Beyond Sol

Chapter 17

The Event Horizon had captured orbit ever since. The six of us walked through the hallways in our bright orange Launch suits. We carried our helmets in our right hands and looked straight ahead. We walked through the area the crowd of people had cleared out.
We waited at the large airlock. It opened up and leaded a straight passage into the Spectrum.
"This is the Spectrum 973 huh?" Parker says.
"Yep." I say, walking in.
"Looks better than the 162. But that's mostly because my crew are as lazy as they get."
"NASA Clearly learned from that." I say, sitting down in my respective chair.
"Should I sit here?"
"Sure." Muhammed says, looking back quickly.
"What happened to the person that sat here?"
"Emma and Brayden? They died in a crash. All good though." I sigh, overviewing the system data.
"You're not- Not sad?"
"We'll cry when I'm back on Earth. We sure as hell don't want to compromise a multi-trillion dollar mission."
"Fair enough."
"Prepare for engine start-up." I say.
"I was told, Parker that the 973 has a lot more power than a typical Spectrum. But then again our Spectrum was intended to travel trillions of kilometres." Muhammed says, strapping in.
"Engine startup in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1," I say.
"Nothing happened?" Parker says.
"Wait for it," Eliza says. A hiss of gas was audible, Parker had a very concerned look on his face. Meanwhile inside the engines uranium gas was pouring into the combustion chamber. Four small burners ignited the gas and lit the engines, roaring to life.
Parker was thrown forward in his restraints. "Holy shit this thing has some power!" He exclaims, getting his bearings.
"Told ya' so." Muhammed says, pulling his monitor over. "Fuels good, navigational systems good, flight systems good, entry interface systems good, engines good. We're a go," Muhammed says.
"Contacting ATC...." I say. "This is Spectrum 973 requesting undocking and entry interface to KLMA-3C, our crew onboard today are, Commander Carter, Eliza, Muhammed, Amelia, Parker, James."
"Spectrum 973 cleared for departure and arrival at KLMA-3C," the ATC responds.
I gazed backwards to the others. Kay. Everyones good. "Don't die Parker."
"I'll try not to."
The airlock did its final seal and retracted back into the Spectrum. "Zero G." Parker says. The small RCS thrusters guided the Spectrum out before firing the main engines.
"Away we go." The Spectrum rocketed towards KLMA-3C. Planet looked pretty nice. Even though it's just grey stone and white snow n' ice.
"We're coasting now," I say. The HWSS Event Horizon grew smaller and smaller until it was too small to see with the human eye.

"Entry interface in sixty seconds!" Eliza calls, strapping into her seat.
"Pitching upwards for entry. Both heat shields deploying. Entry in 40, 39-" The Spectrum slammed into the atmosphere at Mach 19.
"What the hell just happened! Amelia, Muhammed! AETHER do a damage assessment."
"The atmosphere was thicker than anticipated. Our parachutes are gonna deploy too early and get ripped apart. AETHER recalibrate parachute deployment height with due respect to the atmosphere."
"Recalibrating..." AETHER calls, the altitude gauge dropped rapidly. Orange plasma covered the windows.
"What the hell is happening?!?" Parker yells.
"For you? Basically everything. For us? A walk in the park," Amelia said.
"Not a walk in the park! Not a walk in the park!" I say, flying my hand over to the drag increasers. "Spectrum is speeding up. Not good." A rolled up sheet of titanium extended from the cryo module, increasing drag exponentially.
We were juggled around in our seats like paperweights. "We're getting upwards of six G's!" Muhammed shouts, desperately trying to steady out the Spectrum.
He grabbed a hold of the stick and flipped it up right. The landing gear extended outwards. "This isn't gonna be relatively smooth!" I yell. The rear gear hit the ground with 600 feet per second altitude drop. The suspension cancelled out any downward velocity with little effect to us.
"Bringing the front gear down." Muhammed called, the nose dropping. The front gear bounced a bit on hitting the ground.
"Now what?" Parker asked.
"We wait for the Spectrum to come to a full halt. It's not like we have reverse thrust. It would destroy our engines." Muhammed said, sitting back.
"Waiting...Got it."

