Lost Among The Stars

A space shipyard. Design from the FANDOM site. CHAPTER 2 – SPACE REFIT 13:57 (Greenwich Universal Time) Thursday, January 8, 2320 Command bridge of the armed merchant ship A.M.S. KOSTROMA On approach to the Avalon Space Yards Low Earth orbit The tall brunette in her early thirties smiled on seeing the face of a mature man appear on one of the small viewing screens attached to the armrests of her command chair. ‘’Hello Gustav! I am back from my second trip to Eris and am ready for the refit we discussed a few months ago and that is to be financed by the Spacers League. I also have a few million credits that are burning my fingertips and that I am eager to spend at your shipyard on a few personal projects I have in mind.’’ ‘’Aaah, the kind of customer I like!’’ replied with a smile Gustav Shomberg, the owner of the Avalon Space Yards and one of the most prominent spaceship designers in the Solar System. ‘’So, how are the scientists in the Eris Station doing, apart from wallowing in Eris diamonds?’’ ‘’Studying and observing, as you would expect from true scientists. They are also quite busy studying each other, considering the fact that seven babies have been born at the station in the past year and a half, with more on the way. By the way, I also kept busy with Michel Koniev, what with those long space trips, and we now have a three month-old boy named Misha. You will be free to cuddle him once you come aboard.’’ ‘’Oh! Congratulations! I am sure that he will make an excellent ship captain one day. About your refit, I received three weeks ago from the Spacers League the weapons systems, ordnance and materiel meant to be fitted to the KOSTROMA. From formidable, your KOSTROMA will soon become a truly mighty opponent in a space battle.’’ ‘’Well, I sincerely hope that I will never need to use those weapons, ever: I hate war, even if I proved to be good at it while fighting the Terran Federation four years ago. The personal improvements I have in mind are definitely on the more pacifist side.’’ ‘’I am eager to hear about them, Tina. I suppose that your crew will go for a long and well-deserved vacation period on Earth while we will work on your ship.’’ ‘’You supposed right, Gustav. I may have forests, giant aquariums and farms aboard the KOSTROMA, but I still don’t have a seaside beach or a mountain range.’’ ‘’Can’t have it all, I guess.’’ said Shomberg while shrugging and smiling. Well, I will now leave you in peace, so that you can dock your ship inside my Dry Dock Number One. See you later!’’ The video link was then cut, leaving Tina Forster free to concentrate back on guiding her 1,700 meter-long ultra-heavy cargo ship towards the waiting main dry dock of the Avalon Space Yards. At an empty mass of 2,510,000 metric tons, the KOSTROMA would definitely inflict some major damage to the space yard if not handled properly and with due caution. Thankfully, her cargo holds were presently empty, while her deuterium-tritium fuel tanks were only a quarter full, the result of the long, year-long return trip to Eris, so her ship’s gravity sails, which worked in a fairly similar way to anti-gravity fields, proved more than sufficient to propel the KOSTROMA with agility and precision. Another twenty minutes and the giant cargo ship moored itself inside the largest of the yards’ dry docks. The access doors of the dry dock then closed and compressed air started filling the vast volume of space inside. ‘’Mooring clamps engaged and secured! Communication tunnels extending into position!’’ announced First Pilot Frida Skarsgard, a 31 year-old woman with reddish-brown hair and blue eyes who was also a close friend of Tina. ‘’Shut down all engines! Secure from flying stations!’’ said Tina in turn before looking at her First Navigator, Dana ‘DD’ Durning, who was also her unofficial First Officer. While Dana said that ‘DD’ were simply the first letters of her name, sneaky tongues (male ones mostly) said that it alluded to the size of her chest. Whatever the meaning of ‘DD’ was, the 36 year-old still had most men salivating at her sight. ‘’Dana, you have the bridge. I am going to meet Mister Shomberg.’’ ‘’Understood!’’ Getting up from her command chair, Tina then walked down the steps linking her platform level with the next lower one, where the access rotunda to the elevators was. At this level in the ship, just under the massive, 700 meter-diameter bow shield of the giant cargo ship, only two personnel lift cabins and two medium cargo lifts reached all the way up to the bridge complex and were reserved for the exclusive use of the crew. The other elevators contained inside the central longitudinal spine tube of the KOSTROMA stopped short of it on Deck 23, which was the highest level passengers could normally get to, unless invited up by Tina. Calling up one of the lift cabins and then riding it down to the ship’s Main Promenade Deck, on Level 9, Tina left the cabin there and started walking down one of the four radial hallways linking the deck’s central rotunda with the peripheral ring which constituted the Main Promenade proper. Passing in succession in front of the entrances of the ‘Maharaja’ Indian restaurant, the ship’s commercial daycare center, the ship’s barber shop and hair salon and the children’s playground, she arrived after some sixty meters at the junction of the hallway and of the Main Promenade. Small trees and rows of decorative bushes planted on both sides of the ten meter-wide ring promenade added a soft natural touch to what was in essence a commercial shopping venue used by crewmembers, members of their families, passengers and visitors alike. The shops, boutiques and clubs of the Main Promenade were in fact one of the main reasons why the KOSTROMA was such a popular mixed cargo and passenger ship in the Solar System. For the men and women working hard in often isolated mining operations and smaller human outposts around the Solar System, the passage of the KOSTROMA represented a rare and much appreciated occasion to entertain themselves, shop for things that were not available locally, enjoy exotic food and generally change their minds from work. On