Mark Anson - Below Mercury

She sighed. No. She was flying a tanker.

It had all started out so well, she thought, as she gazed into the blue haze where the sea met the sky, her mind wandering.

A year ago (was it a year already? ) she had been on the way up the promotion ladder in the Astronautics Corps. She had been among the best of the best, a captain in an interceptor squadron, commanding huge vessels right at the limits of their performance, until her self-confidence was put into question on a difficult rendezvous with a carbonaceous asteroid out past Mars.

She had frozen with indecision at a critical point, aborted the manoeuvre too late, and very nearly crashed a spacecraft filled with several thousand tonnes of fuel into the rock. The review panel had investigated her actions and, while not finding her guilty of any wrongdoing, had criticised her for not taking prompter action.

She still woke up some nights, sweating at how close it had been, the collision alarms sounding, the ship responding too slowly, too slowly. Sometimes, in the worst dreams, she crashed into the asteroid, and the tanks split, and the cold ammonia fuel splashed out over the surface, bubbling and boiling in the vacuum.

Clare never told anyone about the dreams, not even the people she trusted. If any of that got back to the review panel, she would be out of the Corps, and to Clare, that was like being out of life. She lived and breathed her work as a pilot; it had been her driving ambition ever since she had been a young girl.

She had gone against the advice of her school and her parents when she entered the Corps, advice that said her talents would be wasted. She had endured the long, hard years of training, first in atmospheric flight and then in low Earth orbit, and spent all her spare time studying for the compulsory master’s degree in astronautics, to get the coveted astronaut’s badge over her name.

Yet, here she was, flying tankers and training rookie pilots, while others soared into orbit ahead of her. She thought she looked younger than her 34 years, but inside she felt much older. Decades older, coming to the end of her useful working life.

How she longed for something to do , for something that needed split-second decisions, on the edge of fuel margins, while a huge asteroid turned by above you, and alien mountains and valleys flashed past just above your head, billions of years old, waiting to claw you from the sky. How she longed for that again, the bonds she had forged with the crews, the times they had had, the risks they had run, how she longed for it, how she wanted it, wanted it, wanted it .

Now they had offered her something: a routine trip to Mercury, ferrying some engineers to some huge tomb of a mine and back again. It was getting back into space, she thought, but not the way she had envisaged. She had an uncomfortable feeling that, once she took this ‘temporary secondment’, it would become permanent, and she would be stuck in Transportation forever, on board space tugs, hauling the huge fuel tankers back and forth across the Solar System until she couldn’t take the boredom any longer.

She felt like she was being sidelined, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Helligan had said not to get excited, and to wait until she received her orders. Knowing Helligan, he probably wanted to make her endure as much waiting as he could contrive, so it could be weeks, or more likely months, before the SAIB would be in touch.

Before long, she would be desperate even to get the chance in Transportation, and that was probably just what Helligan had in mind. She just had to play the game and try to keep her options open.

Behind the tanker, the refuelling was complete.

‘Orbital Five Two Seven, tanks full, breaking contact. Report when clear of the launch area.’

‘Tanker Seven Four, roger,’ Clare’s copilot responded.

The tanker shuddered slightly as the spaceplane broke free of the refuelling boom, and dropped astern. Clare disengaged the autopilot with a flick of her left thumb, and banked the tanker to the left. Her other hand moved the thrust levers forward, to take the tanker quickly out and away, far away from the dwindling patch of sky where the spaceplane was preparing to leave on its climb into orbit.

Clare watched a full minute go past on the mission clock.

‘That should do it,’ she said, checking their distance from the spaceplane on the navigation display.

‘Yeah, we’re clear. Shall I let them know?’

‘No, I’ll do it.’ Clare thumbed the transmit button on her sidestick and spoke into the slender microphone of her headset. Her softer voice was a contrast to the clipped words of the copilot, and the crew of the spaceplane might have paused for a moment in their pre-climb checks, as they tried to place the familiar voice.

‘Tanker Seven Four, clear of launch area. Contact Guam Centre for orbital climb clearance. Goodbye – and Godspeed.’

The huge bulk of the tanker swayed from side to side as it mashed its way through the last few hundred metres of humid air towards the runway at Andersen Base. It tilted its nose slightly at the sky, and then sank onto the runway, spurts of smoke springing from its tyres.

The spoilers deployed, and Clare lowered the nose to the ground. She braked the tanker to a brisk roll and let the runway trundle past, as their allocated taxiway drew towards them.

Keeping a careful lookout, she steered the tanker off the runway, towards the domes and spheres of the fuel storage area. There was another launch tonight, and the fuel tanks needed to be chilled down and reloaded in preparation. The voice of Andersen Ground Control came and went in her headset, directing her through the maze of turns and taxiways towards the fuelling apron.

A ground handler on the tarmac ahead waited for her, and as the tanker approached he motioned with one bat, signalling her to turn. She turned the giant aircraft round and moved it forwards slowly into its assigned position, until the handler made the ‘stop’ sign, and finally signalled to cut the engines.

‘Been a good mission, ma’am,’ her copilot remarked as the whine of the turbofans faded.

‘Yeah – we did a good job,’ Clare muttered, as they ran through the post-flight checklist, returning various switches and controls to the proper settings.

For a moment, she almost believed it. It had been a good mission; they had carried it out faultlessly, the spaceplane had gone on its way without a hitch, and they were back where they should be, when they should be.

A good mission. Only …

Clare felt that soft, grey feeling inside that only those who have tasted success and achievement can know, the little voice inside you that tells you that you aren’t being stretched, that you aren’t learning anything, that you’re sinking into routine. In a few short years you’ll just be looking on it as a job, a means to make money, you’ll never be back up there again, up there where you wanted to be, where—

‘Ma’am?’ The copilot was looking at her.

Clare looked back, blankly.

‘It’s the duty controller on ground control. He wants to speak to you.’

Clare pressed the transmit. ‘This is Captain Foster.’

‘Duty Controller here. I have a message for you from the group commander. You’ve been assigned to Deep Space Transportation with immediate effect. You’re to report to the training centre at zero nine hundred hours tomorrow for a mission briefing. That’s it.’

‘Roger that, sir. Out,’ Clare responded, and pushed her seat back. A half-smile played on her face.

Perhaps today was going to be a better day, after all.