AN: I wite for Red vs Blue now! This is a small Space Program!AU for Kimbalina, SouthCT and Texsis with some added characters and maybe intrigue later on with Aiden Price. Feel free to buy me a coffee as a tip at /A6851PYT
Fly Me To The Moon - Chapter 1
Telemetry and Geometry Make For Complex Bedfellows
"Command, this is Commander Miller, we're looking golden on the pre-flight checks, all systems are a-go up here." Commander Carol Miller, or as her team referred to her - Carolina - reported from the command module of the gargantuan rocket, the gyroscopes working perfectly so she didn't have to look up the entire time. She was not yet wearing the fishbowl on a helmet, it was still days before the actual launch, and yet still Carolina was scared beyond belief. Of course, she was, this mission wasn't just hers, it was Kimball's too; her girlfriend, and she was on the mission too.
They'd joined the program as different people but as the training had been ramped up, and it looked like Houston wanted to sponsor another mission, after so long of no manned space travel outside of rotation missions to and from the ISS, Vanessa Kimball and Carol Miller had grown so close. The only possible destination was engagement.
There was a slight pause between Carol reporting and the command tower responding. "Uh… Roger that Commander, we're showing green lights across the board here." The stiff voice of Wash came across the comm - Administrator Washington Jeffers.
"Solid copy Command, running atmospheric and emissions tests now," Carol reported back, flipping a certain number of flips and switches and levers too, her mind wandering across planar realms and spatial time, cross bridges back to the dear past months ago in the program, before Houston brought the news to the team.
There were a few of them - Commander Carol 'Carolina' Miller, Colonel Vanessa Kimball, Special Officer Natasha 'South' Dakota, Science Officer Connie 'Connecticut' Tut as well as Supplementary Doctor Allison 'Texas' Church. All women, which was almost unheard of, it was a big opportunity for Houston and for the whole program. To man a mission to the moon once again, after decades of man not setting foot there, with the whole rocket and command module staffed entirely by a female crew. It was unprecedented and such an amazing opportunity. But all Carol could think about as she was sat in her seat, which was the one in front, and next to her second-in-command and fiance Vanessa. In a few short days, they'd be sat next to each other for the final countdown before lift-off, and their long three-day mission from ignition to touchdown. Three days in the same capsule, next to her beloved.
For Commander Carol, it sounded like the perfect break for her and Kimball, filled with nothing but science, routine and horrible space rations with a sprinkling of zero gravity. Kimball however, hated the lack of gravity. She was not a massive fan of being cramped in the command capsule with nothing to keep her stuck to her chair but the harness around her body.
"Emissions look green, Commander. Atmo is nominal, and the weather forecast just came through for the week, you're gonna be disappointed," Wash informed her as the results from her tests came through to the central command building. The emissions tests were good, the rocket and associated boosters looking very efficient with the Delta-V readings matching what estimations had them at. Of course like every rocket, no matter how many tests, there was only one time going through the atmosphere. It was still all theory at the moment and would be until the thing took off.
"Let me guess… Sunny in Texas?" Carol asked as she stayed seated and checked all the instruments around the cabin dashboard. Hundreds upon hundreds of dials, levers, switches and knobs all around the main panel and scattered all the way back. It was cramped, it had to be, and a little bit cold without any of her fellow astronauts, but formality and protocol was absolutely everything, for if it wasn't, things could go wrong in any number of catastrophic ways.
She heard Wash laugh into the comm unit as she set up some more tests - cabin pressure, life support checks, CO2 scrubbing units and Oxygen supplementation units. It was all daily tests that needed to be checked, double checked and the reran all in the next day for weeks on end since the rocket had been assembled on the launch pad to when the colossal thing would execute its departure from the Earth and leave for the heavens.
"Sunshine in Texas, all surrounding states for what appears to be the next few weeks, sucks you're going to the moon huh?" Wash asked, chuckling down Carol's ear as she flipped switches and watched the readouts in the capsule change and alter. Sunshine all over the states and she was headed into space where the cold was unfathomable and the craft of the rocket was so volatile, any miscalculation would result in absolute death for herself and her friends. But still, the thrill of exploration and soaring a little closer to the stars than the others on Earth. She could live without a little sunshine if it meant she was taking a trip to Luna with Vanessa.
There would be so much more sun.
"I'm not fussed about the Sun, Wash. I'm more excited for the Moon, ya know?" She sassed him, smiling a little as she tweaked the instruments in front of her. "Are you seeing the same readings of cabin pressure over there? And what about the bleed from the ignition?" She asked, noticing some odd numbers with both.
Wash checked the readings he had on his end, making sure nothing was off and it was possibly a glitch. If it wasn't, it would either be insanely hard to recalibrate, or simple as anything.
