Just outside the Mars Metropolitan Area
Old Tella music drifts out from a wall console. The sound of tools tinking against tigraph, emanates from beneath an open mechanical maintenance door close to the floor with the posterior of a prone person extending out of it’s entryway. A thud, followed by an overly angry string of expletives streams out, muffled and uninterpretable, from inside. A silky smooth voice begins announcing “A door is ajar!” from overhead speakers. From inside the maintenance door a fairly deep, slightly agitated, and ever so slightly amused-with-itself voice announces “My door isn’t a jar, it’s a debing door!” As if in response, “A door is ajar.” A sharp electrical crack, a second thud, and more expletives ends the repeating overhead announcement. Jehan’s large frame emerges from within the compartment, stands, and puts down several tools on a small cart beside him. “This piece of deb! You need the fingers of a small child to get into anything.” as he heads toward the cockpit. He was slightly heavyset, though it was fairly well proportioned across his frame. His stubbled jaw looked to have been cut from stone set on a handsome face with a large mouth and bright, intelligent, piercing eyes topped by a slicked back head of graying hair that was still more dark blonde than gray. Crow’s feet extended out from the corners of the eyes from a multitude of smiles and laughs over the years. A devilish charm seemed to mist off of him as he walked toward the cockpit ladder. Reaching it, he extended a thick, long arm up to grab a rung and began ascending.
“You say that every time you have to work on anything, Dad.” Oros was a similar stature to his father, though leaner with the benefits of youth and a borderline obsessive exercise routine. His lean physique was a hit with potential one-time sexual partners (male, female, and everything in between), but also inflated his ego and so he was a little cocky, but had managed to tone it down a lot over recent years as he was becoming more adult than child. Looking down at a display from the co-pilot station, “The internal temp sensors are working again and you obviously fixed that faulty door sensor, but the directional thruster system is still reporting an error code.”
“You can just ignore it, it’s a bug in these old Zuvers. We could change every component in that thruster system and the error would go away for a while, then come right back.” Jehan plunked into the pilot station. “Otherwise, are we ready to go? Did you get that display working properly?”
“Yeah, kind of. It’ll work for now, but when we get back, we’ll need to look at the connector. It’s still cutting in and out, but it’s not as bad now.” Oros looked up at his father. “Why don’t we buy a new hauler, Dad? This thing is such a piece of deb. Besides, the newer haulers have antimatter drives.”
Jehan practically jumps out of his seat in exasperation. “Those newer tugs are so damn complicated nobody can work on’em. I’d rather wrench my way through a trip, then break down and have to wait for a tow because I can’t debbing fix anything! Plus all that gamma radiation is dangerous, I don’t care what the Human Council of Health has to say.” Jehan reached up and engaged the main thruster. It would be a short moment for the fusion drive to create enough plasma. “No matter how many times you ask that question, the answer will always be the same.” Jehan sighs, looks down into his lap and thinks He doesn’t deserve to be yelled at. He looks back to Oros and in a calmer voice, ”call it in.”
Oros used the display to open a channel and send a flight request to the Mars TCA (Transport Control Authority). The affirmative response was instant, which was a treat, because sometimes the system didn’t operate this smoothly and you had to wait a while for a response.
“We’re good.”
“Well that was quick for a change.“ Jehan turned and immediately gave his son a stern look as he observed the buckles on the ends of the restraints dangling freely on either side of Oros’s seat. “Get your debbing restraints on!”
Oros reaches down for his restraints, rolls his eyes, and replies, “OK Dad, I’m putting them on,” in a most indignant tone.
“You remember Old Bello, don’t you?
As Oros’s buckles click together, “Dad, seriously? Everyone knows that was a freak accident. I mean, in all of the emptiness of space, this guy collides with…”
“Freak accident or not, scraping you off the bulkhead is not my idea of…”
“OK, OK, OK, I get it. I’m buckled in, can we please just go?”
“Hold on, here we go.”
Oros thinks to himself, I’ll hardly have to hold on. This old tug can barely get out of its own way!
