Days of Future Past - Part 3: Future Tense Page 11

  "I am to hold them until someone comes from the Clarke County Sheriff's office to take possession of them."

  "Okay, from this point on, anyone detained will be questioned, given food and water as necessary, and released after a five day holding period. Release them back near the perimeter where you found them, unless they request to be released some other place along the base's perimeter. If they are decidedly hostile, drive them off; do not take them into custody. If they are peaceable and are willing to turn around and leave, give them a warning and let them do so.

  "Oh, and clean out the cells and bury the remains someplace fitting." I said as I recalled the pictures of the cells that had been briefly shown during the briefing.

  "Acknowledged, Colonel."

  "Next, what is the status of food stuffs?"

  "Currently we have one million ninety-five thousand meals in storage...."

  I interrupted him, "Are those viable, or expired?" I asked.

  "Viable," Apollo told me.

  "How have you managed to keep food viable for the last several hundred years?" Sarah asked, amused.

  "I haven't," Apollo replied, "All of the meals were produced in the last ten years. I have a rotating storage for new food as it is produced."

  "Wait, you're producing food here?" I asked, surprised.

  "The Mars Colony Food project was started two years prior to the war. The goal of the project is to produce food stores for a group of one hundred people. Food is required to last in storage for ten years. At which point it is disposed off."

  "Why'd they do a food program here?" I asked, rather surprised.

  "The climate here at the time of the project was determined to be harsh enough to meet the needs of the program, as well as the location being secure enough to not alert our foes that a plan to colonize Mars was being considered."

  "You know," Heather said, looking at me, "food is often an issue for a lot of people. You could see about trading that away to some of the local communities for other supplies."

  Apollo responded to her statement, I don't know if he thought Heather was talking to him, or he felt the need to interject.

  "The MCF project is classified as secret. The food from it may not be shared."

  "Apollo?" I said.

  "Yes, Colonel?"

  "Mark the project as a success, continue to execute it, and declassify it and all of the information that has been gathered from it."

  "Yes, Colonel."

  "Now, weapons, what have we got that we can sling on that space plane outside?"

  "Weapons stores for aircraft are at fifty percent. Rearming the Phoenix will not cause an issue.

  "Refueling?"

  "Fuel stores are only twenty percent, however fueling the Phoenix will only require one percent of our stores. However, as I mentioned before, fueling will have to be performed by a person."

  "And maintenance before we can fly it again?"

  "Here are the issues that need to be addressed," Apollo said and displayed a long list on the main screen.

  The girls and I then spent the rest of the day going over each of the issues with Apollo. Many of them just required a human to approve before they could be carried out. But a dozen of them required us to first inspect the Phoenix, the name of the space plane, as well as the items that were being repaired or replaced. And of course I would have to sign off on the finished product.

  We okayed those things that the machines could do, and worked out a basic plan for the things we'd have to do ourselves. It would take us at least a week. While the job was supposed to be easy and a trained crew could turn it around in a couple of hours, we had no training at all, and would have to constantly check the manuals, or ask Apollo for instruction.

  But the girls didn't seem at all daunted by the tasks, and while I'm not a whiz at electronics or hardware, none of it looked like anything I couldn't deal with, as long as I could ask Apollo questions on anything I didn't understand.

  It was nearing dinnertime when we came to the last two items on Apollo's list.

  The first was 'qualified flight crew.'

  "Well, we don't have any of that, so we're just going to have to waive that one."

  "I must protest, Colonel. Without qualified crew, you can not fly the Phoenix."

  "Apollo, the three of us are it. If there are things we need to know in order to operate the Phoenix, give us a checklist and some barebones training. I understand that there is a risk involved, but we have no other choice in this situation."

  "There are some basic simulators on base to help with proficiency," Apollo said, and I almost thought I could hear a sigh in his voice. "I can give you the basic training in how to use the systems."

  "Fine, how long will that take?"

  "A couple of weeks should cover everything."

  "Great," I said, "You have five days to train us. We'll start training tomorrow, in the evenings, after we're done with the day's work."

  "I must protest, Colonel."

  "We'll see where we are at, when we're done. If anything is hopelessly bad at that point, we'll work on it."

  I moved down to the last item on the list, pilot.

  "And here we are, the last item," I sighed.

  "You don't have a pilot, Colonel," Apollo confirmed.

  "Yeah, we do. It's me."

  "You are not qualified, Colonel. In fact, you did not complete flight training according to my records."

  "Yes, however I am a certified pilot, licensed for single and multi-engine, as well as for instrument flight."

  "The Phoenix is a much more complicated aircraft then a civilian one, Colonel."

  I laughed, "Yes, I know. But we're out of options, Apollo. Do we have a flight simulator I can train on for that here?"

  "Yes, Colonel."

  "Good. Besides, how hard can it be? It landed itself here after all."

  "Three other sister ships of the Phoenix were not so lucky, Colonel. Two burned up on re-entry, and one crashed in the mountains to the west of here."

  "Un-huh." I looked at the girls, "What do you say we go outside and take a look at this spacecraft of ours, and then go get some dinner?"

