Chapter 3: Boarding the Fortune

-- January - Week 1 --

Lee entered the transporter for the short trip up to the Space Station.

The Fortune was attached to the space station waiting for them. Lee headed down the aisle, plopped down next to Rabbit and smiled at him. “Hi, Kyle, ready for the big adventure?”

“As ready as I’m going to be,” he replied. “But the real question is when will you be ready for the Kyle Vella adventure?” he asked, as he wiggled his eyebrows and slid his hand up her jumpsuit encased thigh.

While gently removing his hand and enfolding it in hers, Lee leant over and kissed his cheek then whispered, “Not a chance, in this solar system.”

Rabbit gave her a crestfallen look. A moment later, he switched on his high wattage smile, “Hey! You said this solar system, so there is hope for me yet.”

Lee laughed and punched him in the arm, “You don’t miss a trick, do you, Rabbit?”

Kyle shrugged, “A man’s got to do, what a man’s got to do.”

Lee grinned at him. Kyle had once told Lee that he hailed from Arizona and was just as famous for his programming abilities as he was for his bedroom aerobics. Lee believed him on both accounts.

Lee’s primary job was to maintain all the electrical systems and robots on the ship. However, her skills also allowed her to transition to drive specialist or manufacturing, and she could replace any part on the ship. Lee was also competent at programming the ship’s systems, but she left the navigation to Kyle. All that maths made her head hurt; she had told Kyle in the past.

It had only been three days since Lee had last been on the Fortune. The rest of the hundred-person crew were now making their way to the ship. The crew members, who had also been involved in the construction, were now returning after two weeks of leave. They had gone home to say goodbye to their families and have Christmas.

Lee no longer had a home. Her grandparents, who had raised her, had passed away nearly four years before. Lee elected to stay and continue the final diagnostic tests and repairs on the ship with the contractors who were staying behind.

Lee had taken a transporter down to the Moon two days before the meeting, to pack up her small apartment. When not on the construction docks of the space station, she had been based on the Moon. They had worked a roster of two weeks on and then two weeks off during the year the final fit-out had taken. Lee had not always taken the two weeks off.

When not on the fit-out, Lee and Kyle had elected to complete a series of courses. They thought the classes would come in handy if they ended up planet-side for a year or more. A coordinator at UNSEC had put together a training plan for them.

They had even spent several weeks on Earth to complete some of the activities like bush orienteering, rock climbing, sailing and desert and snow survival. Kyle and Lee had a lot of fun doing the courses. They also learnt how to fly, operate and repair the latest vehicles called lingers. As Kyle and Lee spent so much time in space on ships, they hadn’t learnt how to fly them, hence the courses.

Lingers were for all intent and purpose, an all-terrain vehicle that also flew at very low altitudes. Because cargo areas on starships and transporters were limited, a vehicle that could do a bit of everything was required.

The lingers were fitted with electric drive motors. They used solar panels, inverters and GE cells as their power source. If the GE cells got a couple of hours of sunlight or were hooked up to a generation source every so often, the vehicles worked well.

The lingers could last for about six to eight hours between charges if the vehicle wasn’t overloaded, so night driving could be restrictive. In recent years, they had become so popular that they had replaced more than half of the cars on Earth.

Lingers were also one of the primary transport vehicles inside the domes on the Moon and the other planets. The drive system on the lingers could be changed over to the wheels if no atmosphere was present.

Lee didn’t think the driver of the linger she had encountered earlier had been driving one very long. Either that or he was under the influences of some drug and hadn’t engaged the autopilot. She fleetingly thought about if the driver had intended to harm her. The increased whine of the engines as it suddenly sped up came to mind.

A frown creased her brow at this thought.

The trip up to the space station was short.

The passengers were soon heading towards the boarding lounge to access the Fortune. For some reason, it seemed to take forever to get through the quarantine zone. The only items Lee had brought with her on the transport were her pad, a book containing a collection of Isaac Asimov stories and her minder.

She had to smile as several arguments broke out in front of them. She and Kyle were watching the hunky Lieutenant and his people, as they had to confiscate several items from various members of the crew who thought, ‘banned’ didn’t apply to them.

Alcohol seemed to be the number one item that several people had thought was unfair and argued about. Many claimed that they were parting gifts from family and friends, but it fell on deaf ears. They had both been amused to watch as the collection of hard liquor and even tobacco products filled the crates behind the check-in point.

Kyle nudged Lee, “Looks like the Moon crews will be having a party tonight.” They both smiled at each other.

When one of the soldiers called out for those with no extra baggage to move to a line in front of him, Rabbit and Lee gratefully moved. After walking through the scanner and having their ID checked, they were soon walking down the familiar passage to enter the ship.

At the second airlock, another soldier scanned their IDs, checked they had the ships schematic on their minder and directed them to where their cabins were located. At this point, Lee and Kyle had to go their separate ways.

They planned to meet up again at dinner.

Lee finally found her new cabin.

Lee had discovered when she boarded that she had been shifted down a deck. Her new cabin was closest to the entrance to the pigpens on Level Four. She could smell them whenever the door next to her cabin opened to the livestock areas.

This cabin was segregated by a bulkhead door, from the other eleven cabins on the fore-end of the ship. Annoyingly, every time the bulkhead door opened, it chimed loudly. Lee noticed the name tag on the door was not all the way in the slot. She pulled it out to find ‘L4-12 VETS’, typed on the back.

When she queried the onboard computer, she found one of the Vets, Robby Breeder, had been married to a Tina from hydroponics during the break. The couple had been moved to level two. However, she didn’t know why the other Vet was now in her old cabin on level three, and she was in this one.

The only good thing, as far as Lee was concerned, was that she had this cabin to herself. She wasn’t sure yet if the animal husbandry people using the corridor all the time would be a problem for her or not.

Lee found her small port and her box of books were already in the cabin, so she then spent time arranging her room to her liking. Happy, she then familiarised herself with the layout of this level and accessing the replicator for clothes and toiletries. She hadn’t spent much time in the cabin area on Level Four during the fit-out.

Two hours after Lee had boarded Fortune, the transporters had dropped their final loads of passengers and the last of the equipment to be loaded. Lift-off was scheduled for 17:00 hours, so it was still another hour and a half away. Lee was just killing time, so she decided to head down to engineering anyway.

Lee found that the workshop was empty and guessed that the shift change had already taken place and that the afternoon crew were all busy making sure everything was ready for the launch. She checked that her tools were still in her locker and then noticed that a copy of the crew roster was displayed on the work schedule screen in the crib room.

Lee inspected the roster and found that it hadn’t changed from the last version she had received. She didn’t need to report until 00:01 hours, as she was on the nightshift crew. She decided she might as well see the departure. She would be able to get a couple of hours of sleep after dinner and before her shift started.

Lee headed to the fore lounge in the dome and found a small crowd of people already there. Various crew members who weren’t on duty and had already settled in had made their way to the observation lounges to watch the launch of the Fortune. Lee recognised people from the pre-flight meeting, but she didn’t know who most of them were.