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June 15th, 2208 - Launch Day
Low Earth Orbit, aboard the colony ship ‘Conestoga’
Mission Commander Rito Mori
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I watched some of our thrusters end their burn as we moved away from the space elevator and orbital station. The flight checklist continued, "...Conestoga is past station safety perimeter. Activate inertial dampers. Drive containment GO, PLI GO, MRF 1 GO, MRF 2 GO, Navigation GO, AFS GO, Inertial dampers GO, Data link GO. ALL SYSTEMS GO FOR LAUNCH! Flight clock is running at minus one sixteen..."
In passable English, the Secretary General told me and the two billion people watching; "Crew of Conestoga, I know you will do best and take human to stars! Earth wish you happy and good fortune!"
I forgave her minor mistakes, since I knew she was fluent in many other languages. Ops announced in the background, "Fuel flow begin, increase three percent per second to ninety. Forty-two, forty-one…”
I told the Secretary General and the world, "Building the Conestoga and preparing for this mission has taken half a million people more than a decade. All that work so the few of us aboard can carry humanity, and the human spirit, to a new home among the stars. We're ready for the challenge! In the words of early astronaut Alan Sheppard, 'LIGHT THIS CANDLE!'"
My timing was off, reducing the drama. Ops finished, "Fuel flow ninety, clock at minus 5, 4, max fuel, 2, 1, IGNITION!"
For a few milliseconds, sixty of the most powerful lasers humanity could build shined into the center of the drive chamber. The ship's five million gigawatt Zolachev drive FEROCIOUSLY ROARED to life, with a hundred times the power of everything on Earth combined. We were riding on a carefully controlled supernova. The accelerometer instantly changed from zero to 627 G. It quickly climbed to 781, then 938, and eventually stabilized at 922 G. Without the inertial dampers, a Zolachev drive ignition wouldn't even be survivable. If both dampers failed while we were at high acceleration, everybody and everything aboard would be smashed into a chunky soup. A single damper failure might only kill us.
We were crushed into our seats, watching Earth fade away on our screens, propelled by the energy equivalent of eighty Hiroshima bombs per second. To people on the ground, our exhaust would be brighter than the sun for over ten seconds, and they would be able to see us with their naked eyes until we were farther away than Saturn.
We could move our arms a little, but only with great effort. We felt 'only' seven G's. Nine was enough to put even the old-time fighter pilots unconscious. At ignition plus 15 seconds, with effort equal to lifting half my weight with one finger, I lowered fuel flow to ten percent. Five seconds later it would have changed automatically, but out of pride, I had to show I could do it.
Our actual acceleration gradually dropped to 236G, and we felt a much less arduous 1.6 for the next half hour. As we passed Mars at T plus forty minutes, our velocity reached twenty percent of light speed. The stars slowly transformed from dots into short streaks of light.
I slowly dialed the fuel back until our actual acceleration dropped to 1.3 G and announced, "All systems nominal. Inertial dampers off. Engineering department start post-launch maintenance. Begin scheduled cold-sleep procedures."
I got up and patted my second in command Johannes Lenk on the shoulder. "Hopefully, it'll be a boring trip. See you in a year, Joe.” I had scored one point higher than he did on the final exam, or our roles would have been reversed. Our running joke was that one point was the difference between a genius and a monkey. We were friends, but highly competitive. “Oh, I almost forgot to mention, keep an eye on port side pneumatic system B, it was acting up a little in testing last month."
He stuck out his tongue, crossed his eyes, and gave me an upside-down salute. Then he mumble-shouted, "Yeth thir, mithtah bothman, thir!" Saliva sprayed all over. We laughed a long time, before he shook my hand and said, "Congratulations and happy dreams, buddy." I was glad the control consoles were sealed and washable. I headed for my assigned sleep tube and climbed in. The crew would all do a one-month shift awake every ship-year, to prevent body atrophy. Thirty would be awake at a time, and each day one pair would rotate between duty and cold-sleep.
Unlike the flights before the colony missions, we would keep accelerating for five years instead of just a few minutes. After coasting unpowered at almost the speed of light for 35 years, with the ship rotating to provide artificial gravity, we would decelerate for another five years. We were expected to reach the Ptolemy-1 system after what seemed like 45 years on the ship, or 125 to those back on Earth. Everybody we knew who wasn't on the ship would be long gone when we arrived. All of us would experience what felt like 4 years awake and 2 years in a ‘happy-tube’, as a lot of people called them.
If Ops was still there, the great-great-grandchild of somebody who wasn't even born yet would get our arrival message in 165 years. We were the third colony mission, and they wouldn't hear from the first or second for 63 and 104 years respectively. We passed Neptune and left the solar system three hours later.
Since I’d given the launch speech, Joe sent our final departure message. "Good luck to you, Earth. So long, and thanks for all the fish."
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I dreamed I was floating. In the distance I could see Juana Morales floating too. She was an Educator, Hispanic-looking, with a pretty face and shapely body. I had a punny thought. 'I wanna Juana.' She laughed as I thought it, so I knew I had to be dreaming. I hadn't said it yet, and even I didn't think it was that funny. Juana floated toward me, as she praised me; "Commander Mori, I'm so glad we have you! You're such a genius! So brave! Such a great leader!"
Somehow her boobs were bigger, and she was even prettier now. She kissed and hugged me, and Joe approached her from behind. All our clothing disappeared, as Joe said; "Rito, the two of you are so hot! Let's do her together!" This also told me I was dreaming. I knew he was totally straight. He wouldn't even want to see another guy during sex, but it was MY dream.
He and I both slid our cocks into Juana's pussy, me from the front, and him from behind. Feeling his penis touching mine and holding his muscular arms turned me on as much as beautiful Juana. He said, "I owe you so much, for all the help in training. I wouldn't have made it without you. I'm glad you're so smart! Let me pay you with a kiss." Another thing that told me I was dreaming, was that he and I were about the same size. In real life, he was half a meter taller and about twice my weight.
He slid his tongue into my mouth and French kissed me, as we fucked Juana rhythmically for months. All three of us climaxed again and again, hundreds and hundreds of times, and neither Joe or I ever lost our erections.
Cold-sleep is the best!
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