Subject: STORY: Zero-Gee 1a
Date: Wed Feb 22 06:20:29 MET 1995

I'm back with a new story. I'm going to break up future posts into
smaller chunks, that way you can read them quick. Since it's an (a) and a
(b) segment, (a) stops kinda abruptly, but in a good place. BTW, don't
hold the physics in this story under too good a microscope. Physics is
not my faority subject and I plan on learning as I go, so some things may
change as I calculate velocities and distances for the story. Anyway,
here it is. Later.

Copyright 1995 by Jason Kendelhardt

                         Zero-Gee   1

Space was a black veil, dimensionless and huge. The dim lights from the
cockpit display were enough to drown out the tiny pinpricks of solar fire
lightyears away. The only thing in the local zone the pilot was able to see
was the reddish flicker of the killersat screaming through atmospheric vapor
at 6500 m/s. The target was 1500 km above the Earth, dropping rapidly.

The pilot swore as 2 more gees were slammed into her body. The flight computer
controlling the Hellcat fighter had boosted acceleration in order to catch the
fleeing satellite. Humans were next to useless in this type of combat, it was
all a matter of orbital geometry and velocity physics, the human was just
along for the ride. The huge white disk of the Earth rotated suddenly as the
fighter twisted up on it's nose. Space was chased away by the Earth in the
cockpit view as the ship flipped over onto it's back, it's engines now leading
the way. The tortuous g-force was eased, replaced by the dreamy sensation of
zero-gee. Inertia kept the fighter going in it's original heading, arced
slightly as Earth's gravity well tried to keep the fighter in an inward
spiral. The pilot checked the computer readouts flashing across her eyes,
struggling to keep up with the computer. What was it doing, what prog was it
running? Then she felt gee hit her again. The fighter's forward momentum
slowed dramatically relative to the killer sat and it dropped almost 100
kilometers towards Earth before the computer righted the vessel. Now pointed
slightly down towards the Earth, the fighter resumed the chase after the sat,
now even farther away, the ship lit up the powerful hydrogen engines. Over 3
gees again crushed the pilot, who was feeling more like a punching bag than a
combat pilot. Acceleration increased and the ship closed on the sat.

The killer satellite was using the last of it's fuel to dump it's forward
velocity, allowing Earth to pull it down, deeper into the gravity well. That
meant that the 2 ton block of ceramic and titanium would get low enough to
drop it's ordinance, but the Hellcat might get close enough to fire a laser.
The AI running the sat obviously though it was worth the risk. The Hellcat
came closer, red tinge spreading across it's delta wings as it scraped the
vaporous edges of Earth's atmosphere at over 8000 meters per second. The sat
was dropping into the fighter's orbit, only 1000 kilometers ahead.

She wasn't going to make it. The pilot finally managed to work out the
calculations in her fogged brain. No way could the fighter make the shot. As
soon as the ship stopped accelerating downwards and spun to make a laser shot,
it's velocity would shoot it out of orbit and too far away to hit the sat. She
had failed.

Then she saw a flash of brilliant magnesium deeper out into space, close to
the sat. A long tongue of hydrogen fire sprouted from nowhere, pointing at the
target. There was a few seconds of tense waiting as the tongue pushed over a
dozen gees to close in on the sat, trapped without fuel and unable to maneuver
in the g-well. There was another flash, this time at the head of the missile.
The pilot couldn't see what was fired, but she could envision a thousand ball
bearings being thrown at the sat, each one rocketed up to .01 c. The killer
sat couldn't avoid it's fate, but it could salvage some of it's mission. The
pilot watched in horror as 10 blister packs vomited gas along the sides of the
sat. The vapor crystallized in the vacuum, exotic plumes marking the release
of the killer sat's deadly cargo. 9 oval eggs dropped down deeper into the
well, biting atmosphere. The sat was hit a millisecond later by 5 osmium
pellets, each one packing the punch of a tank cannon. The satellite
disintegrated, it's life over. Streaks of red marked the demise of the rest of
the missile's payload as they vaporized in atmosphere. Some hit the eggs,
destroying them and burning up whatever they held. 3 of the eggs escaped
though, out of reach of the Hellcat's laser and the other missile the Hellcat
had launched into a low orbit a half hour ago. The pilot didn't know where the
ground targets were, what the eggs held, not even whose satellite it was. All
she knew was the bitter taste of failure on her tongue and a deep burn of fear
in her gut.

