Weyr
10-07-2005, 19:12
OOC: This thread takes place about two weeks after Moontian vacates Neptune space for all practical purposes. Whenever that fits into your timeline...up to you.
"I don't know," she sighed, shook her head.
The disk of Earthbound II spun lazily along its axis, testing additional stabilizers installed two weeks ago. It was more than a space station; an orbital port city, really.
The rotation pulled her slightly towards the outside of the station; the artGrav coils still only worked on a single axis. She came every day to watch the shipyard put the four ships together. A week ago there were just the ribs and internal supports. Now the final touches were being laid on what she suspected would be her coffin.
"It looks like a coffin," she grumbled, suddenly angry. The mood swings were supposed to be a part of the process. They annoyed her, kept her from doing her job. Her job consisted of sitting around and going over the specs of her final command's systems. There weren't any training sims, or briefings, or bits of advice, because there would be no superiors this time who would control her actions. She would be alone on the far edge of the system, in a giant metal can filled with pseudo-intelligence-controlled machinery.
"Gloomy today," Alexei periodically dropped by, though he did not spend as much time here as Karina, finding her interest in the construction process almost morbid. It was like watching a master biothaumage put together an arm -- 'and this is where we lay on the bicep' sort of morbidity. "Relax, a year tops and we'll be back home, or have more company than we can wish for."
"Easy for you to say," Karina pulled away from him.
"Not really," he shrugged, chuckled. "There's a huge mess in realSpace over there; who knows what'll happen. Maybe the entire damn system will just drop out of existence. It's happened before. I'll be interesting either way," he winked. "A month to get there, that's what they say, right?"
She watched a crane lower prefabricated a module into the ship's hull. Flares lit where construction workers in their heavy suits began to weld the component to the ship's internal frame. Two weeks to go from nothing to almost done -- the wonders of automated mass-production. Each piece was mass-produced on Terra, then shipped in a pre-fab module that was taken directly off the transport and put into the vessel. With everything still on schedule...
"Yeah, that's what they say," she responded after a while, looking through the clear stresglass into the vacuum of the construction dock.
"I don't know," she sighed, shook her head.
The disk of Earthbound II spun lazily along its axis, testing additional stabilizers installed two weeks ago. It was more than a space station; an orbital port city, really.
The rotation pulled her slightly towards the outside of the station; the artGrav coils still only worked on a single axis. She came every day to watch the shipyard put the four ships together. A week ago there were just the ribs and internal supports. Now the final touches were being laid on what she suspected would be her coffin.
"It looks like a coffin," she grumbled, suddenly angry. The mood swings were supposed to be a part of the process. They annoyed her, kept her from doing her job. Her job consisted of sitting around and going over the specs of her final command's systems. There weren't any training sims, or briefings, or bits of advice, because there would be no superiors this time who would control her actions. She would be alone on the far edge of the system, in a giant metal can filled with pseudo-intelligence-controlled machinery.
"Gloomy today," Alexei periodically dropped by, though he did not spend as much time here as Karina, finding her interest in the construction process almost morbid. It was like watching a master biothaumage put together an arm -- 'and this is where we lay on the bicep' sort of morbidity. "Relax, a year tops and we'll be back home, or have more company than we can wish for."
"Easy for you to say," Karina pulled away from him.
"Not really," he shrugged, chuckled. "There's a huge mess in realSpace over there; who knows what'll happen. Maybe the entire damn system will just drop out of existence. It's happened before. I'll be interesting either way," he winked. "A month to get there, that's what they say, right?"
She watched a crane lower prefabricated a module into the ship's hull. Flares lit where construction workers in their heavy suits began to weld the component to the ship's internal frame. Two weeks to go from nothing to almost done -- the wonders of automated mass-production. Each piece was mass-produced on Terra, then shipped in a pre-fab module that was taken directly off the transport and put into the vessel. With everything still on schedule...
"Yeah, that's what they say," she responded after a while, looking through the clear stresglass into the vacuum of the construction dock.