“Guard Changing,” 3.1

A Station Keeping story, by tycho garen
on 12th August 2008. (commentary)

This is the first installment of the third Station Keeping episode. Part two will drop tomorrow.

Location: Command Deck.

Joshua Sian jogged into the command center, it was like he’d spent the past two weeks running and always 10 minutes late. The space station shouldn’t have been that big yet anyway. Before the door closed he called out “Status?” as he walked over to an open station.

“The first three ships are, within range, for docking, several are queueing up–and the rest will be here–in an hour or two.” The crewmen’s stilted response was punctuated as he worked furiously to pass messages along to the dock crew.

“As we expected,” Sian noted as he began to adjust his own preliminary calculations. “Crewman?” Sain asked without looking up, his voice wavered slightly with concern. Thankfully, he managed to mostly stifle a wince at being unable to recall a name.

The entire command center crew responded, but their responses weren’t synchronized.

“Where’s the docking arm?” he asked, finally looking up at one of the displays. “We’re going to need it really soon…”

There was no response.

“Well, bring it about! and inform the commander’s ship that they might not have as much help as we promised.” The error, though not inexcusable, was as much Joshua’s fault as it was anyone else’s: they were over worked and understaffed, and Joshua had planned on being in command half an hour earlier, until one of the construction teams demanded his attention. Thankfully the docking arm would probably extend (even in the right direction!) when it was needed, but it was still frustrating.

“We have space for the first two ships in bay 3, and the second ship in…” he paused to look up the docking plan again. “bay 6.”

No one responded, there was no need.

“I’ll take in the first two ships, then I need to get down to meet the commander, you can manage the rest,” Josh proposed. It was good that he was about to be done with being in charge of things like space stations: proposals didn’t command in the same way that orders did. “So get ready for it,” he added.

“Should I call in Jacobs and Qunicy to help out with this?” One of the crew asked.

“Please do, It would be–” Sian trailed off, his concentration captured by the docking procedure, but everyone else was to busy to care what “would be.”

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  1. [...] is the second installment of the third Station Keeping episode. Read part one [...]

    Pingback by Critical Futures: a next wave science fiction review — 13 August 2008 @ 7:39 am

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