She knew the price of failure to the Corp. She knew what she would have to pay
for not winning. It's not fair! It was the computer's fault! She tried to
rationalize with the Corp, plead for her life. No chance. She felt the
ejection seat launching her into the cold depth of space. She was far enough
away from the Hellcat to not get toasted by the hydrogen engines as the
computer piloted the fighter back to the obital base, but she was too close to
Earth, moving too slow to avoid the incessant pull of gravity's claws. She
fell closer and closer, a downward spiral with only atmosphere to halt her. At
her speed, atmosphere would be harder than concrete and hotter than molten
steel. She had no chance. NO CHANCE!

Carla Damnington awoke with a frightened jerk of her entire body. The cocoon
hammock she was sealed in kept her from launching herself out of bed. She took
in a deep breath and raked her sweat-matted brown hair out of her face. The
damn nightmare again, she thought. When would it ever end. She reached one
muscled and tanned arm, obviously the product of constant UV treatments or
melanin injections, out to unzip her sleeping bag. The stale odor of sweat and
fear arose out of the confines of the bag, diffusing throughout the room. When
the room was the size of a back-corner broom closet, smell was quick to
spread. Still trembling from the dream, Carla torqued herself out of the bag
by using one of the many rubber grips around the room. Delphi Station had
about .2 gee throughout most of it's tubular length, enough to keep body
fluids where they were supposed to be and water in your cup, but still too
weak to avoid propelling yourself into bulkheads if you didn't watch it.

Carla checked the time. 1247. Not bad, she thought, I actually managed a good
3 hours of sleep. She grabbed a wash cloth hanging off the back of a folded
chair and rubbed off the dampness on her arms and legs. The scented absorbent
cloth saved her hundreds on showers every year. Nothing could beat a hot
shower, but nothing cost as much either. She sat down after folding out the
stool. She flipped on the televid to wash the dream from her mind. She called
out a few random channels, but nothing much was on. Delphi Station had a dish
catching all the vid channels, but Carla and her roommate didn't want to pay
for them. About all they got was public access, Delphi's internal stations,
and the solar weather channel. She left it on the latter. She had a few runs
to make in the next couple of cycles, so she had to watch out for clouds or
debris fields.

Carla opened the small drawer that held her clothing. With climate control
always set to a balmy 20 degrees Celsius, no one needed much in the way of
clothes. Just some loose fitting synthsilk jumpers and underwear. With
changeable electrostatic coloring now available up here, one outfit was all
you ever needed. Carla pulled out a deep red jumpsuit with faded black sleeves
and legs. After touching up the black with a little spray, she pulled it on,
easy enough in Delphi's grav. After that came the foam boots with matching red
tops and black soles. A quick ponytail knot in her hair to keep it out of her
face finished it off. She glanced into the mirror above the small desk. She
could see the beginning's of crinkles in the corners or her eyes and the
deepening worry lines on her forehead. Have to do something about that, she
thought. Maybe get those freckles taken off as well. She was only 24, but a
lifetime of space living and exposure to strong UV had taken it's toll.
Bullshit, she chided herself. It's the damn bioware. Need to get that shit
taken out, it's killing me. She had this inner war nearly everyday as she
watched the premature aging from the strain of supporting bioware. Her tissues
were filled with free radicals eroding off of the implants, easily curable,
but she couldn't afford the vitamins necessary to combat them. 24 and looking
more like 40. Then she checked out her figure. Underneath all that flowing
fabric was a body tighter and firmer than any normal woman. Her bioware aged
her skin, but kept her body in fantastic shape. Not that anyone could tell
underneath the jumpers. Sometimes she hated spacer fashions. Then she smiled.
In zero-gee the wrinkles vanished, and her muscles made her stand out. Space
had it's advantages and disadvantages.