"Cabin pressure is a smidge too high, we'll review it here and have it a go before the morning test. Bleed is expected, compensate Carolina," Wash instructed her with a clad-iron voice and stern directive. She did as he ordered and notched some more switches for the rocket and boosters to compensate for the mild expedited bleed from the engines below. After that all was fine, the cabin a little heavier than usual but nothing was moving and she was alone. She was fine, although had to take a breath just to level her head and assure herself she was okay. She thought of Vanessa again, her smiling face, those plump and ebony lips making her tanned face glow with an angelic beauty that made Carol's heart race like a hare. She always smiled a goofy and insanely embarrassed smile whenever Vanessa made her heart flutter so much, whether that be by flirting with her, embarrassing her or just being herself to the point where Carol began thinking about Vanessa so deeply and lovingly. Carol would admit herself that she could be very sentimental or downright overthinking at times.
The experiments and tests ran a little later again, deep into the evening before Carol was done with everything, theories so long and circumstantial she began thinking on a hypothetical plane. She was fairly exhausted by the end of it, all of the sitting and the running, waiting and relaying and reporting back to Command. At least she would not have to do it in the morning, on mission day minus two, only forty-eight hours before ignition and lift off. It began to run around the annals of her mind again, it was coming, faster and faster.
She was going to the moon, and Vanessa was going with her too.
Her cell phone rang just as she was walking from the changing locker rooms back to the barracks and astronaut housing. Since she was from the Navy, Carol was perfectly fine with a small bunk, but also happy when she could kick back for a weekend in the more spacious and civilian housing with Vanessa and the rest of the crew. They were the envy of the rest of the recruits.
"This is Commander Miller," Carol spoke into her cell phone upon answering it, very formal and very much in the same military protocol as she had always spoken since joining the Navy and then Houston. It was a habit she simply could not kick, not for the life of her, it was drilled into her mind.
The one on the other line was, what sounded like, a smaller and younger woman, probably a go between herself and someone trying to place a call from another country. "Commander Miller, this is NASA Operator Jenkins, there seems to be someone trying to place a call to you from Orbit, would you like to accept the charge and the call?" The young and prompt woman asked her, and from the information, Carol determined that it could only be one person.
York.
"Yeah, I'll accept the charges, put him through Jenkins," Carol instructed the woman, and there came a static silence with some beeps, followed by a quick thud of pitch and the switching of frequencies and lines. It was the standard sounds from flipping between calling from Earth and then space. York always made Carol his only call from ISS. "Well look who decided to catch me on my way home from work, am I still the only reason you have a phone, York?" Carol asked, instantly smiling from teasing her friend.
York's rugged and carpet-like voice was the same as always, and the line and background noise non-existent. It was so clean, and then again, he was thousands of miles above her and floating, infinitely suspended in no gravity at all in the combs and corridors of the International Space Station. He was her oldest and longest friend, had been since even elementary school, and even when he had to move to New York, as part of a different college program when Carol joined the Navy, they still did not part, and wouldn't even if he was far up there in space constantly and she was down on Earth, ready to lead the first manned mission to the moon in so long.
He laughed and chuckled at her smiling remark, he could tell she was smiling just by the light overture of her smoky and elegant voice. "You still keep that M9 under your pillow just in case?" He asked, smiling back at her as he looked through the viewport on the station, looking all the way down through the cloud layer and to the green and yellow of the states. "How's my favourite commander of the first all-female mission to Luna?" He swaggered, very suave and yet comforting, like an elder brother or even uncle at a stretch. That was how she had always seen him, as a slightly elder brother despite herself being a few more months older than him anyway.
It was not that she was any kind of immature. For being in her early thirties she acted as if she had already died once and led another life. But York was always slightly more so calmer and unphased by anything than her. He was just that little clearer in his speech and how he spoke like nothing was ever incomplete or confusing to him - he could understand anything he ever saw or anyone ever said to him. York was the type of man who would be permanently listening to old school driving rock, bands like The Eagles and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He was the calmest of respectful men.
And Carol really admired him and adored him for it, it made him such a man that she could keep him close at an arm's distance at all times and not have to constantly refrain from insulting him like other men - mostly jackasses - she'd met her entire life. Her father was the worst. Still, she smiled at his voice, but then rolled her head back and forth at the mention of the mission.
"Please, do not hang that over me for my entire life okay? It's just a mission, and it's not even the first time I've been to space, York," she chastised him, groaning into the phone and loosely keeping her legs placing one in front of the other. She had slowed far down in walking back to the apartments but she was gently coasting there. The sun was nearly completely gone and the dark of the evening dusk was approaching, and she liked the cool breeze brushing past her auburn ginger hair, a golden copper glinting in the last dregs of shine coming from the horizon.
It wasn't even the first time she was going to space. Not at all, she'd already been on three missions before, even served a two-month rotation in York's place, as a favour when he was almost dying from pneumonia from a vacation gone wrong, but she was still nervous about it. Not that it was the first manned mission to Luna in decades, and not that she was in command, not that Wash was their handler and he hadn't overseen a manned mission beyond low orbit before. She was nervous because it was still Connie and Natasha's first mission in a capsule. York knew this, but he would never call her out like that. It was not his job or his responsibility to psychoanalyse her like that. He was her confidant, her friend, not a shrink.
"Yeah but come on, you'll be on the wall for this, have your own plaque imprinted in gold, just like Armstrong, and Aldrin. You'll be a pioneer Carol, you'll have been to the freaking moon!" He called at her as if it were her birthday, and yet she was completely unphased as the breeze swept her hair behind her again.
