Chapter 19: Thunderbirds are Go!

We delayed our departure to space aboard Bucephalus until Sunday. Saturday had proven windy and a storm front had passed through later in the day. I also suspect the A.I. gave Uxe and me the day to deal with and recover from our recent exuberance. Today, the weather was better although the skies were still overcast. It was late morning, and we were currently in Hoss flying towards the cove where the fully fueled spaceplane waited.

Uxe and I had the cockpit all to ourselves. Ohmu was in the front storage compartment along with our luggage. When I had asked why she was not riding with us in the cockpit in the space behind the seats she had just said that she was fine in the storage compartment. I looked over at Uxe and smiled. The girl looked radiant with her darker skin and perfect complexion. The flight suits Naomi had made for us were tight-fitting and they hugged Uxe’s curves.

“Nervous?” I asked.

“Yes, a little.”

“Well, one thing I have learned over the past few years is that the A.I.s are damned good engineers. The only real problems I have ever had have been the result of my own actions. From the sounds of it, we will just be along for this ride so that means fewer chances for me to screw something up.”

—Good analysis, John. You are learning. —

Uxe laughed. Ohmu or Naomi must have transmitted the message to both of us.

I noticed a smaller flying object off our port quarter. Naomi had sent an aerial drone from Nautilus to monitor the launch. I scrolled through the cockpit menu system and made a new window appear which showed the transmitted video being taken from the drone. I laughed when Uxe looked at the close-up views of herself in the window and tried to figure out where the images were coming from.

We neared the cove and slowed. I had to admit I was also a little nervous. The one bit of good news was that Uxe and I did not have to worry about space sickness. Ohmu had assured us that our implants and brain alterations would prevent us from suffering from any disorientation. So, we carried no barf bags. Uxe had asked about going to the toilet. Ohmu said that there was a vacuum arrangement in Hoss which would handle those needs, but she still recommended that we take care of number two before we left.

I spotted Bucephalus at the back of the cove. The shiny metal spaceplane was sitting much lower in the water than it had been during our previous visit. I also noticed that the front intakes and discharges for the electro-thermal turbine engines were open as were the intake scoops at the rear. The fore and aft wings were now just above the water. I noted that their tips were angled down forming sponsons or tip-floats for stability. These would also help the wings to funnel the turbine exhaust underneath to help lift the plane from the water.

The drone video feed showed a great view of Hoss landing and being lowered inside the belly of the beast. When we were fully aboard and Bucephalus sealed up, I noticed that it was far from quiet inside the spaceplane. In fact, it was quite noisy with the various compressors, heat pumps, fuel pumps, and other devices in operation. The A.I. was also busy testing all the movable surfaces, the turbines, and the gimballed main engines.

“Ohmu, we didn’t bring goggles. Will it be noisy during the take-off?”

—It will be incredibly noisy, John. I will cause the implants to drastically decrease the sensitivity of your auditory nerves during takeoff. You and Uxe will be able to communicate by subvocalizing and the implants will allow the other to hear. —

I felt movement. The exterior view showed Bucephalus using her steam-assisted water jet impellers to exit the cove and get us into the main channel. We would be taking off to the northwest back towards where Nautilus was anchored. Once we were airborne we’d quickly turn due east for the trip to orbit.

It took us about fifteen minutes to make the slow cruise from the cove out into the wider channel of the straight. There, we held position and waited for our launch window to open. That was to happen in four minutes, and we would have just under twenty seconds to start our launch. If we had to delay or abort, the next window would be in four hours. Our target’s mid-Earth altitude equatorial orbit meant that there would be a window every four hours around the clock.

I checked my seat straps and made sure they were a bit tighter than normal. The noise level dropped as Ohmu adjusted my auditory nerves. I saw Uxe’s mouth moving occasionally. Ohmu must be explaining to her what was happening via the implant. At one minute the vibrations started to rise as the turbines spooled up. In the drone video window, I saw clouds of water vapor begin to blow back from the thruster ports near the nose.

At thirty seconds there were a few large bumps and the designations for the hydrofoils now indicated ‘down and locked’. Everything on the board was in the green and there were no cautions or warnings. Once the clock hit ten seconds things started happening rapidly. A large countdown display popped up on a new window and A.I. generated course vector lines and boxes appeared in the center of our forward display.

We started moving with just a few seconds left before the countdown hit zero. The drone video now showed a cloud of water vapor and steam streaming behind both our nose and our tail. The turbines went to full power and we noticeably surged forward. Uxe reached over with her left hand and grabbed my right.

