Very Fast and Very Far Apart

The guy who tested the human body's limits during violent deceleration was named John Stapp, and Jody still thinks that’s funny.  Stapp the stopping man.

Her name's Jody Hart, and that's funny in the other direction, because she's never cared a lot about anyone.

A hard stop facing forward during deceleration causes "red outs" as the blood pushes up against your retinas and busts through your capillaries.  Face backwards, get "white outs;" the blood vacates your eyes and sets up residence in the back of your skull.

It's safer to hit the ground with your back to it.

†

"I'm Delilah Bell, I'll be your radio and mission contact for the next tour."

"Jody Hart."

"Our apogee is every five and a half hours, and so that's when we'll call you."

"I take it we'll be seeing a lot of each other, then."

"Technically not seeing, ma'am."

"Then I'll be hearing you, Delilah Bell."

†

In space, you conserve two things: fuel and momentum.

In the aviation age, long-range flights would be refueled by big fuel tanker planes with a robotic boom.  The two aircraft match speed until, to each other, they are still.  To the ground, they're hurtling along at six hundred miles an hour.  They hang in the illusion of stillness granted by their reference frame, two pilots tied by a radio and a boom-mounted camera, two planes linked like dragonflies mating, until the tank is full.

These days, it's easy to intercept a refuel and rations module: she goes on the comms and says, hey crew, we're catching some R&R tonight, gonna stay in and watch video-on-demand with our honeys, gonna make sure the coupler slips right into the receiver collar, if you know what I mean, and I mean it literally, because if we miss this docking we'll all starve to death in space.

It's not easy, because they're clocking six hundred miles per second, but it's easier, because on the fuel intercept everybody cooperates.

†

"What's our next target, Radio-Girl?"

"Civilian communication satellites, ma'am."

"It's about to get real lonely out there for a whole lotta people."

"But you don't get lonely."

"Nope."

†

In a stalemate, violence gets put off as long as everybody stays afraid.  The feds have Jody up in space as a big Beware Of Dog sign, taking potshots every six months to show off how good they are at hitting tiny things from a long way off.

You get a couple hour-long windows once every couple months and then it's waiting until the orbits align again.  Distances get big fast, and their reflexes are limited by the speed of their messages.  In this cold war, even light is slow.

†

"So, what do you look like?"

"Like ground beef with a buzz cut."

"I bet you're fearsome in full dress."

"I can make a non-qual shit his pants from fifty feet away."

"I like that."

†

They go full dark after every strike.  It's the most dangerous part of every mission, when the other side gets hard data on where they are: missile trajectories mean reverse-engineered orbital calculations.

Nobody's even allowed to vent the lav, because all that released pressure causes vibrations.

In one of the earliest space missions, a leaking urine bag caused an electrical short that almost killed them.  Jody tells the crew, and everyone laughs and double-checks their valves.

So far, nobody is trying to hit crewed spacecraft.  It's not any more challenging than hitting satellites, but it's an escalation the Jupiter-based secessionists don't want to make yet.

†

"You should call me Jo."

"We aren't supposed to use the channel for this, you know."

"I won't tell if you don't."

"You'd be the officer I'd be obligated to tell, Jo."

"Then it's not a problem.”

†

When she was thirty-four, Jody had to make the decision to take her mom off a ventilator.  It was a bad death—DNR is the way to go, in documents and in the RFID chip in your dog tags.

Jody treated it like any other task that had to be done.

She signs off on their first crewed target and it feels the same. Their goal is picked for them, a big hulking piece of space infrastructure.  It's a soft mark, too massive to re-direct without burning more fuel than the tanker has to spare.

She leads her crew through it, a series of jobs to be done carefully, just like sharpshooting, or paperwork, or holding her mother's hand.

†

"Someone's going to try to hit you back.  I'm not stupid, Jo.  I can look at our missions and guess the other guys are doing the same, and you're an attractive kill.”

"Don't think about that."

"I'll think what I want."

"I'm getting old.  Soon I'll be out of this tin can. I'll buy you a house in New Mexico.  Somewhere with a big outside.  Just for us, Dee."

“Not if you die first.”

“Haven’t died yet, don’t plan to later. Promise.”

"You ought to be shit-scared of leaving me alone down here."

"Guess I'm out of practice."

†

It's not Jody's fault that her team’s the best at what they do.  Her numbers girl has a knack for estimation, better than the inflexible computer model can come up with, and her guy on the ship's sensor-based eyes is uncanny at picking signal out of noise.  She can sometimes hear him listening to static off-shift.

The easy metaphors don't work in orbit.  You think of it like naval warfare, or billiards, because it's hard to imagine so much free-wheeling three-dimensional space.  Everything on a planet has a relationship with earth and sky.

†

"Delilah, come in."

†

"Delilah."

†

"Dee."

†

"Baby, please."

†

“C’mon, honey. Everybody dies someday.”

†

What gets them is an electromagnetic pulse, 400 miles across, the cheater's way to aim. It hits every circuit board on the ship like a fist to the chin and has the crew diving for oxygen masks and the manual pressure cranks.  There's always a mask less than fifteen seconds away.  No more complaining about drills, Jody says.  Drills are why you lot are pros, sucking plastic like kids snorkeling on the beach, picking up bits of busted beer bottles and calling them sea glass.

Command sends up a shuttle with spare parts and a pack of computer engineers.  They perform the coupling blind, cameras dead, eyes clouded by fogging oxygen masks.

Over the radio, Jody can hear the pilot on the shuttle holding his breath. He’ll have a partner in his ear too: don't drift, man, gently, gently, overshoot and you’ve killed them.

†

“Commander Hart, this is mission control. How do you read?”

"It’s okay, Dee. We’re never gonna hit the ground.”

© 2021 AJ Lucy

About the Author

AJ Lucy is a fiction writer who lives with her wife in Philadelphia. She has a BA in fine arts and a PhD in molecular biology. In her spare time she fosters sick cats and helps organize the Alpha Young Writers Workshop for teens interested in creating all kinds of speculative fiction.