She was subconsciously memorizing the entire space forecast while examining
herself in the mirror. She had 2 shuttle trips between Delphi and an Oscar
platform to run, as well as a cargo haul to a neighboring can colony bigger
than Delphi. A full cycles work. The vid reported no dust clouds or junk
fields between any of the orbiting stations, rare news. She would actually be
able to fly directly to each target without navigating around space hazards.
She might even get back in time to compete in the Z-ball tournaments.

Carla sealed her ID card into a pocket of her jumper. Then she rolled up the
sleeping bag and wedged it into her drawer. The entire body sleeve rolled into
a bundle smaller than her fist. Modern tech was wonderful. She cut off the
vid, set the air fan to maximum for an hour to clear out the odor, then opened
the door to the corridor outside of her room. The bright lights dazzled her
for a second, before her eyes adjusted. She had never noticed that she had
been sitting in a room lit only by a glowing clock and a televid screen as if
it were fully illuminated. Her roommate spazzed the first time she caught
Carla reading a paper letter by the light of the clock. Spacers didn't use
much cyberware and her roommate had had very little experience with anyone
with implants. Carla didn't feel like explaining the difference betwen bioware
and cyberware, so she let the girl believe what she wanted.

She shut the door, sealed it with a word, then headed off down the hall. One
good thing about living in a can colony was that it was so wide and big you
could get the illusion of having privacy and open space. Delphi was fairly
large, an orbiting cylinder 10 kilometers long and 4 wide. It occupied one of
the Lunar points, areas along Luna's orbit that remained stationary with
respect to the Earth and Moon. You always knew how to get to L-points, they
never drifted away.

She headed down the hallway towards the shuttle bay elevators. Since Delphi
rotated to give grav to the inhabitants, the spaceships were docked in axial
bays where there was no gravity and pilots didn't have to deal with rotational
motion. Her tiny apartment, hot-bunked with a computer tech named Jandy, was
only a couple hundred meters from the lifts.

Several hundred people were up and about this cycle, going to and from work.
Since there was no natural day or night, some genius thought up the idea of
splitting up the 24 hour "day" into 2 cycles, 0000-1200 and 1200-2400. Carla
secretly believed it was a conspiracy to keep the station on-line all the
time, since workers were given 8 hour shifts around the clock. Some overlapped
the cycles, some didn't. Without a day or a night no one complained that they
had graveyard shifts or were worked when no one else was awake. 3 distinct
periods evolved sice roughly a third of the station was at work at any given
time, a third sleeping, and a third at play. Sometimes the difference could be
dramatic, as Carla once experienced when she stayed up for a full 24 hours,
touring the entire station. She watched bars undergo radical changes in
clientele and genre (one went from an Italian cafe to a Mexican saloon to a
McDonalds in response to local mood), theaters switch movies, and fashions
altered. It was an amazing spectacle to watch, but it brought on a sense of
displacement, because Carla worked odd hours and never really settled down
into a single period like Jandy had.

This time she didn't really take much notice of her surroundings as she headed
for the lifts. A flock of space virgins tumbled past her, out of control in
Delphi's low grav. They were bouncing up and down, reveling in their low
weight. Most of them were old, probably going to the retirement section of the
colony. If you were old and frail, there was no better place to retire than an
orbiting station. Low gee eased the pain and it kept the geezers -far- away
from their tired children. Carla suspected that many of the old folks were
coerced into coming up here by anxious kids and grandkids who wanted pop or
grandmama out of the way. She hoped they got under control before they hit
something or pissed off the locals. A few men coming her way caught her eye.
Speaking of locals, she thought, here come some of them now.


