09:35 (Earth Universal Time)
Friday, September 13, 2329
Captain’s office, Executive Floor, Core Section
A.M.S. NOSTROMO, Building Dock Number One
Avalon Space Yards, Low Earth Orbit
Tina Forster at age 42
Despite the fact that she had been working non-stop for two days on administrative and personnel matters rather than flying around Space, Tina’s morale was high and she was giving her all on her present work: to get the NOSTROMO ready for Space with a full crew and full supplies. You didn’t just declare that your 3,000 meter-long, 7.4 million tons ship was ready to fly right after its launch: you had to make sure first that you had everyone and everything you needed aboard, then had to give time to your crew to get familiar with your ship. Examples of hurried and botched ships’ service entrance were many in History and they rarely ended well. One good example of such a case that came to Tina’s mind was that of the brand-new British battleship PRINCE OF WALES, launched at the start of World War Two. It was still doing its initial sea trials in 1941 and trying to correct some teething problems when the British Admiralty had ordered it to go hunt the German battleship BISMARCK in the company of the British battlecruiser HOOD. As a result, it went into battle with a number of civilian shipyard engineers still aboard and working to fix a number of defects. In a sea battle that then became a historical epic story, the HOOD was sunk, while the PRINCE OF WALES had to withdraw with some serious damage after many of its systems had failed during combat. In the case of her brand new NOSTROMO, Tina was resolved not to rush its first spaceflight. This morning, she had been concentrating on ordering the thousands of things that her ship would need once in Space, like food supplies, fuel, fertilizers for the ship’s extensive hydroponic gardens and plantation, spare parts and lots more.
Tina was looking at the staffing of the various personnel and passenger services departments and making notes on her computer when the chime of her office’s door rang.
‘’COME IN!’’
The person who then entered her office proved to be a good surprise for her: it was Doctor Koomak. Getting up from her chair and walking around her desk, she went to meet him with a warm hug.
‘’Doctor Koomak, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit today?’’
‘’To two things, Tina.’’ replied the old Koorivar scientist, his expression most serious. ‘’You remember that the dead Space Predator we found on the VLADIMIR KOMAROV was wearing some sort of equipment-carrying vest?’’
‘’Yes, I do! You were put in charge by the Admiralty of the scientific team tasked with studying and analyzing that vest and the equipment in it. Did you find something significant?’’
‘’Significant? No! Vital? Absolutely! Let me explain in as simple a manner as I can. One of the things that had proved to be the demise of the VLADIMIR KOMAROV and of the DE RUYTER was the ability of the Space Predators to teleport aboard those ships, with Predator boarding teams then ripping to pieces their crews. From the recordings retrieved on those vessels, we learned that Predator asteroid ships first teleport numerous boarding craft to close to the ships they target. Then, those boarding craft glue themselves to the outer hulls of those unfortunate ships before teleporting inside those ships dozens of Predators. Well, one of the things that we found and analyzed from that vest turned out to be what you could call a teleportation beacon, meant to signal that the Predator wearing it was ready to return to its boarding craft or to its mother ship. Then, the teleportation device on that craft or ship homes in on that beacon and teleport that alien aboard. While that beacon did not tell us how exactly the Predator teleportation device works, it did tell us about which frequency and type of energy wave it works. As a result, I was then able to develop a jamming device that would scramble the teleportation beam and make it disperse before it could pick up the waiting Predator. Most importantly for us, that jamming device would in theory be able to scramble Predator teleportation beams as they try to send boarding craft close to our ship. All this is still unproven but I am sure that it will work as I just described.’’
Tina’s mouth opened wide on hearing that.
‘’But that’s huge! If you are correct, then we would be able to prevent those Space Predators from boarding our ships, even at close range. And what is the Admiralty doing with this find?’’
‘’It asked me to come here and have a number of my teleportation jammers installed aboard your NOSTROMO, and this on a most urgent basis. The other major ships of the Spacers’ League Navy are being similarly equipped as we speak. Hopefully, this will make fighting those Space Predators much less difficult and risky. I also made sure that Koorivar ships be also equipped with my jammers.’’
