“Sweet baby lord Jesus that’s fucking cold. Cold, cold, cold, cold – cold. God damn!” Exclaims the shuttle pilot in a fit of rage as he twists knobs, flips switches and toggles back and forth between banks of dials and indicators. The frosty fog of exhalation puffed out by the pilot is condensing quickly upon the frigid surfaces of the tiny space. The cramped cockpit of the shuttle is full of storage bins as the craft has been sitting in the unheated cargo bay waiting for a chance to get un-crated. The six inch thick concrete glass bubble that engulfs the free floating gimbaled pilots chair is scarred with frost patterns. Cris crossed with finger scrapes as the angry man tries to get a series of small view ports through the icy crust with halfway decent visibility. The dark cargo hold, and the dim running lights on his dash board makes for a difficult systems check.
“Did you cock suckers seriously not turn on the cabin heater yet? How the fuck am I supposed to operate the shuttle if I have to battle frost bite in sub zero temperatures!” Shouts the stout pilot from his crispy, cold worn leather chair. He’s flipping switches and running his own extended operations check list without turning to look over his shoulders at the two other men of team ETA huddled in the back of the seating compartment. “You heard the Doctor, we had six hours to shit, shower and shave. That cabin heater wreaks havoc with the power output on a dry run start up of a shuttle this size. Anything not nominal would potentially add extra time and we’d get spaced for fucking things up before we start. You want to end up in the surgical bay? Because I fucking don’t man. We all had our station orientation. We all ignore more than we can ever explain to god.” Quips the man seated in the rear compartment off to the pilots left. The man seated to the right is busy bolting additional instrument panels to the bulkheads within arms reach of his seat. Clipping netting to hooks mounted across the wall, and shifting tools and cargo from padded bin to padded bin. The crew of team ETA are running nine men short of their usual personnel compliment, and are thus trying to cover off more than their usual share of prepping the shuttle for launch.
The nine members are doing the exterior checks, their muffled discussions and fits of laughter can be heard inside in small bursts. The hiss and sizzle of welding with the smell of ozone wafts in the open cargo bay doors to the rear. The huge cavernous loading dock is bustling with machines and industrial noise. The odour of burnt lubricant hangs thickly in the air. A haze of blue oily smoke drifts limply in the poorly circulated air. Fumes and off gassing chemicals permeate the space. An overhead speaker crackles to life with an ear splitting shriek of feedback. “Attention – away teams ETA and Theta you have T-minus ninety minutes until scheduled departure. All non-combat team members should make their way to a safe location behind the environmental bulk heads on no less than sixty minutes. Crews will bolt combat teams into their shuttle at T-minus ten minutes to deployment.”
A heavy banging sounds on the concrete glass of the cockpit. A series of orange gloved thumbs up are flashed to the pilot. The last few systems checks are glowing nominal on the display board, with the last few toggles switched over to operational. The pilot has strapped himself into his seat, and adjusted his head rest, arm rests and his foot stool. All items are a part of my gyroscopic pilots chair, keeping the pilot oriented along the elliptical plane of the solar system regardless of gravity status onboard the small ship.
The small speaker on the pilots chair begins to hum as the launch clock begins to count down from t-minus five minutes. The pilots ungloved hand reaches over head to another control board. The last thing he needs to do is remove a black and yellow cover from the launch toggle and the crew with deploy out of the bottom of the drop shoot launch tubes. Once he’s given the signal he will toggle the switch and the ship stationed on a set of two arms will fold ninety degrees down through an opening in the cargo bay floors and the rockets will fire as they drop out the bottom of the massive rock that black ops base UB313 is built into. With the closing seconds of the countdown something small and black falls onto the pilots face. Distracted for only a second the pilot looks down to his lap to see the tiny black rock. Moving to pick it up with his fingers it squishes between his thumb and forefinger. “Mouse shit? What the fuck?” Mutters the pilot.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six …. ” – with the pause at five the pilot takes the briefest look around the cabin of the shuttle which now shows the faintest of signs of the rodents presence. Knowing what meager signs to look for the pilot can see the soft chew marks from rodent teeth on the plastic seals and cloth coverings. “… four, three, two, one… we are go for launch. God speed gentlemen.”
From the inky depths of space outside base UB313 two massive streaks of propellant can be seen glinting in the soft haze of the distant sun, as the two small combat ships careen out of their launch tubes simultaneously.
Part Seven: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
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