--
******************************************************************************
Jason Kendelhardt                         Violence is Golden
kendejd9@wfu.edu                     and I have the Midas Touch
******************************************************************************



From kendejd9@wfu.edu (kendelhardt jason david)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Subject: STORY: Zero-Gee 1b
Date: Wed Feb 22 06:21:30 MET 1995
Organization: Wake Forest University

The second part of Zero-Gee 1. Later

Copyright 1995 by Jason Kendelhardt

                         Zero-Gee  1b
3 slender youths, moving with the grace of a lifetime spent in low gee,
quartered her. Carla wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, but she had
had problems with these kids before.

"Hey, Carla Damn-it-all, you don't want to talk with us?" The speaker was the
leader of the group, a ganger named Wedge. He got that handle because his face
had an odd triangle shape, almost like some japanime cartoon. On a normal
person it might not have been that big a deal, but Wedge was sensitive about
it and grew up to be a pugnacious SOB. His cronies were random members of his
gang.

Carla stopped, then backed up slightly to put a wall at her back. The hallway
was only 6 or 7 meters wide, but the press of people made it seem both bigger
and smaller. The gangers carved out a chunk of free space and blocked Carla
against the wall. People flowed around them, oblivious.

"I have nothing to say to you, -Wedge-." She emphasized his name. "I got
things to do, unless you want to meet me out on the court." Z-ball was an
honored method of settling disputes on the station.

Wedge gave her a lopsided grin. "Between the sheets is more my style." His
buddies laughed. "I know you got some fancy 'ware buried under all that meat,
I'm not going to challenge you when you got the edge."

"Cyberware, huh? Then how come no sensor ever detected any? I play with the
pros little man, all you had to do was say you couldn't compete." She was
deliberately trying to provoke the thug. She could easily take him in a fight,
the concept of synthetic muscle and bone lacing never caught on up here.
Almost everyone was muscularly weaker than an average 12 year old boy on
Earth. In low gee, you didn't need to be able to bench a lot of weight, you
needed to be fast and nimble. Carla had that on the punk as well.

"Ha ha. I tell you, bitch, the Scorp's need to make some deliveries over to
the can up orbit. Either you do that for us, as a measure of -respect-, or I
will be no longer able to protect you, -or- your roommate. Get the picture?"
He said this in a low growl so no one else could hear outside of their tight
little group.

Carla felt a chill slide down her spine. Jandy was an innocent girl, with no
part in this. She leaned forward, edging up on her toes to stare Wedge in the
eyes. "Listen to me, you little shit. You leave her and me alone or I will
space everyone of you little fuckers. You think the Vamps will protect you
from security? That's bullshit. If I agree to testify against you, your ass
will be blown so fast you'll never even see the airlock." She was bluffing.
The Scorps were a faction of a larger gang, one that had a lot of weight with
the station administration.

Wedge's eyes twitched a little, and some color ran from his cheeks. He was an
insecure man, way down inside. Then his bravado took over. "Ice, show the lady
that we mean business."

Carla wondered which thug was Ice when she felt the sharp pain of a blade
running across her ribs. The ceramic knife cut through the jumper like it was
made of cobwebs, then glided over her skin. A faint line of red welled up on
the edge.

Carla looked over to her left at Ice. "Ohh, he's got a -knife-!" She played
like a scared kitten. She waited until she saw the cruel delight in Ice's
face, then slammed her elbow into his throat. She pushed off her right foot
and threw enough force into the blow to drive Ice almost 4 meters back. In low
gee if you left the ground in a fight, you were going to go flying. She spun
around and palm struck the other punk in the nose. She didn't break it, but
his eyes teared up and he stumbled backwards. Wedge grabbed her and tossed her
upwards, trying to cut her leverage base. She kicked off the wall and spun
over him, bouncing off the paneled ceiling and hitting the far wall with toes
and palms. She drifted to the floor and darted off into the mass of amazed
spectators. When you have the reflexes of an acrobat and only weigh a fifth of
what you did on Earth, stunts like that were easy. As long as you have
leverage, you can do anything.

