Futuristic The Adventures of the Ulster and her Crew: Both Legal and Otherwise II

[JDParadox]

"So is sobriety, love. We spacers can't be perfect like you groundsiders." Jensen scoffed and laughed at the girl's comment, far too drunk to give a damn if she had meant any offense, far too drunk to think of a good retort, far too drunk to explain where his habits came from. Out there in the belt, everybody drank. One way or another, only a little or too far gone like him, alcohol and money were what made the belt spin. Life was just far too short for there to be any reason not too.


Though, if you asked him, whenever a witty reply was not on the tip of your tongue when talking to a lady, it was long past time you returned to your quarters. It was not as if the ship's digital systems could get any worse, he could work on them when he woke up.


Damn, just really living up to everyone's expectations today, aye, you bastard? Really outdone yourself


Even in his sorry state, zero G maneuvering still was a simple endeavor; after all, once you got the hang of it, it took very little effort to just drift. Jensen passed a man in the mess hall, busy at work cleaning up a pair of pistols that once again reminded him of Ceres, where old guns were more common. He nodded in greeting before making for the cabins, finding an empty room and letting his bag float away from him and further into it. They were starting the burn soon.


"1..." The girl counted as he managed to find the chair without too much difficulty, strapped himself in and waited.


"2..." That strange feeling you get, that excited tingling before you know the G-force hits you like a truck. He could feel it in his bones, he had done this a thousand times, but it was not one of those things you get used to.


"3..." And there it was: Sudden, violent, and beautiful. The world shook, the engines roared, and he was smiling, eyes closed more because of the aching in his head than anything else. A thousand times, and it still somehow seemed to feel new every time. Most people hated the feeling of blasting off, but for spacers like Jensen, it felt like going home. Maybe it's because he was going home, for all intents and purposes. The inertia was enough to turn his face numb.


When the burn stopped there was something almost like disappointment in his chest. The blast off was always the best part, even though Jensen knew everything would come to a point of saturation within in the next few weeks, and then the cycle would repeat once he found himself groundside again.

 

[Tarmagon]

Marya read the return text, and tried to throttle down the nearly blinding fury the condescending tone evoked.


"Stupid, stuck up, arrogant..." the flow of mental invective tapered off as she undid the straps on her chair and started for the door to engineering.


"Cas, tender my resignation to the capt...."


"Bridge, Ulster. All hands, secure yourselves for undocking and escape burn. Reynolds, half pressure on the superheaters for now. Shaw, report any abnormalities immediately and stand by for further instructions. "


"Keep comms chatter to a minimum, or I'll personally eject you."


"Well tube-wash!" Marya snorted, diving back into the chair she had just vacated and strapping in.


"Do you still wish me to tender your resignation?" her pda asked.


"Cancel last command Cas," Marya replied absently as her fingers danced along the propulsion control panel, bringing the massive pumps to life and filling the super-heater chamber with propellant mass. "Link to reactor and engine status displays. Real time display of reactor throughput, plasma flow, propellant pressures, and thruster output."


"Displaying."


"Screw it," Marya said aloud. "I'm not going to let some hopped up egomaniac ruin this for me."


Keeping one eye on the building pressure in the propulsion system, Marya ran her finger along the hatch controls for engineering, sealing the blast doors and putting the compartment on its own environmental circuit.


"No point in flooding the rest of the ship if the plant lets go," she thought as the hiss of the sealing door reached her ears. Gravity began to assert itself in bumps and spurts as the RCS thrusters aligned the ship, and Marya couldn't stop the grin that started to spread across her face.


"Queue up playlist three Cas," she said. "Maximum volume that can be contained in engineering. Start on main thruster burn."


"Acknowledged."


"Firing main thrusters."


"3..."


"2.."


"1..."


