Commencing in 10

“Tears of Andromeda, you are cleared for landing sequence... commencing in T-minus ten minutes. Do you copy?”

The words buzzed and crackled through the comms to fill the cramped cockpit. Over a century of the space program, and they still hadn’t given the ships a better sound system. He scoffed. He thought he’d be used to it by now. They had the technology to do better. He’d seen it. At this point, he was all but certain they were doing it for the aesthetic. Outrageous.

Brigger was his name. Currently Captain James Brigger. Born and raised Texan country boy. He’d ridden his fair share of bulls in his time, but ridden far more spacecraft back to Earth from upper orbits.

But a spaceship was a different beast than a bull.

He shook his head at that thought, too. The ship name. He’d told them the Tears part was bad luck. Nobody listened to a lowly captain, as usual. They went on with it anyway. Probably some artsy-fartsy NASA marketing cruft. Why not “Triumph of Andromeda”? Or even just “Andromeda”? Nice and simple...

He’d even done a few Mars craft retrieval missions. Yeah, he was proud of those. But this one was special, too. This was the first of the Vulcan Program missions, and the crew sitting behind him was returning from humanity’s first manned mission to the Centaurs: the strange, asteroid-like bodies scattered throughout the massive void between Jupiter and Neptune. They’d brought samples, too. It would be humankind’s first time analyzing them in a lab on Earth. Finding out exactly what they were made up of. Important stuff. Important stuff, for sure.

On his right, Flight Engineer Lanrietta Ruiz shifted around in her seat, flipping switches, turning knobs, and nudging sliders, preparing everything to be just so for the landing sequence. She was non-mil. A civvy. But damned brilliant if he ever had to admit it, and he already had, many times during this mission. A bit overreaching at times, but he couldn’t ask for a more dedicated Engineer. He turned to the glass and watched the whirling, whispering system over the Gulf, still at least two days out from the peninsula. Naw, it’d be sunny when they arrived at KSC. Maybe even enough time to grab some of that Jake’s Barbecue before heading home. He chuckled to himself. You could go from space to Earth and still have to take a puddle jumper to get truly home.

He always loved that barbecue.

He always hated that flight.

Lanrietta glanced at him hesitantly. He gave her a tiny nod, completing the ritual they’d been doing recently, granting her permission to take over the comms for him.

She leaned toward her receiver. “Good to hear from you, Houston. We’re just getting ready for a standard landing procedure. How’s the weather down there? From what we can see, pretty sunny. Can’t wait to be back home. Over.”

Brigger made to roll his eyes but didn’t get a chance.

The whole craft jolted. Hard. Down and to the right. A sharp dive, a sharp yaw. Instinctively, Brigger’s hands snapped to the joystick. Idiot. The craft was already in autopilot. The manual controls had long been given over to the landing systems.

“Lan… what was that?” Brigger asked hesitantly. He’d been on a million and one landings and never, never felt a craft shift like that.

“Trying to figure that out, Cap,” Lanrietta said, voice distant, preoccupied. In the moment, Brigger bristled at the term. Couldn’t she just use the proper and full Captain? He let it pass.

Lanrietta’s eyes danced across the dash, double-checking every system. “Possible aerial collision. Vertical tail, but… current structural integrity readings are showing it was only a deflection. No break.”

He scoffed and shook his head. Damned drones. Everyone and their brother was whizzing one around these days. Every flight path was littered with the critters.

She checked a few more indicators. “It’s okay… yes. Yes—we’re okay. All systems... nominal.” Then her head snapped to a single red blinking light just beyond his right hand. “Nominal, that is... except primary input machinery.”

He glanced at her. She grinned back before he even spoke. He ignored the look. “English, please?”

Her grin faded. “The keyboard, Brig, the keyboard! It’s offline.”

Brigger’s smile likewise faded. The keyboard. Of course it had to be the damned keyboard.

“And...” Lanrietta continued, her flat face now fully sinking into a desperate-looking frown. “Comms with Houston are out.”

