Chapter 21

Space, February 27, 2162
Earth-Mars Shipping Lanes

It was a full 25 hours of deceleration. The sleek speedster had flipped around with the main engine facing forward and the N52 engine of the F-231 roared at 150% output, decelerating at such a rate that Alan Scarlett was rendered unconscious. A ringing in Alan’s ears brought him awake. It was a proximity alarm. He felt beaten up, like he was tossed in a cement mixer along with a load of bricks, and did the past day tumbling with the bricks. When he was able to focus, he looked out his window, and he realized he was floating next to a big white hospital ship. “What the hell is that?” groaned Alan.

Then his bionic eye came to life, the words NSS Friedensbringer popped up in his bionic eye. It’s never done that before, and Doctor Fortier said he had taken it out and tweaked it a bit on the Nunnya. Then he groaned ... the Friedensbringer! The ancient hospital ship that he spent weeks chasing around the asteroid belt. He flew that thing from Mars to Earth and it was a terrifying journey. The few members of the crew he had with him on that trip slept in their environment suits just in case there was another hull breech.

Then he remembered, it used to be the JSS Friedensbringer, not NSS; it was registered to the Joint Committee on Homeland Security and carried the ID JSS. Now it was the NSS, and that told Alan that the Friedensbringer was now a navy ship. He looked at the rusted, warped hull and the side hangar door opened for him.

Crap.

“F-231 tail number WA-001, you are longer than the door is wide. Please extend your landing gear and enter nose first, then let us bring you in manually.”

Crappity, crappity, crap, groaned Alan mentally. This damn thing’s nose was so long and pointy that Alan sat far behind it. His windscreen was angled so steeply he could barely see the nose, or the spaceman guiding him in with hand signals. Finally, the nose landing gear entered the hanger bay, and the spacemen clamped a tow bar on it and manually pulled him on board.

The hangar door closed and as his eyes adjusted, Alan noticed the hangar bay was cleaner, more professional looking. There were two other ships in the hangar and Alan recognized them as recon speedsters, RC-8 or something like that. They were space force boats and Alan didn’t study up on them yet.

Several spacemen came up to his ship as he shut it down, and they opened the canopy. It slid forward and one of the spacemen reached in and de-energized the seat magnets and Alan floated up out of his seat. “Let’s get you on a bike sir,” said one of the spacemen.

“Thank you ... chief?” said Alan. He sounded assured and confident, like a senior NCO.

“Master Chief, sir. Master Chief Gunnison, I’m chief of the boat. Will you be transferring your flag here?”

“Let me take a look around the old scow. I didn’t get a good impression the last time I was aboard,” said Alan as the Chief and another spaceman assisted him into the airlock.

“I’m sure you’ll find a significant improvement over the last time you were on board sir. The crew calls her ‘Big Freda’ and they take pride in their ship,” said Chief Gunnison.

When Alan stepped out of the airlock, he saw a tremendous change in the ship. Gone were the posters and graffiti, the burnt out and broken lights were fixed and the flight crew ready-room was bright and spotless. Alan climbed onto a recumbent exercise bicycle and began pedaling, repairing the damage that three days and nights of being stationary did to his body.