Starswift (Chapter 2)

"Nope! Lifts reserved! Use the ramps!" The gruff aging voice of the ships Steward yelled across the crowded foyer of the Mess Hall toward a trio of crew attempting to squeeze past a large food supplies container some boatswains were struggling with. The three men ignored the command directed at them and punched the elevators console hoping to get the lift going and were puzzled by its complete lack of response.

Smiling the Steward dangled the lift keys in front of their faces and said with a certain satisfaction. "I locked it down. Now out!"

"I'm a Warrant Officer! Know who you're speaking to!" A arrogant short pudgy member of the trio retorted.

The Stewart leaned in closer, still smiling and poked the fat one in the belly. "Hey! You wanna eat, cupcake? Then you'll use the ramps! Now beat it! Lifts reserved."

Defeated the three men quickly shimmied their way past the Stewart and made their way for the ramps.

Watching the whole thing, Zachary laughed to himself as he stepped from the ramp. His burly frame spinning one of the punier ones around as he shouldered his way pass the trio and made for the Mess doors. .

"Never bite the hand that feeds! Right Steward!" He called out across the foyer.

"Damn right!" The old man nodded back, his fist punching into his waist watching the men scamper off.

Zachary loved the Mess Hall. A modern, sleek combination of both cafeteria and crews lounge it was easily his favourite place on the ship. Located at the centre of deck 8, with its high ceilings and large open spaces it was purposely designed to be a place of comfort for the crew. A place you could go to relax alone or seek out company.

Circular in shape with the Galley in the centre it had smoothly flowing cutouts along its periphery that housed neoterically furnished lounges and plush reading areas. Informal dinning arrangements took up much of the rest of the contemporary designed space.

Floating lazily overhead, a cloudy thick band of the Milky Way stretched across the darkened ceiling accompanied by billions of stars that sparkled like jewels or glittered like grains of silver and gold.

Following the fresh scent of hot french fries, Zach made his way around artfully placed holographic emitters disguised as stylish planter boxes. Each featuring an assortment of large bamboo plants, exotic flowers and fan like palms. The foliage braking the cavernous room into smaller more intimate areas that gave the crew some form of creature comforts while aboard.

Eventually his nose found its way to a chow line in front of a cafeteria window serving burgers and various fried foods.

One of the best things aboard a starship was the quality of the food and the gourmet chefs they employed. The purpose was to keep moral up in a place you'll be sealed inside of for months at a time. Grabbing a slice of chocolate layer cake to go with his meal he thought to himself happily. 'Yep! Pretty effective!'

Zach momentarily paused in the middle of the Mess holding his tray out in front of him looking slightly dopey as he panned his sight across the room searching for anybody he knew that he could sit with. He was hoping he'd be able to catch up with some of his old crew mates from the earlier substation assignment and see how things were going. Really he wanted to gloat a little about his promotion. But alas he found that all of his friends had either already taken Mess or were off doing other things.

Resigning himself to eat alone he headed towards a quiet lounge area off against one of the far walls, meandering through and around dining tables and a few boisterous Bosuns. Taking a leisurely pace he was hoping that there was still a small chance he might find somebody he hadn't noticed yet that he could sit with.

'Great. Guess not.' He thought to himself realising he had crossed the room sooner than he thought and was already at the lounge. Raised a few feet above the rest of the mess decking, its moulded pearl coloured couches and sleek anthracite tables paired nicely with the thick carpeting thoughtfully laid down throughout the reclusive area. Lit up along its curving walls a animated panoramic scene of long legged giraffes strolling alongside grazing zebras in one of Africa's savanna's warmed the lounges atmosphere.

Zach selected a couch half in shadow near a large square holographic projector that erupted a huge life-like acacia tree. Its branches spread overhead like a canopy across the ceiling. One of the giraffes ambled over and began munching on its leaves.

