ΔV Pt. 02

"Why from Earth?" he asked, frowning. "We've got a Jovian fleet too – they could be there in a few weeks."

"That fleet is protecting Ganymede. The last thing we want to do is lose the biggest claim we have in the outer system," Chomsky said, her voice flat. "And all our best techs are on Earth. The Chinese haven't said much, but what they've said...well. It's big. Now, get to work."

Lucas stumbled from the room, feeling shellshocked.

"Three months," Teller whispered. "Three months, Jesus Christ. This is going to be the biggest logistic crunch since the Watney rescue."

"Well," Lucas said, rubbing his face with his hands. "At least we have more toys. Right?"

"Right." Teller didn't sound convinced.

The first thing Lucas did was bring up a list of starships that the United States had in orbit. Thanks to a century and more of space industrialization – and the fact that starships had a remarkable shelf life, considering the alarming number of technologies that had failed to materialize. No one had invented fusion power. No one had built true AI. Nanotechnology remained a fringe field, mostly used in medical practices. And so, the starships that the United States built were only marginally better than ships built before – the main differences being mission profiles and tactical designs. Different schools of thought existed when it came to building ships – and one could see how those schools gained and lost prominence with the design dates of certain ships.

Lucas sorted out the ships into several spreadsheets. Several could have made the mission time from a purely mechanical perspective – but they were one or three man skiffs which would have arrived with the crews driven completely insane by the isolation and close quarters. A heavy drone carrier looked momentarily promising, until he had crunched out the numbers and found that, even if they tapped every drone onboard for reaction mass, they still would have missed the flight window by two weeks.

The next two days were spent in a haze of orbits, Hohmann transfers, burn calculations, and thrust-to-mass ratios. Each time Lucas stumbled to his apartment, he fell into his bed and passed out. Even Teller stopped trying to get laid – he was run ragged doing his own math, doing his own plots. Every other logistics specialist threw out ideas during lunch or coffee breaks. The ones who were still working on the normal profiles clearly sent them pitying looks.

And then...

Lucas had the idea that would ruin his life.

It was late on the fourth day, with the deadline looming. He was sitting in his chair, glaring at the remassing stations throughout the SOL system – tabbing to show where a ship could get methane, where a ship could get hydrogen. He had found an orbit that would work – but only if the ship could refuel at Ceres. But Ceres had been slow in developing, with the focus of the American development being on their newly claimed Ganymede.

"Why couldn't they have waited a year?" he whispered, looking at Ceres' logistic reports. It had literally millions of tons of water on it. Enough hydrogen to fuel a...

Fuel...

Lucas tabbed back to his spreadsheet. "Oh, I'm a moron," he whispered.

Chomsky was in her office – did the woman ever sleep? - when Lucas buzzed the door. She nodded to him. "Mr. Sibusiso?" she asked, nodding to him – her jowls wobbling slightly in a graceful, low gravity jiggle. Lucas, in his addled state, nearly giggled. Instead, he coughed.

"I've got a proposed burn plan and ship schedule," he said, then tapped at his tablet, sending the file to her screen. She looked at it, pursing her lip.

"A teakettle?" she asked.

"Yes," Lucas said. "W-We phased out teakettle ships – uh, water is just, it's not as efficient as other forms of reaction mass. But it has an advantage: Ceres isn't prepared to produce hydrogen on an industrial scale – but it doesn't have to produce ice. It just needs to cut it off. And with a month of lead time, they can get the ice ready to intercept our ship. And she's a laser ship, so, she's big enough to carry a science team."

Chomsky, though, was smiling. "And the name..." she said.

"The...huh?" Lucas asked.

Chomsky looked at him. "The name didn't determine your selection?"

Lucas shook his head.

Chomsky's smile faded. "We're going to need a logistics specialist to go with the ship – if this anomaly is a portal, we want someone there to prepare and manage our logistic operations on the far end." She nodded.

"Yeah. We should," Lucas said. Sleep deprivation made the next thing he said come easy: "Man. What luckless dip are you going to be sending?"

Chomsky did not smile again.

Thirty hours later, Lucas pushed through the airlock and onto the USS Enterprise. His face was set and pinched from the hard burn that the cislunar shuttle had put him, and his guts wanted to crawl up and out his throat. Getting a sweeping view of the aging ship hadn't exactly filled him with confidence, despite the shuttle pilot crooning: "Ain't she a beauty?"