—The clock is running, — I heard, making me smile. I was impressed at how fast Bucephalus was accelerating in the water. Our large size kept the ride much smoother than I expected also. Instead of a pleasure boat bouncing across the ripples, we were more like a freighter plowing through the water. At thirty seconds we started to climb above the water on the hydrofoils. The ride got a bit smoother and quieter. Our acceleration also increased as we shed much of our drag.

At forty seconds we had already traveled three kilometers down the ten-kilometer-long predicted launch path. The ride smoothed out even more which meant our hydrofoils were now completely out of the water. Sure enough, the indicators showed them retracting. We continued to accelerate as we skimmed along in ground effect just a few meters above the surface. The drone had long since fallen behind and its view showed a zoomed-in view of the enormous rooster tail of water vapor thrown up by our passage.

At fifty-five seconds our hydrogen plasma engines kicked in with a thump and a steady roar. The wing flaps started to rotate us up into our climb. We were well past eight kilometers downrange and the rotation and increased gee forces calmed my nerves as the mangrove jungle had been approaching awfully fast in front of us.

I saw a new bit of information appear on the display that showed our extendible aerospike nose had deployed. This resembled a spear that stuck out in front of us seven meters and moved our shockwave forward enough to clear our wide nose. It would be needed once we passed the speed of sound.

The seats rotated forward slowly as we sank back into our seats. Bucephalus was now at a forty-degree climb and turning to starboard to get us onto our easterly heading. Our acceleration continued to grow as we lost mass. Uxe had a death grip on my hand and I tried to tell her we would be fine. Our angle of attack increased steadily until we were near eighty degrees. The bank stopped as our heading finally aligned with the equator.

At four minutes we were at our maximum gee loading of 3.2 gees. Both Uxe and I were grunting through each breath as Ohmu began to call out our progress and calm our fears. The external view had grown dark as we left the atmosphere. The ride was much smoother with the only rumble coming from the three magnetoplasmadynamic engines. I could see Uxe’s mouth moving constantly as she rambled off questions to the A.I. Her grip on my hand was still tight but had eased off a bit.

Now that we were much lighter and above the atmosphere, our engines began to throttle back. A few minutes later one of them cut off completely. This brought our g-force load down to just under two Gs and our breathing got much easier. The viewscreen began showing additional views outside Bucephalus. The view looking along our keel towards the rear was incredible. You could clearly see the curvature of the Earth. We were in space! I was an astronaut! A boyhood dream had been fulfilled.

At fourteen minutes, forty seconds, we reached MECO meaning the main engines cut off completely. The sudden falling sensation was a bit of a shock. Ohmu or Bucephalus’s A.I. reduced the tension on our seat straps a bit and the seats rotated back. On the display the message Freefall duration- 55:03 was displayed. This started to count down to zero and indicated how much time we had until the engines fired again to circularize our orbit at roughly 6,330 kilometers above sea level.

—We are now passing above low earth orbit. DET power is being diverted to the magnetic radiation shields. Everything on board Bucephalus is operating in optimal condition. The mission is proceeding according to plan. Enjoy your brief period of weightlessness, — Ohmu said to both of us. We looked at each other and smiled.

Ohmu’s message about the shields reminded me that we would be entering the inner radiation belt which surrounded the Earth. The mid-Earth orbit location of the space station was smack dab in the region of the highest flux zone of the inner belt so we and much of our equipment needed to be shielded.

We had both active and passive shielding. The active came from a superconducting web energized by the DETS which surrounded the entire space plane, and the passive came in the form of a shell of boron nitride nanotube shielding placed around Hoss’s recess. The replicator cover dinged. I opened it to find two squeeze packs filled with an orange liquid. I passed one to Uxe and tasted mine.

Tangy ... In fact, it tasted like orang... “Ohmu! Did you make us TANG?”

—Did I get the flavor right? Picket had never sampled it and I was working from recorded descriptions of a funny tasting bland orange drink from your old web.—

“You did pretty well! Thank you,” I said. Uxe asked me to explain so I spent a minute telling her about the moon-shot astronauts. This led to another minute trying to convince her that humans had actually gone to the moon and landed on it. I don’t know if she believed me or not. Hopefully, the A.I.’s would back me up.

When I finished my Tang, the seat straps came completely undone and the seats slowly reclined until they were flat. Now I knew why Ohmu had not ridden in the back compartment. With the seats out of the way we had a good volume of cabin space to float around in. Not enough to spin like a top but enough to have us laughing as we bounced off each other trying to stay orientated.

