“Orbital Control to Vessel in orbit bravo-seven-three-charlie-niner-two-alpha-seven, come in,”
“Starship Athena in named orbit to Orbital Control, I copy.”
“Alright Athena, I’m going to need you to boost to orbit echo-niner-two-bravo-one-six-delta-two.”
“Starship Athena, boosting to Orbit Echo Niner Two Bravo One Six Delta Two, initial burn in six minutes, mark.”
“Readback is correct, thank you.”
“Orbital Control to Starship Athena, come in.”
“Starship Athena to Orbital Control, I copy.”
“Athena, I need you to return to your prior orbit.”
“Starship Athena, returning to prior Orbit Bravo Seven Three Charlie Niner Two Alpha Seven, initial burn in two point three minutes, mark.”
“Uh… Readback is correct, thank you.”
“Orbital Control to Starship Athena, come in.”
“Starship Ath-!”
He switched off the tape, and looked up at Head Space Commissioner Kane. “As you can tell, she’s been responding properly and promptly to all our controllers. Maybe you’re using a protocol she’s not equipped for?”
Commissioner Kane raised an eyebrow. “I’m asking for literally anyone aboard,” he stated. “You’re asking explicitly for the bridge.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Try being a little more specific?”
He scowled, and left the Orbital Control Captain’s office. He’d fob it off on a junior commissioner- let them deal with the ship whose testing crew refused to answer the calls of the Office of Commissions.
“Commissioner West to Starship Athena Local Area Control, come in.”
Commissioner West waited silently, listening to the radio, for several seconds. He’d transmitted it on the general local control channel- the channel used by small craft approaching a larger ship to request injection into its dedicated Local Area Control Network, used to coordinate operations between small craft in the vicinity of a larger vessel.
There was no response.
He sighed. He couldn’t say he hadn’t expected that- every one of his calls to the testing crew from the surface had failed, so he rather suspected the testing crew might have either abandoned the controls, or abandoned the ship altogether. He’d even looked for personal numbers, but been unable to find any names for the testing crew- as far as his computer was concerned, the ship had been tested by a crew of air.
Which happened, when someone didn’t do their job properly and forgot to tell the computers who was testing the thing.
That was his third attempt at establishing communications via traffic control radio- so he had to assume the ship was unmanned. He switched to the general Vessel Approach channel. “Commissioner West to Starship Athena, prepare to be boarded,” he instructed, and put the mic down. He then tapped his controls, and drove his tiny little shuttle towards the massive ship.
It was easily the largest ship in space. He’d seen cargo ships, far larger than superdreadnoughts, that would have fit through a hole the size of just one of the massive engines mounted on the back of this thing.
And someone had abandoned it in space, just asking for it to get stolen.
This was particularly dangerous for a ship like this one- even at this size, it had been launched under Navy authority- which meant it was armed. He had been ordered to commission it into naval service as well, meaning it had passed all tests, and been confirmed to meet all the minimum requirements; all he had to do was give it a quick inspection, determine the crew complement and supplies required for a long-duration cruise, and assign her a USN name and call tag.
For the last of those, U.S.N. Athena was available, so he’d already reserved the name for this ship. He liked preserving names given to ships during their testing or construction phases.
It didn’t exactly hurt that the name ‘Athena’ was already plastered, in large letters, on the sides of the ship. Keeping that name would reduce the amount of work required to apply the new name.
Exactly as expected, as he drew close, the approach lights around an external airlock lit up. He sighed, and flew towards it.
He needed to get this done as quickly as possible, lest any… unsavory parties realize she was unsecured and swoop in for the treasure.
His docking procedure only took a couple of minutes, before he had the doors opened.
He paused before he entered the ship. For one thing, there was a strange tingly feeling in the air, drifting out of the larger ship’s airlock; for another, whereas his shuttle- and every starship he was aware of- had zero gravity inside, the screens on the inside of this airlock were apparently warning him of a full gravity shipboard. There was even a colored grab bar just inside the airlock doors, lined up perfectly with a line around the inside of the door frame labeled as the ‘gravity line’.
He looked at it for a few seconds, then launched himself forwards, grabbed that bar, and swung himself across the interface.
His stomach rebelled instantly. Except it wasn’t so much his stomach, since he didn’t have to fight to keep his lunch from coming up. He released the grab bar only half-voluntarily, stumbled on landing… and passed out seconds later, collapsing to the decking.