Great. Not only did he not have his keyboard, he’d have to do it without his largest pair of eyes and ears earthbound. How was he supposed to continue executing a proper landing sequence without his primary input device? Well, he knew the answer to that question.

But he didn’t like to think about it.

Brigger shifted into emergency mode. “Flight Engineer Ruiz. Please confirm all instrumentation and auxiliary landing systems remain operational.”

Lanrietta’s competent eyes scanned the magnificently complex cockpit once again. “Confirmed. I repeat, only primary input machinery and earthbound communications are down.”

A voice, full of concern, pressed in from behind them. “What’s going on? Is everything alright?”

Brigger couldn’t see the woman, but he knew who the voice belonged to: Captain Yung, the captain of the Vulcan I craft. But this was a lander. He was the captain now.

Brigger tried to turn as far as he could toward the voice, which wasn’t much against the tight straps and the cramped seat. “Yes, Yung. We’re fine. All core systems are operational. We’ll be able to land just fine. I’ll just need complete silence as I work this out with Engineer Lanrietta.”

“Of course, Captain.” The four crew members behind him fell silent. Good.

Brigger pulled down the spiral-bound notebook from the hook just above his head, contingency training kicking in automatically. Lanrietta did the same beside him with her own copy. He opened the first page and scanned down the list of commands. There were about fifty of them, and now that they had fewer than eight minutes until landing...

He looked up, eyes distant. “That’s—”

“Nearly seven command codes per minute,” Lanrietta said.

He grunted. She’d already done the math. Of course she’d already done the math.

“The first one. Guidance, Navigation, and Control,” she said, finger pressed hard into her copy of the manual. “GNC-LND. That’s G, N, C, dash—”

Brigger cursed, cutting her off, exasperated. “Yes, thanks, Lan! I know how to read!”

There was no time to waste.

He knew nearly every command code by heart. That was not part of the problem. It was something of a rite of passage for every cadet to know them. To memorize them. In the training barracks, he was sure at one point he’d been reciting them in his sleep.

The problem now… was what order. That much he had never memorized. And now, how to actually enter them?

He hunched down over the auxiliary input interface to the left of the much more favorable keyboard and nearly gave up before he’d even tried to start. The “auxiliary interface” was nothing more than a single rectangular gray LED screen fixed into a steel plate above four buttons: CONFIRM, DELETE, UP, and DOWN. No lettered keys. No larger screen. No nothing. He swore he’d clobber the technician who thought this piece of work up. Of course NASA couldn’t just throw another backup keyboard into the cockpit, could they? Certainly something to do with their ‘weight-saving optimization protocol’ or some other such stardust...

All these thoughts and many more unsavory, colorful ones flashed through his head in rapid succession. But to ruminate was to spend time. Time he didn’t have. Time that could be better spent punching the stupid command codes into the even stupider manual interface.

He turned on the switch to send power to the manual input. The lowercase letter ‘a’ blinked back at him mockingly. Of course the thing had lowercase, too. Lowercase for a series of command codes that only used capitals. He cursed loudly then quieted himself just as fast. He didn’t need the rest of the crew getting all nervous now. No need to panic. Not yet, at least.

...and how the hell was he supposed to find a dash?

He pressed DOWN a few times. The LED display flitted through ‘{’, ‘}’, ‘[’, ‘]’, ‘=’, and so on, before finally arriving at ‘Z’.

Okay. So that’s where his symbols were. Where his dash was.

And even with the symbols, it’d be faster using the DOWN button than traversing the entire lowercase alphabet using UP alone.

So that’s what he’d do.

His eyes flitted back to the long list of command codes. At least they were courteous enough to all have the same format. Six accursed capital letters, two groups of three, separated by a dash. He decided he wouldn’t just clobber the technicians. He’d whip the daylights right out of them.

“Okay, Lan. Here’s what we’re going to do. Listen very carefully. When I’m done with a code, I will say ‘next’. Only ‘next’. Nothing else. You’ll give me the six letters only. I know where the dash is. Got it?”

