Chapter 19

I purse my lips in thought. My eyes wander to a chair behind the helm, and elevated on a platform jutting out of the bulkhead floor to offer a commanding view of the bridge. I climb two steps to the left of the elevated chair with a railing on either side, and I round the chair. Slowly taking a seat, I look at the many different stations with haptic interfaces glowing in front of the seats. Commonwealth bridge stations are highly configurable, and their ships can run on a skeleton crew thanks to automation. But the Star-Navy prefers the option to have crew man stations to decrease workload during intensive operations.

I sigh "B'Nan?" the Gravidan perks up "miss Kara." I smile at him. "Take the station to the left of the helm. Gali?" my gaze lands on the Iridian noble. She jumps in surprise "y-y-yes?" I sigh "take the station to the right of the helm. Mister Farham? Open a shipwide intercom channel." The helmsman replies back with an undercurrent of cheerfulness "Open shipwide com, Aye ma'am!"

The helmsman makes several taps of his haptic screens and slides one aft towards me. The haptic user interface projecting in front of me. It shows that the channel is open plus a status board of the ship. "This is your captain speaking, all hands prepare for departure in five minutes. Secure and seal all exterior hatches and cargo gangways, Engineering personnel are to spool Phizon drives two and three and bring drives one and four to standby for atmospheric escape and planetary departure."

I slide a hand over to the right arm of my chair, which has a small multifunction touch screen on it, and I close the intraship com. "Helm, contact Ilustrae departure." The helmsman read back these orders "Contact Ilustrae departure, helm aye." after a delay with some switching of communications frequencies, a green light shows on my chair's left arm display. Indicating Com channel 1 is open and I am on the air. I begin with a professional, uninflected tone typical of ship com chatter. "Ilustrae departure, S.S.R. Void Star requesting departure for planetary egress towards lag-range point three."

I let off my finger from the com-1 transmit button and after a moment of silence, the channel crackles to life with a crisp beep indicating a transmission "S.S.R. Void Star, Departure. We read back your request for departure and planetary egress bound for lagrange point three. You are cleared to lift off and climb Three zero zero meters" I nod at the helm station and the low crescendo of the whinny of the ship's reactors spooling up reverberate in the ship. The transmission from departure continues. "...Fire main thrusters and climb at heading two five five slash four five for two niner zero. Egress and contact planetary traffic region Six for further advisory calls and talk-on. How copy?"

I press the transmit button for com-1. "Departure, Void Star. Lift off and climb to three zero zero meters. Burn main thrusters and climb at heading two five five slash four five for two niner zero, Void Star copies." I let go of the transmit button, and a squelch on the frequency indicates acknowledgement of my read-back.

The ship shudders momentarily as the carriage beneath the frigate lifts off the ground, assisted by the gravity propulsors which are creating a cushion underneath the craft and lifting it off the ground, assisted by the two inboard main thrusters with the diffusers pointed downwards at an 85 degree angle.

Slowly we climb to 300 meters. Upon which like clockwork, the Helmsman rotates the main thrusters up to orient with the centerline of the craft. After passing 300 meters, helm gently pushes the throttles forward and upon achieving a speed of 200 kilometers per hour, the diffusers behave in a thrust-vectoring manner with the control surfaces to pitch the nose of the ship upwards 45 degrees.

We start to rapidly climb as the two outboard main reactors and engines come online with a low whine behind us. I watch the fluid motion of all these control surfaces from manual inputs from the helm station on a haptic display to the left side of my seat at 1 o'clock from my orientation. Slowly, the sky goes from a deep blue to black.

Com-2 crackles with a transmission "Void Star, Planetary region six center, with you at eighty thousand meters and climbing at a rate of two thousand meters per second." I depress the com-2 transmit button. "Regional, Void Star copies. Requesting escape vectors to lagrange point three." I remove my finger from the transmit button.

"Void Star, Regional. Copy escape request for lag-range point three. Continue to climb on current heading and orientation to six thousand kilometers. RCS Data inbound for lag-range three." I wait a second for the transmission to end, and I depress the com-2 transmit button once again. "Regional, Void Star. Continue to climb on current heading and orientation to six thousand kilometers. Standing by for RCS data for lag-range three."