The thrust hit, and Heart of the Dragon began to boom throughout engineering, harmonizing with the deep thrum of the pumps and roar of super-heated matter being flung into the void. Marya rode the waves of music and the song of the old ship's propulsion system, letting the ship speak to her bones. A flicker of yellow in the corner of her vision and a quick touch to increase the plasma pressure to the super-heaters. A slight rumble, just out of sync, and she throttled back slightly on one pump, keeping everything in the green. For three glorious minutes, Marya lost herself in the thunder and fury of the old ships reactor and drive, reveling in the controlled fury. It was nearly painful when the thrust died away and she had to dial back to standby mode. Heaving a massive sigh, Marya grinned to herself.


"I wonder if 'chief' ever gets that feeling?" she mused as she unsealed the doors and engineering rejoined the ship proper.

 

[ToteMaus]

Cecilia took a deep breath as the elderly ship accelerated, groaning and protesting all the way. A sustained six times earth gravity in linear acceleration was by no means comfortable, and if metal fatigue had gotten to the pylons, the engines could very well tear themselves off with the sudden jolt of thrust. The old ship held together beautifully, and after a few minutes, the engines were cut and the Ulster began drifting away from earth. Over the next seven days, as they drifted into a solar orbit, that pale blue dot would shrink away into a pinpoint.


Cecilia tapped the intercom again, "Okay crew, we've got about seven days until heliocentric orbit and our next burn. Get comfortable. Shaw, spin up the hab-ring." With that, she reached into her satchel to withdraw a manilla envelope, containing a small data storage device. She plugged it into a slot on the console in front of her, and, after a few button presses, uploaded its contents to the ship's files. She slapped the PA button again, "I've uploaded our mission briefing to the Ulster's common drive, read it at your leisure." After the PA clicked off once more, she turned to look at Frances, "So, how does she measure up to the ships you are used to flying?"


The briefing was a simple text file accompanied by an image. Those who had signed on were vaguely aware that this was to be a bounty retrieval expedition, but this one little file contained all the details. It opened with the official bounty as provided by the UCSA:

UCSA official bounty registry. Charles Everett, wanted for industrial espionage, theft, and fraud against MMI. Reward is five hundred thousand credits alive, one hundred thousand dead.

Mister Everett's last known location was Mars, Hellas City. The Ulster is to travel there, and rendezvous with an informant in Hellas, he will contact you when you arrive.

​

This rather brief and very cryptic information was unlikely to inspire confidence. Particularly so, being that Elias was known as a trader, not a bounty hunter, and likely had very little idea of what he was doing. Whatever the risks, the money offered for Mister Everett was just too tempting to pass up.

​

 

[Industrial Waste]

'Aye, m'um. Hab ring is a go' Shaw taps her comm unit before making an announcement over PA 'Habitation, this is bridge, brace for grav spin. I repeat, habitation, brace for grav spin, over'


The electromotors in the ring's axis come to life with low humming, as the habitation ring starts to spin, slowly and gradually gaining in speed over the next 10 minutes until the gravity holds steady at 0.5G.


'Habitation, bridge. You're good to go, gravity is stable. over' Engineer turned off the PA before beginning a full diagnostic of primary and auxiliary systems.

 

[JDParadox]

Jensen heard the comms and sat there until the hab ring spun up, until he could feel that familiar half G pulling on his bones and muscles. The high of the burn was gone, so was that stupid smile on his face. Now, if only the raging headache would follow them too.


Home. What was so great about being home again? He had to look forward to 7 days of just drifting through empty, featureless void: this was the less glamorous part of space travel, even much less so than usual. Jensen stood up from the chair, stretching. His bag had found its way to the floor, contents half-spilled out to its side: just clothing mostly, dark tones of black and navy, like some alien beast's disemboweled guts. He stumbled to the door. Time to go meet the Captain.


The strange man in the galley, dressed like an Earther gunslinger from some bygone century, was still hard at work cleaning his ancient pistols. Jensen paused near the ladder. "Sup, pengyu?" It was broken Belter Chinese for "friend". Out there, a hundred kinds of people from a hundred different countries, all trying to make a living in a place where life wasn't even meant to be, made for a strange mix of culture, like some ugly interbred mutt. "I'm guessing you're the muscle on this boat. I'm Jensen." He gave a mock salute in greeting, other hand still hanging onto the ladder. The PDA in his pocket was beeping, but he could always check it later.

