Star Force: Integration (SF2) Read online

  Paul figured this was about as close to being a Jedi as he’d ever get…

  He was completely wrong about that, however. The challenges and changes that he would experience in the following years were going to be far greater than anything they’d faced thus far. Though he couldn’t see it now, nor could any of the others, they’d just begun what would be a very long, arduous journey, far beyond anything they could imagine.

  10

  Paul woke up early the final morning and went for a normal gravity run with Jason, trying to rebalance their legs and get in a decent workout before they left on the long trip back to the starport. Neither of them liked going a day without some type of workout, and even though they were sore and stiff from the radical training they’d been going through, they pushed the pace and got in a fairly hard 5k run…though the time wasn’t all that impressive given their awkwardness.

  Paul felt much better though after the workout and subsequent shower as his body seemed to be shifting back into normal patterns. If there was one thing he’d learned from this little field trip, it was the necessity of maintaining normal artificial gravity when in space as often as possible. His body would adapt to any environment and conditions it experienced, but in the process he realized that he would lose most of his other hard earned strengths.

  Davis had been right, more so than he ever imagined. They had to have stations and ships with normal gravity, otherwise they’d run into all kinds of health and fitness problems.

  That said, he was glad that he’d been able to learn how to deal with the zero and low gravity environments. Even if he didn’t have a chance to practice those skills in Atlantis, at least he wouldn’t be completely inept the next time he found himself in that situation…which technically would be in a half hour when the 2s transferred over to the waiting Jaguar-class starship that had stopped by on a short detour of its routine cargo run a few hours ago to pick up the trainees on its way back to low orbit.

  After packing up his duffle Paul left his temporary quarters and grabbed a quick breakfast in the cafeteria two levels up. The slightly lesser gravity didn’t bother his eating habits, but he did feel a bit light sitting in his chair. When he finished a stack of pancakes he stashed a couple of individually wrapped snack bars into his duffle for the trip back, unsure as to what food would be available on the cargo ship.

  He met up with the others and their escort attendant on level 20 and were guided back through the zero gravity spine of the station to the docking area and boarded the large starship much as they had the Cougar, save for this one didn’t have rotating cylinders in a stretched out hull. This starship had a large, thick disc up front, with a zero gravity cargo section stretching out behind, reminding Paul of a giant pizza cutter.

  The ship was half as long as the station, and was returning from a circuit of stops in mid orbit during which it exchanged various cargos and personnel like a massive subway train running around the planet. Its previous two stops had been factory stations, dropping off raw materials brought up from Earth and picking up manufactured components to then transport out to other factories or shipyards for assembly.

  The ship was also carrying large containers of water which would be used to supplement and rebalance station reserves. In addition to crew requirements, water was also required for several mechanical functions, including hydrolysis that provided both oxygen for breathing and hydrogen/oxygen for fuel cells to power the stations.

  Most of the hydrogen and oxygen used was brought up from Earth in pressurized canisters, but each station and ship had been equipped with solar arrays to provide backup power and the ability to refuel their stores using the available water on board in lieu of resupply from Earth. As such, all stations and starships carried water reserves, and not all of them were in full supply yet, given their recent construction.

  It was Star Force procedure to bring up water from Earth whenever possible, in whatever large or small quantities they could squeeze onto the dropships in addition to their primary cargo or passengers. That water usually made its way to one of these larger cargo ships, then distributed throughout the Star Force orbital infrastructure.

  The Jaguar was the largest starship fielded to date, and massed more than some of the small stations. It had been built in the primary shipyard, situated in geosynchronous orbit, along with its five sister ships, taking approximately one year each to assemble, though construction of their components had begun long before that at various orbital factories.

  It carried a crew of more than 50 on a regular basis, and the disc width was equal to that of the training station’s discs, though this one was twice as thick and, as usual, was actually a pair rotating in opposite directions encased within an outer shell. Virtually all of the ship’s compartments, including the bridge, were located in the disc, with the zero gravity sections…which made up 85% of the ship’s interior…reserved for cargo transfer.

  On the way back to the starport, Paul and the others got to visit the cargo bays and ‘explore’ a bit. Inside the cavernous six bays, each situated adjacent to one another in the long ‘tail’ of the starship, were hundreds of various sized crates, each attached to racks spanning the bay. Fortunately they were only half full, leaving lots of empty spots and making it the perfect place to play hide and seek during the 25 hour trip.

  Paul and the others got to practice their zero gravity skills more than they had expected, thanks to an understanding captain, and organized their own obstacle courses in one of the bays, as well as several other challenges to keep themselves busy…including the long range jumps that they hadn’t been able to try out on the station.

  Even the large training room there was shorter than the length of the bay, and though they had to avoid crates and support structures, Paul and the others found that they could, if they aimed precisely enough, launch off one wall and fly to the other just a little under 100 meters away.

  Needless to say, the return trip proved much more entertaining than the ‘plane ride’ out on the smaller Cougar.

  When they got back to the starport they had about an hour’s delay waiting for their dropship, so Paul pulled rank, so to speak, and got permission to observe part of the unloading process as the Jaguar transferred over crates to the starport.

