Seventeen Gam Theta
Coming out of deep space, we cruised our carapods through the port at the upper part of our home ship. Each pilot in our clutch landed her vessel in a specific docking bay and began to disengage from the carapod’s systems. Once I had severed links with the biomech’s nervous system and com links, I slid out of the pilot’s hold into zero-G. I stretched long sending myself into a slow flip. In the docking bay next to me, Seventeen Gam Iota held on to her carapod and kicked her legs in a little jig to alleviate the pins and needles. After some mild jokes at Iota’s expense, we settled into the chore of caring for the exoskeleton of our carapods.
Seventeen Gam clutch had been out on a long-range scouting mission. We had surveyed Raccroc 4.8-74/6° to evaluate its suitability as a potential home planet. It had been a disappointing mission and we were all plaintive while doing our post-mission work. The planet had many of the characteristics we were looking for but the air was toxic to us in our current form. I thought it would take at least four generations before we would be able to produce people able to live in that environment. Everyone was hopeful we could find a planet we could settle on immediately.
I examined my exoskeleton for wear, missing my extra set of limbs. After spending hours inside a giant beetle-like cyborg vessel, it was hard to get used to being so much smaller, with only four limbs and no pincers. I often felt the phantom limbs in my middle long after a mission was completed.
My eighteen sisters, the pilots in my clutch, talked quietly among themselves. Rho and Beta, the most raucous of my sisters, shared a joke that made them laugh loudly, disturbing the relative quiet of the docking bay. Many of my sisters were excited about a program being presented in the ship’s main hull in an hour. However, I was looking forward to finishing a book on Earth physics in my bunk.
Rho and Beta finished first and rushed to the hyperdisfecting lock, yelling their general goodbyes. Several other sisters were just leaving when we heard Sixteen Gam clutch fly into their docking bay immediately below ours. They had been sent farther afield to scout a different planet. Thirteen Gam clutch had been sent out too, but I could see that they had arrived back hours before my own clutch. There were only six of them left and they were getting quite old to be still flying missions. As far as I knew, they were going to be retired in the next cycle after the Eighteen Gam clutch was ready to fly. Right now Eighteen Gam were still pupating with their carapods.
[To read more download the PDF file below]
seventeen_gam_theta.pdf
Coming out of deep space, we cruised our carapods through the port at the upper part of our home ship. Each pilot in our clutch landed her vessel in a specific docking bay and began to disengage from the carapod’s systems. Once I had severed links with the biomech’s nervous system and com links, I slid out of the pilot’s hold into zero-G. I stretched long sending myself into a slow flip. In the docking bay next to me, Seventeen Gam Iota held on to her carapod and kicked her legs in a little jig to alleviate the pins and needles. After some mild jokes at Iota’s expense, we settled into the chore of caring for the exoskeleton of our carapods.
Seventeen Gam clutch had been out on a long-range scouting mission. We had surveyed Raccroc 4.8-74/6° to evaluate its suitability as a potential home planet. It had been a disappointing mission and we were all plaintive while doing our post-mission work. The planet had many of the characteristics we were looking for but the air was toxic to us in our current form. I thought it would take at least four generations before we would be able to produce people able to live in that environment. Everyone was hopeful we could find a planet we could settle on immediately.
I examined my exoskeleton for wear, missing my extra set of limbs. After spending hours inside a giant beetle-like cyborg vessel, it was hard to get used to being so much smaller, with only four limbs and no pincers. I often felt the phantom limbs in my middle long after a mission was completed.
My eighteen sisters, the pilots in my clutch, talked quietly among themselves. Rho and Beta, the most raucous of my sisters, shared a joke that made them laugh loudly, disturbing the relative quiet of the docking bay. Many of my sisters were excited about a program being presented in the ship’s main hull in an hour. However, I was looking forward to finishing a book on Earth physics in my bunk.
Rho and Beta finished first and rushed to the hyperdisfecting lock, yelling their general goodbyes. Several other sisters were just leaving when we heard Sixteen Gam clutch fly into their docking bay immediately below ours. They had been sent farther afield to scout a different planet. Thirteen Gam clutch had been sent out too, but I could see that they had arrived back hours before my own clutch. There were only six of them left and they were getting quite old to be still flying missions. As far as I knew, they were going to be retired in the next cycle after the Eighteen Gam clutch was ready to fly. Right now Eighteen Gam were still pupating with their carapods.
[To read more download the PDF file below]
seventeen_gam_theta.pdf
