User:Cesrate/The New Future

Notices

The "Day", "Month", "Year" and "Century" in this story are Kerbin's units shown as follow, not Earth's.

	Earth	Kerbin
Day	23 h 56 m 4.100 s	6 h 0 m 0.000 s
Month	27 d 7 h 43 min 11.5 s	1 d 14 h 36 m 24.4 s
Year	365.2564 d	106.5225 d
Century	36525.64 d	10652.25 d

See Statement for more informations.

As for more about language stuffs, view Teahouse:Talk about language.

Start

Space is always a place to think.

Three centuries has passed, and we are at what is called "the Golden Era". The steps of Kerbals have been on Mun, on Duna and on Laythe. But what the most marvelous is, many evidences found indicating we're not alone. The unknown species that have visited a number of bodies in Kerbol system, but they're gone now, leaving an empty place for us. Well... Massive amount of mysteries.

The universe is still young, Kod knows how many wonders may she have!

"Auto RCS adjust."

Voice drag me out from thoughts.

"Finished."

I'm now in the Picker Base C-2 - a new base designed for mining - strictly, in the ascending ship it carried. Differed from its company B-5, this base has this ascending ship named Pegasus with we three Kerbanauts, which now have a special mission.

"Such a maneuver has no precedent, are you ready?" Said by base commander Jackson on screen.

"Yes." Answered by me affirmatively. "And good luck for you."

"Good luck for youselves, too. We don't know what's waiting for you." We know he means the mission.

"Fine, we know nothing about EACH mission!" Jokingly said by Conard sitting next to me.

Our laugh is accompanied by the noise of flashing plasma outside, although laugh can't completely wipe out my feelings. I'm still having a rock on my heart... The fear of unknown, I think. Once this thing is done, I'll have the rest of my life with families on the ground. No matter Kerbin or Laythe or whatever else.

"Thirty seconds to go!"

The plasma outside has vanished, replaced by the white smoke from heat shield. Smoke is soon vanished with cooling-down as well.

"Heat shield seperated!"

"Retroburn start!"

"Throttle 10 percent."

Usually brake parachutes should be deployed first, then separate the heat shield. But as we will be launched at high altitude, now the engines of the base used for final descend are fired for deceleration.

"AoA 90 degrees, ready to go."

"Cargo Bay unlock!"

The airtight lock around us is opened, with the wind flowing in. Two tail engines are slightly throttled up to balance the base.

"Three, two, one, FIRE!" Conard screams. Ignoring his excitement, I start the four Rockomax 1X engines of Pegasus. Then without a time to think, we are straightly thrown out both by the burning propellant and by the wild turbulence.

"Good shooting! Now you are on your own, good luck!" Jackson is saying goodbye to us.

"Picker C's well, they got the control and deployed chutes." Finally, Stephen speaks something. "Now I'm contacting Quark."

As Stephen contacts Quark City, I hold the joystick firmly, although the flight computer is helping to stabilize the orientation. Because this maneuver is out of plan, the autopilot can't help much. 12 seconds passed, we're now in the correct trajectory to the pad.

"Landing legs extended."

With parachutes deployed and engines slightly powered, we're descending vertically.

"Throttle 5 percent."

"2 per second."

"Touch down. Engines shutdown."

"Good flight. Should be recorded in textbook." Stephen says.

Now we are on the land. The temperature is about -5℃, not warm of course. Wearing thermal clothes, we open the door and push aside the parachute. A dark blue sky is welcoming us, and we have a good view at woods-surrounded Quark City, the first and only colony on Laythe. In the front, a service team is coming to visit us.

"Well... Let's finish the horrible welcoming ceremony quickly and have a sleep." I suggest.

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