Well, I didn't want to keep you all waiting, so I decided to upload another chapter sooner than I did last time! Hope you aren't finding any of this too improbable or boring. If there's anything you'd rather me do different, don't hesitate to let me know! Anyways, enjoy the story!
Arbiter had lifted off from the launch pad, and was now ascending into the Eastward roll.
"Houston now controlling the roll of Arbiter on its course heading Northeast from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral toward a two-hundred-and-thirty mile rendezvous with the space station." the announcer said.
Everyone watching applauded in triumph... unaware of what was going on inside of the Shuttle's payload bay...
(XXXX)
The extreme vibration and roar of the Shuttle's engine was putting Kyle, Lyra, and Jan all on edge, given that they had no restraining harnesses, and were forced to lay on the aft side of the cargo module as they ascended.
"Wh-what's gonna happen...!?" Lyra asked.
"We're launched up by a controlled explosion, and are currently accelerating to seventeen-thousand miles per hours, where we will be two-hundred-and-thirty miles above the planet's surface!" Kyle said.
The three exchanged nervous glances with each other after processing what Kyle just said, all before looking up at the closed hatch forward relative to them.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH...!" all three shouted.
(XXXX)
The crew of Arbiter were all anticipating getting into orbit. They had been training their entire lives for this mission, and were eager to be the crew for the next Expedition. They assumed everything was normal... up until they received a transmission from Mission Control.
"Arbiter, this is Houston." came the voice of the Flight Director.
The Mission Commander enabled his in-suit transceiver.
"Copy, Houston. Go ahead." he said.
"Uh..." the Flight Director said. "...we appear to have detected a miscalculation in the weight capacity of the habitat payload. The roll is off-kilter by a fraction of a degree."
"Copy, Houston. Should we abort flight?" the Mission Commander asked.
"Negative, Arbiter." the Flight Director said. "We're gonna boost the engine output by roughly five percent to compensate, and you should stay on course for the ISS."
"Copy, Houston. Over and out." The Mission Commander said, cutting off his transceiver just before he sighed. "Just leave it to those new boys in engineering to overlook a weight issue..."
(XXXX)
"I'M GONNA DIE! I'M GONNA DIE!" Kyle shouted.
"Kyle, settle down!" Jan shouted over the roar of the Arbiter's engine.
Kyle was fighting back strong nausea due to the heavy G-forces he was experiencing.
"I'm gonna throw up, and then I'm gonna DIE!" Kyle shouted again.
"What are you, some kind of nut?" Lyra asked.
"Technically, an astro-nut!" Kyle answered.
"Kyle, we are NOT going to die!" Jan said.
"WHAT IF THIS IS CHALLENGER ALL OVER AGAIN!?" Kyle shouted.
"KYLE! Listen to me!" Jan said. "Arbiter is not going to suffer the same fate as Challenger! Just calm down!"
"Okay... okay..." Kyle said.
"Just breathe!" Jan said.
Kyle took some deep breaths... but then he stopped and covered his mouth as his eyes went wide.
"What am I doing!? I'm using up all the oxygen!" he said.
(XXXX)
At T-plus two-and-a-quarter minutes, the SRBs separated from the Shuttle, falling into the ocean as they burned out, leaving Arbiter to reach orbital velocity by its main engines. At T-plus eight-and-three-quarter minutes, the external fuel tank was depleted, and was detached to simply burn up in the atmosphere upon reentry. After a final course adjustment, the Shuttle was in low-earth orbit.
Still, it was going to take them quite a while to make it to the space station. Several hours in fact.
(XXXX)
Kyle, Lyra, and Jan were no longer bound by the force of gravity, and were floating about the cargo module... but they were not going to open the hatch.
"We can't let the astronauts find us!" Kyle said.
"Why not?" Lyra asked.
"I don't know about you two, but I do not want us to go down in history as the first stowaways on a space mission!" Kyle said.
He could not even begin to imagine what sort of penalty would be given for trespassing onto the Shuttle and the International Space Station. However, he did happen to know something that could be done about it... something Lyra had done a little while ago...
"Lyra! Do you think you could..." Kyle trailed off.
"What?" Lyra asked, tilting her head.
"...could you turn us invisible? And possibly jump time ahead?" Kyle finished.
"...Why would I do that?" Lyra asked.
Kyle sighed. "Do I really need to spell it out? Invisible so they don't catch us, and speed time because... it's gonna take six hours for us to make it to the ISS, and that doesn't include the time it'll take to dock to the damn thing..."
Lyra sighed herself.
"Okay... I can do this..." she said.
With that, her eyes began to glow amber as she charged her magic. She hoped that she would not make the same mistakes over again, like with her first attempt. With a bright flash... they all became transparent with a purplish aura surrounding them.