  "Definitely," Heather said, standing up and stretching attractively while Sarah and I watched with frank appreciation.

  I grinned at Sarah who winked back, then we both stood up and stretched as well.

  "Okay, meeting adjourned. Keep up the good work, Apollo. I must say I'm impressed with your performance. You did a great job and I know we wouldn't be able to do this without your help."

  "Thank you, Colonel."

  We left the command center then and there was a jeep, or I guess what now passed for a jeep, waiting for us. It took us out to the Phoenix, which had been towed into one of the hangers after landing and taxing off the runway.

  The outside skin was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It was black, and if I had to guess I'd say it was some kind of carbon fiber. It definitely wasn't made of the tiles that the space shuttles I'd know of as a kid had used.

  The wings on it were swept back delta wings, and the engines were again both familiar and not. There were inlets for two air-breathing engines, but there were also a series of ridges, or channels, along the top and bottom of the fuselage, at the back where it tapered off like a wedge. They looked like the aerospike engines that people were experimenting with back before I'd left.

  There were twin tails stuck up off the sides at an angle off the wedge, to either side of the aerospike configuration, and the whole craft rode on a set of tricycle landing gear, two wheels on each set, with the rear gear looking pretty substantial. The entire craft was about the length of a seven-thirty-seven, if maybe a bit narrower in the fuselage and sat about as high off the ground.

  Going up the stairs and inside, the interior was a lot smaller however. There were sixteen seats, eight to a side of the cabin to the right of me as I looked back towards the rear of the space plane. Each was a lot bigger than a normal airline seat and had a conso
le set in the ceiling above it. In the back I could see a hatch that led to the aft spaces.

  To the right was the hatch to the pilot's compartment.

  Stepping through that I entered the cockpit which had four seats arranged inside it. The front two, by the windscreen were obviously the pilot and the copilot seats. About half the controls looked familiar, some I could probably have guessed at, but the rest I would have to learn about. As for the instruments, I could identify several small backup gauges and displays, but most of the dashboard was occupied by numerous large screens.

  The infamous 'glass cockpit' that everyone had been talking about when I'd left.

  I noticed that nearly every unused space in the cockpit was covered with handholds and straps, as it was I could tell that getting into the pilot's seat was going to take a little bit of climbing and careful stepping while on the ground. Considering the amount of controls you had to be careful of, the handholds in the ceiling definitely made sense.

  The next two seats were behind the pilot and copilot seats, and there was a bulkhead between them and the front two. On that bulkhead were numerous display screens and a lot of controls. There were joysticks to either side of both chairs with triggers on them. There were also numerous handholds in this area as well.

  "Offense and defense stations?" I mused out loud looking back and forth between the two stations.

  "Hmmm?" Sarah asked.

  I turned to her and Heather who were both looking around, rather impressed.

  "The pilot flies from up there," I pointed to the pilot's seat. "I don't have a copilot and so the other seat will stay empty. You two will be sitting here," I said and gestured to the second two seats.

  "Why?" Sarah asked.

  "I suspect this is where the weapons are controlled from. And probably why Apollo is so worried about you learning how to use them," I said and rubbed the side of my face thinking about it.

  "We're definitely going to have to know how to use the weapons, in case we run into any dragons."

  "Well, how hard can it be?" Heather asked looking it all over.

  I shrugged, "I have no idea at all."

  - 12 -

  Apparently it could be pretty hard.

  It would take us the full week to get the Phoenix ready to launch again, we had to have it fueled, re-armed, all loaded, and everything tested. All under the very watchful eye of Apollo who definitely had more patience than I suspect any human would have exhibited. We'd start each day at about ten, after a late breakfast, and then worked until dinnertime, and after that he had us spend a couple of hours in the simulators learning our jobs.

  The two back seats in the cockpit didn't function exactly as I had thought they would. One was for the weapons pointing forward, which were the missiles, a laser, and a high-speed gatling gun. The other was for the weapons pointed backwards, which was another laser and another gatling gun.

  Defensive systems were normally handled by the copilot, though the pilot did have access to those systems as well. I guess the idea was they could trade off as necessary, but it wasn't that complicated, as there weren't a lot of defensive systems really. There were racks of automated jamming systems, flares, chaff, the usual kinds of stuff; apparently defensive systems really hadn't changed all that much from the pilot's perspective.

  The person in charge of the rear facing weapons was expected to shoot down any missiles or craft attacking from the rear. While the person in the other seat was expected to do the same for things coming at us head on.

  Heather loved it, and viewed it all as just a great big video game and was actually rather good at using the systems. I think Apollo might even have been impressed with her, if AI's could be impressed.

  Sarah soldiered on, and while she was good with understanding all of the systems and using them, her shooting skills were just not as good as Heather's. The need for using the joysticks to aim kept giving her problems.

  As for me, well the flying was easy. Managing the center of gravity as fuel was burned, managing the throttles on twenty-two different engines, switching over from turbines to aerospike and back, and re-entering the atmosphere. Those were challenging.

