Starbound Interview with Lucinda Margaret K.

Transcript of an interview with the Gliese colonisation mission primary Pilot/Navigator from the United Nations Space Agency internal information channel Starbound on 1st August 2106.

Interviewer: Lucy, thank you very much for agreeing to join us on Starbound. We're very excited to have you here.

Lucy: Well, thank you very much. It's both an honour and a privilege.

Interviewer: Tell us a little about your background and family. Where were you born and how did you come to be an UNSA officer.

Lucy: I was born in Eurabian state of Northumbria in 2081. My father was a judge and a man of very fixed ideas regarding his childrens' scholastic prowess. All three of my brothers are borderline retarded and were therefore a profound disappointment to him in that regard. They all ended up in the army, obviously, but I went to boarding school were it transpired I had a modest talent for mathematics. Honestly, all three of them really are quite stupid. Can I say hello to them?

Interviewer: Er, that's great... And how did your UNSA career start?

Lucy: When I was 14, so that would have been 2095, my school recommended that I attempt the UNSA selection board. I did the preliminary aptitude and psychometric tests then I travelled to the UNSA Academy in Baikonur for the simulations and socialisation evaluations.

Interviewer: And you were accepted?

Lucy: Not immediately. I was rejected on the basis that I didn't respond in a positive manner to authority and would not take direction or follow process. So I thought that was that. However, a few months later they were having trouble getting candidates who could hack the requirements of the Pilot/Navigator track so they went to the bottom of the rejects pile and there I was.

Interviewer: How long did you spend at Baikonur?

Lucy: About five years, then I moved to flight training at the facility on Deimos. About four years ago I was assigned to the first Gliese flight as Pilot/Navigator.

Interviewer: What will the duties of the Pilot/Navigator be on the flight?

Lucy: I will do the orbital maneuvering of the colonisation ship, the Integral, at departure and arrival. I'll manage the reorientation of the ship from the accelerative to decelerative phases and execute the atmospheric entry and landing of the cargo containers. Finally, I'll fly the landers to the surface.

Interviewer: That all sounds very challenging. You must have moments of doubt and fear?

Lucy: No, I don't. This is a dangerous business and if I ever entertained doubts or fears I would have been killed ten times over by now.

Interviewer: Thank you very much, Lucy, for a fascinating discussion.

Lucy: Thank you.

Interviewer: Make sure you join us next time for an interview with Doctor Rafferty, the Integral's Flight Surgeon.

Lucy: You don't want to do that. She swears like a fucking docker.

Two Toes

Two Toes had got his the name the day the bunyip came out of the lake. It had heaved its ugly, steaming bulk from the dark brown waters and waddled over to Two Toes' favorite gum tree to rub its scaly hide against the trunk dislodging great skeins of bark. This was, in Two Toes' considered opinion, a diabolical infraction of the way of the world. 

He swooped, screaming, out of the gumtree, which was shaking violently under with the ministrations of the bunyip. Two Toes wasn't the biggest, strongest, quickest or cleverest galah in the forest but he was the bravest and most determined. Bravery and determination count for a lot in a fight with a bunyip. So Two Toes and the bunyip went at it in the sun dappled mud under the gum tree by the lake. They fought in a storm of feathers and drops of green bunyip blood. After a few extremely violent minutes the bunyip slunk back into the water lacking an eye. Two Toes had lost a toe from his right foot to the bunyip's snapping, serrated teeth reducing that foot's number of toes to the eponymous two. They both knew that the matter had been settled in favour of Two Toes and the bunyip never returned to the tree.

Two Toes was sat in the tree that was now indisputably his on the day the ghosts and their metal beasts came into the forest. His cousin White Wing, who was the dirtiest and foulest beaked galah in the forest, came flapping in to the tree.

“They’re ripping it all to shit, mate!” White Wing screamed while pointing one of his grimy wings to the cloud of dust and debris that was enveloping the forest on the Western shore of the lake.

“Who is?” Asked Two Toes.

“Ghosts and metal beasts!” White Wing’s shrieks reached an even more feverish tenor and he hopped from foot to foot on the branch in agitation.

“I’m going to take a look.” Two Toes exploded into the warm morning air with a crack of his wings. He’d heard tales of the ghosts and metal beasts from the sly and inquisitive magpies of the forest. They had been eating the forest up the coast for many years and it seemed they had finally made it to the forest around Two Toes’ lake.

He flew toward the dark brown cloud and roaring noises of the metal beasts. Settling on a branch next to the new clearing he watched the metal beasts spewing acrid black smoke as they ripped up and ate the trees. The ghosts who were smaller than the beasts scurried among and tended to them. Two Toes could not discern which was master and which was slave.

He was surprised when he was joined on his perch overlooking the devastation by a large and battle scarred magpie. Broken Beak was the leader of the magpies who held the forest on the western side of the lake as their undisputed fiefdom. Two Toes had some bitter and violent territorial disputes with Broken Break but they had now reached an accommodation based on guarded and mutual respect.

“I know what’s happening.” Broken Beak spoke in the usual magpie manner that left the audience in no doubt as to who held all the secrets in the forest. “The ghosts and the metal beasts are going to build a giant nest. I even know what it’s going to be called.”

“What?” Two Toes asked.

Broken Beak rubbed his chipped beak on one of his wings groom his feathers before he replied.

“Joondalup.”