Storm Clouds - A KSP Story (With added skulduggery and explosions)

[KSK]

No fair! I'm running out of room to hang all these cliffs from!

Seriously though, this is nail-biting stuff. And I loved Matrick's banter with Mission Control.  

[peadar1987]

On 05/11/2017 at 9:21 PM, KSK said:

No fair! I'm running out of room to hang all these cliffs from!

Seriously though, this is nail-biting stuff. And I loved Matrick's banter with Mission Control.  

Thanks, 'tis a bit of a hacky trick to keep people reading, but glad it's working!

Next installment is part-written, and should be dropping soon^TM

[peadar1987]

So about that promise to post something soon...

The good news is that the PhD is finally in! 60,000 words over 250 pages. Now I have to wait until February for the viva...

The bad news is that the forum deleted my entire last chapter just as I was posting it. You'd think almost 10 years of being a student would have taught me the importance of keeping backups, but you'd be wrong!

Next chapter coming when I can get the motivation together to rewrite it!

 

[HamnavoePer]

This. Is. *******. Awesome

[KSK]

On ‎17‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 1:23 PM, peadar1987 said:

So about that promise to post something soon...

The good news is that the PhD is finally in! 60,000 words over 250 pages. Now I have to wait until February for the viva...

The bad news is that the forum deleted my entire last chapter just as I was posting it. You'd think almost 10 years of being a student would have taught me the importance of keeping backups, but you'd be wrong!

Next chapter coming when I can get the motivation together to rewrite it!

Bah to unreliable forum text editors. That's great news about the thesis though - best of luck with the viva!

[peadar1987]

On 22/12/2017 at 11:52 AM, KSK said:

Bah to unreliable forum text editors. That's great news about the thesis though - best of luck with the viva!

Thanks very much! I even knew about the reliability issues. This sort of thing is exactly why I should stay safely closeted in academia instead of being let anywhere near real-world engineering.

On 21/12/2017 at 8:22 AM, HamnavoePer said:

This. Is. *******. Awesome

Thanks buddy! Just for that, I'm going to put out the next instalment:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

West Atlavandian Mountains, earlier that day

The military transport bounced and lurched along the rutted mining road, between walls of blank rock and vertical drops, as it tore around the hairpin bends at breakneck speed. Alongside a taciturn driver sat a general in the Imperial Air Force, and a square-jawed Kerbal by the name of Jorson. In between near-death incidents, the general was giving Jorson the most unorthodox briefing of his air force career.

"Sorry for the bumpy ride, but we've received intelligence that both the Tespens and Yeflanans are preparing to launch, so we needed to act fast. Now, you're going to pull 30 gees on the way up. That's probably going to be enough to make you lose consciousness, but hopefully you'll come to before you need to activate the 'chutes..."

Jorson had flown over 100 combat missions in the on-and-off civil war that had plagued the former Atlavandian Empire for the past half-century, and had experienced 30g before during an ejection over the Bay of Angorfa. He'd survived that, and even though he had no great desire to do it again, he was a model soldier. If the order had come to fly his interceptor into a cliff, he would most probably have done it.

The truck barrelled around one last corner and past a faded sign reading "Green Peak Copper Mine: Elevation 4122 metres". Jorson had flown several missions in here, darting through the valleys playing cat and mouse with rebel aircraft. It had been some of the best flying of his life, and he allowed himself a nostalgic look over the jagged peaks and yawning chasms they surrounded before the truck drove slowly into a cargo lift and the spectacular view was replaced with bare stone.

The lift took over an hour to reach the bottom, creaking and rumbling as it slowly descended the shaft. Already one of the deepest mines on Kerbin, the shafts had been extended over the past year, and by the time the lift juddered to a halt, it was 5km below where it had started. Leaving the cab of the truck, Jorson was met with a rush of warm air.

"Don't touch the walls" said the general "They're over 70 degrees celsius. We need to blow this air through constantly to stop everyone down here from cooking alive."

The pair then walked briskly down the passage to a small alcove, the strip lights along the ceiling not enough to fill the pools of darkness lurking in the corners. At the end of the alcove there was a strong steel door that would have looked more at home in a submarine than a copper mine. Spinning the wheel to open it, the general had a few final words.

"I'm going to shut this behind you, wait ten seconds for the pressure to equalise,then go through the next door and strap yourself into the couch. When the green light goes on on the instrument panel, you have five seconds, so brace yourself. Good luck!"