She reached the lifts a minute later. She saw no sign of pursuit, but that was
only because Wedge knew where she lived. He could come by for some revenge
anytime he wanted. Carla was not about to give up and move to another station,
gangs infested every large orbital habitat and always preyed on the
independent shuttle runners.

Once she was in the elevator, a huge wire box moved by opposing winches, she
let out her breath and tried to calm her raging heart. There were several
other passengers, but none looked interested in her. As the elevator descended
into the center of the can, the gravity imposed by rotational force
diminished. At the axis of the colony there would be almost no gravity, so
Carla grabbed onto a wall handle for stability.

There was a momentary pause as the elevator attached itself to the free
floating inner tube of colony. The space docks were housed in a non-rotating
inner sheath, so the elevator had to disconnect with the rotating section to
get into the docks. After a few seconds an entry door opened up underneath the
wire cage, admitting the lift into the space docks.

Here there was no gravity. Carla felt the familiar effects of zero-gee steal
upon her body. All the fluid in her stomach stopped staying at the bottom,
causing slight nausea, inner ear fluid ceased to be gravitationally settled,
meaning that if you shook your head, your brain would think you were spinning
in circles. That was a BIG adjustment for non-spacers. Everyone else got
cyberware or bioware implants that controlled that problem with internal
gyroscopes or by adding friction to inner ear fluids. Carla could nod and
shake her head as if nothing was wrong. It was a tremendous asset in combat.

As the elevator door stopped and the wire door rolled away the passengers
debarked. Carla kicked off the mesh side of the cage, heading for a series of
catwalks crisscrossing the passage ahead. She didn't have any whip-cord on her
so she had to hit them exactly. Bingo. She grabbed a handrail and twisted down
onto the plastic walkway. From here it was a few kilometers to her ship, so
she hitched a ride with a maintenance train down to Bay 2.

Bay 2 was at the posterior end of the station, if you considered the command
center to be at the "front" of Delphi. That was where all the cargo flights
came and went. Her sole possession worth anything was there.

MIDNIGHT GLORY was cabled down in a launch tube, all ready to go. The ship was
an Apex-class tug, almost all engine and fuel. She was only 20 meters long
from forward sensor array to the nozzles of her main engines, but physical
size meant nothing when you had Douglas Space Mark VI hydrogen rockets for
thrust. Carla had won more than her share of space races with this baby. The
only thing she lacked was a powerful maneuver system and some decent sensors
or she would be perfect.

After thanking the tram driver, Carla launched herself towards her ship. She
calculated the Tram's velocity correctly and managed to hit GLORY's door
perfectly. Carla called out the password and waited for the ship's computer to
acknowledge her voice and command. Then the deep blue door slid aside,
revealing the sparse gray/white interior. The sight of GLORY never failed to
stir Carla's heart and remind her of why she loved space.

Someone cleared their throat from behind her. Carla spun around, moving back
into the shelter of GLORY's belly. A short, pudgy man was drifting in front of
the door, looking like he had a hangover from hell. Zero-gee probably wasn't
doing his stomach any favors either. The guy had a carryall bag strapped to
his back.

"Can I help you?" she asked suspiciously.

"Ahh, yes, yes you can." The guy seemed nervous, or shy. "I, uh, I need to get
back to my station, but I, uh, I missed my flight. I was checking the cargo
manifests and I noticed you were going by Luna. I was hoping that you might be
able to drop me off there." The guy was looking all over the place, never in
her eyes.

"Luna? You have got to be kidding! I am going -by- the Moon, I'm not going to
stop there. Making orbit would add 5 hours to my trip!"