‘’Damn! We must go see Gustav Shomberg at once about this, so that your devices could be installed aboard the NOSTROMO. Uh, what was the second reason why you came to see me?’’
Koomak then smiled for the first time since his entrance in her office.
‘’I want to be part of your crew and serve aboard the NOSTROMO, Tina. Working in a physics lab on NEW SHOURIA is nice, but I can’t see a better use of my final years than serving on your ship.’’
Tina’s smile was then replaced with a look of concern for her friend.
‘’Don’t tell me that you are going to die soon, my friend.’’
‘’Oh, nothing so dramatic, Tina. I may be old, even for a Koorivar, but I am still in fairly good health and can hope for at least another fifteen to twenty productive years before I kick the bucket, as you Humans say.’’
Tina let out a breath of relief then and gently patted Koomak’s shoulder.
‘’My friend, I am not stupid enough to refuse such a request from you. How about you becoming the dean of my ship’s university’s physics department, on top of becoming my chief scientist?’’
‘’That would do!’’ said the Koorivar, a grin on its long snout.
‘’Then, I will take care of providing you with an apartment as soon as we will have gone to speak with Gustav Shomberg. You really made my day, Doctor.’’
‘’That’s what friends are for, no?’’
‘’Indeed!’’
11:20 (Atlantis Eastern Time)
Monday, September 23, 2329
The Golshan’s apartment, Oceanside City
Atlantis (16 Cygni Ac), 69 light-years from Earth
Nineteen-year-old Roshana Golshan
Roshana Golshan could nearly bang in frustration her head against the wall of her room as she desperately kept trying to find a place as a student of physics in a university…any university. Her curse was that Atlantis was one of the newer worlds to be colonized by the Spacers’ League and, while being a world with near ideal living conditions, something that had attracted plenty of immigrants to it, its services and infrastructures were having problems coping with the continuing influx of arrivals. As a result, the only university operating on Atlantis at this time was booked solid in terms of student’s registrations and Roshana had found herself far from the top of that list, through no fault of her own. With her parents’ consent, she had then started to look for a place at another university on another of the worlds of the Spacers’ League but many of those worlds had the same kind of lack of sufficient infrastructures as Atlantis, so her search had been fruitless so far. And the new academic year had already started, with many universities not accepting new students’ intakes anymore! In desperation, Roshana then changed her search pattern from ‘universities’ to ‘all’ and clicked on the ‘enter’ button of her computer. With a long list replacing the one she had been looking through, she next selected out the entries she had already looked at. She felt even more discouragement when that list was cut to only two entries. The first one was about the Koorivar Institute of Physics, on New Shouria. That posed two big immediate problems for Roshana: first, she didn’t speak Koorivar; second, the gravity on New Shouria was a painful 1.3 G, something that she knew she would not be able to endure for very long. While she was physically fit, she was not a particularly strong girl. Rather, she was what many would call an intellectual type. Eliminating that option, Roshana then looked at the second and last option available to her. It was a brand-new entry on the UniNet and had been posted only a few days ago. However, while new, it immediately proved to be an intriguing one for her.
‘’A university on a spaceship? Is it a traveling school of some sort? And what kind of ship is this ‘NOSTROMO’?’’
Clicking on the link for ‘NOSTROMO’, Roshana then saw a web page appear, complete with pictures and an introductory video file. Her eyes opened wide as she started reading the information on the web page.
‘’A three-kilometer-long ship?’’
Now reading frantically the information on the page while eyeing the picture of a huge, squat cylinder-shaped ship, Roshana suddenly felt blood rush to her head.
‘’Captain of the NOSTROMO: Rear Admiral Tina Forster, previously the captain of the famous cargo ship KOSTROMA. I can’t believe my luck! Let’s see if they say who is the chair of their physics department… DOCTOR KOOMAK?!’’
Now completely excited, Roshana ran out of her room and headed to the kitchen, where she knew that her mother was preparing lunch.
‘’MOM! MOM! I FOUND A PLACE TO STUDY! COME AND SEE THE WEB PAGE ABOUT IT!’’
Knowing how important this subject was for her daughter, whom she adored, Leyla Golshan quickly washed her hands before following Roshana to her room.