The Enterprise was, as starships went, quite ugly. It had a conical nose that was studded with blisters of ultraviolet lasers, then a narrow, tapering neck to cut down on mass, which then ballooned into the central habitation section, which could be spun up for some centrifugal gravity. Then there were the massive, bulbous water tanks that held the reaction mass, and then, finally, there was the ominous, matte black rectangle of the nuclear reactor that provided the power and the motive thrust. Flaring out from the reactor were two immense, sail-like radiators that glowed a brilliant cherry red even at rest. The whole thing looked spindly and toylike, and only when the shuttle decelerated towards the airlock did the scale of the ship start to impress itself on Lucas. The habitation section, which had looked like a pair of soda cans, turned into hotels. The conical nose turned into a mountain. The radiators became football fields.

Then the shuttle dock closed around the shuttle and he was through the airlock. He was met by a woman with sky blue skin – the kind of skin someone got from a dye pill – and the uniform of a junior officer. Lucas took her hand as she offered it. "Welcome aboard, Mr. Sibusiso," she said, managing to not quite mangle his name. "I'm Ensign Helen Trevor, I've been assigned to welcoming you aboard." She grinned. "I hear you're why we're being brought out of orbital duty."

Lucas nodded. "Yes, uh, you know who to blame," he said.

"Blame?" Ensign Trevor asked as she showed him the ladder to take hold of – the corridor that led to the shuttle lock was quite narrow, almost claustrophobic. The air smelled faintly stale, and Lucas could hear a constant, low droning noise that he was positive was going to drive him absolutely insane within the next few days. "Mr. Sibusiso, half the crew wants to pin the Medal of Honor on you. The other half just wants to buy you a round and a hooker next time we hit Armstrong City." Her eye shone as she grinned at him.

Lucas had the frankly terrifying mental image of being held down while a line of nearly seventy prostitutes were ushered towards him by smiling astros. He gulped and started to climb 'up' the ladder.

"Oh! Sir! Er, uh, Mr. Sibusiso!" Trevor said, quickly. "You'll want to reverse your orientation once you hit the junction."

Lucas frowned as he saw what she meant. The ladder he climbed led into a ring shaped room that was slowly rotating – the faint, soft sound of metal rasping against lubricated metal filling his ears. Every few seconds, a different hatch rotated by overhead – separating the null gravity spine of the ship from the rotating habitation decks. He nodded. "There...this seems kind of dangerous."

"There's nothing to it, Mr. Sibusiso," Trevor said, pushing herself up and out of the ladder. Her magnetic soles clicked as they attached the edge of the 'floor' - or what would soon be the ceiling. She pointed up at the rotating speed. "It's not that fast, see? You just need to jump when the yellow paint shows up – and then grab onto the green handle there. Watch." She tensed, then jumped. The yellow paint she had leaped for – a long, yellow bar stenciled onto the slowly rotating ceiling – had finished rotating by once she had reached it, and her hands closed around a broad, bright green bar. She swung herself around and 'fell' into the hatch with a grunt. She poked her head out, her arms braced to keep her nestled against the hatch.

"Easy as pie!" she said – even as her head vanished around the bend of the ring shaped room.

"I think I'm going to throw up," Lucas whispered.

A few moments later, the hatch came around again – and this time, Trevor had drawn back, giving him room to leap and swing in. Lucas bit back a scream of terror as he jumped upwards – and then his palms slapped into the green bar after what felt like exactly zero seconds of delay. He swung around – and her arms wrapped around his leg, drawing him down and hooking his feet against the rungs of the ladder. The female astro slapped his thigh with a cheerful laugh. "See? Easy peasy!"

Lucas nodded, his arms trembling as he clung to the ladder.

Each step down he took made him feel more and more comfortable – gravity growing more and more pronounced until, at last, he stepped off the ladder and into the central corridor of the habitation ring. The floor was broad – for a spaceship – meaning that there was enough room for three skinny people to walk abreast. Most of the traffic stuck to the edges of the corridor. Crew walked by, murmuring to one another about their duty shifts. A distant buzzing sound and a smell of ozone crackled from around the curving bend of the corridor, which looped upwards and out of sight.