When Bolero started playing over Hoss’s sound system I realized what Ohmu’s other reason for remaining out of the cabin had been. Uxe looked confused at the music for a moment until I embraced her and asked her if she could think of any ways to pass the short hour we would be weightless. Soon our passionate kissing was only interrupted when we struggled out of our flight suits and underthings.

What can I say about weightless sex? Well, it certainly encouraged deep hugging and entwined limbs! After we spent fifteen minutes pretending to be satellite sixty-nine we learned mutual cooperation was very helpful as we attempted traditional intercourse. Thank God the flight controls were virtual as I think I banged into and off of every part of the cockpit while building towards my second climax. When we were spent, we simply floated for the last ten minutes entwined in each other’s embrace.

Every part of the cockpit except the seats was showing the view of our surroundings which was the beautiful blue and white orb of the earth against the backdrop of a million stars in a black sky. As I floated content in my lover’s arms I studied the view. It occurred to me that the A.I. behind it had taken liberties as the view was slowing rotating around us. We had also not passed into darkness once during our forty-minute-long session which did not match the reality of our orbit. Oh well, I’d still give the show a big thumbs-up.

Our seats began to return to the seating position signaling our period of weightlessness was soon to be over. The replicator dinged again, and I found a pair of warm moistened washcloths. We wiped ourselves down and then helped each other find our clothes which had drifted all over the cockpit. Uxe had managed to get fully into her flight suit when the engines began our maneuver while I sat there only in my shorts with my suit around my ankles. That got a laugh out of both of us.

I managed to finish dressing when we were again in weightlessness and slowly approaching the station. It filled the viewscreen with its entwined snowflake and many modules construction. I noticed a few new additions to the station. One of these was a large open web torus mounted next to the old stationary particle accelerator torus. I recalled that the torus had a diameter almost 600 meters across so this new construction was large.

Another new bit of construction was a module in motion. This looked like a spinning double-ended hammer. One end had a large cylindrical shape that was the same as one of the Orion launcher cargo modules. This was connected to a long tubular structure at least a hundred meters long. The tube had a hub object which appeared to be the center of the structure’s rotation. I tried to time its spin and guess that it rotated about twice a minute.

On the far end was a smaller tube leading to a smaller opposite hammer head. Also, the distance from the hub to this smaller head was less at about thirty meters as compared to the sixty leading to the larger end. To spin off-centered, as it was, the smaller head must weight much more, or the larger cylindrical head must be hollow.

The central hub was attached to the non-rotating bulk of the station by a short stationary tube. There was clearly a pivot or rotary joint of some sort where this strut met the rotating hub. I’d have to learn what all this was after we arrived.

I realized the sheer size of the place as it kept growing and growing as we approached. Eventually, we spotted the large module which was our docking point. As we approached it I noticed something else. A few of the modules still showed the damage and slag from the ‘diversion’ attacks which had been launched from the Atlantic Ocean.

Some of these areas were being repaired as we approached as I could see the sparks of plasma cutters in action and the purple glow of electron beam welders operating in the vacuum around the station. When I mentioned that, Ohmu explained that the glow came from trace gasses emitted by the fusing metal.

The actual docking was interesting as we had views from both Bucephalus and the orbital station. Docking might not be the correct term as it was more of a ‘grabbing’ when a large manipulator from the station grabbed onto Bucephalus and pulled us into a large metal enclosure. The covering over Hoss was opened and another smaller manipulator pulled the red vehicle out and placed us into an airlock large enough to hold the complete aircraft.

The sounds of air flowing could be heard and soon the hatches unsealed with a pop of pressure equalization and opened. Uxe and I floated out and were joined by Ohmu, who had floated out of the nose storage compartment. I winked back at her brief smirk towards me.

“Uxe, John, please follow me.”

The android led us through a narrow connection tunnel. She moved with purpose and no wasted motions. We humans bounced and spun around and over-compensated. At the far end of the tunnel was a hatch which opened as we approached. Inside was a sphere a bit over two meters in diameter. The interior was padded and had tether handholds sticking out all around its interior. Once we were inside the hatch sealed with an airtight ‘sssnnnook’ sound. I felt a slight pressure change.

“This is a transfer orb. Most of the station is in vacuum and this orb will be your means to navigate to its various parts. Our destination will be your habitat where you two will be able to refresh yourselves.”

Ohmu instructed us to secure our feet into tether loops and hang on. There were brief sensations of movement as the orb maneuvered out of the landing bay area and headed towards ... our quarters, I guess. There were a few smaller view screens which showed an outside view as we moved through the entwined snowflake general shape of the station. We approached the spinning hammer object I had spotted during our initial approach.