‘’Is it here on Atlantis?’’
‘’No, Mom: it is on a spaceship.’’
‘’On a spaceship? Are you sure that this is not some kind of scam?’’
‘’It is serious, Mom: we are talking about the new ship of the famous Captain Tina Forster. It is called the NOSTROMO and was just finished being built in Earth orbit. It also happens to be the biggest spaceship ever built. You will get all that from the info page on the UniNet.’’
Entering Roshana’s room, her mother then sat in front of her daughter’s computer and started reading the said info page and eyeing the photos and attached video file. She then noticed something that Roshana had apparently overlooked but that was actually a good point about this offer.
‘’It looks like a truly interesting opportunity for you, Roshana. What I like about it is that the tuition and residency fees are really low. This must be a subsidized program. You are truly interested about this opportunity, Roshana?’’
‘’Interested? Hell, I would kill to get an opening for this, Mom!’’
‘’Then, let me call your father at work and see what he thinks of this.’’
As her mother made her call, Roshana waited anxiously, hoping fervently that her father would accept to let her enroll. She was nearly a nervous wreck by the time that her mother closed her wrist communicator unit and twisted her neck to smile to her.
‘’Your father says ‘yes’, Roshana. Now, you better fill that admission request form attached to this web page right now, so that it could leave on the next courier drone at one this afternoon.’’
‘’Oh, I will be jumping on that right away, Mom. Thanks for supporting me on this.’’
‘’My pleasure, Roshana.’’
Her mother then got off the computer chair, so that Roshana could start filling the admission request form, but stayed close to her, in case that she would need her help about the financial arrangements. Some nine minutes later, Roshana was pushing the ‘send’ button and let out a sigh of relief when an automated message advised her that her form had been recorded with the other communication links and messages already stored in the courier drone due to leave in a bit over one hour. With a departure and arrival frequency of three times a day for the drone courier service linking Atlantis with the other colonies of the Spacers’ League and with Earth, she could now hope for a reply within a day or two. That day or two promised to be long ones for her in the meantime.
The next day, Roshana received a response message by the evening courier drone. Frantically opening that message, Roshana only needed to read the two first sentences in it before screaming out at the top of her lungs.
‘’THEY ACCEPTED ME! YIPPEE!’’
Running out of her room, she got her parents to come to her computer, so that they could input their bank information to the response message in order to pay her studying fees. Once that was done, Roshana read carefully with her parents the joining instructions at the last part of the reply.
‘’A passenger shuttle from the New Haven Starline will pick me up tomorrow at four in the afternoon, local time, at the Oceanside City Astroport. They joined an electronic ticket for the flight. Let me download it on my pocket data pad. Damn! I will have some judicious packing to do tonight: I sure don’t want to arrive on the NOSTROMO and look like one of those high-class snobs traveling around with dozens of suitcases.’’
‘’Don’t worry about that, Roshana: I will help you pack.’’ replied her mother, making her daughter kiss her on the cheek.
‘’Thanks, Mom! You are the best! Ooh, I’m so excited now! I don’t know if I will be able to sleep tonight.’’
The next afternoon, Leyla Golshan drove her daughter to the city astroport, arriving a good hour before the due departure time. After passing through ticket control and going to the passenger lounge assigned to the passengers destined to leave on the New Haven Starline shuttle, Roshana glued herself to the big windows of the lounge in order to look at the shuttle that was due to carry her to the NOSTROMO. It was not a big craft, being a lenticular-shaped light shuttle with a capacity of eighty passengers, but it sported a colorful orange, pink and blue paint scheme that was quite pretty, with the words ‘NEW HAVEN STARLINES’ painted in big red letters on its sides. Roshana admired it for a good minute before going to sit next to her mother in one of the lounge’s padded chairs. While waiting, she checked at least twice that she had everything she needed and had not forgotten some important documents. However, all of her past school diplomas and exam papers results were indeed recorded in her data pad, while she had her Spacers’ League citizen card, birth certificate and vaccinations booklet on her or in her purse. When boarding time was announced, Roshana shared a last hug and kiss with her mother, more emotional than she cared to admit.
