- Crawfish.png (325.22 KiB) Viewed 74 times
Agent Henshin looked at his watch as he stepped into the EVA airlock. the doors swung open with mechanical certainty, revealing the sally port where his space suit stood, lifeless, waiting for him to don it. OAI Special Agent Henshin hoped he would be able to finish his time in service without getting an EVA qual, but he was dead wrong. the primary radar antenna on the Crawfish had gone out of alignment, and the autocentering servos had broken on launch from the Mun. He'd have to go out and run the program himself.
The Crawfish's crew of four was a cold bunch. Two OAI agents, a Zokesian Special Service Agent and an MCR Navigator made up the crew. Upon launch, everything began going wrong. The modifications to set up the Hegemony-C-Class had been a rushed job, and upon leaving the system they had nearly half of their systems break or work incorrectly enroute to Jool. Scientific Exploratory Research Group, a joint venture between the Zokesian Space Agency, the UIF's Imperial Stellar Exploration Agency and Arcovdonian Space Command Authority, was funding the project as a civilian research trip, and as a result the identities of the four crewmembers was obfuscated from the public with fake names, fake interviews with actors hired to play them at press conferences, and fake backgrounds. The mission was hailed as a scientific research leap forward for the Systems Commonwealth, to scan and research the atmosphere of Jool for compounds advantageous to Kerbalkind, and it very nearly would have been just that.
No one on the ship expected to have to perform an EVA on this mission, and as a result none of the crew had completed their formal EVA qualifications. Without the precision radar system, their real target may never have been found and the crew of Crawfish would be forced to perform their scans and return empty-handed.
Instead, Henshin would step up.
Climbing into the suit, he checked his life support and radioed his comrades in the rest of the ship. "Suited up, ready for release." The airlock began to be flooded in red light as the seal warning went off, indicating the outer doors were in transit. Not a sound was heard as the cold, vast expanse of space opened up to Henshin. He slowly stepped out and gingerly maneuvered himself around the side of the vessel.
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The Crawfish was 49.6m long and 10.5m in diameter. His target was a small set of four antennas on the primary fuel tank of the vessel. Slowly transiting to the rear, past the four massive Vectors of the descent module, he could see the bright green ball of jool staring back at him. Now nearly twice the size of the spaceship, he knew in a few days they'd be at their target, and they better find it now.
After two hours of aligning, testing, and re-aligning, he had it working. Calibration passed and soon they'd have their target.
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Their target, known as Jool-Konstruct Ballonfahrzeug 5, was a derelict Anchor Station in the Joolian atmosphere. Located almost 100km down from the edge of the atmosphere, the station was built in the late 2080s as a research base for Grail's Zokesia, operating construction and fuel-production machines as a base of operation for smaller research craft to fly out of. Its large buoyancy tanks provided lift to keep it inside Jool's atmosphere without power, and utilized one-way valves to maintain a nearly zero-bar pressure inside at all times. It had been abandoned for nearly one hundred and thirty years, but it was still here. Off-axis, and dead, but still floating. This was the real mission of Project Crawfish.
They were going to go get it.
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Lieutenant Commander Rodger Beaking stepped from the gangway between the hab modules and the lander. He was the only Astral Navigator in the MCR who knew of what the parameters of a "landing" on jool may look like. Special training for months in the ultra-secretive black sites of the OAI on the mun had prepared him for this mission. It was dangerous, and if he didn't make it back, he would doom the rest of the crew of the Crawfish. He was taking the rest of the fuel of the ship to go get JKBV5. The final calculations had been run the day before by the small crew, and they determined there was in fact just enough fuel to grab the station and return, then burn for their final target of Pol. It was time to begin.
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The lander shot through the joolian atmoshpere as it slowed, the massive aero forces straining the craft. Drogue chutes had been deployed to stabilize the descent, and the ship began falling slowly into the planet's void below.
Beaking looked at the monitor down at the surface, and saw below him a massive, swirling storm. He double checked his instruments and the radio data analyzer. It was at the center. This storm, big enough to swallow Kerbin itself into, was being caused by an object at its center. It didn't make him any less tense, but it was confidence that he was landing in the right spot. They would not get a second shot.
"Begining burn in 3...2...1...NOW!"
The kick of the massive Vectors lurched Beaking in his seat as nearly 3 Gs of force was applied directly to the ship. Burning backwards through the atmosphere, he checked his altitude and the docking alignment. He couldn't see the station, but the radar on the lander was beaming back to him perfect alignment on the station. His altitude was now below 85km from the top of atmo. If he went below 105km, he would never return, as the vectors would lose power the more atmoshpere he passed through. The station was reading 7km below.
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As he slowed closer to the station, he switched on the autopilot to take him directly into docking position. If the large Klaw on the bottom of the ship was aligned with the station and he impacted les than 5m/s and more than 2m/s, he'd connect. More speed, he'd die. less speed, he'd bounce off and lose control. Easing it in, cross-checking the autopilot, making minor corrections with his man-in-the-loop override controls. It was now or never. Down, down down... thud.
"Contact, initiating climbout"
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The Vectors roared as Beaking put them at full power. The massive ship lurched, unstable from the new load below it, and swung violently to one side, nearly capsizing. Beaking overrode the autopilot and began correcting the lurch as he flew slowly upwards onto his rendezvouses route. Shaking and shuddering, the ship clawed skyward. The fuel was tight. He might not have enough, even if he used the reserve for a Pol transfer. He'd have to hope the station's tanks were full and they could siphon fuel once in orbit.
After ten agonizing minutes, the lander was on a trajectory for low Jool Orbit. He'd have enough to rendezvouses with the rest of the crew and re-attach. He breathed a sigh of relief as the ship went silent. Below him, the storm was breaking up, violently tearing itself apart at the seams without its center.
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24 hours later, the rest of the Crawfish came in sight. The lower docking port of the station mated up to the control side of Crawfish, and the ship was whole once more.
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Agent Henshin went out on EVA once again, completing his 2nd EVA of the mission, to run external hoses from JKBV5 to the fuel tanks of the ship. They had just enough fuel to get to Pol, albeit with a less-than-optimal entry into final orbit. The treasure trove of data on the hard drives of the station were intact too, and revealed hundreds of machine assembly blueprints for the automated constructor on the station, some that were not even related to research or science as the original mission of the station presented. "Grail, you magnificent bastard. You put military craft in here, didn't you?" Henshin grinned looking through the data. They'd got their target, and now they were enroute to unleash it.
