The Colony: Part 2.

The countdown on the navigation display ticks to zero. The blue glow outside fades momentarily; a blinding flash gives way the blackness of space.

The Kennebec hurdles though the void; ahead of us is the Alpheratz. The trip from GAMMA-4 has taken only three hours, we're now about 50AU from earth.

The Alpheratz is over 1000 meters in length, but from over 1700 kilometers away she appears little more then a speck.

The shuttle is pilotable from the commander's station but it's not ideal. I attempt to transfer control to my station but the computer tells me the pilot’s station is in use. Perturbed, I turn left to the pilot's station. Startled, I realize I'm not alone.

“Hello” I say to the rather attractive looking woman at the pilot’s station.

She has long blond hair, pulled back in a ponytail, and moderate facial feature; she looks austere in her flightsute, all attention focused on the display before her.

At my words, she responds with a terse “hey” without looking up.

“How long have you been sitting there?” I ask, not content with her response.

“'bout an hour, why?”

“Didn't even notice you come up.”

“Yeah, Jackman sent me up, said something about want'n me to get some docking experience or something.”

I ponder telling her that my crew is usually on a first name basis, then decide to so.

“Sorry, I didn't catch your name.”

“Krajewski, Jessie Krajewski.” She replies.

“Jessie, you haven’t gotta refer to us by surnames or titles. We only make temp crews do that. If your an employee of Andromeda you're basically family.”

“Well, that's nice for a change.” She says, hinting at a smile, but otherwise remains stoic.

“So, Allison said you needed docking experience?”

“Yeah.”

“I've never read your resumé, my opinion of you's a blank slate. Tell me why I should let you fly my ship.”

“I have a PH.D. in astrodynamics and I ran cargo to Earth-orbit stations like GAMMA-4 and HYDrA. For a few months.”

“Why'd you stop?”

“Got canned.”

“For what?!”

“You know what, maybe it's better if we keep things tabula rasa.”

“Don't crash my ship.”

“Can't guarantee anything.” she says sarcastically.

“'k.” I say chuckling. “We're about a minute and a half out, she's all yours.”

Directly ahead of us, the distinctive outline Alpheratz is clearly visible. A 300 meter disk-like aerobraking shield sits on her bow. Behind which is a 900 meter section of hexagonal modules, stacked axially. Each module is ninety meters from opposing sides with a 10 meter triangular hole in the center. Each module is slid down the truss, then bolted to it and the adjacent modules.

On her stern is the engine section which is larger then the modules ay about ten meters on each side, it is also hexagonal. The engine section contains mostly power generation equipment and gravity modification arrays. It also houses the seven main engines.

“Seventy five seconds” Jessie says. I'm transferring all systems display's to your station.

“Thanks, . . . everything looks good.”

At this distance the sun provides little more light then the rest of the stars. The only light to illuminate our path comes from the floodlights on both the Kennebec and the Alpheratz.

Closer and closer we draw. The Alpheratz now fills most of the forward window.

“Ten seconds, I'm beginning deceleration burn.”

The forward thrusters fire, causing immense deceleration. The grav-mod units prevent us from feeling a thing.

The thrusters stop.

“We're about seventy six point-. . . seventy-seven meters from the dock, constant distance.”

“Engage the station keeping program; I'll get the hangar doors open.”

A couple of quick key strokes and a long password; I'm logged into the Alpheratz' computer. I send the request to open: “external hatch 01”. Seconds later I see the doors begin to open.

I hear footsteps on the ladder. I turn to see Vincent's head peak over the top of the ladder. He stands there grinning, haloed by a mass of curly black hair.

“What'd I miss?” He asks.

“Nothi'n much, we're just about to dock.”

“Cool.”

He leaps forward, the rest of the way up the ladder, and into the engineers station on my right.

“Have you ever docked a shuttle before?” I ask Jessie.

“A few times, but never in a hangar like this. Are you sure the shuttle fits? It looks a little tight.”

For the first time I see her smile. Then without warning, she engages the rear thrusters at full thrust. The shuttle leaps forward, closing on the hangar an in seconds.

A wave of panic overtakes me. There's nothing I can do.

We're going to fucking crash. I let out a choked scream.

We're in the hangar now, I'm still paralyzed with fear; I notice the shuttle has slowed. Jessie is firing the forward thrusters. The shuttle comes to rest gently in the docking clamps.

