After unpacking his meager belongings and taking a brief read-through of the overview packet Veevers had handed to him, Cowell decided to take a short walk around and attempt to familiarize himself with the station. Even with Spacer Poole’s explanation of the layout, Cowell found himself consistently getting turned around and staring at a dead-end bulkhead or a transit tube that went the wrong way. Somehow, the interior design of this station didn’t match any of the other standard Ring-and-Spindle layouts he’d studied in the academy. On top of that, it seemed that everyone stationed there already knew where everything was, so all he had to use for internal navigation were the irregularly placed “You are here” plates that gave the current location and arrows pointing in various directions for increasing or decreasing cabin numbers or towards a transit tube.
He finally resigned himself to asking for assistance from others passing by, including adults in and out of uniform and even a couple of children rampaging through the corridors. Once he’d made it back to his own cabin, he sat down at the desk and used the comm screen to plot his route to Veevers’ office the next morning. He also tried to memorize the route to and from the ward room so he could get some food later. He knew that having something to eat in the morning before a first flight demonstration would be a bad idea.
Cowell had set his alarm early enough to dress in one of his standard service uniforms — reminding himself he’d need to order more uniforms and some civilian clothing for off-duty hours from the BX late that day. Then he set out, attempting to follow the route to Veevers’ office which he’d spent so much time the previous evening plotting and memorizing. He managed to accomplish this task while getting lost only once en route. At 0755, he entered the outer office and the aide sitting at a desk barely glanced at him before waving him through.
At his desk in the inner office sat Veevers, leaning back, feet up on the corner, looking through a folder. From the little bit of the folder tab that he could see, Cowell suspected it might be his personnel and transfer folder. He stopped one meter away from the front edge of Veevers’ desk and stood at attention. “Lieutenant Desmond Cowell, reporting for duty, sir!”
“At ease. Your Adademy record certainly makes for some interesting reading, Lieutenant. Your qualifications are … sufficient. There are only two noteworthy elements in this entire folder.” He held up his fingers as he counted them. “One, your flight qualifications were deemed to be superior. Two, the number of … incidents … shall we say? … which were either directly traced to you or were believed to have been your responsibility are …” His superior officer paused to reflect. “I guess I understand why we are lucky enough to have been graced with your presence here.”
Veevers snorted, then lowered his feet and sat upright. “Basically, there’s just about nothing that happens at this station. We stand watch over a boring planet and occasionally need to go chase down an asteroid or something if it looks like it might be on a bad approach vector. For small craft, which is what you care about, we’ve got a collection of shuttles and combat boats. Since we are a military base, there’s one shuttle and one fighter always kept hot in the launch bays. Similarly, one pilot is always sitting in the flight ready room next to the launch deck. For the flight crew, regular training is mandatory and I do have enough of a budget to allow for seasonal duck-hunting contests. The ‘ducks’ in this case, being small asteroids in a nearby belt. When the time comes, the rules of the event will be explained.
“In the meantime, though, I want to see what you can do in one of my boats. I’ve had the deck crews prep an extra shuttle for you. I know you don’t have your own flight suit and helmet yet, so head over to the deck and grab one of the set for transients. Then launch, conduct the same maneuvers you did for your Academy flight test — you still remember what those were, right? — and come back for docking and landing.”
Seeing Cowell’s confused expression, Veevers added, “The flight deck and ready room entrance is 1-A-172. Turn left when you exit the outer office and follow the corridor until you get there. Dismissed!”
Cowell had never flown a Dawson-class shuttle before. That made sense since the Dawsons had stopped production several decades before he was even born. Discovering that all of the shuttles were Dawsons and Elyots, which were also obsolete, had made him somewhat concerned about this flight qualification being more of an activity than he’d previously anticipated.
Gearing up, strapping in, and launching had been unremarkable — aside from the thrill he always felt from being catapulted through a launch tube and into space. The launch tubes for the Burrow curved through the ring itself, allowing the turning motion of the ring to add just a little bit more to the speed of the craft’s ejection and launch into space.
Once there, the controls felt familiar. Apparently, there’s only so many ways to configure a flight stick and thrust controls and those don’t change too much. Almost none of the other controls in the cockpit were familiar or at least in the expected position, so he knew he was late in retracting the catapult connectors and engaging main thrust.
Suddenly, the comm clicked on. “Dawson-zero-two-niner, this is Fortuna Burrow Flight Control. The area is clear of other craft. You are clear to commence maneuvers.”
Finding the trigger to transmit, Cowell clicked it. “Fortuna Burrow, Dawson-zero-two-niner. Roger. Commencing maneuvers now.”
After finally getting set up for the landing tube, being grappled and hauled onto the recovery deck, Cowell felt like he could allow himself to stop shaking. Looking through the view ports of the cockpit, he could see Veevers pacing back and forth, with what looked like two MPs standing at attention nearby. Uh oh… this doesn’t look good.
Once the shuttle had stopped moving, he shut down main power, unhooked himself and walked to the hatch to exit onto the recovery deck. Veevers and the MPs were now standing directly in front of him. Veevers looked like he was ready to explode.
“Of all the half-assed shit to pull! On the very first day you’re even here? Do you have any idea of the series of panic attacks you caused up in Ops? Whatever it was you managed to do got the Sensors guys screaming at the top of their lungs about how the automated systems were suddenly classifying you as a station threat!”