The ship begins accelerating, much to Oros surprise, at an extremely high rate, pressing his body firmly into the seat. In a slightly labored voice, “Dad, what did you do to this thing? Is there something wrong with the inertial compensators?”
“Yes: they aren’t powerful enough to handle my mods.”
“When will some of these G’s back off, I think I’m getting a little…”
An enormous thud rocks the ship and Jehan and Oros are pressed forward into their restraints as the hull of the ship produces an audible moan as if it too were made to feel uncomfortable by the sudden deceleration.
“Aren’t you glad I made you put on those restraints?” Jehan looks at his son with wide eyes, heart throbbing out of his chest. Oros returns the wide-eyed look.
A brief moment while Oros recovers his composure, “We recreate the Titanic II and all you want to do is play I told you so? Really?“
“Don’t be so dramatic, we’re in one piece. Let’s see if we can figure out what just happened. It sounded like we hit something dead-on. Obviously it didn’t hit the forward view port, so it must be below. Check the hull down there. See if there is any damage. I’ll run a systems check and make sure everything is functional.” He had gotten up and was already beginning to walk toward the diagnostic station when, “Oh and Oros… take your helmet with you. Just in case.” Oros nods, walks back to the copilot station, takes his helmet and latches it at the side of his waist. He then heads off down the steps while Jehan begins tapping away on the display, initiating diagnostic programs that evaluate the status of all the components in each system in the ship. All components on every ship manufactured for the past 50 years are equipped with an interface for at least OBD XXII. With this standard in place, no matter what ship you are flying, you can always perform essentially the same diagnostic testing. The system, however, can’t test inert components like the hull; it’s just plates of tigraph.
Oros begins ratcheting away at the retaining bolts holding inner wall plates in place at the front of the ship. Beneath the cockpit, the soft music bounces around just right so that it actually sounds much louder and disrupts Oros concentration. I’ll never understand why he listens to this old crap. He’s got to be the only one left in the universe that listens to Little Feet or Ted Nugget or whatever the hell this music is. “Herbie, music off.”
The ship’s computer responds over the overhead speakers with a spot of mischief, “Oros, you didn’t say the magic word!” The amplification effect that made the light music so obtrusive intensifies the loud announcement to an abrupt roar in Oros’s ears causing him to jump. Jehan hears a thud from the floor and a muffled “Ow, deb! Son of a…” He snickers, but manages to stifle an out-loud chuckle. A guitar solo continues streaming through the overhead speakers.
“Oh come on dad! You said you were going to undo that stupid prank! ” Oros declares incredulously.
Jehan is now wearing his most devilish of grins and truthfully delivers, “Sorry son, but I haven’t managed to wipe that bit of memory. It really was intended as a one-time joke, but it turns out I just so happened to save it on a bad piece of memory. I think we’re stuck with it.”
“It figures.” Oros, annoyed, goes back to removing the internal hull panels. “Herbie, please turn off the music.” The music abruptly stops. Thank god. “I never did understand why please is a magic word, anyway.”
“It’s an Old Tella thing.” It’s fallen out of use, except for a few old farts like myself.”
“Now, I at least get the old fart thing. It describes you so well.”
“Ha! Not as well as little deb describes you!”
“You’re probably right there.”
“Oh, I know I’m right! I had to raise you all the way from little pain-in-the-ass to full on little deb.” Jehan pauses a moment and reflects on the many tireless hours he spent raising his son by himself. He often blamed himself for his son’s stint with addiction. Though, genetics were clearly a factor, as Jehan himself full-well knew. Logic and guilt didn’t often make good bedfellows. That aside, he still knew he wasn’t guilt free. Addiction has a funny way of revealing itself to others, regardless of how hard you intend to keep it locked away. Especially to those closest to you. But that was the past, and it can’t be changed. Best to leave it there.
Returning from his inward thoughts, Jehan saw that the diagnostic testing was almost finished. So far so good. Jehan raises his voice so his son can hear him down below, “How’s it coming?”
“I’ve got the inner plates off. You may actually want to come see this…” Oros trailed off. The tone in his voice was a bit worrying.