"We're doing some maintenance that way," Ensign Trevor said.

"Right," Lucas said, nodding.

"You're going to be parked with the other scientists," Trevor said, walking with him down the corridor, tugging him into the traffic lane that headed the direction they were walking. Trevor wasn't sure if it was with or against the spin of the rotating section. His stomach did a queasy little flop and he felt as if his head was spinning with the rotating section. "Next to Dr. Goldberg, I think. And your luggage is being shifted there already – there's an internal cargo system, you know?"

Lucas tried to smile.

Ensign Trevor took him into a hatch that led to the right from the main corridor. Here, the curve of the ship was invisible – a fact that alone already made him feel more at ease – and the corridor was even more narrow – a fact that did not help in the slightest. They walked past several bunk rooms, what looked like a lavatory ("the head!" Ensign Trevor helpfully supplied the proper astro term), and finally came to a quartet of doors. One opened for them and Lucas looked inside.

To go from his apartment at Armstrong City to this...this...broom closet.

Lucas felt prickling on his face. A sudden, impossible urge to open the door and get outside, to feel the wind on his face, struck him.

Trevor, her voice gentle, said: "There's a fan system over the bed. It, uh, it helps."

Lucas walked to the narrow cot that was sunk into the wall. He swung himself in and laid down, breathing slowly and carefully. The fan system controls were all chunky, physical switches – not touch screens – and he flicked one on. Natural scents and a warm breeze fluttered against his face. It wasn't the constant, steady stream of a more classic fan system, but rather something...gusty and erratic. His eyes closed and the sound systems worked into the bed began to play chirps and bird sounds. It was such an obvious ploy, such an artificial attempt to recreate Earth that...Lucas would have sworn that it would have been utterly absurd.

It felt wonderful.

When he turned his head, Trevor was grinning at him. "Told ya," she said, then shook her head. "Man, you civilians get spoiled."

Lucas managed a chuckle. "You think this is nice? Wait until you see my apartment."

"Mr. Sibsiso, that's highly inappropriate," she said, her voice serious. Lucas jerked up and slammed his head into the vent controls – the knob that changed the intensity jammed into his skin and left an impression that felt like it reached his skull.

"Oh, no, I mean, I, no, I-"

Trevor laughed, her eyes glittering. "I was kidding," she said. "God, it is nice to use that line on someone who can't give me latrine duty for it."

Lucas rubbed at his forehead. "Kidding."

Trevor grinned. "Yeah."

Lucas breathed out a slow sigh of relief. "Oh. Good." He nodded. "Good, good. Uh..." He tried for a smile. He had gone without sleep for almost a week. He had been crammed onto a shuttle for thirty hours, an alarming amount spent swinging between brutal acceleration and long, horrible periods of stomach-turning microgravity. In short, Lucas' brain was not functioning at a hundred percent. He did not have the normal censor that would have stopped him from saying: "Not that I'd be against showing you my apartment."

Trevor smirked, slightly. Her eyes gleamed. "I'll remember that next time we're on Luna, Mr. Sibsiso."

She nodded. "Burn in fifteen hours, so, uh, be prepped for that."

And she walked off.

Lucas gaped after her.

Had he just...flirted?

And had it just...

Worked?

He was still marveling at that when he managed, finally, to fall asleep.

***

Sukhdeep was dead.

Those three words tolled inside of Vidya's head – ringing like a low, mournful gong.

Sukhdeep was dead.

Three words.

Three months – give or take a few weeks – and they still felt...wrong to think. Incorrect. Like something that needed to be altered, objected to. She should have been able to: No, Sukhdeep wasn't dead. That's silly. He's working away on Janus, and I will see him once we come into orbit around the place.

But she couldn't.

She couldn't because Sukhdeep...was dead.

For the first two weeks of the flight – the weeks spent drifting at a hundred kilometers per second – she had been numb. She had walked to her duty station, mindlessly looked at the givens they had gotten from the forward observers in the Saturnine system. While the IAF didn't have any surviving ships near the Janus anomaly, the warship that had provided security for the research station had launched several observation satellites at various Lagrange points, and several had survived to observe. So, really, she had a lot of fascinating data – the whole Indian scientific organization had fascinating data.

But every single number, every single result, all spelled out the same three words.

Sukhdeep was dead.