Jorson walked through the door, counted to ten, then opened the dull silvery metal hatch in front of him. He'd expected it to be heavy, he knew it was made of tungsten alloy, but was surprised at just how heavy. It took all his strength just to wrench it open, and once he'd clambered into the small conical chamber inside, it swung back to with huge force. The interior was sparse, a crash couch in the centre, facing upwards to a basic instrument board, readings of temperature, air pressure and altitude beside the radio. He strapped himself in, radioed mission control to update them, and sat back to wait for the countdown.

Edited December 23, 2017 by peadar1987

[peadar1987]

Jorson felt, more than heard the hiss as the docking tube disconnected from his capsule, deep at the bottom of its shaft. He had not particularly noticed the hum of the vacuum pumps before, but he did notice their absence now there was nothing surrounding the capsule to transmit any vibrations. The only sound now was the voice of mission control in his ear counting down towards zero. The green light came on in front of him, and he clenched his leg and core muscles as he had been trained to do. He knew that below his capsule, and lining the entire evacuated shaft all the way to the surface were the nozzles of thousands of hastily mass-produced rocket motors, which would start to fire as the capsule raced past. They weren't light, they weren't reliable, and they weren't efficient, but not being attached to a spacecraft they didn't need to be. He'd expected acceleration, but when the countdown reached zero, it was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. The acceleration of his ejector seat had lasted well under a second. When the first rocket motors below him fired, the acceleration instantly caused him to see stars, and his peripheral vision disappeared immediately. After one second he was already travelling at 300 metres per second. After two seconds he had travelled over half a kilometre towards the surface. He felt something within his chest pop as his tunnel vision worsened. At three seconds he could barely see through the black fog clouding his vision, and the roar of the rocket motors was almost drowned out by the blood rushing in his ears. At four seconds he was fighting the urge to black out completely. He knew his speed would be over 1 kilometre a second, and he would be over half way to the surface. At five seconds he had travelled almost all the way to the surface, a trip that had taken him over an hour on the way down. He was already travelling far faster than any Kerbal ever had before, and there was still a whole interminable second of acceleration left.

He had once been in a supersonic fighter that had suddenly lost power. The sudden deceleration from air resistance had felt like hitting a brick wall. He braced himself to exit the evacuated tube and enter Kerbin's atmosphere.

To his surprise, when the explosive charges ahead of him detonated, throwing the two halves of the door to the shaft wide open, he felt almost nothing. The dense tungsten slug which formed his capsule didn't particularly care if there was some puny gas in the way, it was rising at almost 2km per second and it had a whole lot of momentum on its side. 

As Jorson's vision slowly swam back into focus, he could see the altimeter tick over 60km. The pressure reading outside was already negligible. He took a moment to consider that he was now the first Kerbal in history to hold both the speed and altitude records, while at the same time ruing the lack of windows in the capsule. When the altimeter broke 100km, he also officially became the first Kerbal in space. Jadra was still low enough to see clouds above her, and Matrick was still sitting on the launch pad.

[peadar1987]

Jadra's rocket continued to accelerate, the vibrations increasing as the air swirled around the ungainly craft. She twisted her head to look at the mission clock, the intense shaking making even this simple task seem herculean. Not even close to max-Q. The acceleration was steadily building, making the unhealed bones in her arms ache.

She could feel the craft lurching and jolting as stages from the outer ring of the first stage burned out, and then an immense kick at the base of her spine as the next ring fired. The g-forces from the lightened craft spiked to new levels each time the vessel staged. She'd expected things to calm down after max-Q but the noise and vibrations just kept on increasing. And just when she thought it couldn't get any more intense the inner ring burned out. By this stage her spacecraft was well past max-Q and for a few seconds the only sound was the hum of the rudimentary life support systems. Jadra almost jumped out of her skin when the pyrotechnic bolts attaching her little capsule and its heat shield to the remaining boosters fired with a loud clunk. With the sounds of the engines gone, she realised how much attention she'd been paying to every crackle and bang in fear that it was the sign of an impending fireball.

 

[KSK]

Not sure how I missed the last chapter but one! That wasn't the Kolumbiad launch site by any chance?

[peadar1987]

On 04/03/2018 at 8:07 AM, KSK said:

Not sure how I missed the last chapter but one! That wasn't the Kolumbiad launch site by any chance?

