Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) Read Online Free

the morning’s reports, a list of numbers: 113 incoming messages, 38 incident reports, 17 points of interest, and one birthday coming up. He was going to be 57. That wasn’t in his list, but he added it in anyway. He’d have to contend with it later.
    Mancuso grimaced. It was a pain in the ass measuring human birthdays in Earth years now that they were on Mars. Keeping track of the days on Earth, the days on Mars. Everybody was on two clocks. It sounded a lot more impressive than the thirty years he’d have if he reckoned it by local timekeeping like some of the new generation had started doing. Then again, what he wouldn’t give to be thirty again. Might even do a couple of things different if he were.
    He broke out of his train of thought and focused on the screen in front of him. Start with the incident reports, as usual. He opened the first one, subject: STN PWR FLUCTUATION AT 0612, 2% VAR. Probably dust on the collectors or a bad connector on one of the lines. He typed up a message requesting an engineer take a look at it. That’d mean probably a couple of hours downtime on the collectors and a switch over to battery power. Next subject: STN DOCKING SEAL FAIL, BAY 5. He was pretty sure if he looked back through the logs, he’d find the Terror was docked in Bay 5 last. Her skipper had a bad habit of letting the auto locks disengage instead of doing a manual unlock and some of them were pretty sticky at their great age.
    Mancuso sighed. The station was only fifteen years older than he was when it was finally completed and they were both falling apart. They were both getting too old for this. He flagged it for engineering to take a look.
    He felt a twinge in his chest and rubbed the muscle absent-mindedly. He remembered the message waiting in his inbox from his doctor again. The subject line said it all. “Test results.” He’d been ignoring the request to talk about these for a week now. No point in ruining a good day.
    Skimming. Twelve requests for new parts. Three new personnel requests. Two leave requests. Forward… Forward…
    He started looking over Olympus and Watchtower’s points of interest. His favorite part of the morning. Looked like three possible M-type rocks coming into range for the next cycle. He tagged them. Five silicates, not interesting, they rarely were. Remnants of rocky asteroids or blasted-off chunks of planet battered into sand. Funny. There was an unknown in the list but no detail. He wondered if there was a bug in Watchtower’s programming.
    Mancuso looked at the board again. Making Time had begun her descent chasing Calypso. Pandora had a head-start and would be ready to start deceleration burns in a couple of days. Good ships those. Good crews. They made his life a hell of a lot easier, that was certain. All he really had to do was keep the station running and occasionally pick a new rock for them to go dig into. Not a bad life, all told.
    Fifty years the Lighthouse had been keeping track of the Martian space fleet. It bookended all their travels to and from space – a temporary stop-over on their way to the asteroid belt. Mancuso and his crew served to keep those ships running. He felt like it was the most important job in the colony. And the station was getting old. All the pieces they’d added onto it over the years were breaking down and wearing out. Their job was to keep it running in its orbit around Mars.
    Keep the lights on.
    “Sir? Incoming message from Pandora.” Jill Sanchez informed him from the communications station, interrupting his reverie.
    He turned to her. “Put it up.”
    The speakers crackled with the incoming transmission. “Control, this is MSS13 Pandora checking in. We have cut power to engines and are drifting into our deceleration burn scheduled in 48 hours.” Captain Mike Bruno’s voice on the speaker. “We’re looking for some quality entertainment during this quiet window which we will pay for with a big heavy load of metal. Over.”
    Jill