Pan.

###############

“I told you we should have waited for the reporter before flying to Pan.”

“Yes, you did... four times!” Eric Hunt said and looked to Sarah. “But that would have delayed our flight plan for an unknown amount of time. And if the reported just had waited here at Pan, it would have been no use at all.”

Everyone in the cockpit became silent.

“So why are you annoyed about the interview Eric?” Sarah asked, “I mean I think it was quite nice.”

“Yes, nice... but I really would have preferred that these women would not have spelt out for everyone that ESA and JAXA hired a station of biomodded catgirls as a support base” Eric tried to explain. “I have not read the proposals by ESA to the EU council, but some of these guys can barely tolerate the Fen. There is no way they would have agreed to this mission if they knew about the catgirls.”

“You mean they didn’t told them?”

“Not directly Masuno, not directly. Most likely they buried the name of the catgirls company in some appendix document, together with a few thousand other details they would never read.” Eric sighed. “But I hope everyone recognizes what this means for us.”

Masuno Soetsu blinked and looked a bit puzzled, but Sarah Meier nodded.

“Yes... it seems not a single person involved in this project gave them a hint. At least the upper planning level would have known about this Fen involvement. Oh, and all of the crew too!” she said. “Which means we have some petty and powerful persons waiting for us to get back into their reach to punish us for betraying them.”

Eric suppressed a smile, it was good to know that at least some of his crew were able to see this political minefield.

“Exactly. So either we come back successful as heros or we screw up and get fired by the influence of some pissed string pullers. Powerful motivator for this mission. But that’s enough talk, we just have two hours left until landing. Check the ship for the last time, I do not want to hear a ‘but we haven’t noticed’ later.”

Masuno grinned. “And after that we go and meet the catgirls!”
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#25
HRogge Wrote:
Ace Dreamer Wrote:Sounds good. A bit improvement. Couple of very minor niggles:
Added it to my gdocs... will be in the final wiki document, thank you.
My mistake, should have read a "big improvement". Smile
In the next section:
"And if the reported just had waited", should be "reporter"?
"“You mean they didn’t told them?”" should be "tell them"?
"‘but we haven’t noticed’" should be "hadn't"?
Nice piece on how politics can bite you even if you do your job as best you can!
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
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