 

[DJGomez]

Caine continued cleaning his 1911s and reassembled them in record time as he was greeted by another of the crew. "Sup Pengyu." Said the man, to which Caine replied with "Xiawu Mosheng ren." (Afternoon Stranger.) Caune couldn't speak Chinese fluently, but his time out in the rim and colonies taught him a little bit of every language. He couldn't hold any sort of conversation, his vocabulary consisted of mostly insults, so he knew when he was being insulted, but he knew a few words here and there.


Putting his pistols back in his holster, he looked up at the man who had greeted him. He seemed competent enough, and he could smell the liqour on him from here.......He'd fit just in just fine with Caine as he offered him a seat. " Muscle is a strong word. I'm the public relations correspondent. Joshua Caine."

 

[JDParadox]

Jensen still couldn't believe he'd let the Ceres dialect slip again, but Caine's reply was enough to give him pause, if only out of curiosity. That, and the man's job title made him laugh. "Hah. I was wondering what the hell 'public relations' meant. Now I know" It was difficult to tell if he was a spacer or not, tall enough to pass for one, but short enough to work as an Earther too. He might as well have been Martian or Venusian, for all Jensen could gather. But then again, where you came from didn't actually matter that much when you're all on the same boat floating in the middle of nothin'. They're all spacers now. "I bet those guns should help with talking them down, aye, Caine?" He gave the man a knowing smirk


"Nah mate, thanks but I'll pass. I'm just heading up to see our glorious capitaine, and to check if this old gal's security systems has actually been updated in the last century." He'd already ran that check and the results weren't all that promising, but it was better to seem like he wasn't just some deadbeat drunkard hitching a ride to Mars. Jensen started taking the first steps onto the ladder, feeling the artificial gravity fading away with each rung. "You should join us, check out the view from the cockpit. Heard space's looking real nice this time of the year." He paused on the last step, waiting.

 

[Wood]

Frances breathed a deep sigh of relief and released her x-strap, slouched in her chair and enjoyed the feeling of a successful launch. "Space really is beautiful" Frances thought, "When there's nothing between you and it but steel produced by the lowest bidder." She watched the Earth and couldn't help but feel glad that they were moving away. When the Captain spoke, Frances jumped slightly. She had almost forgotten she wasn't alone in the cockpit like usual. "You know what." Frances watched the dials fidget across her eye. "It's ugly and old, but so is my Grandmother and I still love her." Frances nodded her head to accept the briefing. "I think I'll be happy flying her."


The girl read the briefing and chuckled. She had tried so hard to get off of Mars, and it was pulling her right back.

 

[Tarmagon]

Marya let herself relax from the rush of acceleration and started the cool down cycle on the main drive. As she did so, an announcement crackled over the PA.


'Habitation, this is bridge, brace for grav spin. I repeat,habitation, brace for grav spin, over'


She felt the grumble of the powerful motors slowly spinning up the habitation ring, and watched her power readouts carefully. Not a blip.


"Guess this old girls solid where it counts" she mused as the minutes went by. After what she guessed was about 10 minutes the PA crackled to life once more.


'Habitation, bridge. You're good to go, gravity is stable. over'


"Okay, " she said to herself, "Let's try professionalism. Cas, open circuit to the bridge please. "


"Open," her pda replied.


"This is Reynolds in engineering, " Marya said crisply. "Reporting that main drive is cooling to standby mode. Request permission to reduce reactor output to maintenance levels and recharge ships batteries. Do you want the catcher field initialized Chief? "

 

[GreenEyedStranger]

As everyone else on the ship got comfortable, the Pilgrim moved to the side of the main bridge. He suddenly stopped halfway and knelt, placing down a small wooden altar just a bit smaller than her torso. Nearly blocking some of the way, the Pilgrim draped over it and began to pray in a strange mystic language.


