Chapter 160: Casual Spaceflight
"So... where are we headed, admiral?"
Mei looked at me as if she was expecting a suggestion, but then came up with one herself.
"If Sydney is a no... How about... Uhm... Copenhagen?"
"Copenhagen? Sure. I haven't heard much about Copenhagen." I said. "Where even is that?"
"It is under construction near the inner edges of the Kuiper Belt, near what seems to be some sort of asteroid mining hotspot."
"It is under construction?"
"Yes, but the main frame is finished and they have already spun the station up for artificial gravity. I heard that they are just building the insides of the celestial. Half of it is already done." she said. It was apparent from her voice that she was getting excited. "It is not as big as Shenzhen or any of the popular celestials really, but we could go for something like that, since you don't like crowded areas."
"It is a bit risky buying a house on an incomplete celestial, but I don't want to break your enthusiasm."
Mei went silent and stared at the stars through the shuttle's front window for a while. I didn't want disturb her while she was thinking.
"Let's head over to Copenhagen." she said. "If it is not as good as it is advertised, we can always not move our house there."
"Of course." I said. "Well, fly us to Copenhagen then, admiral."
Mei turned the ship towards the correct orientation, and started applying thrust to accelerate into an orbital transfer trajectory.
"The maneuver should take about half an hour at this rate." she said as she unfastened her seat belt. "I will keep it at low acceleration values so we can still move around the shuttle without trouble."
"How long will the entire journey take?" I asked.
"About 15 hours, give or take half an hour."
"May I deploy the artificial gravity capsules?"
"I was just about to tell you to do that." she said.
I pressed a button to unlatch the two habitation capsules that were attached to the sides of the shuttle. The capsules extended away from the shuttle's main body by using some hydraulic system to increase their distance from the shuttle's center of mass. Then, when they were fully extended, the shuttle used its maneuvering thrusters automatically to start spinning around itself, which would result in an artificial gravity of around 0.4G in the capsules.
Of course since the shuttle was much smaller than a space station built for artifical gravity (that would usually have a radius of at least a few hundred meters), it would have to spin much faster to create a notable acceleration. This meant that if one wanted artifical gravity aboard a shuttle, they would have to deal with the uncomfortable effects of spinning at higher angular velocities. Human body had not been evolved for sustained high spinning rates, and a lot of people would tend to vomit in such cases. However, Mei and I were in agreement that the spinning was a better option than constantly floating in microgravity for 15 hours.
"I'm taking the port capsule." Mei said. "If you go into the starboard capsule, there were some books on the table, which I wanted you to take a look at."
"Okay." I said. "...although I make no promises that I will read any of them."
Mei moved into the port-side capsule to take advantage of the artificial gravity and travel in relative comfort. After a short while, I also got up and moved to the starboard capsule. Since the shuttle wasn't very big, its each capsule provided just about enough space for comfortable habitation for one person.
I took a short look at the books Mei wanted me to read, and then lay on my back and closed my eyes to get some sleep. I wasn't sleepy at all, but I wasn't in mood to do anything else either. I just wanted some time to pass quickly.
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I woke up with a beeping sound from the cockpit. I looked "up" (which in this case meant towards the center of the shuttle) and saw Mei moving into the shuttle's main body from her capsule. I did the same and followed her into the cockpit.
The communication panel was lit up and the beeping was coming from there. Mei immediately knew what was going on.
"Somebody is broadcasting on the emergency frequency." she said. "An S.O.S.?"
"Likely." I said, getting ready to put my sensor knowledge to use and probably boast about it later on. "Can you turn the nose of the ship over that way so I can get a high resolution image on the sender?"
"Copy that." Mei said. "Buckle up."
We both got strapped onto our seats and I commanded the shuttle to stop the spin and retract the capsules. Mei then took manual control of the shuttle and rotated it over to the direction the transmission appeared to come from.
"Now, let's see... I'm going to redirect some power from propulsion to sensor cooling."
"Go ahead."
"Can you shutdown everything other than life support essentials?" I asked.
"Sure."
"Also the cockpit lights."
"The lights too?" Mei sighed. "What are you doing, trying to see individual electrons?"
"Okay, I just asked for the lights for the dramatic effect." I said. "They can stay on."
The noisy picture on my sensors display started getting better as the imaging systems started getting less interference from the shuttle's own systems.
"This looks like something big." I said. "Maybe a bulk freighter."
"I guess it could be." Mei agreed with me. "Size is one important information, but can you judge its distance from us?" she asked. "Or even more importantly, can you figure out its trajectory?"
"It will take a few minutes, but I think I can." I said. I observed and recorded the relative position of the ship in distress over some time and plotted the data for the flight computer to calculate the ship's estimated position and trajectory.
"So?" Mei asked impatiently.
"The ship is about 1500 light seconds away from us, and almost in the middle of nowhere." I said. "The system atlas couldn't find any celestials nearby the freighter."
"In any case, it is the duty of every ship to re-broadcast any S.O.S. messages they have recieved, and I intend to be a responsible ship captain." Mei said.
She pushed some buttons on the communications panel to in preparation to activate the shuttle's broadcast mode.
"I'm starting broadcast." she said. "It won't be long until our transmission is heard and acknowledged by Anchorage since we are not so far away still..."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Strawberry_Pancake
Strawberry_Pancake I would draw what a shuttle with capsules looks like, but readers usually imagine their own version of the visualizations of a story in their heads and I don't really want to take that away from anyone. It would be like watching a movie of a book you read only for it to look nothing like what you imagined in your head.
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