Astronomicon: Icarus

3 - Introductions

Just forward of the centre of the room, an octagonal control deck, over two metres across and packed with a myriad of controls, some real, some virtual, formed the centre-piece of the room. A matching, slimmer inverted console was suspended directly above it from the low ceiling.

Another member of the crew, a skinny, red-haired man with very pale skin was hunched over the octagonal control deck. He looked to be somewhere in his early thirties and was wearing battered-looking grey overalls. He smiled at them pleasantly for a moment and then returned to studying the readouts on a small screen.

In the front wall of the control room, there was a low archway leading forward into the cockpit. Either side of that were more large, grille-covered windows affording a view along either side of it. At the back of the control room, a large centre door provided access to the rear half of the deck and a couple of metres to the right of it was another, smaller door. Two groups of seats, laid out in a single row, were fixed to the rear wall on either side of the pair of doors.

"This is our control room, basically where everything happens around here. Back there," Captain Taylor pointed to the large door in the back wall, "Is access to the accommodation area. I'll show you that next, but first, let's introduce you to Iolo."

The red-haired crew member looked up again from the control deck then walked around the deck to greet them.

"This is Iolo, our chief mining engineer. He's actually a geologist by training, but he's got a natural flair for mining operations. He's been on the Icarus for two years now."

"Three!" corrected Iolo, reaching his hand out to Felix.

Felix grasped the offered hand and shook it firmly.

"Is it three already?" asked Captain Taylor.

"Just over," smiled Iolo, offering his hand to Ishaan.

Ishaan took Iolo's hand enthusiastically in both of his and shook it vigorously.

"How time flies. Anyway, Iolo decides which asteroids we mine and how best to do it. If this was a military vessel, he'd be our tactical officer. Right, let's show you the accommodation. This way," he announced as he turned towards the large door.

Ishaan and Felix followed him across the control room and through the open doorway. A dimly lit corridor almost two metres wide stretched away toward the rear of the vessel, finally ending at a bulkhead door painted with battered-looking yellow and black stripes. Doors spaced along either side of the corridor led to the various accommodation rooms. The first two doors led to officer cabins, his own on the right and another opposite to be shared by Felix and mining engineer, Iolo.

After that were two cramped bunk rooms, each with sleeping accommodation for five people but somewhat underpopulated with Icarus' current minimal crew. Beyond those, he showed them the tiny infirmary and the room everyone nicknamed "the Lab" where samples of ore were catalogued and tested. Larger rooms followed; the galley on the left with its small tabled area and even smaller kitchen and, opposite that, the "Rec Room" which contained facilities for relaxing, playing a range of games, a multi-gym and a booth to provide private communication with friends and family off the ship.

In the Rec Room, they met Dmitry Popov and Hugo Perez, the two mining technicians on board, or "miners" as the rest of the crew called them. Dmitry was thirty-five, a stocky but strong build, with light brown obviously thinning hair and more stubble than Captain Taylor.

Hugo was slightly taller but considerably thinner. He was twenty-nine but looked much younger, clean-shaven with very neat, short black hair. They were standing on either side of the lone long bench table, playing cards, when the Captain, Felix and Ishaan clunked their way into the room.

On seeing the Captain enter the room, they both carefully placed their hands of metal cards face down on the magnetic surface of the table. Captain Taylor introduced everybody, gave a brief run-down of the various leisure activities available and then led them out of the room again and back into the central corridor.

The last two rooms before the bulkhead were both storage, mostly supplies for the voyage and a great deal of spare equipment. At the end of the corridor an intersecting corridor, barely more than a metre wide, ran the full width of the ship. Four shallow windows, little more than wide slots, positioned high in the stern wall provided a panoramic view across the top of the engine housings for two enormous engines. The engines themselves were almost a third the length of the Icarus itself. Near the ends of the side corridors, airtight hatches in the floor provided access to the deck below. They were currently closed, with large red wing-nuts securing them.

Icarus relied on her powerful engines, manoeuvrability and thick hull to safely navigate within the asteroid cloud. Bars, cages and grilles covered any potential weak points on the hull, leaving her extremely resilient to minor impacts. She was fitted with the latest generation of hazard-detection system, able to track thousands of erratically moving objects, and that, combined with her ability to rapidly turn and accelerate in any required direction, gave her the ability to reliably negotiate the dangers deep within the cloud and to track individual asteroids with remarkable precision. Whilst the armoured hull was vital protection, the aim was always to avoid collisions in the first place.

Captain Taylor led the two new arrivals back towards the control room.

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