Board Thread:The Mech Bay Bar'n'Grill/@comment-24866242-20140514220513/@comment-24866242-20140514220608

Ben slumped in his chair. They all did. The inertial dampening system had failed along with the hyperdrive and the gravity plating in the floor wasn’t enough to compensate. They had been decelerating at a constant twenty-nine point four meters per second per second for a week and a half now. Occasionally the bulkheads groaned a bit under the strain of three gravities. The ship was rated for ten g’s, even without inertial dampening or structural integrity fields, but she was old, and everyone looked like they were expecting the ceiling to cave in.

The gravity plating was in full reverse and helped to cut the three gravities of acceleration to a more tolerable two. It was enough that they could move around, but they kept exertion to a bare minimum. Ninety kilos in that kind of acceleration puts a lot of stress on the knees.

Marissa came in the aft entry way with a medical satchel over her shoulder. She leaned on the arm rail for a moment to catch her breath before stepping over to Jarrid and sticking him in the arm with a hypospray. She lingered with him for a moment before moving on to the rest of the bridge. Blood pressure meds. She had carefully rationed them when they had gone through this the first time around, on the climb up to speed.

Chaz was next. He rubbed his arm absently but stayed focused on his engine readouts. Marissa moved forward to the helm and stuck Sandra, then moved back to Ben in the captain’s chair.

“How’s Becky doing?” he asked, massaging his arm as she put away the hypo.

“Her wrist still hurts.” She leaned on the arm of his chair with both hands. She was making the rounds twice a day, moving around a lot more than the rest of them as a result. “Bone knitter did its job though. I think she learned not to try cartwheels in high gravity.” She rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead and took a deep breath before pushing herself back upright.

“Kids. You’re pushing yourself too hard. You should start passing off your afternoon rounds.”

“To who? We’re all working too hard lately. You haven’t left this chair longer than it takes to pee and to get four winks since we started the burn.”

Ben smiled. Her spirit was still up at least. They had just entered the home stretch and everyone knew it. “About that,” he said, “I was thinking a catheter might save me some time every day...”

“Oh you.” She smacked his arm, probably harder than she meant to in the high gravity. Unfortunately she caught him right on the injection site so it stung even more.

“How about this then,” he offered, rubbing his arm while she rubbed her hand, “everyone passes through the common room twice a day. Start catching people there.”

“And what about you, Captain Sleeps in his Chair?”

Jarrid piped in from behind them, “Don’t worry, babe. I’ll haul his ass out there.”

Ben gestured as if to say “There, you see?”

Marissa chewed her lip thoughtfully. “I suppose that will let me keep a closer eye on Becky…” she considered. In the end she didn’t take much convincing and she retreated back to the hallway and made a careful descent down the stairs.

Ben turned his attention back to the view screen. A computer display of Itaean, Galiese's star, dominated, but in actuality Galiese was beneath the ship. The Minnow had been designed with a constant acceleration scenario in mind so the ship was built to accelerate up through her center of gravity. The transparent dome above the bridge was directed away from Itaean, and the sublight engines were pointed at the star.

As they slowed down, the view screen showed not just the closing distance to the star, but also their projected orbit. The orbits of the the planetary system were displayed and their projected path through the system marked a blue trail between the planets. Or rather around the planets. Their course was wide at the moment. If engines failed now their current momentum was still far too great for the small yellow star to capture them. They would drift back into the void of space without ever setting off a blip on anyone’s sensors. As they decelerated their projected path was beginning to show what effect the star’s gravity would have on them. Their periapsis, their closest point to the star, was still barely inside the star’s oort cloud. Their path subtly arched inwards at that point, tracing a long arc past the system and out into infinity. As they slowed the periapsis was gradually moving deeper into the system and the arc was becoming more pronounced. Eventually that line into infinity would bend all the way around the star and they would be in orbit. A darker blue dotted line showed the trajectory they were aiming for, much closer to Galiese's orbit. A scale on the side of the screen showed how much delta-v they still needed to burn to get there. In front of him at the pilot’s station, Sandra’s attention was solidly focused on those readouts.

Ben carefully pushed himself to his feet and braced himself against the chair as the blood drained away from his head to his feet. The blood pressure meds helped make it easier to for their hearts to work in the high gravity but they all had to be careful standing up as a result. Once his vision cleared he carefully moved aft to Jarrid’s station.

“Any sign our signal has been received by anyone?” He leaned against the console next to Jarrid.

Jarrid shook his head. “We’re still about three light weeks out,” he answered. “Our signal would be pretty faint at this distance, but someone might be receiving it. We won’t receive a response for a while, but I’m picking up transmissions from the system now.” Sublight comms were still common around Galiese, which was good because their subspace set was lost with their hyperdrive.

Ben picked up the second headset and held it up to his ear while Jarrid tuned through the frequency bands they could hear. Most of it was chatter, some news reports in various languages, and occasionally, music. “Stop there,” Ben said suddenly. “Go back a bit.” Soft strings filled his head through the earpiece. It sounded like something that might be played at one of the Inns in the old parts of Galiese, away from the high tech areas around Star’s End. It was a digital feed so it was crisp and clear, even at this distance, although they might only receive it for an hour.

“Pipe that through the ship until we lose it,” he said, putting down the headset. Jarrid pushed a button and the ship’s PA crackled to life.