Southern Cross by Windstar

Chapter Twelve
Southern Cross hung in the darkness of space. Her hundred and nine brothers and sisters hung
besides her. Between them, huddled around the larger Guardian ships like children, were the
cruisers and destroyers. Once in a while, a squadron of fighters would cautiously move further
out of the system on a scouting run then hurriedly they would return to their mother ships.
Their only connection with Earth and Mars were the cargo ships, which came and went every
day. The large cargo ships would slip through the sensor net, coasting and silent. Unload their
cargo of perishables, food, spare parts, and more recently graduated recruits. Then they would
turn around, slide back through the net, and power up for the voyage back to Mars or even Luna.
For a week that was the routine. The newly formed human Home Fleet stayed silent. Everything
that was non-essential was powered down as all of the ships did their best to imitate a hole in
space.
Julie hoped it wouldn't last much longer. With their fusion power plants on standby, none of the
ships could power up their gravitic drives, even if they wanted to. The human watched as a
passing Ensign misjudged his trajectory and hit a bulkhead instead of going out the hatch. He
grinned sheepishly at her stare and used his magnetic boots instead of floating.
No gravitic drives, no gravity on the ships. God, I really didn't want to learn all the fun that
being without gravity meant. Taking a shower, or going to the bathroom for that matter, is really
annoying.
Annoying wasn't quite the word she'd been searching for. Impossible worked well for taking a
shower, and aggravating worked even better for going to the bathroom. There were just some
things that were never meant to be done in Zero-G.
A week in Zero-G was starting to affect everyone, despite her Chief Medical Officer's best
efforts. The body, as all astronauts had learned, was never meant to function without the constant
pull of gravity. Muscles weekend, bone mass was lost. In some cases it became serious enough
that people could hardly function at all when they returned to a normal gravity. Those however
were the long-term effects; it was the short term Julie was worried about.
"Ma'am, we've had two more incidents."
At least, Julie hoped she wasn't going to have to worry about the long-term effects. Emie, where
are you?
"What happened now, Clarice?"
"A weapons tech on deck five caused an airlock to cycle accidentally. He nearly caused a
depressurization of the entire section. An engineer in life support vented twenty five liters of
water before she could correct the mistake."