Some words were recognizable amid the strange foreign vocalizations


"-Blood... Return to the tomb and fill our eyes with your stars... Amen."


The Pilgrim would do this for about an hour, remaining mostly still.

 

[DJGomez]

"Sure why not." Caine stood up and walked over to the ladder, grabbing ahold of the ring and following Jensen up.

 

[ToteMaus]

"She'll get us where we need to go without too much trouble" Cecelia replied as she took out and turned on her PDA. She kept her straps buckled, as she rarely found drifting at random about the cabin pleasant, unlike many other spacers she had met. "What do you think about this whole bounty hunting business?" she asked while never really looking up from her PDA. She plugged the crew manifest into a list randomiser app. She smiled faintly as the results came up before attaching the resulting list to the ship's files under the name CookingRotation.txt. The order posted in the file was: Tanner, Kalen, Slantz, Caine, Shaw, Reynolds, and McKee.

 

[ToteMaus]

It had been nearly thirty days since they left earth when the red planet came in view. A short correctional burn later, and the tiny red speck in the distance began to grow as the Ulster's orbit brought it ever nearer. By the time they had finished their declaration and circularisation burn at periapsis, Mars was properly visible out the main view-ports in the cockpit. Cecilia pressed a button on the communications panel and spoke into her microphone, "SS Earl of Ulster entering Mars orbit, requesting docking instructions." It only took a few moments before the reply crackled over the ageing speakers of the comms system, "This is Mars orbital control, proceed to Resnik Station, docking port twenty two." They performed a transfer burn, sending the Ulster on a course to intercept Resnik station.


Twelve hours later, as the newest Martian space dock drew ever closer to the Ulster, it seemed ever more impressive. Unlike the older, more industrial Gagarin Station, Resnik Station was meant for tourists, visitors, and corporate VIPs. As it came into view, Resnik Station appeared at first as a glittering white speck over the Martian horizon, illuminated by the sunrise that was still just out of view. As the sun peeked over the horizon, the red coloured sky below it became a brilliant glowing arc of colour that contrasted with the dull red ground that had yet to see the sun's rays. All of the viewports on the Ulster automatically polarised to shield the crew from the intense solar light. The crew could now make out the shape of Resnik Station, illuminated brilliantly by its anti-radiation coating reflecting the light of the sun.


There was a central docking spire, regularly shaped and symmetrical, with a multitude of docking arms, each of the same length, branching out at regular intervals from the spire. This spire had three concentric habitation rings, connected to the main hub by three massive struts. Each one simulated a different level of gravity for its inhabitants. Six white radiator panels were mounted on the outermost ring, each stretching out hundreds of metres into space, glowing faintly as they expelled the heat from all the station's reactors and equipment, they gave Resnik Station the appearance of a gigantic metal flower hanging in space over Mars.


The Ulster docked at the assigned port with a quiet hiss as the pressures equalised between the vessel and the station. Cecelia flicked the switch on the comms panel that set her mic to internal broadcast, and sent out a message to the crew, "Okay, crew, we'll be going in two shore parties. Party one will be lead by me and will meet our contact in Hellas City. Party two will be lead by Caine and will go to the target's last known location. Volunteers for party one, meet me in surface shuttle bay one, volunteers for party two, meet your guide in surface shuttle bay three. That is all."

 

[GreenEyedStranger]

As the ship landed to the dock, the Pilgrim crawled out of the cabin and stood at the hangar door, under his sleeve, he tucked somethings with his other hand before following the crew to shuttle bay one.


"What exactly are we expected to do?"


The pilgrim asked Cecilia, stooping forward in his strange height.

 

[DJGomez]

Caine walked to shuttle bay two as he checked the magazines in his antique pistols, before loading the back in and setting them in his holsters. He did a quick check of his various other items before closing his trench coat and standing by casually, waiting to see who would join him in this expedition. He had a couple contacts in mind he could ask if their assigned one fell through.