She nodded at him emphatically, then snapped her eyes back to her pointing hand on the notebook. “Understood, Captain. I’m ready. Just say the word.”

He nodded back at her and took a deep breath. The first code. GNC-LND. Here goes nothing.

He rapidly pressed DOWN as many times as needed to get to G, then pressed CONFIRM. The caret shifted right. The display blinked back to ‘a’. He cursed. That made things more complicated. Yes, those technicians were certainly going to receive a visit from him. But... he held the DOWN button. The characters flew by much faster. Thank the Lord. He continued on until he approached N, then hit CONFIRM, then repeated the infuriating process for C, -, L, N, and D until the full command filled the screen from left to right.

He slammed the CONFIRM button.

Two uppercase characters blinked back at him on the LED screen, twice, before the screen returned to its blank, empty self:

OK

OK. Okay was good, Brigger decided. In fact, okay was great.

The next code, now. He’d do the next code. One at a time until they were done.

“Next!” he barked.

“T P S, C H K,” Lanrietta replied immediately.

Ah. He knew this one. Thermal Protection System check. The fact that he was able to recognize that further calmed him.

He punched it in. For the first time, the LED display beeped. His hands froze, and he looked down at the display. ERR blinked twice. Damn it all! He knew the Tears name was bad luck!

“Lan?” he asked, not lifting his eyes up. “Any ideas?”

She only repeated the command. “Thermal Protection System check! Code T P S, C H K.”

He stared at the thing. Of course. He had rushed the last character. He’d put in TPS-CHL. Idiot. Thing must have slipped. But at least he could correct the code. Maybe the techies back at Palmdale would only get half a beating. He pushed the thought away and slammed DELETE, selected ‘K’ as the final character, then slammed CONFIRM, once to approve the ‘K’ and once to approve the code itself.

The command went through.

For a few minutes that was all his world became: four buttons, three letters, a dash, and three letters again.

Shouting “Next!”

Then listening to Lanrietta’s voice.

There was no view of Earth, no cramped cockpit, no shaking ship. Just a horrible, horrible LED screen on a slate of glinting metal.

When Lanrietta’s voice spoke next, however, it was not a code. “Captain. We are currently T-minus five minutes to landing.” Her voice arrived at his ears with a surprising calm. So she had some faith in him after all.

He didn’t lift up his head. That damned incessant engineer, if she broke orders one more time... But cooler heads prevailed.

“Lan!” he shouted, exasperated. “Codes only! At least if you’re wantin’ to get out of this one without something much worse than a few finger burns.” In the moment, the comment was unfair. Lanrietta had burned her hands a few days back repairing a lighting fuse and Brigger had been poking fun at her ever since. He made a mental note to apologize to her as soon as they landed. That is, if the form his body had when they landed would be capable of apologizing.

He turned back to the display. As his cadet-academy-beaten-in brain flipped through the characters, subconsciously, his thoughts drifted in and out to his little Sarah, out on the range. His little Sarah, the beauty of his world... he could see her now, golden hair waving over golden fields, trotting along on a golden horse.

Like every memory with her, it was always golden.

He shook his head. No, no, no. It was far too soon to be going down that path right now. He must focus. He was being selfish, too; Lanrietta herself had three kids at home waiting for her. Half the crew behind him, too.

“This is it! I knew it! We’re all going to die!” The voice sobbed out, sharp and loud, from behind him. He knew it by heart by now. It was Dr. Scoffield, the double-doctorate metallurgist directly in the seat behind his. Smarter than he and Lanrietta combined, but nowhere near enough heart—or nerve—for space travel.

At the scientist’s distracting cries, he was pulled out of his reverie and slammed CONFIRM.

The input beeped in protest. The display responded by blinking ERR twice, then returned to show the incorrect code.

Brigger growled. “Dammit, Doctor, if you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll come back there and shut it for you personally—landing protocol be damned!”

He glanced down at the display. BRK-ARM. It was the wheel brake command, fully correct. What in damn tarnation? He slammed CONFIRM again. Same beep, same twice-blinking ERR code.

