34. Civilian armada

• “Captain Pier to all civilians on board the Giant. You probably noticed the works or heard rumours about things happening. I am going to be straight with you. We need to adjust the Giant’s orbit a bit. In the next hours, we conduct testing of our devised plan.”- his measured, balanced voice calmed even himself, unable to sleep the night, chucked a can or coffee already — “During this, you might experience some shaking. While these should be minor, just as a precaution, try to find stable seating and use the null grav belts wherever you are. Thanks for the understanding and will keep you all posted, Pier out.”
• “Nice speech, dad.” — Eddy and Maria on private channel.
• “Thanks, kiddo. Take care there, don’t be heroes, we just do as planned and leave in two days when the Irondome arrives.” — tried Vince preemptively calm Maria.

Her eyes gave away how anxious she is. This is the day, when all goes down what they planned and worked for months.

• “Same there too, dear.” — Maria kissed the air just for a moment, Vince returned the gesture.
• “Will do.” — then switched back to public channel to continue — “Captain Pier to the towing fleet.

Just as we planned, all know your part, just follow central instructions for balancing. We will do a ten percent test, then gradually pull it up to thirty percent. It should be enough to work out the holes in the plan and after six hours rest, we do start again. For the real thing then.

Remember, we are testing, if any failure experienced, pull the plug on your side and we coordinate fleet wide shutdown. God speed to all!”

The cacophony of acknowledgments filtered through by the computers and the crew of Steiger as Vince finished talking.

• “Here goes nothing.” — said to himself and entered commands to the nav computer.

As the mark was given, signals from the Steiger ramped up the fleet. The tiny ion drives, thrusters and various propulsion mechanisms fired up in the assigned order. Sectors of ships one after each other radiated a dim light. Soon the whole fleet lit up like an old city Christmas tree, where streams of bulbs turned on one by one to avoid a short circuit.

Here they were balancing propulsion vectors. Tiny, partial degree seconds usually had no effect on a single ship. The fleet was too close to each other, a tiny mistake would make them fall like dominoes. Each ship was responsible for their own safety margins, however if an entire sector started to shift together, it would endanger the others or spin the Giant out of axis and out of control.

As the Giant was still under spin gravity, the whole fleet was spinning with it, making it all more dangerous. However they had to just push in one direction, which made the unusual maneuver a possibility in the first place.

They won’t fire the ion drives of the Giant today. Unknowing if they can be fired up again, they have to risk without testing them.

• “Okey, fleet position and clearance healthy, increase to twenty percent.”

Using a common unit between all ships allowed simple communication. As many had different level of pulls, had to group them into roughly same power output sectors.

Every hour added a significant weight to the Giant to counteract. It was speeding up toward the moon directly. As the distance eaten up, the gravity realizing ever bigger percentage of the millions of tonnes the ships could weigh on Earth. Fortunately the moon in questions was a sixth of that size, still the point where the entire fleet’s power output wouldn’t be enough inched closer.

• “We still seem okey, Nomad, you lean starboard a bit. Fleet, increase to thirty percent output.”

If the universe was looking, it would not get why humans put a packed Christmas tree into space and added the lights only to the trunk of it. The universe would not think of these terms anyway, they are human concepts only.

The dim lights became brighter, as the blue hue started to turn to white centers.

• “Cables hold, all ships stable.” — Steiger control radioed. — “Ramp down, gradually.”
• “Well done all. Rest a few hours, double all systems and if everyone is a go, real deal in six hours!”

Cadaver called up Vince on private channels:

• “Captain Pier, our drones performed well, though a few of them burnt out. We replace them and attach new ones to the drum anyway.”
• “Understood. Any other anomalies or problems?”
• “Nothing we saw. Even the Giant’s fall slowed down with the expected amount.”
• “That is good news.”
• “Well, too easy for my taste. Nah, all crew did well with the preparations.”
• “Indeed. See you in six hours.”

They could not move much more between the tight fleet attached to the Giant so Maria and Eddy stayed on the bow section and Vince remained on the bow. I can see them again in the evening, he thought to himself as he ran the rounds around.

Long time he didn’t do much training, this time he couldn’t rest anyway, running along the circle of the ship helped keeping him busy. Clock ticking, at least the solution works, now only the execution remained.

Victoria was deep in reading operational reports, the usual charts for running her vast ship and the floating space city of a hundred thousand souls. Officers, navy and spacemen, pilots, civilian contractors and everything necessary to keep a city alive.

She was more than a usual ship captain. Acted as a military governor of a city that is sometimes ordered into grave danger. At first she only noticed her tea vibrating on the table, then the rumbling filled in the whole office. In seconds she was already out on the bridge.

• “Report!”
• “Data coming in.”
• “Is it the drive?”
• “Engineering here, no, it isn’t, we are traversing…” — moments passed in the silence — “Something, the data does not make sense, nothing is out there, engines work perfectly. Hold on!”

Just as the main engineer shouted in, the Irondome stopped in deep space. The crew barely felt anything as the rumbling just stopped too.

• “Report.”
• “We stopped. Engineering, what happened?” — second officer stood on the side of the bridge with a confused look at his screens.
• “Give us a few minutes, all seems safe for now.”

The minutes became an hour. Analysts and officers went through every bit of data they could collect. Knowing the dangers of their overloaded engine, they wanted to be sure it wasn’t something else.

Then the hour became two, then four. Victoria knew when to trust her crew, yet this time she needed to push them forward.

• “Any hypothesis what happened?”
• “We don’t know, the engines work perfectly. But they skipped a cycle, seems a safety program was too eager. I can restart the cycle, don’t see any reason not to. Diagnostics all green.”
• “Other input and ideas?” — asked Victoria around, looking in the eyes of her crew seeing no objections — “Engage it again.”
• “Restarting engine cycling now, we need a few hours to be back up to full speed.”
• “Understood, how much time we lost?”
• “Eight hours. Now we are two and a half days from the Giant’s position.”
• “Here its engineering again, do you see the speed measurements?”
• “Helm, report.”
• “I can’t, I don’t understand… We are way faster, almost on max speed already.”
• “We can push it a further few percentage.” — reported engineering.
• “Engineering, not sure to risk it, do you have a hypothesis what is the reason?”
• “Not sure of the cause. However this space, seems, less resistance affects the engines, we can move space easier around us. Engine cycle speed and energy usage is under usual values we should experience with this travel speed.”
• “Risks if we speed up?”
• “Nothing new compared to what we were running on for a month.”
• “Then… pedal to the metal. Estimated arrival?”
• “In less than… eight hours, we arrive a few hours after Captain Pier and the civilians start their pull.”
• “Hope this is good enough.”

Read the story leading up to now:

Giant of the Stars

Fictional story of a luxury starliner’s catastrophy