"AETHER what's the velocity of the Spectrum relative to KLMA-3C?" i call, hanging by the door into the bridge.
"Measured velocity of...0.3 M/S." AETHER responds. I grab the PA radio.
"All crew to airlock one, all crew to airlock one." I say, the orange helmet sealing to my suit.

"Opening exterior airlock, brace." Amelia calls, the exterior airlock door swinging open.
"Measured pressure of 0.46 atmospheres. Atmosphere consists of 29% Nitrogen, 69% Oxygen and 2% trace gases." Parker calls, setting up his research station. We walked down the steps onto the rocky surface. The ground rumbled and shook.
"Woah!" I pulled James back onto the stairs.
"Carter, I don't think the Spectrum wheels should be sinking..." Eliza called, walking back up the stairs calmy.
"Everyone inside! Inside!" Muhammed calls, sprinting up the stairs. We all followed in, slamming the exterior door shut. AETHER for obvious reasons started screaming at us to "Fix the pitch of the vehicle."
"What's wrong with the pitch?" Parker asked.
"Nothing- Wait. AETHER which way is the Spectrum pitching?" I ask AETHER
"Spectrum is pitching down."
"Oh shit..." Muhammed says.
"Why does it matter which way we're going down in this god awful quicksand."
"If we were pitching up, engine first, everything would be fine. But since we're going bridge first, dirt and dust is gonna flood the engines and eventually the fuel tanks. And the Spectrum is always an open system. If we sealed the engines off, the Uranium Dioxide would eventually just make the tanks and engines pop like a balloon and that's our goodbye to sweet jolly life."
"So we're fucked?"
"Yep."

The hull groaned as the dirt and sludge started to pour into the engines. "Contaminated fuel," AETHER wailed.
"Yeah, we know damned well our fuel is contaminated. No need to remind us of our impending doom."
"Carter, we've always been able to work out a solution for every problem we've ever had with the Spectrum, you're confident we can't work our way out?" Muhammed sighed.
"The past we've had millions of kilograms of liquid uranium and the best technology available to man. Now 95% of our fuel is contaminated and our combustion chamber is smashed up and bent in." I say, furrowing my brow.
"So that leaves us with three options.
A: We go find uranium and fix the combustion chamber.
B: We die here. Alone. The Beyond Sol program dies with us." Amelia paused. "Do-Do you wanna hear the third?" She asked/
"Yes!" Parker shouts.
"We strip the Spectrum. We take out about everything we can. We ditch the contaminated fuel tanks. We take out flooring, beds, closets, tables, chairs, if we can we could take out some of the structural beams. But if we strip the Spectrum that would mean ditching the OMS, Navigation systems, communication systems, everything. We'd be eyeballing our way to the Event Horizon."
"Using limited fuel on a stripped vehicle. The weight of the Spectrum would be what?"
"Thirty three thousand tons." James said, eating a pudding.
"Three millions kilograms of fuel is enough to get thirty three thousand tons into orbit?" Muhammed asked.
"Barely. Our engines gobble fuel faster then James eats pudding. And that's saying something." I chuckle.
"Shut," James said.
"Ya' big baby!" I say, stretching back. Parker pursed his lips looking at us joking around and playing. We were up in the cafeteria and I was sitting on the table, criss crossed.
"You guys are so-Calm," Parker said.
"Twenty two years of training and graduating the best out of your entire countries really does get you somewhere I guess."
"Yeah, on the Event Horizon it wasn't as much of a program but of 'If you had the skills.' And if you did you would board the Event Horizon and set out to your new home."
"Not surprised," Muhammed said.
"I'm tired. I'm taking a nap," I say, Parker throwing his hands up
"See! See! You guys are crazy."

"So. All of your full recovery times were good. The journey to orbit is 130 seconds from engine start up to MECO. We're all gonna blackout within twenty seconds of engine ignition and from there the Spectrum's gonna be on a free trajectory. We have about twenty seconds to wake and helm the vessel. From there we eyeball our way to orbit. We're gonna be pulling a lot of G's," Muhammed says