  Rendezvousing with an object in orbit, that was difficult.

  Docking with another spacecraft was frustrating to the point of where I almost put a bullet through the simulator.

  After the third day of working on the ship during the day and using the simulators in the evening, Apollo had a little talk with Heather and Sarah, who both came to me and told me that they didn't need my help working on the Phoenix anymore, and that I should really just spend all of my time working in the simulator.

  "You ratted me out!" I said to Apollo after that had happened.

  "Colonel, I simply noted that there was a problem, and gave the suggested solution to your wives, so that they could help you with the decision. You did tell me to give them equal access and authority."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I did, however you didn't seem to appreciate the suggestion."

  I grumbled, he had suggested that I concentrate solely on the flying aspects, as it was pointless for us to make the flight until I could get us up to the station that was in orbit around the Earth, which was just the first phase in our trip to the Moon.

  Once we got to the station, then we'd transfer to a second craft which would take us to the Moon and let us land on it. We would be using that same craft to make the return trip as well, and I hadn't even started to learn how to fly that one!

  I was really starting to worry about just how long this was going to take. Apollo and I both agreed that while the ship's autopilot in both craft could handle everything, it would be better if I knew how to do it, and in many cases, did do it. Because the autopilots were fallible, and if I couldn't do it and they broke, we were all as good as dead.

  I was making good progress, on everything but docking. Switching from one set of engines to the other wasn't anything more than a matter of practice and I quickly mastered that skill. Flying up out of the atmosphere and following the flight director was also just a matter of practice and I was quickly getting that under control as well. Switching from flight surfaces to reaction controls was a little more involved, because once you got out of the atmosphere you had to actually put in a correction to stop any movement you started, as there was no longer any air to do that for you, so I was taking a little more time to learn that, however I was still making good progress on it, because it was all linear and logical to me. It all reacted the same way as flying.

  But docking? Going forward also made you go up, which made you then go slower. Going down made you go faster and forward. Slowing down made you also go down, which then made you move faster. That was all in relation to the target you wanted to dock with. Once you were close in, say about ten yards, you could just kinda brute force it and it wasn't much of an issue, but when you were a quarter of a mile out? Or even just a hundred yards?

  Yeah, nothing behaved 'like it should' and I wanted to scream. I did scream sometimes. It was all totally ass backwards from what I understood from years of flying.

  "Your problem," Apollo told me, "is that you think you are flying in an atmosphere when you are docking. There is no air there, only gravity and rotational inertia."

  "Which doesn't tell me a lot," I sighed.

  "If you want to go faster than your target, you move into a lower orbit, to cut inside the corner it is turning. If you want to go slower, you move into a higher orbit, to take the outside of the turn. You are going through one long curve. Instead of flying with the Earth, or the 'ground' beneath you, you need to put it on your wing and just think about it like a corner on a racetrack."

  "Or a turning rejoin," I said trying to think of it more in flying terms.

  "Exactly," Apollo agreed. "You need to think of getting close to the target before you start trying to think of docking with it."

  "Fine, let's try it again."

  I was covered in sweat and I was ti
red as hell. I was still trying to get it right, but damn if Apollo's suggestion hadn't made a huge difference. I think I was finally starting to get the hang of it when suddenly everything went black and the whole simulator came to a stop. The top slowly started to open and I looked around in a daze.

  "Paul?"

  I looked over, it was Sarah.

  "Dammit, Sarah, I almost had it that time!" I complained.

  "Paul!" she said in a louder voice.

  I blinked, "Yeah?"

  "You have been in there since yesterday. It is time for breakfast."

  I stared at her for a moment.

  "OUT!" she said in a very accented voice and pointed.

  I got out.

  I was so shaky that I was having trouble standing up, and it took me a moment to get my bearings. I noticed that I was soaked with so much sweat that my flight suit was drenched.

  "I, I lost track of time," I told her sheepishly as she helped me out of the room.

  "Obviously. I guess that I am going to have a little talk with Apollo."

  "I told him to let me keep going," I said a little embarrassed.

  "Yes, well I'm going to tell him to not let you overdo it or I'll reprogram him with an ax!" Sarah growled and I didn't miss the return of the dreaded accent or the use of contractions.

  She was definitely pissed.

  "I promise to take breaks," I sighed and smiling I stopped and leaned over and kissed her.

  "You are taking the day off!" She declared her accent still rather heavy.

  "Sarah, we're on a schedule, everything is ready at this point, but me! I need to keep working; I'm the only one holding us up now."

  "Coyote! Front and center!" Sarah yelled, and damn if he didn't appear.

  "You tell him," She said, stilling fuming.

  "Take the day off, Paul. You won't do any of us any good if you're too tired to fly."

  I sighed, "Okay, okay. I'll take the day off."

  "Better," Sarah smiled and led me back to the room for breakfast.

  We'd been eating the food that the MCF project had been producing. While it wasn't the greatest, it was still better than some of the things I'd had to eat in the past. As our trail rations were mostly meat, we were saving those for use as treats now. The MCF food was vegetable based of course, even if some of it was extremely high protein.