Station Breaker

62 Security Protocols

As I sit inside the cramped cockpit of the DarkStar, waiting for the carryall to make its way down the road to iCosmos, I contemplate my most recent life choice.

All I had to do was let Captain Awesome get into the spaceship and let him do the thing he was trained for. But no, me and my fat mouth.

Was it the fact that he has a kid? Or is it that I knew all along sending him up when there was a perfectly disposable astronaut standing by who already knew what all the knobs did?

What difference does it make? I couldn't let him take my place.

But the thing that gets me is that I know this was Markov's plan all along. I'd be angry at him for manipulating me if I wasn't so upset at myself for allowing it to get that far.

I should have bravely volunteered to do this thing instead of contemplating hiding out in his cabana until the whole thing blew over or blew up.

Even Laney, recruited less than a day ago, was ready to jump right in. Hell, if she thought we'd have taken her seriously, she would have jumped at the chance to be in this tiny seat with a control panel inches from her nose.

"How we doing?" I ask into my radio.

"We're almost at the iCosmos gate," says Prescott.

He's riding shotgun with Jessup in his SUV ahead of the flatbed.

We're counting on the pseudo-crisis aboard the US/iC to cut through the red tape a little.

While Markov has enough people inside and out to smooth things along, if someone gets a little too nosey and decides to dot more "i's" than we have time for, this whole thing could fall apart.

As the carryall comes to a stop, I imagine the security guards checking their clipboards and radioing into the complex about the rocket that just showed up.

Each second stretches much longer than it feels like it should, but that's just my nerves and the fact that I'm going to be spending the next several hours inside of this tin can waiting to see if I get to die in space or Federal prison.

I don't mind the tight quarters all that much. When I was a kid and had my heart set on being an astronaut I watched The Right Stuff and paid careful attention to all the difficult things the astronauts had to do.

The toughest was being stuck inside the space capsule not able to take a pee.

Alan Shepard, the first American in space, had to relieve himself inside his spacesuit because NASA kept pushing back the launch window past the limit of any human's endurance.

Not wanting to embarrass myself or go nuts in the claustrophobic space, I'd test myself by seeing how long I could spend inside a cardboard box.

After a few failed attempts at lasting more than a couple minutes, I found out I could last much longer if I poked air-holes in the box.

I decorated the box with decals and named it "The Centennial Hawk," because I was neither original nor clever.

At first I'd assume a yoga-like pose and watch movies on a laptop I placed inside as my control panel. Then I started going into some deeper meditation — or the nine-year-old's version of it.

While my box was no one's idea of a sensory deprivation tank, I went on some wild daydreams sitting inside there contemplating inner space.

This would help me out later on in life when I worked as a guinea pig and a trainee at iCosmos. I spent a lot of time in the huge water tank going through various simulations, waiting for instructions. Lately it's been zero-g construction for all the space stations being built.

I could sit in the bottom of the tank for hours and hours. Although my first launch was just a few days ago, I've spent months aboard the simulated crew modules and Unicorn prototypes.

All of this leads me to the fact that I'm totally okay here in the DarkStar.

I'm fine.

It's my safe place.

I'm. Not. Worried. At. All.

"David?" says Prescott over the radio.

"Yeah!?"

"You okay?"

"Yeah, fine. I was just dozing off."

"Wow, man. I can't imagine how anyone could sleep during all this."

Me neither. "What's going on?"

"They're letting us through. The payload master is going to meet us in the hangar and sign off on everything."

"Just like that?"

"We emphasized the point that the capsule had to be kept sealed because of the water and the new filtering system."

"Right. Good call."

"That was Ms. Washburn's idea."

"Of course."

The capsule starts to vibrate.

"We're moving."

"I can tell. Other than the payload master, does it look good?"

"We think so. We could have you launched in three hours. They're using the bigger booster, so there's some room for adjustment — which works out well for us."

Trying to intercept a space station is no easy feat. If you're off by seconds, the whole thing is thousands of miles from where you need to be and that takes more fuel.

Fortunately, they're putting me on top of a fatter version of the Alicorn that has more fuel and thrust. It's less efficient, but nobody is worried about that right now.

Prescott keeps me up to date with what's going on outside, while trying not to be obvious about the fact that he's talking to a trojan horse.

Occasionally he calls into his headset as if he's talking to someone back at the Air Force operations center.

I hear the voices of iCosmos load engineers as they inspect the feeds and cables on the outer ship.

The dashboard in front of me shows the Unicorn controls and the different readouts as it talks to the computers outside.

From my side everything seems exactly like a military payload module should look. The sensors we want to give back correct data are doing so, and the ones that we need to lie are performing admirably.

As far as the engineer's portable computers tell them, this is just a dumb cargo ship waiting to be sent into space.

"David," Prescott says in a half-whisper. "We're good. They're going to rotate the ship, connect you to the rocket and then tilt you upright in the next half hour."

"Wonderful."

"We're leaving the assembly building but will check in."

"I'll be right here. Until I won't."

"Roger that." He lowers his voice even more, "And um… thanks, man. I know what you did."

Yeah, but do I?