Aside the Carrier Alabaster

By Paul Springsteen

Aside the carrier alabaster is a story that I wrote a year ago.  It takes place in space and in the future.  Not many advances have been made.  However enough have that allows for the capability of space travel at relativistic speeds.  Things are going well for years aboard the ship.  However eventually there is a murder when they are half way and past the point of no return.  The protagonist of the story James Do must find who the killer is.  Though it isn't his profession by trade.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Springsteen
• Release date: May 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393987062

Paul Springsteen

Paul Springsteen is someone that grew up in a medium sized town in Texas located in the united states. He went into the military upon graduating high school.  Though it didn't last long he did get an honorable discharge because of medical reasons. After this he went to the local college of his home town.  There he got a master's degree in physics. Due to illness he had a hard time in the job market before he discovered the joys of writing and wishes to spend his time writing stories for the forseeable future.  This came about from a strange origin.  From D&D of all places.  He kept feeling like he was getting shafted from playing stories.  So he pushed himself to write his own stories and enjoyed it. His stance on writing though is that he doesn't write to whatever is the it thing in the market.  Instead he has a particular way the story is supposed to go in his head and follows that.  So the reader should be aware that even killing the protagonist and having the bad guy win is a possible way things could happen in the story in the future.

Book preview

Chapter 1

James Do was sweating and his chest felt tight as he opened the email on his computer.  For the email it had the header that it was about his application to be on the Carrier Alabaster.  It was an application that he eagerly wanted to be part of.  The carrier alabaster was a hybrid colonization and warship.  His role would be that of an engineer for the spaceship.  At least that is what he hoped.

James Do was about 5'6" and of asian descent.  His parents were 4 generations in of citizens to the United States of Earth.  James had black hair and brown eyes from ancestor that he didn't know much about.  He was of a slightly skinny build.

The email read saying Congratulations upon reviews your credentials and biometric information we have determined that you will be a good fit to fly aboard the carrier Alabaster.  Please notify all of your next of kin as this will be a one way trip.  Note that you will not get paid aboard the carrier Alabaster as currency would not matter for a new colony that is freshly emerging.  James stopped reading temporarily as he pumped his arms in the arm and moved around with raw enthusiasm.

There was more information in this email.  Linked to an email was the token that he would be given to show to those to be given entrance to the carrier.  As the email stated lower the Carrier Alabaster would be leaving port in about 3 weeks.  Their destination was the planet known as Kapteyn B located near the red subdwarf Kapteyn's star.  The planet was around 13 light years away from Earth.

James looked at the calendar on his phone.  It was March 3rd, 2414 and he would have to leave aboard the ship on March 25th, 2414. 

Still this was a rare opportunity.  Space travel was very expensive.  This was the third colonization ship that would be sent out.  The first was an unsuccessful launch by the Russian federation.  The ship was travelling in its gravity pocket when the space ship was unfortunately a result of a collision with a meteoroid traveling through space.  The meteoroid collided with the ship tearing a hole into it and the ship and all of the people on board had no way to get home and they were lost.

The second colonization attempt was successfully accomplished by China about 4 years ago.  They colonized proxima centauri b.  Every other major power in the world took this as an offense and started to build toward outpacing the chinese in colonization of stars.

The technologies to allow for ships to approach these habitable planets is a recent one.  It was a technology that was discovered by the late Steven Han.  He was a chinese physicist that was actually an immigrant to china from the USE.  Basically the technology was a theory and a practical application that allowed for the creation of artificial gravity pockets.  This was another way to propel a spaceship through space.  Instead of using a fossil fuel it would rely on a positive to negative gravity differential that would basically allow a ship to fall through space.  It was revolutionary because it allowed for a ship to use much less fuel than it would use normally.  With it ships could reliably travel at about half the speed of light.

This was James's job was that he was to stay awake with a skeleton crew while the majority of the people on board would remain in cryostasis.  For about 26 years in Earth years he would have to remain awake and make sure the engine that creates gravity pockets would remain in the best condition for the trip.  The carrier did have backups but even the email stated that they were to use as few resources as possible.  Once the Carrier Alabaster reached its destination that would be the only resources that they would have.

The carrier was a large and consuming enterprise for the United States of Earth.  Actually this ship would even have some from the EU aboard the ship as well.  The quickness of erecting this ship was the result of cooperation between the two giants.  Still he could only imagine what it would be like to walk the soil of Kapteyn b.  They would need to terraform the planet but according to estimates they wouldn't need to do much.

The email said that he should never slack off during those years.  The skeleton crew of 20 people had to stay awake while the rest of the 5,000 people aboard the ship slept in cryostasis.  Part of the biometric information was to see how much of an industrious person that James was.  The powers of the USE knew that he would need to have to love working.  Also there were test to gauge his temperament and how much he needed to talk and deal with other people.  He would be nearly alone for those 26 years.  Each of the other 20ish skeleton crew would be too busy with their jobs to just casually chit chat with him.

This was good news however to James Do.  It was around 6 in the morning.  He had woken up to check his email just before he needed to go to his job.  It was just a job that he was able to get fresh out of college.  In college he had gotten a degree in physics and electrical engineering.  You would think that he would get a better job fresh out of college but society doesn't always appreciate you.  Experience seemed to matter more than his 4.0 gpa.  His day job where he needed to tell them of the new opportunity aboard the Carrier Alabaster.  He had only worked there for about 3 months anyway.

Still he needed to properly prepare for the adventure that lie ahead.  Well to some it may appear monotonous but James knew that he would be overcome with awe every day that he was aboard the Carrier.  Still he hoped that it would separate him from the malaise of life.  To be one of the founding members of a planet was no small thing.

Even though the ship was to leave on the 25th of March he knew that he needed to be there earlier.  So he probably only had 1 or 2 weeks to finalize everything and then he would be living at the facilities of the launch site before it departed.

Still the first thing he needed to do was to give a notice to his job.  The job was as a mechanic at a shop.  They had given him a chance seeing as he didn't have a degree typically to work there or the experience.  He knew enough about the makeup of cars and internal combustion engines to work with the cars.  Still it didn't help to know how to do thermodynamics equations for heat transfer for your typical heat engine.  Just the practical application was necessary.  Something that James thought would be valuable later on.

James took a shower, brushed his teeth, and in every other way prepared in the typical mundane way to go to his job.  The only difference is that now he would be giving them a notice of his departure rather soon.  He wouldn't need the money where he was going.  The soon to be colony on Kapteyn b was something that wouldn't use the US dollar for goods and services.  At least not right away.  The