Cowell had nothing to say and could only forlornly look down at the deck“And bouncing off of First Ring during that utterly botched landing attempt! I kept waiting for the alert that the station was going into weapons-free mode!” Veevers paused to catch his breath. “But the absolutely worst part of this? I don’t even get a chance to chew you out first! Care to speculate way? Just a wild guess? No? It’s because the Old Man — yep, Commander Yamamoto himself — called up to say he gets first crack at you! Which is why these gentlemen here,” a wave at the MPs, “are going to escort you to his ready room while I get to stand there and pretend you don’t report to me!”
The walk to the Operations Ready Room — basically the Base Commander’s office when he wasn’t actively on station in Operations at the sunward end of the Spindle — was long and Cowell felt like he was a condemned man being taken to the executioner. No one looked at the four of them — Cowell with the MPs on either side of him and Veevers trailing behind — during the entire trip. Upon reaching the Ready Room, Cowell and Veevers were allowed to enter while the MPs remained outside.
Inside, sitting at a wooden desk — a rare luxury on a station like this — was an older man. His hair was dark, but graying at the temples. He sat rigidly, although it was unclear if this was from the current stressful situation or if this was just how he always composed himself. The insignia of a full Commander adorned his shoulders and his name tag clearly read “J. Yamamoto”.
Cowell immediately came to attention and waited for what he knew was coming.
“Lieutenant Cowell … I take it you’re the one I have to thank for the fact that two of my Sensors officers needed medication to calm down and my station has a couple new dents?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see. Would you care to explain how this happened? Or, perhaps, is there any sort of justification or excuse for this?”
The response which had been drilled into him repeatedly while he was at the Academy came easily to his mouth without even needing to think about it. “No, sir. This officer is clearly a useless lump of flesh and waste of resources and is not even worth the time of anyone else to train him.”
Yamamoto glanced over at Veevers who nodded almost imperceptibly. “Damn. We got you right out of the Academy, didn’t we? No wonder you’ve got no idea how anything works. At ease, Lieutenant.” Yamamoto stood up, walked around his desk and leaned back against it.
“All right. I’m pretty sure that the Lt. Commander here has chewed you out some already and no doubt he’s still sitting on a lot more to say. Under just about any other circumstances, you would be standing here, at attention, for the next hour while I unloaded every tiny bit of anger that I’ve had building up over the past several years onto your sorry ass. In this case, though, I think I’ll hand that responsibility off to your direct superior officer.
“However…” Yamamoto drew himself up and began speaking much less softly. “If you ever cause that much unwarranted panic in my Operations Center again… or you bounce so much as a pebble off of my station … you will find yourself suddenly demoted to being the only person responsible for cleaning every single toilet on this station and you will be doing it without any tools.
“Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
“Yes, sir. I …” Cowell’s voice broke as he felt himself starting to cry. “I understand, sir.”
“Bryce, get him out of my sight and get him some proper training. He’s not allowed out in space solo until he’s done qualification flights with someone watching over his shoulder. Dismissed.”
The following weeks for Cowell contained nothing but an unending cycle of studying and training, interspersed with occasional time for food or rest. He’d been granted access to a complete set of manuals describing every aspect of the cockpit of both shuttle types as well as the Fort and Galceran combat craft sitting on the flight deck. He spent hours and hours sitting in the cockpits of cold — depowered and not-flight-ready — shuttles and combat fighters, memorizing the location and function of every switch, button and control in each.
Once he thought he had those down, he logged hours in the realistic flight cockpit simulators located near the hangars. He was constantly badgering the deck crews and other pilots for assistance in designing scenarios for him in these simulators … everything from minor mechanical malfunctions to complete system failures … forcing him to stretch the limits of what he could think of in order to work around or otherwise compensate for these issues. Many times, when confronted with something new, he would make a mistake or wouldn’t remember which control did what, or where it was located.
During this time, his personal flight uniforms and helmet were sized and delivered to the flight crew locker area, waiting against the time he would be allowed in space again. The few meals he did have were hurriedly eaten at the wardroom and usually spent while he was reading through manuals and checklists, making notes to himself.
Occasionally, Lt. Cmdr Veevers would see Cowell, either heading to a cold cockpit or the flight simulator section, and would simply shake his head, wondering just how long it would take the green Lieutenant to be flight-capable and contemplating if he should start the paperwork to cycle him off-station to an area that might be better suited for him.
Ultimately, the day came when Cowell showed up at Veevers office and requested permission to attempt his flight qualification tests, with the understanding, of course, that all of these flights would be overseen with another, more senior and qualified pilots present and able to take command and control of the craft in the event that Cowell messed up again.
Fourteen weeks had passed since Cowell’s arrival on the station. To the best of Veevers’ awareness, in that time, Cowell had not been anywhere other than his cabin, the wardroom, and the study and training areas around the flight deck. Grudgingly, Veevers gave his permission and assigned another pilot for all four flights.
It was a much more somber and beaten-down Lieutenant Desmond Cowell who completed these tests flights and, once the other pilot and signaled his approval, he simply returned to Lt. Cmdr Veevers office to present the papers showing his success.
“It’s about time. You’ll be on the duty roster as of tomorrow. Get a decent meal in you and get some sleep. You look like hell,” was all Veevers had to say to him.