Something like that. The Kerbals' attempts to produce Kavorite have been unsuccessful so far

[peadar1987]

As Jadra's capsule was reaching the top of its arc through space above the Tespen Sea, the SRBs on Matrick's craft were just burning out. When the separators fired and the empty casings fell away to the sides the crushing acceleration died off and was replaced by a gentle push against his back. The spot of light falling on the capsule wall from the small window slowly crept towards the bulkhead as the rocket flew deeper into its gravity turn. A surprisingly gentle clunk signified the second stage dropping away, and after a few seconds of weightlessness, the push in Matrick's back returned. By the time the final stage had burned out, it only took one glance at the instrument panel to confirm that the trajectory of his capsule would take it over the horizon and beyond.

"Mission Control, this is Shadevine 1. We have achieved orbit. All systems are green."

From the other end of the line there was only silence.

 

[peadar1987]

The Royal Palace of Nitori was lavish to the point of being vulgar, the perfect location for another drinks-reception-come-press-conference. Set on an ancient volcanic plug at the heart of the city of the same name, it towered above the narrow streets and townhouses of the old walled city, and the apartment blocks of the lower classes surrounding that. Jadra pulled up in the courtyard in a brand new, cherry red sportscar, gifted to her after her successful mission to space. At first she had tried to turn it down, embarrassed. It was then explained to her that the car wasn't for her benefit, it was a symbol to show what could happen to ambitious peasant farmers if they did what they were told, and that she would be seen driving it to public events if she knew what was good for her. She'd discovered that once she looked past the ostentatiousness of the car, she could appreciate it as a piece of engineering, and when she opened it up on the winding roads back to the Estate where she grew up, it was very fun to drive.

She revved the engine one last time, enjoying the sound of the eight cylinders echoing off the walls of the building, before handing the keys to a uniformed Kerbal to park in one of the bays below the palace. Flashbulbs popped as the as she walked along the red carpet into the reception room. Giant mirrors on the walls reflected the crowds of reporters waiting to hear her story.

She walked o the front of the room, and after a short introduction from her public relations attachée, an ever present almost since her feet had first touched the ground, she began to speak. She described the acceleration of the rocket, the juddering of every rivet, the feeling as each ring staged. She'd been told she'd been received extremely well, the lower classes identifying with the way she spoke and acted, and the upper classes viewing her as a curiosity. She was always nervous standing up at these functions, but as she got into her stride, the nerves slowly eased. As she painted the picture of her capsule arcing slowly over the Tespen Sea, the light shining off the water and the clouds like delicate paint strokes far below her, she thought how strange it was that she, who could barely summon up the courage to speak at a family dinner, had a room of the most high-profile reporters and dignitaries in the country hanging on her every word. As she finished talking them through the reentry, the gradually increasing g-force, the jerk of the parachute opening, after an endless second of terror after deployment, and the surprisingly soft landing on marshy ground, the room stood and applauded her, as she stood awkwardly, soaking it all up.

Next came the questions. The usual pre-vetted stuff about how proud she must be, what a great achievement it was for the nation, and so on. Jadra's attachée picking out reporters from the crowd with a flick of her pen.

As she was answering a routine question about how it felt to be weightless, a lanky Kerbal at the back of the room, wearing glasses and a brown sweater cut across her.

"How does it feel to only have been the second Kerbal in space?"

Jadra stopped, unsure of how to respond. As she opened her mouth to speak, the Kerbal was grabbed by a security guard, and began to be dragged towards the door. He wrestled free for a second, and shouted:

"Was it worth it? All those Kerbals who died in the Javelin accident? Were their lives worth it Jadra?!"

He grunted in pain as the security guard clubbed him with his baton, before dragging him out through the door.

"Sorry Jadra", whispered her attachée, "One of the 'reporters' from some underground rag. I have no idea how he got in here, but I intend to find out. Don't worry, it won't happen again."

She then turned to address the room.

"My apologies, but Jadra has several extremely important functions to attend to this evening, as I am sure you will understand, now, if you would like to follow me through to the West Ballrom, you will be served with refreshments and have the chance to meet some of the military team responsible for the space program"

The reporters and dignitaries filed out through a giant set of gilded double doors, and Jadra was left on her own in the reception room, looking at a hundred reflections of herself in the wall mirrors.