Day: 2

Year of event: 22+ 10^(10.1395)

Notes: n/a

"We're down to negative two knots, we'll be entering the orbit of Object 19-gamma-1002 in half an hour. Then my guess is that we'll clear the customs within the hour and you'll be on your jolly journey to get us fake passports." Cassie reported in her usual upbeat tone.

Dorothy would have been lying if she said she wasn't nervous. The last time she had come into contact with Onshores was when she was just a kid, back on Earth. And that had ended in shots being fired.

"Alright. I go in, I sell the secondary fuel tank, I buy all of that stupidly long list of documents, and we're out." Dorothy said in an attempt to reassure herself.

"Would you like me to go over that list once again Captain?" Cassie asked, having picked up Dorothy's elevated heart rate.

"No, I know it by heart at this point." The woman shook her head.

She decided that the best course of action was to busy herself to try and forget about the stress. During the past few days, she had spent most of her time listening to Cassie's reports and inspecting the ship for parts she could sell.

The cloaking and long-range hologram buffer were two of Cassie's main selling points. The former allowed to make the ship virtually invisible for every form of existing scans. Of course, the old "bucket of paint" technique would still expose the ship, which was where the holographic buffer came in. It created an overlay image that prevented the ship from being visually identified as such. Its most common application was to camouflage a vessel as an asteroid or as a ship of a different class.

Both these devices required a lot of energy to function, thus limiting Cassie's maximum speed to 3 knots, as opposed to the standard 5. Furthermore, they required a lot of space, which alongside the dual engine, did not leave much space for habitation quarters. The dual-engine required two separate fuel chambers, which themselves entailed two sets of cooling systems. This was essential to allow for the simultaneous usage of the cloaking and sun-jump systems.

Dorothy had carefully considered all of these factors and had decided that in order to better blend in with the locals in Sector 19-gamma, she would camouflage Cassie as one of their small cruisers. And since they did not utilize sun-jumps as an FTL travel method, Cassie was better off not jumping while in their territory.

Selling the fuel tank was thus a logical, but also short-term solution. If push came to shove, Dorothy was confident in her ability to rewire the main tank to fuel both engines, but she hoped it wouldn’t get to that. That much energy in a single circuit could lead to hardware malfunctions, and Dot was not keen on the idea of Cassie going fully offline, or having the cryogenic chamber being unable to boot up.

A joyful tune notified Dot that the 3D printer had finished making her new outfit.

"Now you'll truly look like one of them!” Cassie exclaimed. “Oh, I should change my hull to match the colour, we'll be like besties."

"I don't think I'll blend in as well as we're hoping." Dorothy shook her head as she pulled out the long piece of synthetic cloth out of its production tank.

The dress had been based on a pre-loaded design collected by an anthropologist who had studied this specific sector of the Onshore. The fabric was a dark grey colour, and had lian3 fibres woven through it.

Lian one of the most fascinating materials ever created, at least in Dot's opinion. It was named so after the scientist who discovered it and held properties similar to those of Kevlar and Carbon-Fiber. Unless treated through electrolysis, it was liquid at room temperature, and could either be a conductor or isolator depending on the voltage used during treatment. The only way to return it to liquid form, and thus reuse it, was through exposure to specialized solvents. In practice, this meant that the long, asymmetric, sleeveless dress that Dot had been handed was fairly bullet and stab-proof.

The second part of the outfit was a dark-blue turtleneck top that, for a reason Dorothy could not fathom, had a second, decorative, collar, and ended around her chest. But the 3D printer had not made any mistakes, this had indeed been one of the most popular outfits last time this sector was surveyed.

"Don't forget your shoe-stockings Captain." Cassie reminded her passenger.

The stockings matched the top in colour and did not require to be worn under shoes since the material they were made of was resistant enough to sustain casual wear.

"Right. I'll go get some magnetic paste, just to make sure this ensemble stays together." Dorothy said in an unconvinced tone.

"You really like that stuff, don't you?" Cassie asked.

Dot ignored the AI. During the past two days, her comments had gotten more and more random and out of place. It didn't matter much though, since she would go to sleep the second they'd land, and be reset upon waking up.

Dorothy changed in the corridor, not caring about privacy. It wasn't as if Cassie had eyes or the ability to process any connotations of nudity.

Once she was done changing, the woman went to the bathroom to check out the look in the only full-length mirror aboard. The outfit looked somewhat plain, but it beat the blue onesie cryogenic-safe suit Dorothy had been wearing thus far.

"I'll also be getting something with a hood." Dot noted as she ran her hand over her shaven head.

Although modern-day cryogenic chambers no longer required their residents to fully shave their body to prevent rashes and other skin issues, Dorothy still preferred to do so. Her colleagues insisted that there was no evidence behind it, but Dot didn’t want to take any risks.

On the plus side, her eyebrows had regrown just enough to look natural, so at least she didn't have to worry about that.

