Having completed repairs and depleted several bottles it was time for the crews to say goodbye. Both had challenging missions ahead of them. The Linux was making trajectory calculations since they were unable to find the Prometheus class tanker that was supposed to be on Ike. Perhaps the Kraken had stricken there as well?
And the FusTek changed the inclination, lowered its orbit, and dropped into the atmosphere of Duna. “I wonder if she will handle as well as on Kerbin,” Thompwin said. Dobal shook his head, “almost no atmosphere, she’ll fly like a brick.”
But the atmospheric flight was not impossible, and once they were low enough, Arlan activated the experimintal hover mode. Fellow engineers had repeately pointed out that you had to be crazy to use the engine in this configuration, which led to the configuration be aptly called “crazy mode.”
Translating up, down proved a bit tricky, but they ended up landing less than 500 meters from Venn’s Base for the first part of their mission. “Power down the systems boys,” Thompwin said. “I’m finally where I was supposed to be.”
He looked at the base from his command seat, had things gone differently, perhaps the crew of the Sirkut would still have been alive. Best not dwell on that. He powered down the computers and prepared for EVA. They had a lot of work ahead of them.
Thompwin was the first to set foot on the red, well white surface of Duna and hiked over to Venn Base to verify life support and base operations. There was a 3-week mission to run experiments and he was determined to fulfill it.
By the time he had reached the base, Arlan had disembarked and checked the sensitive payload, a new ore scanner for Cobalt II. It seemed to have suffered no ill effects from the space battle. She then went on and captured the science from the Sojourner. “I’ll go and power her up,” she radioed to Dobal.
Dobal had the heavy job of reconfiguring the Sojourner so that it would fit even more stuff. The thing was almost falling apart from all the bypasses that Katsuki had made, in the end he just ripped off a computer rack by justifying it would probably be handy to have one of those at Cobalt II. Soon the converter and drill were mounted, as were the additional cooling systems.
The cracked jokes and buckled in for the 3 km ride to Falcon 14, which was still sitting on the ice plane with bingo fuel. It was a short drive, mainly uphill but not a problem for the powerful wheels of the Sojourner.
Once there they deployed the drill, radiators and convertors and would spend 4 days to refill all the tanks, returning the Falcon 14 to active duty. Then it was time to return to base.
“I think this landscape is even more beautiful at night,” Arlan said, while looking at the bright stars that lit up the evening sky. Dobal nodded and then set the Sojourner in motion, rolling it towards their lonely comrade.
“Watch the speed!” Dobal had to warn Arlan several times that going downhill means dangerously fast “free” acceleration. By careful application of reverse and brakes accidents were prevented and soon they would see Venn Base in the valley.
The KSC psychiatrist later established that this was probably the moment that the two fell in love, but who can blame them with such a sight.
Meanwhile in high orbit over Duna, the Linux left for Jool. It would take them 1 year and 241 days to get there but in cryo sleep, the crew would hardly notice. Sean didn’t like the idea of being put on ice, but in the end, he respected the chain of command. They had 3,5 km/s of Delta-V left and were counting at JPS (the acronym had already become the norm to refer to the Jooltopia Planetia Shipyard) to resupply them.
“One last thing,” Sean said, “we also need a solution for the emptiness of our cargo bay, in our current state we are almost defenseless.” By the time Navy HQ would reply that they were working on it he was vastly asleep.
Thompwin went out to watch the sunrise. Today was the last day at Venn Base, they had collected the science, fixed the broken parts of the base, and refueled the Falcon. Though with the NX-0 Class, Thompwin wondered if it would ever be used.
Soon the others joined and they started the power-up sequence. It was a struggle to get the systems back online until they figured out that the radiators on the power sources had shut down, which meant highly inefficient power, and shutdowns during the generation of gravitic waves.
Once airborne they set a course until a crackling noise announced that they had forgotten to retract a solar panel. There were still issues with the power, but they made mach 1.
And then Mach 3, before they knew it they were suborbital. “Whoopsie” Thompwin had pushed the accelerator a little too hard, but at least they would get there quicker.
Once they landed they powered down the engine, but oddly enough it kept sending up static flares. Dobal looked puzzled, “Try punching in F5 and then F9,” was his advice.
Thompwin took command of the Cobalt II, Dobal and Arlan transferred the cargo and installed the new sensor, which would allow for more detailed scans of the environment. Next would be to activate the greenhouses and power up the lab. The team was super excited to finally be at their destination and started their science part of the mission.
KSC Archives 