My heart racing, I turn to Jessie. She's laughing at me, Vincent too.

I turn to Vincent.

“Did you put her up to this?!!!” I say, voice still shaky.

“Why what ever do you mean?” Sarcastically.

“God-Damn you all!! Enough games, let's get over to the Alpheratz before one of you has another genius idea to kill me.”

I don't admit outwardly, but the whole event is sort of funny after the fact.

I get up out of my seat and proceed down the ladder and into the companionway. Jessie and Vincent are close behind. Heading Forward I reach the nose hatch that connects the shuttle to the dock. I quickly verify that the hangar is pressurized and that it is safe to open the hatch. The geared dogs around the hatch open smoothly and the large round hatch swings inward. I step through.

The hangar is roughly pie-wedged in shape and the shuttle fits snugly inside. It doesn't have the same open feeling that the GAMMA-4 air-dock has. There are no service platforms like the air-dock either. For this reason we must use the nose hatch; the side hatches are accessible only by crane.

The shuttle has a ventral ramp but is is of no use in the hangar. The low ceiling prevents landing gear deployment. Shuttles are instead head in place by docking clamps on ether side. At the tip of the “pie-wedge” is another hatch that leads to the core of the hangar module.

By now most of my crew has disembarked the shuttle. I open the hatch and enter the core. Five other hatches like the one I just walked through stand on each of the other walls in the core. They lead to the other hangars just like the one the Kennebec landed in.

One gets the most peculiar feeling standing in the core. Around the wall is the massive triangular truss that extends the whole length of the ship. The decks in the module cores are transparent, so looking down and up brings a sensation of awe over a person.

I can see for at least a hundred meters above me and close to eight hundred below me. In the center of the core is the circular lift tube.

I open the lift door, my twenty-three crew and I pile in. I press the command deck button that sits at the top of a row ninety or so identical buttons.

The lift hums to live and after a short while it comes to a rest. We exit into the expansive command deck.

The command deck is located at the junction of the central truss and the aerobraking shield. The ceiling is domed shaped and low overhead. Around the outer edge of the deck are six stations that will be maned once we are underway.

“Can I get everyone’s attention for a few minutes.” I say to my crew, now gather on the command deck.

They quiet and turn their attention toward me. “Thanks, this shouldn’t take long.”

I take a look at my notes on my portable computer before speaking.

“Alright, so I'm talking the second watch along with Steve, Allison will take the third, and Ralph will take the first. The second watch start's at 1600 and goes to 2000, the third goes from 2000 to 0000, the first goes 0000 to 0400. The system continues in the same four hours on, eight hours off manner. You've all been assigned a watch so you know when you're on. This trip should take about ninety two days, It'll be hard work when we get where we're going but it should be an easy trip.”

“Where are we going?” Asks a young man, standing to my left.

“The info packet you got, talks about our destination in detail but I'll go over it still. The star we're going to is about 1800ly from Earth and should take ninety two days to reach as I mentioned before. It has four planets, one which is habitable and colonized, and three others which are candidates for terraforming. That's what we're carrying, terraforming supplies, eight metric megatons of them.”

I sit down at my station. “If you're on watch now, you're here; If you're not, be gone.”

Four people stay, the others leave. Among them is Steve Perrine. I don't know the others.

“Steve, let's get underway.” I say.

Steve, who knows the current crew, instructs the them on slip-drive procedures. In about a half an hour the Alpheratz is ready to depart Sol. I give the order and we enter the slip. It's not the same as slip travel on the shuttle, we don’t have windows. We can look at displays that show feeds from external cameras though.

The Čerenkov Radiation that envelops the Alpheratz is different from that which envelops the shuttle. In the shuttle, the blue glow is more or less uniform; In the Alpheratz turbulence can be seen in the radiation, most likely due to the ships immense size though this phenomenon is still not fully understood.

The four hour watch passes without much event. Steve introduces me to the three other crew members: Seth Cung, Evan Hara, and Chelsey Handel. We occasionally make small talk, but most of the watch passes in silence.

At the sounding of the watchbell, the third-watch crew enters from the lift. I depart the command deck along with the others on watch. I descend the lift to my hab-module. Tired from the eventful day, I hop onto my bed and fall asleep without even getting undressed.

Continued in part 3.