  Unlike the small docking arm that they’d used to board from the Sparrow, the Jaguar was attached to a much wider port via its own extendable docking pylon that attached directly to the inside of the starport’s shell rather than the docking arms emanating out from the zero gravity section in front of the cylinders. Most of the bulk cargo storage was located in the shell anyway, but even if it hadn’t been, the Jaguar was too large to squeeze into the primary docking ports without obscuring half of them.

  Instead the giant ship situated itself next to the outer rim where the docking bay doors were retracted and extended a grapple arm sideways from its ‘tail’ segment, just ahead of its engines, which were sticking down below the starport with the disc section poking out above and the long tail connecting the two on the side so as to not block the other traffic coming in and out.

  Once the grapple was attached and the small momentum differences between the ship and starport were nulled out mechanically, the Jaguar’s docking pylon extended and connected with the inside of the starport’s shell with an L-shaped attachment that got up and under the overhang so the actual docking port could still exist within the starport’s protective shell rather than being located on the armored exterior.

  Paul watched from the starport’s side as some, but not all, of the crates were transferred over via mechanical arms attached to the walls of the large docking pylon. They motored their way along small tracks with the cargo in their grip, then very carefully exchanged the packages with the starport’s own cargo arms, which then carried the crates down to a processing station.

  From their they were moved via sled to the appropriate warehouse compartments within the shell, some having to go all the way around the backside of the cylinde
rs to get to their storage areas on the other side of the starport.

  Paul took a ride with one of the workers on a sled back into the well lit but ‘dark’ areas of the starport where nobody else ever went, just to see what it was like. The sled moved on a track set into the ‘floor’ while the midsized crate was held down with a series of clamps. The worker stood on a raised platform with his feet in footholds as he drove the sled down the port side of the starport.

  Paul stood beside him, hanging onto the rim of the control panel and his feet in a second set of footholds, amazed at how much cargo was being stored and transferred about and impressed with the overall size of Star Force’s operations in space. He’d known all along how ambitious they were…after all he’d been living in their largest construction project for the past half year…but given the fuel to weight issues of moving cargo and personnel up into space, he hadn’t realized it could be this busy.

  Midway through his tour of the dark zones, he hopped ‘trains’ and hitchhiked a ride with a crate being taken into the starport’s interior for distribution. The tracks that ran the length of the floor, walls, and ceiling diverged into a short offshoot that led into the backside of the station where the cylinders were attached to a cargo distribution area.

  The crate in question was taken off a sled and moved to a side chamber where it was opened and smaller packages, not quite crates but of a similar design, were removed and sent in groups through the rotational airlock and into the gravity zone of the starport. Paul followed along, seeing some containers being sent to the food prep area while a few others were taken up into the commercial zones. Both contained food, but Paul figured one was meant for the cafeteria while the others probably contained prepackaged snacks that would be made available for sale to the tourists constantly transiting through the commerce hub.

  Paul eventually returned to the front end of the cylinders and the zero gravity section they’d first passed through on arrival almost two weeks before. Megan, Jason, and the others were sitting attached to three tables halfway up the amusement park-like reception area, waiting for their dropship to arrive. He joined them and watched the wall-screen view of the Earth and docking area, noting the large slice of the left side that was obscured by the docked Jaguar.

  He didn’t have to wait too long before an attendant arrived to escort them inside their dropship…another Sparrow that, ironically, was bringing up the 3s for their training mission. They met and conversed with each other briefly, then went their separate ways. Paul and the others boarded the dropship and detached from the starport without delay and nudged away from the space station on thrusters alone.

  Once they’d drifted out to a safe distance, the Sparrow flipped over, pointing its engines forward, and began a sharp descent burn, nulling out most of their orbital momentum and dropping them back down to Atlantis’s position with very little reentry friction, though it could have stood the heat of a full on reentry had it needed to.

  Once down into the atmosphere a pair of hull panels retracted and the small jet engine that the Sparrow contained came online and flew the spaceplane back to Atlantis, where circled a few times before being given clearance to land on one of the massive runways. More hull panels on the underside of the Sparrow opened and the blocky landing gear extended, breaking up the otherwise smooth, polished chrome visage of the craft.

  They touched down without incident, then taxied off the main runway, down a service offshoot, and over to a semi-active terminal, docking with a walkway extension.

  Paul unstrapped and stood up, feeling real gravity for the first time in what felt like forever. It was different than centrifugal gravity in a way, cleaner somehow…or maybe that was just his imagination. Either way, grabbing his duffle and walking off of the dropship on sore legs, he was glad to be back home.

  Paul frowned to himself as he and the others made their way through the terminal, now free of any handlers, and headed back through the city to their training area and quarters. When had he started thinking of Atlantis as home? Home was supposed to be back in Indiana with his family.

  He glanced to his left at Jack, then at Emily on his right, suppressing a smile. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but it seemed that he had picked up a second family and a second home in recent days. That wasn’t something he’d expected to have happened, but now that it had, he was glad. It made him even more sure that his decision to join Star Force instead of going to college had been the right one.

  Paul glanced at his surroundings and suppressed a laugh. The biggest and most prestigious college campuses on the planet had nothing on Atlantis…not by a long shot.

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