"Did it work?" Jan asked, looking at herself. "I can still see myself... and you two..."
Kyle looked around the cargo for a mirror, and he was lucky enough to find one. He peered into it... but his reflection did not.
"It's worked!" he said. "Nice one, Lyra!"
"Alright!" Lyra said triumphantly. "Now... just fast-forward to six hours from now..."
She performed yet another spell... and they were all forced into the side of the module, feeling themselves being pulled to the back yet again.
"...Are we spinning?" Lyra asked.
"Yeah." Kyle said. "For some reason, they like to spin the Shuttle around pitchwise while it's up here..."
They waited around for a little bit. It was about ten minutes to the three in the cargo bay, but eventually, the rolling stopped, and they heard something bump the Shuttle. Time had slowed back down to normal by then.
"I think it's been six hours." Lyra said.
"We've docked! We need to wait for the new crew to board now." Kyle said.
After a little while... the hatch began to open from the other side. All three invisible stowaways went quiet as mice. A NASA astronaut was preparing to enter the cargo bay to begin transferring equipment and supplies into the space station. Kyle was motioning to Jan and Lyra to move around and avoid him, which was difficult in a microgravity environment.
Despite the astronaut hearing some strange movement, he just brushed it off as him hearing things, and the three made their way into the Shuttle's main crew quarters.
"Okay, once we're on the station, we'll be in the Harmony module, commonly known as Node II." Kyle whispered over the onboard fans.
He knew the layout of the ISS quite well after having learned about it in Astronomy class back in high school. They made it through the docking airlock onto the space station, where they were in Node II right away.
"Okay, now what?" Jan asked.
"Let's see..." Kyle said, looking around the station. "...on the port side is Kibo, the JAXA laboratory... starboard is Columbus the ESA lab... zenith is the Centrifuge Accommodations Module... and nadir is the secondary logistic module..."
"So... where do we go?" Lyra asked.
"We need to go aft, into the station." Kyle said. "We'll make our way through the US lab, Destiny, and head for Tranquility, or Node III on the starboard side of the station. From there, we can look through the Cupola window to see what our options are to get out of here."
With that, the three of them made their way through the Destiny module, being careful to avoid bumping any equipment, especially around the astronauts who were working on science experiments in the area. But they were able to get by unnoticed. They made it to Unity and Kyle led the way into Node III. On the way to the Cupola, Lyra and Jan both stopped to look at something in a large white box to their right.
"What's this thing? Is it some kind of toilet?" Jan asked.
"Yeah." Kyle said. "The toilets up here, and the one on the Shuttle, work a little differently than ones on Earth; they use fan-powered suction to... keep things going in the right direction."
Lyra pursed her lips. "...That's disgusting."
"Okay, let's get to the Cupola." Kyle said. "We can't waste any time up here."
They made their way to the end of the module, and Kyle led them directly nadir into the seven-pane window module. Through it was the view of Earth directly nadir to the station, as well as the many modules and four of the eight ITS solar arrays on the main truss structure, which provided electrical power to the station.
"Wow!" Jan said. "It's like a glass-bottom boat!"
All of them were inverted relative to the space station so they could get a look through the Cupola at the spacecrafts docked to the ISS.
"We'll need to find a spacecraft that can withstand atmospheric reentry and get us back to the ground." Kyle said, looking around the nadir side of the space station.
"So, how can we get back home?" Lyra asked.
Just as she asked... Kyle happened to spot a solution.
"Right there." Kyle said, pointing to a docked spacecraft. "We need to take that Russian spacecraft, the Soyuz, to get back to Earth. Conveniently enough, it can hold up to three cosmonauts."
"Oh." Lyra said, looking. "What about that other one?"
Kyle looked to see that she was pointing to another spacecraft docked further back. He shook his head.
"That's a Progress. It's used to bring cargo to the space station, and is filled with trash to burn up in the atmosphere. It has no heat shield like the Soyuz." Kyle said.
"Have you ever even operated a Soyuz?" Jan asked.
"Well... just simulators." Kyle said.
"How did you do?" Lyra asked.
Kyle flattened his lips against each other. "...Nine times out of ten, I crashed it."
Lyra's eyes went "down" into Node III. "That's not very reassuring..."
"But," Kyle began. "that was before I learned the math behind it. If I remember the angle of descent, as well as the roll capability of the Soyuz... I think I can get us back down to Florida!"
"You sure about this, Kyle?" Jan asked. "Wouldn't we be stranding other astronauts up here by taking that thing?"
"There's another Soyuz docked to the aft side of the Zvezda module, and the one we will be taking is berthed to the Rassvet laboratory on the nadir port of the Zarya FGB. The Progress cargo spacecraft is berthed to Multipurpose Laboratory Module Nauka, nadir to Zvezda and the Science Power Platform." Kyle said.
