Void Ripper by Collins David

Author:Collins, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

Testing

The new routine was that we started each day with a status meeting in one of the shuttles. The bridge was being ripped up and rebuilt, adding the new off-line control station, and the 4 rooms behind our rooms was having the wall between them ripped out, and it was being converted into a new conference room.

Then we formally greeted the people that had passed the last of their interviews and were now being assigned as crew. They had rooms already assigned, and they had training classes scheduled in their rooms. Not all the people that went through the secondary interviewing made it to crew. The first trip down to Earth in the shuttles usually had a few that for one reason or another had either failed or dropped out on their own.

At the end of a week of interviewing, we now had a crew of 72, and had another 18 candidates still in secondary testing.

“How are the pilots doing?”

“If we keep 2 for each shuttle, and 2 for the main ship, we only need 6 pilots. Should we let the 7th candidate go?”

“Assign the best 3 as pilots, assign the next 3 as co-pilots, and ask the 7th if we would stay with a different title. I hate to ever find a case where some critical part of the crew is out of action, better to have extra backups. Oh Pitter, what about diseases and stuff, I know we have the medi-beds, how do we handle alien pandemics or biological warfare?”

“The races of the Zodiac, while they have had multiple wars, and they have used some nasty ship destroying weapons, they do not ever fight on any planet. I am very familiar with your planets record of wars. The Zodiac races have never used biological warfare, chemical warfare, or nuclear warfare. Unless something drastic changes, I hope we never need to use the one nuke we will have. On that subject, the shuttle on the right side will be under maintenance starting in 2 days. The side door is being widened, all the seats are being removed and the manual controls are being disabled. The shuttle will be used as the shotgun shell transfer ship. I have, in good faith, sent the complete, if slightly simplified shuttle plans down.”

“I heard that the NSA directors daughter will be coming up on the shuttle today. I haven't met her, this will be interesting. Her name is Molly Cranston.”

“Oh, Coella has passed her secondary testing and is going to be in the next patch that get sworn in. This was something Sandra had insisted on, we make everyone sign a paper she had written up, all in legalese language, and then they do a short speech she wrote holding up your right hand. We were now officially, the “Earth System Starship Medusa," and before we took off to explore the depths of space, we were first going to do a detailed survey of this system.”

This was for two reasons, one to give

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