I release the transmit button. Helm pipes up "Cap, just for the record? You did awesome with departure and getting us off the ground." Wesley smirks after praising me. I shrug "just part of the job. I did have my own ship for a time, you know." I smirk wryly and Gali blinks "Wait, you had your -own- ship?" I nod. "I did. And I lost it a year or so ago." After a shrug I stand "Wesley, after you get those lag-range vectors, plug them into the flight computer and let the ship take over for now. I am going to go look around."

******

I stop in the galley for a snack, which I needed. I was famished and had not eaten for the past 36 hours. I end up taking a fruit from the galley to snack on while I roam the ship, familiarizing myself with the layout. Deck 1 was the top-most deck. Stretching the entire length of the ship from bow to stern with the CIC taking up the middle section. Behind that was a set of unused space that I could decide later on how to configure with an elevator situated between the CIC and this unused space.

Deck 2 below ran for the fore two thirds of the ship and contained crew lodgings and two lounges on the port and starboard side in the middle of the ship. Aft of that was a galley section on the Port side and an officer's quarters on the Starboard side. Aft of both these compartments was a pair of medibays with ten medical beds each. Galinae revealed to me that she was trained in medicine, so that was now her department

Deck 3 below that ran from the fore third of the ship and ended backing up to the ventral cargo bay. In the bow compartments were the main targeting computer for the weapons as well as direct access for the fore weapon bays. Inside the largest bay was the ship's main weapon, which I did not have time to revie. B'Nan, who took up a post as the ship's weapons officer promised to deliver a report on the weapons systems on board.

A shallow ramp from there lead down to another sub-level of deck 3 called Deck 3A. Which consisted of the ventral cargo bay observation area and several compartments off the sides of the main cargo observation deck that lead to spaces in the wings. Which contained the armory and four additional smaller cargo storage bays dedicated to spare parts, weapons and fuel for the small craft parked in the ventral cargo bay below. These sections also included the torpedo magazines for the torpedo tubes above on the outboard port and starboard sections of deck 3B, which were on the ventral side of the wings.

From there, there was another subdeck past some ladders covered by hatches to the aft of deck 3A which lead to the engineering section on deck 3B. Deck 3B itself included areas of half the wings and most of the aft portion of the ship and also contained the main engineering spaces. This deck also allowed maintenance access to the aft weapons as well as additional storage bays.

Deck 4 was in essence, the main cargo bay. It was The ventral part of the ship and took up the aft two thirds of the ship's length. On Deck 4 were the launch and recovery systems for the pair of shuttles and additional pair of starfighter craft that Farsa had graciously included with the ship. As well as the main cargo bay which was full of our provisions and miscellaneous equipment.

Behind that was the elevator to deck 3 and direct access to main engineering through an air-tight bulkhead and a heavy reinforced double-door. The cargo space and flight deck space were separated by a bulkhead with an airtight door that could come down to seal off the flight deck to open the launch doors.

The flight deck itself was fully automated and contained several lift cranes remotely controlled from the CIC. There were hatches in the hull for recovery of small craft and a hydraulic arm with a magnetic lock on the end with a clamping mechanism that allowed secure recovery of shuttles and other small craft.

The entire ship consisted of compartments which were sectioned off by airtight bulkhead doors that prevented loss of atmosphere in case of a hull breach. Set to close automatically once the Environmental Control System (ECS) Detected a loss of atmospheric pressure.

I was indeed quite satisfied with this ship. It was large enough to allow me to expand the ship's functions but it was not so large that I had to hire a large (and admittedly expensive) crew to man it. It had a harmonious blend of automation and crew requirement with a very configurable, modular set of bulkheads that could allow for later reconfiguration of certain compartments. I was simply just at a loss when trying to find problems.

At last, after a few hours of exploration, I got in the elevator on deck 3 and went to the captain's cabin above deck 1. What greeted me was a room with a king-sized bed and a set of furniture - leather upholstery with metal framing and legs. The love-seat and chairs were adorned with firm leather cushions and I noticed that they had bullet-proof plates under them. I chuckled at Farsa for knowing me too well.

I flopped on my bed and my mind wanders as I doze off, recounting how far I had come since I was rudely awakened from that cryopod so many months ago. For the first time in quite a long time, I get a peaceful and full night's rest.