Our flight crew climbed into the cockpit, one man and one woman who seemed to know what they were doing. This meant they were probably test pilots, and thus a bit unhinged from the get-go. That might have been comforting.
They flipped a few switches. The ship began to vibrate, first a low thrum, then a stronger, more powerful tactile thunder that rattled my teeth in their sockets. I felt the first forward motion as they taxied into position, then built a little momentum-
-and then they punched it, and I became acquainted withspeed.
Cat lovers, and owners of Great Danes with no sense of personal space, will perhaps understand the effects of g-forces on the human body best. Imagine a cat, or a big doofus of a dog, sitting on your chest. You struggle to breathe because, as it happens, you have a weight preventing the expansion of your lungs. That weight grows as the cat becomes more comfortable and less inclined to move. Eventually, the cat has somehow taken on the mass of three or four planets. Your vision goes black around the edges as the cat purrs on, uncaring of your plight.
You pass out. The cat takes over the world to rule in its rightful place.
Maybe that last bit doesn’t happen, but the example stands. The XC-41 shot down the runway and into the sky like a bat out of Hell and built more speed as it rose. G-forces flattened me until my vision darkened, and no matter how hard I squeezed my leg and butt muscles to counter it, I blacked right the fuck out.
I signed up for Army medical, not the plane jockey brigade. Don’t you judge me.
When I came to, the sky above the cockpit had already started to turn black. Stars winked at me from that blackness. The space docks and the pair of orbital troop transfer stations grew in my vision, became more than the glints I saw when the sunset caught them just right.
Then our pilots rolled the ship, and oh, glory, I saw the Earth below us. That old planet had endured so much the last several decades, with wars and climate change and humans determined to shit where they eat. It still lookedbeautiful. Blue and swirled with clouds, brown and green with the landmasses that held humanity in a firm but fragile grip.
Our one world. The only planet we had, until we could stop fighting on Mars long enough to make it a shelter for us, too. Seeing Earth hanging there in the darkness of space, I wondered how we still managed to commit insult after insult to the one place we could call home.
“Raising divider,” came a voice over the ship’s speaker. “Only two of you are cleared to see what comes next, and unless those two want to shove empty barf bags over everyone else’s heads, we’ll just close the window.”
One of the women with a buffet of rank salad on her suit reached for a bag. The rest of us laughed. Our ship rolled one more time, a new heading that filled our windshield with an awe-inspiring view of the moon. The moon! It was right there, with its lunar bases and scars on the grey terrain from the battles of the past.
Then the divider between the cockpit and the passenger compartment raised, and left me in silent thought about that view of my homeworld.
* * *
I didn’t see the rest of the journey. We scooted along in space. A clanging and bumping outside the ship startled me almost to peeing. Turned out, that was a docking collar and a transfer corridor. We floated – floated! I was so totally in space right then and almost flailed in excitement – down the tube to yet another ship. This one had a much larger passenger area, one with a basic, very new-looking crew compartment that featured all the amenities we might need for our transit to Mars.
Beds on the walls. A table bolted to what I assumed we would reference as the floor. A device the instructions on the wall above it called a toilet. I had not needed instructions on how to use a toilet since I was two, but peeing in zero g does require a new form of potty training.
We arrive at the contents of another press sheet. It’s possible that whenever you’re enjoying this personal account of Sebastian Goes to Space, the information on our ride to Mars will already be in the public domain. For now, however:
“The spacecraft described in Sebastian Sadler’s story was an experimental transport founded on the theories of Miguel Alcubierre. While still in its earliest testing stages, it had been found to safely and effectively transport personnel between Earth and Mars in a short enough time to provide a fast response between the planets. This exciting transport allowed for a two-week flight from Earth to Mars, as opposed to the standard three-month travel time experienced before its inception.”
There you have it, friend. All the information I can provide about the ship that carried me to the Red Planet.
As advertised, the trip took two weeks. We had no view of the space around us, and we weren’t allowed to wander out of the passenger compartment. They did provide us decent food packs and a few rudimentary science experiments to perform. I’m a science nerd, so I found this absolutely thrilling, and I’m not going to lie, I was grateful for any diversion that took my mind of Jackson.
It isexcruciatingto be trapped in the galaxy’s least comfortable cruise ship, one without windows or any access to an outside deck, while the man you love waits for you at the other end of the trip. A man who dies a little more with each Earth sunrise, and the threat to his life won’t stop until you arrive. If it would have sped us up, I would have gotten out and pushed.
This experience gave me a new appreciation for all troops deployed as support when battles on Mars went south. It didn’t take much to imagine sitting in a conventional troop transport for three months, knowing the people you served with watched the sky and prayed you would arrive to back them up. I had two weeks to wait. They hadthree months.
And I’d signed up to do this, once. Knowing then what I hadn’t known years before, when I signed the enlistment papers? I would have signed up again.
I’m coming, Jackson. I’m on the fastest ship humanity has, and I’m coming to make you well. Just hang on.
* * *
“Sadler, report to the front of the passenger compartment,” came the voice I’d learned belonged to the third of our four pilots.
I reported to the front of the passenger compartment as directed, because it was either that or lose to Colonel Graf’s inhuman skill at checkers again. She was a damn monster and in two weeks, I’d won a single game against her. I have no proof she didn’t let me win, either, because Colonel Graf is really sweet outside of battle armor and would take pity on me that way.
One of the guards met me at the door that separated the passenger compartment and cockpit segment. “Try not to look around,” he said. “This is all top secret but you’re already going to the cockpit so fuck it.”
“I won’t rubberneck,” I promised.
With a nod, he led me up a long passage that I will not describe because again, I don’t want to be chucked out an airlock or given cement shoes or sleep with the fishies. We arrived at the cockpit, which I could safely look at because I hadno ideawhat I was looking at anyway. What would I tell a spy?There were buttons and switches and readouts that probably contained the secrets of the universe, but might also have described the best method to make a ham sandwich for all I knew.