“This is Commissioner West.”
Head Space Commissioner Kane raised an eyebrow. It had taken forever, but he’d finally gotten ahold of Space Commissioner West. And not through is personal phone, either- the junior commissioner he’d pushed the Athena off onto had been incommunicado, marked as ‘aboard ship’, for three full days… and he’d only been able to reach him when he’d called the ship and specified for Commissioner West.
It was about time the ship actually answered his call.
“Are you okay up there?” he asked. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“Ah, heh heh, about that,” Commissioner West muttered. “Turns out this ship was unmanned… and apparently has an automatic call routing system. And I think I left my phone in my shuttle, after I was transformed.”
“You were… transformed.”
“Yeah. Into some kind of cartoon horse. It’s a good thing I brought a bathrobe, or I’d be running around naked up here.”
“Into… a horse.” He let out a small snort of laughter. “Then how’d you answer my call?”
“For one thing, these terminals are all touchscreens; for another, I’m somehow still able to grip things with my hooves. And even use my normal phone… don’t ask me how. No pockets to carry it with, though. I expect to have this arkship ready for her new Captain in a couple days. The challenge will be to find a Captain that’s ready for her.”
When he had ordered the starship Athena commissioned into Navy-run passenger service after only the automated deep-space testing, Space Lord Matthews had known that her commissioning would be a newsworthy event.
He had not, however, expected to find out that the commissioner had been transfigured into a creature the newsies had christened a ‘pony’ as soon as he stepped aboard. He’d apparently told reporters that he expected anyone else that stepped aboard to be similarly transformed.
And of course, in the commissioning document he’d uploaded to the database when he officially commissioned the ship into service, he had written that any crew sent to the ship should expect that they could be transformed in a similar manner, but might also be transformed in a different manner, or not at all. He had been unable to find the source of the transformation, but had apparently found his physical abilities to be completely unhampered- just rearranged in a somewhat confusing manner. He’d written that he saw no reason the new crew couldn’t operate it at or even above their prior efficiency levels, given time for adjustment to the new shape. He had, apparently, noticed a vastly increased physical strength after the transformation.
In the event, Space Lord Matthews was present at the assembly when the Commissioner’s shuttle landed roughly at the pad. Commissioner West then trotted out of it, wearing what looked like a bathrobe over his burnt orange fur and dark brown mane. He’d then waved at the gathered newscasters before climbing straight into the van provided by the base hospital per his request; he had, in an amazing show of bravery, volunteered to be examined, to determine whether the transformation was truly as safe as it seemed or not.
The Space Lord then watched the van leave, and made a prepared statement to the press, pertaining mostly to the technology that the ship was equipped with, that had been tested by its launch. The statement had been adjusted, over the last couple of days, to accommodate the suspension on crewing the ship until they’re able to determine that it’s safe to do so.
But of course, since EarthShips was very, very slow to build ships, there were several hundred thousand naval officers, stuck on half pay with no ship to work on. Most of them were fairly junior, since the senior ones tended to get picked first for assignments.
As a result, he happened to know that Personnel was already selecting the eventual crew, in the hopes that it would be cleared for boarding soon. Even so, they planned on sending the crew aboard in waves, just in case they discovered a problem in one of the earlier waves.
He had browsed those crew lists just that morning- and noticed an odd peculiarity, which gave him reason to visit Personnel after the event.
“Good evening, Space Lord.” It was Admiral East, the Head of the Personnel Department.
“Good evening,” Space Lord Matthews answered her. “I was browsing the crew list for the Athena this morning, and I noticed a bit of a peculiarity.”
“Ahh… Um, I should probably make sure you’re aware that it’s a prospective crew list, right? None of the officers on it have been notified, we’re waiting for Medical’s go-ahead before we send anyone. And I verified myself, when they assigned your daughter to it, it’s not out of the ordinary- she really is the best qualified officer we have available.” She shrugged. “It’ll be about time she gets off half pay, won’t it?”
He sighed. “That’s… not what I was asking about. I’m more referring to how every single person on that list is female.”
