58-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the Stars
February 27th, 2552 Briefing
Shuttle pilot/Lab Rat/mechanic’s apprentice – Katherine ‘Kat’ James Reporting
You can feel the excitement building. Everyone in the fleet from the conscriptee pushing a broom in maintenance to the lady serving coffee at the briefings, to the staff taking notes, we all feel it— okay, all three of those are me, but I can see it in little things others are doing. We’re actually doing this.
In the commissary even my fellow conscriptees are smiling, the meetings are a little more intense and the disagreements are more animated, and one of the biggest changes is the fact that we’re all getting assignments.
It isn’t just the pilots, and now their support teams. We’re working on trajectories, fueling positions, relay teams, supply teams – having ships ready to catch the craft if needed and tow her to dock on the Valkyrie. Dancer is going to have to touch down after the remote test – Deploy FTL back to the designated area near the Twilight, where I’ll be waiting to tow her to the landing area. We spend the night there, going over the ship. I’ll be on that team while Dancer is taken through medical.
If everything goes according to plan I tow her out in the morning – and she hops back to the View and does the main landing.
It means that none of us will know what’s happening and how things are going until they hop back. Part of me wants to feel bad about that, but truth be told— I’m going to be too busy to be feeling anything but the weight of what we’re doing.
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