‘’Thank you for accompanying me to the astroport, Mom. I will send you daily messages from the NOSTROMO, I promise you.’’
‘’And I will be reading your messages eagerly, Roshana. Have a nice trip and be happy during your studies.’’
Her heart beating faster now, Roshana then walked to the access overhead gallery linking the lounge to the shuttle and, showing her electronic ticket to the stewardess posted next to the door of the gallery, waved one last time to her mother before walking down the access gallery, dragging her cabin bag behind her. Once inside the shuttle, another stewardess looked at her ticket and pointed to one seat while smiling to her.
‘’Your seat B22 is to the left of the aisle, miss. Have a good trip.’’
‘’Thank you, miss!’’
As she went to her seat, Roshana noticed that about half of the seats were already taken, while only a dozen other persons from Atlantis embarked with her. All of the passengers were late teenagers or young adults, making her guess that they were all going to the NOSTROMO in order to start university studies. Storing her cabin bag in the overhead bin of her seat, she then sat down next to a handsome teenage boy of maybe eighteen who smiled to her.
‘’Going to study on the NOSTROMO too? In what program?’’
‘’Physics! And you?’’
‘’Astronautical engineering. By the way, my name is Stepan Makarov, from New Venice, in the Tau Ceti System.’’
‘’And I am Roshana Golshan. Pleased to meet you.’’
While Roshana meant that as simple politeness, she couldn’t help admire the tall, athletic blond boy with blue eyes smiling to her: he could definitely be called handsome. On his part, Stepan in turn discretely admired her beautiful face, green eyes, sexy body and generous chest.
‘’So, how is life on Atlantis, Roshana? Is living in a triple star system difficult to adapt to?’’
‘’Not really! You get accustomed to it quite quickly. One notable difference compared to, say, Earth, is that our two G-Class yellow stars and one M-Class red dwarf combine to make the daylight both long and quite luminous. The atmosphere is a bit thicker than that of Earth and also contains a higher percentage of oxygen, while the annual average temperature is 21 degrees Celsius, with only moderate variations per seasons. Most of the planet’s surface is covered by oceans, which makes it a great place for water sports. The only downside to it is the near complete lack of native vegetation and lifeforms, due to the stupidity of the local race, which sterilized their own world through a nuclear war some sixteen million years. There are intensive replanting and animal restocking programs in place, using marine, animal and vegetal Earth lifeforms, but the planet is still on the bare side right now. It will take at least another decade or two before Atlantis becomes a true ecosystem again. And what about New Venice, Stepan?’’
‘’Oh, it is a true dream place, Roshana. We have one G8-Class yellow star that provides us with a quite comfortable average annual temperature of 23 degrees Celsius. The local gravity is a slight bit less than that of Earth, at 0.95 G, and there are large oceans around three large continents. The local vegetation and fauna were quite luxuriant when it was first discovered and explored, but there were no truly dangerous predators on New Venice, so the place is both beautiful and safe. You should visit it one fine day: it is a great place to spend a vacation.’’
‘’Maybe I will, Stepan. Right now, I am anxious to see what this NOSTROMO looks like from the inside. The information about it on the UniNet is a bit limited at this time.’’
‘’That’s because it was completed only some two weeks ago. As a fan of astronautics, I read everything I could find about it and its captain, Tina Forster. If it is anything like her past KOSTROMA, it will be a grandiose ship indeed. Forster was particularly proud of her KOSTROMA being like a village in Space, with enough hydroponic farms, plantations and animal farms to make it more than self-sufficient in food. Since the NOSTROMO is even bigger than the KOSTROMA, I expect it to also be self-sufficient in food production. That would partly explain why the tuition and residency fees for attending university on the ship were so low.’’
‘’Well, my parents certainly didn’t complain about that point, I must say.’’
‘’Neither did my parents. While life is good on New Venice, my family is of relatively modest means, as my father works as a simple security guard at one of the local casinos. What about your parents, Roshana?’’