“Oh, that. We had a debate a couple days ago, and decided that, since it’d take too long to fabricate uniforms for them all and we don’t know what their measurements might be, we can’t expect that they will even be able to wear their uniforms once they board. As a result, picking an all-male or all-female crew was the easiest way to avoid any temptation from that- and we simply have more girls available where it counts.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You know the EEO people are gonna scream, right?”
She nodded. “Yes, they will. And in exchange, since we’re dumping so much female talent into one place, I expect the next few dozen ships will probably have almost exclusively male crews.” She shrugged. “At that point, most of our available talent will be male anyways.”
“And when they point out that the Athena is going to be the only Navy-operated passenger liner?”
“It’s a demonstrated fact that passengers are thirty percent happier when the only crew interacting with them are female than when they are male- the reason passenger liners keep getting in trouble for hiring less-qualified women over more-qualified men.” She shrugged again. “We’re still employing the men for the same ranks and job titles on different ships, so it’s not like we’re in violation. And, you’ll notice that almost ten percent of that roster is actually currently assigned to other ships- we had to do that, to fill the senior ranks. We’re shuffling male talent in to replace them.”
“How would we normally crew a new ship?”
“By pulling a majority of the crew from half-pay, but all the senior elements come from other ships, usually staying within grade, while we promote- or pull from half-pay- to fill the new vacancies on their old ships. That way, we get a solid core of active, current experience, capable of putting the ship’s company together and working them up relatively quickly, while a bunch of half-pay officers get to either hit their stride once again or acquire the on-the-job training that they need to be truly effective officers.”
“Yet Athena’s prospective Captain is on half-pay.”
“As I’m sure you know, Captain Matthews might be on half-pay, but she’s been working with the Space Police and all that- she’s actually got more experience than most of our active-duty Admirals. There was even some debate about whether or not to promote her, but we eventually decided it wouldn’t do to promote her from half-pay- a bad precedent to set, mostly, so we’ve assigned her an acting Commodore status. Even that is just a little junior for her post, but we’re completely confident she has the experience to do it right.” She shrugged. “The biggest challenge we’re expecting- aside from the transformation, of course- is that she’s used to relatively small ships, with crew compliments of twenty to thirty, rather than the hundreds of most of our ships, or Athena’s thousands.”
Then he scowled. “Which reminds me: When Dr. Builder requested permission to launch it two months ago, he told me he expected the crew complement to be roughly forty thousand. Why do we have so large of a crew list?”
“He must’ve overestimated what each crewmember could do, or missed a few stations,” she answered. “By the commissioning report, she needs a minimum crew of about seventy thousand, up to an ideal crew of ninety or a hundred thousand- both numbers meet all requirements as well. We haven’t gotten that far yet, though- and even if we do, I don’t want to throw all of our women at her anyways, especially with the transformation. Hence why she’s going to be technically undercrewed.”
He sighed. “I suppose it might be a good thing she’s supposed to have all sorts of automation capability, mightn’t it?”
“Automation…? Huh. The commissioning report made no mention of such- but if there is such capability, I suppose we’ll find out.” She shrugged. “Who knows, she might become our training ship.” She paused. “Hangon.” She tapped at her console for a few seconds. “... Huh. If we’re only counting operations crew, leaving out medical, cooking, and so on, the minimum is about thirty thousand, ideal forty.”
“That makes sense,” he mused. “He did want to launch her as a civilian vessel, so in the end, he was probably counting non-operations personnel as staff instead of crew.”
She nodded. “He never did seem to understand spacefaring personnel requirements very well, did he? At least the ship has all of the tools and everything- he must’ve worked with a passenger liner designer for her passenger and crew sectors. Speaking of which, we ran over the schematics, and found that she actually has no dedicated crew quarters, except only for the bridge officers and the heads of the various sections. All the rest were, on the schematic, noted to be assigned rooms in the first class passenger sector… which has a capacity of almost half a million, and looks like it was designed for as many cabins as we need to be sectioned off for crew quarters- even with closing bulkheads. That’s about what we’re planning on having them do up there.”
He scowled. “Which reminds me. How about if she has a hull breach?”
“From what Commissioner West told us, she looks like a passenger liner, but there are well-hidden security bulkheads everywhere. When he tested one of them, it slammed shut with an airtight seal completely silently… and faster than the bulkheads on most of our ships, actually.” She looked up at him. “If the Athena isn’t a warship, she’s the next best thing.”