"No! You see, you don't have to -make- orbit. You just need to get me close
and I'll do the rest."

"You're talking about an intercept, aren't you?" Intercepts were when an
incoming ship would just eject it's cargo for some other ship to pick up. It
was thought to be the great revolution in space travel, saving everyone lots
of fuel. Then Luna got their shit together and mass produced hydrogen for the
new H2 reactor engines and fuel became a non-issue (well, less of an issue
anyway).

"Yes." He almost seemed embarrassed about it.

"Fine. It'll cost you 1500 credits and you bring your own food. All I have for
you is my spare acceleration couch. And if you puke inside my ship, you'll be
making that intercept without a spacesuit." Jerk. It would cost her almost
nothing to just drop the fool off by Luna.

The man held out his Cred card. "Done. I'm ready to go."

Carla just looked at the offered chip for a second, then took it. She cast a
wary eye at the man while she ran the card through the computer terminal on
the bulkhead in front of her. She typed in the card's account number and
connected with the station's banking system. 1500 credits vanished from his
account and appeared in her's. "Ok, come on in. You have your own suit don't
you?" The man thumped the bag over his shoulder, setting himself into a slight
spin. Carla reached out and hauled him into the ship. Moron.

"Strap yourself in. There's some barf bags in that side pocket. Use 'em."

As the new passenger sat down, Carla started up the computer diagnostics prog.
Then she called her apartment and left a message for Jandy, telling her about
the Scorps. Jandy could find a few old boyfriends to stay with her until Carla
got back and settled the gangers. Maintenance had already gone over the ship,
but Carla did a fast double-check to be sure. Technology nowadays rarely
needed human supervision, but it never hurt. By the time she emerged from the
engine core the computer was primed and ready.

She dressed herself in her own spacesuit. She had an odd feeling that Mr.
Passenger was going to spew, so she wanted to be ready in case she had to vac
the cockpit to clean it. She left the gloves and helmet off, however. "Ready,
Mr...?" she asked the man.

He nodded. "My name is Simon Cortez. I'm a biologist."

"Glad to know that." Like she cared. "You finished puking?" She noticed a
sealed barf bag on his lap, filled sometime while she was in the engine room.
He nodded again. Then he winced. "Stop moving your head. You don't spend much
time in zero-gee, do you?" Simon started to shake his head, but caught
himself.

"No. My station has gee." Well duh, if you lived on the Moon. She had decided
that Mr. Cortez was some corp pug who got himself drunk and missed his trip
home. Probably Mrs. Cortez was fuming mad and the company was threatening to
fire him. Well, not her problem.

Station Control gave her the go ahead. She double-checked Simon's seat straps
and the funky space suit he had donned. It was some weird material she had
never seen before. Some new spring line, no doubt. Then she returned to her
seat and strapped herself in.

GLORY started forward, moving into the launch tube. The chamber sealed behind
her, and the air was pumped out. There was a moment of anticipation, then the
forward doors opened, revealing the inky blackness of space. The launch tube
initiated a 10 second countdown. "Hang on," she called to Simon, seated in the
spare couch behind her.

The tube thrust them out into space at over 10 m/s/s. As gee came crashing
back down, Carla was already scanning the area outside, watching for runaway
ships or debris. She tapped the maneuver engines, torquing the ship around so
her main engines would be able to slow them down. A signal beacon came online,
pointing her towards her cargo. She played with the thrusters by hand for a
while, then turned it over to the computer to rendezvous with the cargo. She
glanced back at her passenger. "Feeling ok?"

He gave her a thumbs up. Just then the tug decelerated with respect to the
cargo box, jolting the humans inside. Simon's eyes grew round and he fumbled
for the barf bag. He filled it. Carla shook her head in disgust mixed with
pity. This was going to be a long flight.


--
******************************************************************************
Jason Kendelhardt                         Violence is Golden
kendejd9@wfu.edu                     and I have the Midas Touch
******************************************************************************