‘’My father is a hydroponics specialist, while my mother works from home as a sculptor. She is quite good at it but her clientele is still a bit limited, so our family revenues are overall nothing to shout about. That the fees to attend the university on the NOSTROMO were so low was actually quite a plus to my parents. While they were ready to do sacrifices to help me, those low tuition and residency fees came as a relief to them. Another big plus for the physics program I will attend is the fact that the dean of the physics faculty is no less than a Nobel laureate in Physics: Doctor Koomak, from New Shouria.’’
‘’Koomak, the inventor of the interstellar drive system? Wow! You can’t get much better than that! For me, the biggest plus is the fact that I will be living and studying aboard the most modern and advanced spaceship in existence. The NOSTROMO itself will constitute my classroom. You should also find out that the NOSTROMO will embody the most advanced applied physics systems Humanity has.’’
‘’Oh! I didn’t think of that. Thank you for pointing that out to me, Stepan.’’
‘’You’re welcome, Roshana.’’
Their conversation was then interrupted by a female voice coming from the cabin’s announcement system, as the light shuttle started to float away from the astroport’s gate.
‘’May I have your attention, ladies and gentlemen. We are now about to take off from Oceanside City Astroport and will then climb to a safe altitude and distance once in orbit before jumping to the Solar System and Earth. We should arrive at the Avalon Space Yards, where the NOSTROMO is docked, in approximately 45 minutes.’’
That announcement brought a happy smile on Stepan Makarov’s face.
‘’Forty-five minutes! When I think that, only nine and a half years ago, we still couldn’t travel beyond the confines of our Solar System. Now, we have people living and working in eighteen other star systems, with more habitable planets being found nearly every year. This must be the golden age of Humanity.’’
‘’But that doesn’t mean that the whole galaxy is ours, Stepan. We already had contacts with half a dozen intelligent alien races, with most probably a lot more still to be found, while my own planet of Atlantis is proof that we missed at least one more intelligent race by millions of years. The galaxy is probably teeming with life, intelligent and non-intelligent, and we have barely scratched the surface up to now. What tells us that, one day soon, some other race will step forward and tell us ‘don’t pass this point or else’?’’
‘’You do have a point, Roshana.’’ recognized Stepan before concentrating on his seat’s display screen, which gave him a view of the outside.
A few minutes later, as their shuttle had attained orbit and was still rising and taking speed, a brief orange flash filled the cabin for a fraction of a second, prompting a comment from Stepan.
‘’We just jumped! I can now see Earth on the forward view screen.’’
Less than a minute later, the voice of the pilot was heard again in the cabin.
‘’Ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching Low Earth Orbit and will arrive at the Avalon Space Yards in approximately six minutes. Once close to it, we will then enter the A.M.S. NOSTROMO, which is presently docked outside of the space yards, via its small craft access tunnel. Once we will be inside the craft hangar, you will be able to walk out of the shuttle and will then be processed in administratively before going to your assigned apartments.’’
‘’Did she say ‘apartments’ and not cabins?’’ asked Roshana, surprised by the pilot’s choice of words. Stepan, equally surprised, could only conjecture about it.
‘’Uh, she did!’’
Their stewardess, a very pretty Asian woman, heard that exchange as she was passing in the aisle and stopped while smiling down to them.
‘’As university students enrolled for four years of studies aboard the NOSTROMO, you clearly needed more substantial lodging than mere passengers doing a single-day trip. Your individual accommodations will thus be our standard single’s/couple’s apartment type, which includes a bedroom, a lounge, a private study, a bathroom and a storage room doubling as a laundry room.’’
‘’A storage room? What for, miss?’’ asked Stepan, intrigued.
‘’All of our apartments meant for long-duration occupants have a storage room of varying size, depending on the number of occupants. Those storage rooms are meant to store away any extra furniture or possessions those occupants brought from previous places of residence, or to store items acquired after arrival on the NOSTROMO. The same standard was applied on the KOSTROMA and such storage rooms proved to be a very popular perk with our crewmembers and their families. Since we constantly travel from one star system to the other and with our resident commercial associates buying and selling all kinds of items, like artworks, clothing, sports gear and many other kinds of things, the opportunities for a family to buy and accumulate new and interesting things are nearly endless, something that could quickly fill a normal apartment to capacity. So, our apartments all have storage rooms. So do our passenger cabins, since many of our passengers are families emigrating to a new home planet and wish to bring with them their furniture, family possessions and souvenirs from their old home. Some emigrants also bring with them their personal vehicles, which are then stored on our vehicle garage deck.’’
