3.11.2070 0610Z
The Pax Astra Royal Navy frigate Intrepid falls toward Saturn, inexorably drawn into the planet's gravity well as the vessel continues its long deceleration burn.
Sixty meters in length, Intrepid is relatively small for a ship with a maximum range of nine a.u.'s. Designed for military missions rather than exploration or trade, few accommodations have been made for passengers and none for freight, other than the two missile pods slung on either side of its forward hull and the manta-like shuttle moored beneath its wasp-waisted midsection. Imagine a half-liter bottle--the payload module--with its spout glued to that of a three-quarter liter bottle--the engine module--and you essentially have the warship's architecture.
Mounted beneath the forward module is a large round aerobrake shield. Its ceramic tiles, each a different color, have been carefully arranged so that they form the warship's figurehead: an angel with a sword, her wings spread wide as if flying through space.
Intrepid's nuclear-pulse main engine has fired continually ever since the ship left the Moon two hundred and seventy-five standard days ago, its lasers fissioning the deuterium pellets constantly fed into the reactor chamber, causing the uninterrupted string of tiny nuclear explosions which gradually accelerated the ship, at the end of its boost phase, to nearly one-tenth light speed. As Intrepid passed through Jupiter's orbit one hundred and sixty eight days ago, its crew flipped the ship around until it bell-shaped engine nozzle was pointed in the direction of flight. Ever since then, the ship has been applying the brakes as a long prelude to entering Saturnine space.
"Begin MECO at ten, on my mark..."
"Copy that, sir. Ready for MECO."
"Mark. Ten ... nine ... eight ..."
A tattooed hand lingers on a throttle yoke as its companion hovers over a set of toggle switches.
"Seven ... six ..."
A pair of wide blue eyes framed by a Gaelic cross watches the readouts on a comp screen. "Guidance positive. On course for transorbital insertion."
"Five ... four..."
Another pair of hands flits across a keyboard. Lights flash from red to green. "Main feed valves closed, central tank offline. Dumping residual core reactants."
"Three ... two..."
"Heat regulators on, radiation buffers engaged, main tank pressure nominal. All systems copasetic..."
"One ... now, please."
As if choreographed by a stern dance master, hands and AI systems execute a complex fandango that charms the nuclear beast to bay. A disgruntled tremor runs through the ship as, for the first time in nine months, the white-hot glow in the exhaust bell quickly diminishes to orange, then red, then fades out altogether.
"MECO complete."
"Reactor shut down and safe, Captain."
"All systems on standby, sir."
Kinnard floats upward against the straps confining him to his seat. Little more than six hours has passed since he was brought out of biostasis, just enough time for his body to readjust to even low-gravity. Now that Intrepid is in free fall, his arms and legs don't ache quite as much. He wants to sigh with relief, but that would be an inappropriate response. His crew might interpret it as a sign of weakness.
He glances at the men and women seated at consoles arranged around the circular command deck. In the company of bio-engineered Superiors, a baseline human is a freak, and not vice-versa. His rib cage isn't anorexically compact. His arms aren't long and sinewy, the fingers of his hands don't resemble articulated pencils. His legs aren't double-jointed at the knees and ankles, his toes haven't been expanded to become a second pair of hands. He has no cerebral implants which allow him to interface with computers, and his eyes don't look like dark blue chicken eggs with a second set of translucent lids.
When the Navy assigned him command of the Intrepid, Kinnard was informally warned that Superiors--or "googles," as Admiral Coonts referred to them, when they were alone in his office at River House--harbored a certain disdain for unmodified Primaries--or "apes," as Superiors often refer to baseline humans, under equally private circumstances. Superiors are born and bred for space; the first gene-tailored embryos raised in a secret lab in Mare Tranquilitatis just before the Moon War had come of age. For them, the cosmos is not a frontier, but a birthright; their origins as egg and sperm donated by lunar colonists is an embarrassment, not a heritage. Even the Christ clan, which has embraced neo-Mormonism instead of the extropic philosophies of the Superior families which have migrated to the outer system, were condescending toward their Primary captain; his weaknesses were forgiven, but not easily forgotten.
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