3 April 2016 (initial training)
Sam Keene, from Cornwall, is looking towards command (perhaps a bit too enthusiastically?). He volunteers.
Cameron Findlay is from Ordovicia, a low-gravity colony world of a few hundred years’ standing, that got briefly invaded during the war – and has something of a chip on his shoulder about proving he’s just as tough as the one-G natives. He spends most of his spare time in the gym.
The first few days are dedicated to the space environment, and the many fascinating ways in which it can kill you.
Isomäki has clearly done this before – he gets round the station quickly by going round the outside in a pressure suit, having all the relevant qualifications.
Morrish has packed very well: he has a number of small non-regulation but permitted items, like a 3D-printed improved catch to hold bedding in place where the standard one isn’t quite up to the job.
Stark is definitely a Known Name, and is trying to live up to it.
“And then it goes B. We think it probably goes Bang but we haven’t had any sensors close enough to find out.”
There’s an unscheduled alert: a small industrial station nearby in L4 is disintegrating, and all hands with vacc suit training are called to help with rescue. Findlay spots an odd sparkling around some of the fragments of hub structure, not spreading out as vented water or air would be: he calls it in, and everyone’s warned to stay clear. It seems to be industrial nano of some sort; later analysis will reveal that it’s not a sort normally used on the station; it was competently reprogrammed to cut through main structural members, and there was no warning before things came apart. This is well outside the usual tricks of commercial rivalry, and while some of the products of the station (ball bearings and pharmaceuticals) have military uses it’s not a primary element in the supply chain and there won’t be any particular interruption of production.
Keene pokes about a bit in the next few days, but doesn’t come up with much. It’s eventually written off to a poor attempt at insurance fraud.
There are the beginnings of escape simulator training, using the gravity wheels and cunning mechanisms to simulate the effects of explosions and damaged ships. Morrish makes it out first time (though he’s still within the simulated blast radius); the others take a bit longer.
After the first few weeks there’s a weekend pass, with the cadets let out into L4. Morrish mostly drinks; Findlay aims to resupply his pharmaceutical habit, and Whitfield seems to know where to go – and after a trip down disused corridors and through sealed-looking hatches, the people he introduces Findlay to seem to be more respectful of him than he is of them. Keene regrets the lack of decent local beer (it’s hard to brew in zero-G), but there do seem to be informal stills, and beer gets imported from the Moon; the Ocean of Storms gets informally taken over by the cadets, led slightly to his surprise by Gretton, and the pink gin’s all right, even if the rum has never been closer than 240,000 miles to Cuba.
Gretton looks for open parkland, but the best available option is a hydroponics section; there’s no agricultural station, and it’s close enough to Earth that people can mostly leave if they want open spaces. Findlay wanders round a virtual simulation of Kew Gardens in 1951.
Isomäki has an idea. He says it will be fun. There’s a solar yacht that isn’t being used… nobody wants to go for it, though, and Keene threatens to report him.
Findlay fails to find the seaweed- and fish-derived whiskey from his home world, and arranges for some to be shipped in from home.