‘’Wow! You really treat people with great care, miss.’’
‘’We always do, sir! Captain Forster always care about other people, irrespective of their race and social status.’’
As the stewardess then walked away, Roshana spoke to Stepan in a low voice.
‘’Decidedly, I am getting to like this Captain Forster more and more. She seems to be a most decent woman, on top of being a genuine Space hero. I hope that we will be able to meet her after arrival.’’
‘’I hope so too. Chances are that she will be on hand to give us some kind of welcoming speech after we leave this shuttle.’’
Both of them fell silent as they watched on their respective seat viewing screens their shuttle approached a gigantic space installation. Stepan grinned with glee as he eyed the orbital station.
‘’The Avalon Space Yards! The Mecca of starship development and construction in the Spacers’ League! My hope is to one day work there as an astronautical engineer under the famous Gustav Shomberg.’’
Roshana did not speak then, concentrating instead on detailing the giant Space yards. One ship docked to one side of the yards soon attracted her eyes.
‘’Hey! I see a ship docked to the station. Isn’t that the NOSTROMO?’’
Stepan looked at the ship for a moment before smiling.
‘’Yes! It is the NOSTROMO! I can now understand why some people call it ‘the flying trashcan’. It does have the general look of a trashcan. However, I am not about to call it that in front of Captain Forster: she would be liable to space me out without a spacesuit for such an offense.’’
‘’And why such a look and shape, Stepan? Why not a longer, sleeker design?’’
‘’That was dictated by simple functionality, Roshana. Its main propulsion system is a directed gravity generator, which basically makes the ship ‘fall’ in the direction chosen by its pilot. The special electro-magnetic field formed by a directed gravity generator has roughly the shape of an egg, with its maximum diameter and length roughly six or seven times those of the gravity generator. All parts of the ship need to be within that bubble of energy in order to avoid damage from accelerations. Arrow-like shapes are thus completely unsuited to directed gravity drives. In fact, the best shape would be a simple sphere. However, a short cylinder shape will be about as good, while making it easier than a sphere to carry bulky cargo with angular shapes.’’
‘’Oh! I see! Thanks for the explanation. As a physics student, I will most probably get to study the theory behind those directed gravity fields. From what I know about them, that propulsion system was invented by the Drazts from Ross 128 and its design was stolen from them by Captain Forster while she was rescuing a Koorivar refugee ship that was approaching Ross 128.’’
‘’Well, ‘stolen’ is a big word, Roshana, considering the circumstances at that time. The Drazts were interfering with the rescue by the KOSTROMA of the SHANIZAR, the Koorivar refugee ship it had been searching for. Furthermore, the Drazts were the first to attack, by attempting to insert a computer virus aboard the KOSTROMA. However, that attempt boomeranged on them, with the KOSTROMA sending them a computer virus of its own, which then copied and sent to the KOSTROMA all the datafiles contained aboard the Drazt cruiser, apart from causing that cruiser to become uncontrollable. That is how we got the design of the directed gravity drive system and of many other things. Thankfully, we are now friends with the Drazts but it took a few knocks on their heads for them to drop their hostility towards us.’’
Roshana could only nod at that explanation. Personally, she didn’t believe in violence and considered herself to be a tolerant, open-minded person. However, she was not naïve and knew that, when faced with a bully, strong actions were often needed to defend oneself. Stepan then pointed on the viewer screen at a number of small dots moving around the NOSTROMO.
‘’Look at all those auxiliary craft, barges and shuttles flying around the ship: the NOSTROMO is probably still in the process of getting supplies, personnel, parts and fuel before its first spaceflight. A ship of such a size needs to load up on a lot of stuff before it is ready for Space. And that doesn’t even consider the need to train the crew in the operation of a new ship. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that it will take at least another day or two before it undocks from the space yards.’’
As their shuttle approached the giant ship, both Roshana and Stepan saw that it was now heading straight