"It matches your eyes." Cassie noted.

And that was true; the dark shirt did match Dot's eyes, which were the only part of her body unaffected by albinism.

"Right." Dot tried once again to calm her nerves.

She threw her old suit inside her sleeping pod, and headed back to the command deck. The piloting chair had served as her bed for the last two nights, so in an attempt to make the command deck look more presentable, Dorothy unceremoniously shoved the blanket she’d been using under the chair. Sleeping under the stars was one of Dot’s guilty pleasures, and nothing could match first row seats in front of the retractable bay window.

The latter was currently closed, and displayed, amongst other things, a list of outgoing and incoming communications through the station where they were about to dock.

"We're here." Cassie announced.

Dorothy straightened her posture, and with an unconvincingly confident tone, said :

"Alright. Patch me through."

"To where?"

Dorothy raised an eyebrow.

"The border control, or whoever's in charge?" She asked.

"That's all sorted now, hun."

"But ... you just said we were here - and that it would take an hour..."

"Well, I know you sometimes doubt my skills, but I'm good at following orders, and follow orders I did." Cassie explained.

"Whose orders?" Dorothy unintentionally raised her voice in confusion.

"Well those from section 2-31. We have successfully fooled them into believing that we are a diplomatic envoy from Ibris 8!"

"I... um..." Dorothy rubbed the base of her nose.

The technician had made a mistake.

Well, she had made several mistakes the first of which was not taking one of the bigger ships as she had been advised. Her reason behind that was the fact that four to six people would have to spend decades in cryogenic sleep just to babysit her for the few days she'd be awake.

The second mistake was trusting Cassie with sorting out the administrative side of things. What little time Dot didn't spend worrying about the Onshores, she had used trying to figure out by what dark magic a Gaia could have gone missing. She hadn’t had time to worry about section 2-31, and she didn’t have the foggiest idea of which protocol it related to. She also knew nothing of Ibris 8, not even if it was a planet or a station.

"Cassie, go to sleep." Dot ordered in an exasperated voice.

The projected screens all flashed blue, and a notification screen appeared at its top. It read "FULL MANUAL" in capital letters.

"Right." Dorothy stretched out her arms. "Now is the time to remember how to fly one of these."

After waiting, and skimming through reports on the locals, for quite some time, someone had finally contacted Dot.

They authorized her landing, but as she began entering the station, but the audio signal started to break up. She wasn't sure if she should stay in the airlock, or fly in anyway, so she flew extremely slowly, all the while trying to recalibrate the signals.

"Are you saying landing pad 2 !?" Dorothy yelled at her screen.

" y..a.. mi.. now." A very distorted voice answered back.

Dot wasn't sure if the problem was on her end or theirs (she was betting on theirs), which did nothing to calm her nerves.

"I still can't hear you!" She yelled once more.

Suddenly, just as a new idea popped into her head. She quickly scrolled through the holographic interface, and changed the type of incoming frequency from "general" to "Hertz".

"Can you hear me now mam'?" A male voice came through "Hello? Hello?"

"Yes! I can." Dot yelled back. "You said pad 2?"

"Yes!" The other voice seemed mildly annoyed.

"On it."

Dot muted her side on the transmission, and pulled out a screen from the side of her chair. The screen came over her eyes, and allowed her to visually overlay the desired path over a 3D holographic projection of the outside of the ship. After all Dorothy was a technician, not a pilot.

She could see a grey tunnel stretching up for over a kilometre before her. A shiver ran down her spine. These gargantuan proportions were not as noticeable on Offshore stations, and Dot still struggled to get used to them.

A pop-up message notified her that the outer airlock had just closed, and the holographic projection showed her two giant sets of doors opening. Trying her hardest to fly in the middle of the corridor, which in theory could have held three or four more CASSIE’s in each direction, Dorothy crossed into alien territory.

Notes:

3. lian isn’t as widely used anymore since the discovery of hoovag (the h is silent), another very polyvalent material. But if you have anything form the early 14’’, like a small storage box, or some fabric, you could try spritzing some Solvent A4.12 on it (the blue one, not the orange one, it’s less concentrated), and you will see your item melt. Depending on its lian content, it could get just a little but squishy, or turn fully liquid. You will be able to fix it by fully recycling it though. It can be a fun experiment to do with your kids.

Please be advised that any partially or fully dissolved polymers are toxic to children.

They are also toxic for adults, when taken orally, but at least an adult will be able to get one of them gross antidotes before they pass out (for the record I am not talking from experience).

The ETHC does not support the consumption of any organic OR inorganic materials that aren’t meant for consumption. We don’t have a code or a protocol for it, because we assume none of you are stupid enough to do it. Although our medical logs do have on record one instance of a certain Vera Z. who somehow ingested 400 ml of Methyl Orange (C.I. 13025) during a New Year’s party.

Current year: 22+e^(23.347)

Redactor signature: E.E. Shwartz