She had not been bothered by the prospect of being immortalised as a Luna explorer even before she was picked to lead the mission. It was not something that got her rocket booster going. She just wanted to leave the atmosphere again, and explore the stars. If it were Mars, that might have been fair game, but not Luna. Luna was relatively normal for what she deemed as spatial exploration.
"Actually I think the plaques are only bronze now, or maybe even onyx, they asked us what we wanted on a sheet if we actually make it back. Nessa asked for solid granite, and Connie and Nat both picked for silver," Carol told him, failing to mention herself, ever modest as she was.
"And what did you ask for? Come on I know you, Carol… Lemme guess… Did you ask for granite too? To be matching with Kimball?" York asked, a little hurriedly, trying to coax her into talking about herself, which she almost never did. She was far too modest border lining on annoying to some people, which didn't allow her to have many close friends, not really.
She was shaking her head. "Actually I asked for tungsten, it's got the highest melting point so there's not much that'll get rid of it," she chuckled to herself like the nerd York always called her.
He was chuckling too. "You freaking nerd, Carol, you'll never change will you?" York asked, his laughter fading to a light step and bounce in his speech. She was nearing the door to the apartments when they had found a small and fluffy silence between themselves. She would never ask him about work, for Carol both knew what life was like up in the ISS and she knew that York absolutely hated speaking about it. He found the routine comfortable but also boring as hell and would constantly count down the days before he was back with his wife in the city for his shore leave.
"Well, I should get back to it Carol, you keep safe until next month ya hear now?" York asked her in his mildly rural accent that was leaking through; every now and then he would slip into his backyard gruff and redneck twang, only ever for her, his wife and his kids though. It was enough to make her smile as she got in the elevator, her legs a little too tired to carry her up the stairs.
Carol laughed, getting out of the elevator and saying her goodbyes while she edged closer to her own door. "I'll be safe York, you make sure you call Tricia, yeah? And make sure you don't go stir crazy up there, I'll have Wyoming smuggle a Gameboy on his next rotation when he swaps with Hampshire."
"Ya better make sure ya send up Silver and Ruby then okay?" He asked adamantly. He would not stand for anything less than his two favourite Pokemon games.
"Sure, now get back to it, good luck, York," Carol bid him farewell, and after he reiterated her own departing words, she ended the call, and she was at the door.
Carol could hear Nessa inside, with some music coming from the stereo system she had in the kitchen area. From the smell coming from under the door, it seemed that she was making herself something - spicy by the smell, possibly spaghetti or something otherwise as spicy and tomato smell. She stayed a moment, trying to work it out, and then listening to Vanessa sing to the suave and funk of Bowie. She loved him, loved his work and loved the oddity of his songs. But it was not his more sombre melodies. It was upbeat and she could imagine Kimball shaking her hips in a stark dance as she stirred the sauce she was whipping up. Kimball was singing along too, of course, she was, it was some of the only free time she had, the three or so hours that was not routine to the base in the evening from seven to ten, after that they would sleep to be up as early as possible the next day. For Carol and her team, it was already as informal as possible since they were on mission clocks and ready to go in an emergency if the mission needed a rapid ignition. But they liked it, loved the three hours they would have together to be relaxed.
"You know, I know you're at the door Carol, come on and get some food you lump!" Nessa called to her through the door.
Instinctively, Carol burst through the door and into the hall, kicking her feet off as she smiled. "I am not a lump!" She called back to her fiance as she stirred the sauce in the pot over the stove, a blue glove covering her hand and no apron at all covering her. She was in her standard issue NASA shirt and some booty shorts that she often wore to let her thighs breathe. She was tanned, ebony skinned and had a few scars over her arms and her legs from experiences never spoken about out of trust. She was standing with her leg out a bit, her bare toes touching the floor as she stirred, and her plump lips smiled at Carol with a beautiful and loving feeling, as if she was silently and mentally kissing Carol a dozen times in her mind. "Now there's a scene I could get used to looking at you know," Carol grinned as she gazed at Nessa cooking away. They didn't have long, long until they'd be seated in that capsule and blasting into the air at possibly faster than the speed of sound.
"Well don't get used to it honey, don't make me break out these guns to shoot ya down!" Kimball taunting, taking her hand off of the pot and flexing her bare bicep for Carol, almost ripping the flesh from the sheer density and the area of muscle underneath.
Carol, like the gay nerd everyone knew her to be, feigned a bullet to the chest and fell to her knees, sprawling all over the kitchen floor until she made it to Kimball's feet, which she cuddled closely like a kitten. "What are you doing Carol?" Vanessa asked, very confused herself as to what her girlfriend was trying to do.
"Shhhh, these legs must not be disturbed, they belong in a gallery…" Carol teased, kissing her way up the ebony lengths of the leg to Kimball's thigh and then up right to her shoulders and then her collarbone until Carol was kissing her neck. "So, what's for dinner?"
"Well I was gonna have a simple bolognese, but I suppose I could share if you were really hungry," Nessa began, turned herself around in Carol's arms and putting her lips to Carol's ear. "Then after that maybe I could be dessert…"