“OK, be right down.” The last test was about to complete. Jehan wouldn’t admit it to Oros, but he was fairly concerned about the bump they’d taken. The last thing he wanted was to be stranded out here. Obviously the TCA could be called upon to schedule an emergency tow, but that system was famously unreliable. Though, he was more worried about the ship’s components than its hull. These old tubs were made with thicker plates than their successors. And the tigraph (graphene interlaced into titanium) made the ship practically indestructible outside of a large-scale collision or flying into a sun. Newer engineering incorporated thinner plates into design-based strengthening techniques that decreased weight and rigidity while increasing agility, especially in atmosphere. Just don’t bump into a docking station, or you’ll be in a maintenance dock for a week, getting hull plates replaced.
The soft beep of the test completing brought Jehan back to reality. Everything checked out. Though while reviewing the results of each test, he noticed the grav inducers and inertial compensators had both been borderline. He’d have to check both those systems when he got home. Turning from the diagnostics station Jehan headed for the stairs to go and see what his son was so concerned about. When he reached the bottom of the steps, Oros pointed toward the uncovered section of hull where it appeared to have been bowed inward as if some great force had applied a fist size point of pressure. The inner plates were gapped from the outer hull and the dent hadn’t gone deep enough to touch those, but it was still impressively damaged. He rotated his hand encircling the damaged section, “We must have hit something pretty solid. I’ve never seen tigraph warped like this just from space deb.”
“I wonder how, whatever it is, got through the deb repulsion system without notice.” reflecting a moment on the functionality of the system, he continued, “If there is something coming that it couldn’t divert away from the hull, it’s supposed to alert us.” Jehan scanned the damage looking toward the center where something had clearly impacted. The hull plates were welded together and the weld lines made a grid across the inside of the hull. In this section of the ship, they were about one and a half feet tall by two feet wide. At the corners of each plate were small mounting points that stuck out a few millimeters. These were used for mounting and removing plates.
In an accusatory tone, “Well, you did speed this old tug up. Maybe we were operating outside the limits of the repulsion system?”
“Maybe, but even so, we should have gotten some kind of warning. It would have merely been late.” Jehan thought to himself, first the grav and inertial systems, now deb repulsion? Is this tug really and truly falling apart? Outloud, “we can deal with ship systems later. Whatever caused this dent doesn’t seem to have been able to push the hull anywhere near it’s structural threshold. Let’s get those inner hull plates back in and restore some much needed rigidity to that area.” As Jehan walked back toward the ladder to go back to the cockpit, Oros lifted the first inner hull plate into place and seated it with a grunt of effort. He then began bolting it back into place.
Jehan reached the top of the stairs and headed back to the diagnostic station to the sound of muffled ratcheting. Scanning through the results on the screen, he stopped at the deb repulsion section. Unlike the grav and inertial systems all the diagnostic readings for the repulsion system were spot on. Just to be safe, Jehan reinitiated the test, then waited a second as the ship’s main computer chugged away at quantum speed, testing each component of the system with trillions of different inputs. Same results. Hmm… How did something get passed you if you’re working? What could the repulsion system be dependent on that wouldn’t get tested here? Anything? There’s the proximity and targeting sensors, the…
Jehan stood and thought for a while, hitting nothing but dead ends in his mental map of the ship’s systems. Oros climbed the stairs to the cockpit floor, noticed his father deep in concentration, and asked, “Everything OK?”.
Jehan looked up at Oros startled. “Yeah, everything’s fine. Just rerunning the test on repulsion.” For Oros’s sake, Jehan buried his concern behind a mask of confidence. “Let’s get going again,” a brief pause,” but slower this time.”
Oros wasn’t the least bit concerned. He thought to himself, whatever that was, it was a chance encounter. We’d be fine going full accel again. But you are the captain of this tug. Outloud, “Probably for the best.” At that, they both headed for their respective stations and plopped into their seats. Jehan immediately engaged the main thruster while pulling his harness into place. As he buckled in, he looked over to be sure Oros was doing the same. Jehan put his hand on the accelerator handle and announced “Round two!” then slid it forward for an eighth of maximum thrust. At this rate it would take them a bit longer to get up to speed, but they’d hopefully get to Geoffrey’s in one piece.