Butterflies of the Dark Star

9 (REVISED)

"LAUNCH PREPARATIONS IN PROGRESS — PLEASE CLEAR THE BAY."

Nova hauled boxes of tools off to the side at the direction of the senior engineers shouting over the rumble of the droid bay. Hers sat in the middle of Thuni's and the initial scout droid. It was a race to see her dream realised, to go back home with the knowledge and training she learned on an important mission on a famous research space station.

To make history.

In the control room, Admiral Mythrai spoke to the controllers as some of the senior scientists came down to view the launch for themselves. Nova gave a box to one of the engineers when Thuni called her over to the terminals. One more check on the control room, she shuffled closer. "What is it? Anything missing?" she asked, falling into the flow of her work, born for it. Her heart fell into the pit of her stomach. "Has something gone wrong?"

"No, nothing is wrong." Thuni pursed his lips. "Ulin's doing a double check on the cores. They worked on yours already, but they took longer than I thought they would. He just mentioned something he wanted to add an augmented buffer given to him by Teimea."

"Neo?" Nova questioned.

Thuni shrugged. "Something to do with the anomaly scanner." He folded his arms, as if protecting himself from the mere idea of Neo Teimea and his chattering tendencies. "I suppose it's better to be given now instead of later when the droids are out doing their initial collection routes."

Nova relaxed and sat at the terminal. I didn't know Neo would go out of his way to do that for me... "Anything I have to do right now before launch?"

Thuni motioned at the control room. "We'll be receiving sequenced codes on the terminals," he explained. "What we have to do is send a command to our droids. Everything else should be automated by the programmers." He rolled his broad shoulders when Ulin dropped themself out of the other droid, wiping their brow before rushing off the hissing pad and rejoining them. "We're just here to make sure nothing goes wrong during the sequence and that nothing goes wrong with the droids, but once they're out in space, it's out of our hands."

Nova squirmed when the terminal with her droid's information lit up. Tension choked her throat at the real thing instead of a training sim in college, she rolled closer to it when Thuni left for his. Ulin handed her an infopod with a nod and a smile of encouragement before rushing up the steps to reach the control room.

Codes fell in sequence along the screen as she dug her fingers into her knees, readying her input code when it gave her a prompt. Power levels are good and stable. Nova inserted a check for an AI response, which it gave without hesitation. Good. AI is connected to the space station. Nova swiped through the number of tabs and files. Everything is consistent with my last check. Air stuck in her cheeks, she switched to the launch sequence when it beeped red light at her. User confirmed, she tapped the sequence back to the droid as the other engineers listened for the call.

"LAUNCHING SEQUENCE INITIATED."

Moment of truth, Nova. This is what you're here for. Just this moment. This will show what you're really made of.

Nova clicked the button, and the screen rolled the code through graphs and power levels. She turned to the control station, where Ulin gave her and Thuni a nod and thumbs up.

"Clear the launch pads!" the senior engineer bellowed above the mechanical groans.

Nova launched herself out of her chair and took several steps out of the way when the pads raised off the ground. It turned with the screaming alert to point the droids to the outside. Mist left the ports of the scout droid, the first to launch. It sped out of the shields without any hesitation. Her stomach boiled with the hiss of Thuni's droid when it rose into the air and followed the scout.