After the remassing drone had intercepted the Sparrowhawk and they had burned hard to change course and cut down flight time, Vidya had gone from numb to furious. Then fury had given way to a deep, crushing well of sadness. The rest of the crew had given her space, which struck her as something close to a gods given miracle. She would have thanked them – had she not been to busy asking the vast, cluttered pantheon of the universe why, why, why. When nothing echoed back to her, she ended up curling up inside of her niche and sobbing for hours.

And then...

And then came the dream.

She opened her eyes in the dimness of the quarters – her breath coming slowly and raggedly, and saw Sukhdeep's warm face near hers. But rather than being in flesh and blood, he looked translucent and pale – ghostly. His voice echoed in her mind, not in her ears. My beauty, my love... And then his lips had touched hers. Her lips tingled, buzzing and burning as if she was kissing dry ice. Her mouth opened in the dream and she accepted the feelings, not caring if they were just dreams. Her fingers reached up – but when she tried to grip him, he felt like nothing but smoke and vapor.

Save for his lips.

Then his tongue thrust into her mouth. It was cold and it drew heat from her like a spoon full of ice. And yet, it quested against her, in the same way that he had when she had first made love with him. No, not the first time. The tenth time – when he and her had grown to know one another's pleasure. His hands cupped her cheeks and then slid down to her breasts, working at the buttons of her uniform. She couldn't touch him – but she could help him, in this dream. She tugged at her bra with her hands, freeing her dusky brown breasts. Then Sukhdeep leaned away from her lips. His shockingly cold, tingling kisses planted themselves along her neck, questing down to the tips of her breasts. Her nipples had slowly puckered, growing harder and harder with every kiss, but the feeling of that tingling chill against her made her back arch inside of the narrow tube. Her hands planted themselves against the ceiling of her room and her legs twitched as she squirmed against him.

Normally, sex in microgravity required careful efforts to not send one's partner flying off.

But in the dream, Sukhdeep had no problem staying with her. He sucked her breasts. He caressed her breasts. He teased her nipple with the tips of his fingers, coaxing soft mewling sounds from her – sounds she tried to choke back. She didn't want to wake herself. But then his teeth, hard cold nubs, caught one of her nipples and gently tugged back. The sensation skittered between pain and between pleasure and there was no way that Vidya could keep her moans inside of her.

They echoed inside of the tube as her husband's palm hand dipped between legs. Two fingertips rubbed up and down her soaked, eager pussy – teasing her through the fabric, while his mouth closed around the edge of her ear, sucking and nibbling. Then, softer than a whisper, quieter than a sigh, he murmured. One last time, my love...

Vidya reached down and pushed at her panties and her leggings. They skimmed down her thighs and her arousal glittered in the dim, reflected light of her lover. In the dream, she shone as if she was under moonlight. The pure, silvery moonlight of Earth. The moonlight that shone down when it wasn't cloudy – during evenings that were hot and spicy and sweat gleamed almost as much as his cum did when he painted her breasts and she crooned with happiness at the feeling of him.

Her thighs spread as far as they could – her knees catching up against the sides of the tube. This pressed her back against the flat mattress of the tube. This left her feeling open. Exposed. Ready. Then she felt the coldness of Sukhdeep's member. The feeling should have been uncomfortable. Instead...it tingled through her – leaving her trembling and quivering and panting. Soft, desperate mewls escaped her mouth and she fluttered her eyes shut, breathing softly. "Don't tease me..." She whispered. In response, Sukhdeep's cock slipped up and down her sex. Up and down. Up and down. Each time he skimmed up, his cock felt warmer – carrying the heat of her with him. Slicking himself up. Each time he bumped up, his cocktip pressed to the soft bead of her clit, sending a buzzing, electrical pleasure along her spine.

Gods.

She wished she could feel more of him.

Vidya wanted, so badly, to sink her fingernails into Sukhdeep's shoulders. She wanted to cling to him. She wanted to bite him. Instead, she had to whisper. "Please...please, my love, please, fuck me..." And still, that infuriating, teasing grinding. He wanted more. Her cheeks flushed. She spread her thighs wider, her muscles burning faintly with the effort, the ship itself circumscribing her efforts. She couldn't push herself more. But she could speak more. "I need your cock. I need it more than I need air, Sukhdeep."