such stops at isolated facilities and outposts, another particularity of the KOSTROMA made it even more popular, this time with the managers and logistics officers of those facilities and outposts: the extensive agro-food production facilities on which Tina had worked for years now to develop aboard her cargo ship. With a length overall of 1,740 meters and a total of 128 full decks, many of which were sub-divided into more decks, Tina had plenty of internal space available to devote to hydroponic gardens, animal farms and fish ponds, and this without hurting her cargo-carrying capacity, which presently stood at a whopping maximum of twenty million metric tons, most of it transported in space cargo pods attached to its external flanks. That initiative, apart from helping to fulfill Tina’s dream of transforming her ship into what she called ‘a village in space’, had proved as well to be very lucrative commercially. One reason for that was that the KOSTROMA was now self-sufficient in terms of food production, with Tina not needing anymore to buy foodstuff at often inflated prices from Earth suppliers or from Spacers’ moon farms. Another reason was the fact that some of the crops and foodstuff produced aboard the KOSTROMA were highly-sought of products, like spices, coffee, tea and chocolate, which Tina was then too happy to sell to other Spacers at prices markedly lower than those asked for by Earth’s exporters. Tina smiled to herself on seeing that the reception counter of the East Outer Access Gallery, which was now some fifteen meters ahead of her, was already processing visitors from the Avalon Space Yards, many of them being obviously spouses or children of the workers of the giant orbital facility. Despite being stationed in Earth orbit, a trip to Earth’s surface was still fairly costly for the average worker, who normally saved his or her money for vacation trips rather than for shopping trips. There was also the fact that the KOSTROMA and Tina enjoyed a special relationship with the Avalon Space Yards, which had effected its first major refit and had also secretly helped arm it in prevision for the war that had opposed in 2315 the now defunct Earth Federation and the Spacers League, a war in which Tina and her cargo ship had played a crucial role. Her smile widened as she watched a group of excited children dragging their parents towards the nearby children’s playground of the Main Promenade, which covered over 500 square meters and had a free height of ten meters, allowing it to house some fairly elaborate play modules. Other children also assaulted the adjacent ‘Enceladus Swirl’ ice cream parlor and candy shop, which served fresh ice cream and chocolate produced aboard the KOSTROMA. The parents of those last children actually put up little resistance, as fresh dairy products were some of the most sought of (and expensive) items off Earth’s surface, due to high transportation costs and the difficulty of keeping those products fresh during the long delivery trips across the Solar System, which could take up to four weeks aboard older cargo ships. Tina was passing by the reception counter and through the large airlock situated at the junction with the access gallery when her wrist videophone buzzed, making her stop and raise her forearm. Seeing that it was Spirit, the artificial intelligence computer of her ship, calling her, she opened the line and spoke in her videophone. ‘’Yes, Spirit?’’ ‘’I am sorry to bother you, Tina, but I just got a message from Shanya, my friend on the VEON SHOURIA: a team of Koorivars just departed Vancouver Island in one of their shuttle craft and is on its way to here. They wish to speak to you in private about a most important and sensitive subject.’’ Two things immediately made Tina freeze for a moment. First, Shanya was the AI computer of the Koorivar ship VEON SHOURIA, which had been saved by the KOSTROMA on Eris. The notion of two super computers calling each other a ‘friend’ was enough to make most people pause. Second, a ‘most important and sensitive subject’, when it related to the Koorivars, could only concern one thing: their anti-matter drive. ‘’Uh, I was on my way to go see Gustav Shomberg, to discuss our refit with him. When is the Koorivar shuttle scheduled to arrive at the Avalon Space Yards?’’ ‘’It should dock with the station in about 43 minutes.’’ ‘’Then, once they are on the KOSTROMA, have them wait for me in my suite on Level 24. I will join them there after speaking with Shomberg.’’ ‘’Understood!’’ Her mind now busy speculating about what the Koorivars wanted to tell her, Tina closed the link and resumed her walking. Once out of the 320 meter-long telescopic access gallery, Tina found that Shomberg had sent a driver with an anti-gravity scooter to wait for her at the reception airlock of the station. Thanking the driver, she took place in one of the passenger seats of the scooter and let the man drive her down the long passageways of the installation. Four minutes later, the scooter was letting her step off in front of Shomberg’s private office, situated in the design department of the space yards. Shomberg’s personal secretary, a stunningly beautiful Asian young woman, greeted Tina with a respectful bow. ‘’Welcome to Mister Shomberg’s offices, Fleet Captain Foster. Mister Shomberg is waiting for you in his office. If you will please follow me.’’ A bit amused at being greeted by her rank as a reservist in the small Spacers League’s navy, Tina returned the woman’s bow, then followed her into a large but not extravagant work office where a joyful disorder of piles of documents and dozens of miniature ship models greeted her. Despite being a true technological genius, Gustav Shomberg was a bit old-fashioned in his work habits and manners and liked to use paper documents whenever he could. Shomberg, a tall and beefy man of pure Nordic type with platinum blond hair and pale blue eyes, greeted Tina with a rather unceremonious hug and kisses on both cheeks. ‘’Tina, it is truly nice to see you again.’’ ‘’And it is also nice for me to see you, my friend. So, you wanted to discuss with me the refit work on my ship?’’