Plopping his food tray on the speckled carbon hued coffee table in front of him, he sank into the cushy seat. "Ah, that's nice." He said a little too loudly, feeling his body beginning to slacken a little from the tension of working the bridge. A grumpy old codger a few seats over glared at him disapprovingly for breaking the tranquility of the lounge. Zach grinned back awkwardly as if to apologise and took out his personal tablet to check for any messages or updates.

Zach's guilt over his tactlessness was quickly replaced by happiness at the sight of a lit up mail icon signifying a message waiting for him from his dad back home in Kingaroy, Australia. A small sleepy rural town, it was all he'd ever known before joining the International Space Forces and going to their academy. As a boy he always wanted to be like his dad and work an excavator digging holes and working with his hands. He never could have imagined that one day he'd be flying starships instead and travelling far away from that sleepy dusty town.

Dads worn face and long whitened hair greeted him. Deep lines formed by a life time working in the harsh southern sun were filled with the rust coloured soil of the south Burnett region he'd toiled in his whole life. Covered in dirt like that, he must have made the message while still in the field at the job site and sent it to him. He felt pained to see his dad aging so badly. He'd worked too hard and for far too long and it was taking its toll on him. His was a poor family and with a young sister still in the house he feared his dad would probably have to work till the day he died from exhaustion.

'Hey Son! Just sending you a quick message before you guys head out to Kepler. We've been informed you're all expected back in five weeks and in time for Christmas. Lyria misses you and keeps asking when her brother will be back to give her swimming lessons. She's sad you won't be back in time for her fifth birthday. I told her when you get back Santa will be coming soon too. That cheered her up. Mum is at the shops but she sends her love....Oh and do you remember your old girlfriend Shazza from state school? I ran into her the other day in Yarraman. She's gone full bogan. Got six kids now. You dodged a bullet on that one. Love you and we're all real proud of you. Take care son. ' His dad gave a lopsided smile and disappeared.

Zach sat back for a second and held in tears that were welling up. He missed his family. He looked forward to seeing them during his next leave for the holidays. Maybe finally fix the washer for mum that had been broken for months. He wish he was paid more and could just buy them a new one all together.

Composing himself he noticed a second message, this one high priority and from the ships engineer.

"To:All Crew
From: Chief Engineer O'Keiran
Re: Artificial Gravity

To all crew and passengers aboard the Starswift.

As all crew are well aware, we will be testing my new drive design in a few hours. The new drive is dissimilar to the current C Drive. We will be in a Mach decoupled state very different from our customary metric engineered cavity we normally use. We all know that we get our artificial gravity as a by product from our drive field. What's this mean to you? It means we will momentarily be without gravity throughout the entire ship as we switch over to the new drive. We expect this transition from one artificial gravity source to the other to last no more than fifteen seconds and should be of minimal inconvenience. However this does mean that anything not secured will get up and float away during that time. If you do not want to chase after your belongings as they float down the deck corridors take the time now to adequately secure them.

There is good news and bad news in this. The good news is the new drive is safer and smoother. There will be no superluminal turbulence. The bad news is gone will be the inertial gradient bias and feathery artificial gravity of .7 G's you've come accustomed to. The new artificial gravity will be running at .9 G's instead. This will take some time to get used to and expect to be uncomfortable until your body adapts.

Officers and senior crew feel free to message me with any questions or concerns regarding.

-Tom"

'Well that's interesting' Zach thought to himself. Although he wasn't looking forward to being suddenly 30 pounds heavier with the new artificial gravity, the prospect of a superluminal jump free of turbulence, raucus and rattling was a bit exciting actually.

The new jump drive was difficult for him to understand the mechanics of. Some abstract concept revolving around Machian decoupling in Desitter space.

The old C Drive was simple enough to wrap his head around. Coherent Quantum Optical Squeezing he believed the egg heads called it. Antenna induced parallel plate waveguides created a cavity in which EM vacuum fluctuations were eliminated using sophisticated soliton methods.