If he weren’t strapped in so tight, he would have turned back and slapped some sense into the doctor, who still had not stopped whimpering behind him. If Brigger didn’t get ahold of himself, the crew certainly wouldn’t be able to. It’d just make things worse. Harder to work. He took a deep breath, composing himself. “Sorry about that, Doc. Just a little frustrated at the controls here. We’re doin’ just fine. Y’all are gonna be just fine. Right back to Kennedy by suppertime.” He even smacked his lips for effect. “Ooh, baby, Jake’s Barbecue? I can already taste it!”

Distantly, he heard Lanrietta’s voice, much sharper and shriller now, carrying a twinge of something approaching desperation. “Captain, T-minus two minutes!”

Wait a moment.

Oh no. He’d been distracted by the doctor’s cries. BRK-ARM was the wrong code. That’s why the machine wasn’t taking it. They had to be entered exactly in the proper order. “Lan! What was the previous code?”

She shifted her finger up on the manual. “A S K, A R M.”

Yes. That was it. The anti-skid arm. The doctor had made him skip right over it.

“Inputting that and the brake arm codes now!” He shouted the words as his fingers flew. Just as he finished the second code, Lanrietta’s shrill cry, approaching the borders of hysteria now, all protocol forgotten, filled the cockpit. “One minute!”

“Irrelevant, Engineer! Next code!”

He had no way of knowing how close they were to the end of the sequence, only a vague sense that they must be close.

And failure was not an option.

As each code came to him from Lanrietta, he recognized it immediately, but he waited for her to report each code all the same. Anything to keep her focused. Keep her calm. Keep her confident. Besides, he’d gotten good at using NASA’s wonderful backup input tool by now. It’d be easy. They were close. They’d be fine.

Lanrietta cried, “S B R, L N D!” He entered it, punched CONFIRM, and shouted “Next!” A subtle sliding shift sound filled the cockpit as the speed brakes shifted to their landing configuration. Vaguely, the greenery of fields crisscrossed by gray streets encroached on the edge of his vision.

He refused to spiral. Not yet… not yet… we’re not done!

Lanrietta sobbed out again. “G E A, D W N!” He entered GEA-DWN, punched CONFIRM, and shouted “Next!” Brigger heard the mechanical servos working below the craft’s hull as the landing gear came down. Things were moving very rapidly outside the window now.

But he realized it even as Lanrietta’s soft voice fell upon his ears. “That’s it, Captain. There are no more codes.”

Before Brigger could even look up, he heard the sweet, sweet sound of rubber striking concrete.

They’d done it.

Audible sighs mixed in with multiple wet hiccups rose from Dr. Scoffield, Captain Yung, and all the rest behind him.

“Well done, Captain, well done,” Lanrietta said, shaking her head softly back and forth in disbelief. Despite her steady voice, there was a dampness about her eyes and wet trails curling down each of her cheeks.

Brigger forced the best version of a Texan hospitality grin he could manage onto his face. “Well done to you, too, Lan. Couldn’t have done it without you. And sorry about that burnin’ comment I made earlier. It was a little bit more than just a… stressful situation in the moment.”

For a moment she didn’t register the reference. But then she laughed, different kinds of tears now streaming down her face. “Don’t mention it, Brig. Don’t mention it at all.”

He relaxed in his chair and tried to chuckle, but found he could only sigh, letting the relief fill him. He was still staring at the auxiliary input even though the danger had finally passed. But there was nothing more for him to do now. After about an hour—once the hull of the ship had cooled from temperatures exceeding a thousand degrees in places—the Kennedy team would be over to pry open the doors.

Jake’s Barbecue would not be entirely out of the question.

The comms crinkled one last time, carrying the same buzz and crackle they always had. Perfect timing for NASA to get back in touch with them. This time, Brigger found the tone a hilarious relief. It sounded exactly the same, but they were much closer to Kennedy now than they had been ten minutes ago.

And what a ten minutes it had been.

A calm voice filled the cockpit.

“Tears of Andromeda, you have landed. Welcome home.”