"Okay..." Lyra said. "...we're gonna do this?"
Kyle narrowed his eyes at his invisible wife with a confident smile.
"...We're gonna do this!" he said.
So, the three of them quickly left the Cupola to go back the way they were going. The Habitation Module, berthed on the aft side of Node III, had a few astronauts in it, so they had to keep quiet.
"The Soyuz we'll take is the one we saw from the Cupola, berthed to Rassvet. It will be the quickest one to take down to Earth. I'm sure NASA will agree to let the cosmonauts come down on either Arbiter, Orion, or the Dream Chaser lifeboat currently docked to the station." Kyle whispered as they made their way from Unity into Zarya.
There was a single cosmonaut in the first Russian module, inspecting some cargo from the looks of it, but he paid no mind to them... since they were invisible. They descended into Rassvet and into the Soyuz orbital module. There were various cables and air hoses in the spacecraft. They would have to be disconnected to close the hatch and detach from the station.
"Well... let's get to work detaching everything." Kyle said. "And let's hope none of the crew notices everything disconnecting 'by itself'..."
So, they all started to pull out the wires from the Soyuz, and some had to be disconnected from the ISS itself, since they were hardwired into the Orbital Module of the spacecraft. A couple of crew members passed by above them on the other side of Rassvet, but none of them noticed what was going on nadir to them. After a good fifteen minutes, they had detached all peripherals from the Soyuz, and were ready to began their descent.
"We're gonna need to fire off an engine burn at the one-eighty mark of the planet where Florida would be. Lucky for us, the station is currently in that rough path. All we need to do is adjust our course slightly to end up where we need." Kyle said.
"Won't NASA notice us? Will they detect us or something?" Jan asked.
"Well..." Kyle began. "...upon the initial descent, we'll go into a temporary 'blackout period', where Mission Control and the ISS will lose telemetry with us. It's probably nighttime in America now, so even if Houston did dispatch helicopters, it would be a while before they could locate us. And by then, Lyra will use her magic to destroy the inside of this thing to erase all evidence of our existence, and we'll be long gone."
"Okay... sounds like this is gonna be pretty tricky." Lyra said.
"Better tricky than impossible, right?" Kyle responded. "Okay, now we need to close the hatch on both the station and the spacecraft... and we'll need to put on the Sokol space suits in this thing to protect us during reentry from anything that could happen during our descent."
With that, Kyle himself stuck his upper half outside of the Soyuz one final time to close the hatch to the International Space Station, separating the orbital structure from the spacecraft. Lyra then used her psychic ability to visualize the hatch's locking mechanism, and used her telekinesis to close it off from the other side. Then, Kyle got to work on closing the Soyuz's own respective hatch, making sure to fully seal it in order to avoid accidental decompression.
Despite the space they were in being very confined and claustrophobic, they managed to slip into the space suits. To each other, they looked like ghosts in fully-solid suits, and they knew that, to anyone else, they would just look like space suits moving around on their own. The suits were not a perfect fit, but it was adequate enough. Then, one by one, they all got into the Descent Module, but it took a bit of time for them to do so.
"Geez... this is as cramped as my first car's back seats!" Jan remarked through her helmet's comlink.
It took a while, but they all somehow managed to get in. Jan and Lyra were on the two peripheral seats, while Kyle took the middle seat. He closed and sealed the hatch to the Orbital Module, and though difficult due to his gloved fingers, he pulled out the manual for the Soyuz, turning to the English section on how to operate it. The control panel had Russian text on it, so without the manual, they would likely not be able to operate it.
"Okay... manual undocking, manual undocking..." Kyle muttered to himself, looking through the English table of contents.
He pressed the red button on the upper corner of the panel, which started up the Soyuz, and then, looking carefully at the procedure for a manually-controlled descent procedure, began to press the buttons in a specific pattern.
"Okay... let's hope this works..." Kyle said, pressing the final button.
On the screen in front of him, a countdown of ninety seconds began, and according to the instruction manual, that means he did it right, and it was now counting down to separation.
"Good, good..." Kyle said. "...we're outta here!"
"Good job, Kyle!" Jan said.
(XXXX)
An ESA astronaut was going about the space station and heading aft to get some equipment from the Russian segment of the station. But, as she was heading into Zarya... she happened to look nadir and notice that the Soyuz hatch was shut.
Below is a link to what the ISS looks like in the universe of this story; NASA and the world space agencies have a larger budget in this universe. So, hope this chapter was a good one for you all, and I'll continue to deliver! See you all later! Keep holding on...
upload wikimedia org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/ISS_solar_arrays jpg (replace all " "s with "."s)