The Crewing by Shane Shepherd

Author:Shane Shepherd [Shepherd, Shane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

***

Kevin

UOB Base, Port Isabel, Texas

My shuttle pulls up at the main entrance, where two uniformed officers are standing. One of the officers approaches my vehicle, and I remove my ID, lowering my window to hand it over to him. He scans it with a small digital pad and returns it, waving me forward.

My shuttle stops at the front of the UOB Training Center II, my favorite building in the large mini-city, as we call it. The UOB compound is a world on its own, containing multiple training buildings, supermarkets, spare parts factories, a couple of laboratories and testing centers, offices for the top powers and several other buildings. My crew uses the TC(II) and we spend most of our time at UOB there. I alight from the shuttle and grab my small bag of personal supplies from the back seat. We’re only allowed to pack around twenty-five kilos of personal belongings. And as you might have guessed, that means just a few pairs of underwear and some things to remind me of my family. I’ll be living off photo frames for the next year. How exciting.

The TC(II) is massive, with more than 400 rooms for personnel alone and several other sections for training, mock flights, and testing. As I enter, a crowd of people walks past me, heading towards another section of the UOB port. They seem to be tourists, or high school students on excursion. UOB has become quite the attraction center since the NEXUS II was built. At a little over seventy-eight meters tall and thirteen meters wide, it’s Earth’s most massive spaceship yet, and my crew and I are one of the first few teams of astronauts to take a ride in it.

Besides, the training room’s large lobby contains flashing displays of the history of humans in space. Safe to say that space and humans have created quite the relationship despite the rocky beginnings.

As I head to elevator one, my mind wanders to the rest of the crew and a smile takes over my features. My crew is family, in space, at least and if you did the math, we had spent years of our lives together. The elevator dings as it reaches floor 11 and I head straight to the section my crew uses. I open the door and bump right into a random woman.

“Apologies, Commander,” she says, scowling.

I would have paid her no mind, but she’s wearing a UOB uniform, and it’s no random one, it’s our mission uniform.

“Who are you, please?” I ask, trying my best to remain professional.

“My name’s June. June Thriller,” she replies as I read the small screen that displays her name on the chest. Thriller.

“And what are you doing here?” I can’t resist the urge to raise an eyebrow. She scowls deeper.

“I’m assigned to the NEXUS II mission, obviously,” she replies in a duh tone, dragging out the ‘obviously.’ “Sir,” she adds like that takes away the rudeness.

“As a crew member?” No way this random woman is going to replace one of my crew members.

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