Anyways, as EM modes were pinched off one by one it meant that the speed of light went up exponentially inside the cavity than in surrounding local space, shoving old Einstein and his relativity complications of inertial mass increases and time dilation far away. You weren't going faster than light per see. You were making light go faster for you than everywhere else. Pretty basic Star drive mechanics 101.

The mechanism's discovery back in the mid 20th century, still being a secret at the time, lead to mass public misunderstanding and even weird crazes and speculation of aliens visiting earth.

In all fairness a ship rigged up for that kind of drive would be pretty difficult to make heads or tails of to the casual observer back then. The sharp change in optical refractive indexes of the drive field created all sorts of visual artifacts from glowing, partial invisibility to even general all around blurryness when looked at. Which explains why the old photos captured of them were always so awful.

To make matters worse the sharp refractive changes had the side effect of steep time rate gradients at the outer boundary of the field which produced subatomic shearing forces and could reduce to frappe anything unlucky enough to be caught at just the wrong spot in it. Basically it can be lethal to life. So it had to be handled responsibly.

If someone screwed up and the field bleed beyond the boundary, the altered vacuum metrics played all sorts of havoc on electrical appliances and even caused severe hallucinations in bystanders. One could understand why people thought they were seeing creepy goblins invading their backyard when some of the early designs would malfunction and have to make emergency repairs out in the field. Those weren't aliens trying to abduct farmer Bob. Those were ship personnel in protective suits checking up on him, making sure their space drive hadn't accidentally fried his brain.

But this new drive apparently was free from all that mess. Aharonove Bohm effects resonantly coupled via Josephine junctions to a superconductor rotating at the angular velocity of a certain Schwartzchild radius eliminated frame dragging, decoupling the vessel from space time. The concept being that if the universe wasn't aware that you were travelling did it in fact matter how fast you were actually travelling or accelerating at all. You're off the radar so to speak and free of relativity. The thing could theoretically teleport or jump from place to place. Or at least that's what he was lead to believe during the crew briefing and physics review they all got last month when he first got aboard. He figured if he really wanted to understand how it all worked he could ask the ships chief engineer over drinks sometime.

In the meantime, they'd find out if the crazy idea worked one way or the other in just a few hours. He thought to himself.

Thinking about warp physics was exhausting and Jr. lieutenant Hoyt got up and headed for the ramps that would take him up to deck six and his quarters for a brief nap. He had a briefing in the hanger’s flight ops in just a few hours and he was intrigued to meet the ship he'd be piloting from here on out that was waiting for him down there. It was the centre of a multi ship task force that included scientific support ships, scouts and logistics carriers for equipment and supplies. He couldn't wait to see what was on the tropical equatorial continents of Kepler 22b. What kind of alien life would he see. Maybe some of it sentient even? That would be something. Maybe he'd even end up written down in history for co discovering half the stuff there.

Walking up the bustling ramps back to his cramped quarters he yearned for his bed back home. With privacy and soft pillows. Really he was just hoping that his room mate hadn't played with the overhead holoprojector again and that he'd walk into a room covered with nude women all over the walls like last time. Besides it being against ship regulations, his roommate had the top bunk and he shuddered to think about what went on up there.

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Well, this is chapter two of the Starswift saga. Sorry it doesn't have as much adventure as chapter one. I needed a little back story and technical details so that the later chapters would be easier to follow regarding certain plot devices.

The main story line and adventure starts in chapter three. And its a big adventure. I promise.

Chapter 1 can be found at this link for those interested.

https://steemit.com/fiction/@steemydave/starswift

Thank you again for taking the time to read this and I hope it entertained you, giving a small bit of respite in all of our hectic lives.

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All liquid rewards from this post are going towards mine and @kaelci 's Australian Prospective Marriage Visa, any upvotes are very much appreciated. Thank you

All pictures supplied by pixabay.com