Dusters, THREE

Dinah made design changes in the field, nothing fully tested, but theoretically increasing the power of Welhaven Two, to several times that of the first ship. Aidyn figured if things went as planned, they would be able to charge almost double the amount for each run, because they could clear twice as much space. The money was not her motivation, she just loved to create and improve.

Once Welhaven One checked out and was ready for live tests, a slew of pilots and crew were interviewed. Dinah and Aidyn did what they called “secondary” interviews, after the company had screened out their own least likable candidates. These were done mostly over video conferences, because many applicants were not local to Mars.

Bunny was one of the more memorable interviews. He didn’t like the line of questioning and wound up “mooning” Aidyn and Dinah before leaving the VidConf. He was very rash and wouldn’t have fit in at all, it showed. Aidyn laughed, but Dinah left the room when Bunny dropped trow and shook his ass at them, saying “Here’s your Sun, slingshot across this”.

Elgin was almost albino, dressed very neat and picked his nose. He did have some experience flying, but needed to grow up, which they thought unlikely anytime soon, since it had not happened already.

Handy was an interesting lady, very pretty, but didn’t fit the job description. She paid attention to Aidyn and we will leave it at that. Dinah suspected that he might have met her again after the interview.

They had many more candidates; Capn’ Jack seemed to be preoccupied, Moonshot had way too much attitude and an extra left arm (a plus actually), Erlend was discarded on just a “bad feeling” Dinah had about him, even though he was one of the more “normal” people they had talked to.


“What brings you to this project?” Aidyn asked the fidgeting man in front of him.

“I’m ready for change, I am sick of mining ships an d’ constant crap we go though.” He was referring to the raids and blockades that pop up from time to time, because corporate space travelers are completely greedy and there really is no law out here. They go out of their way to screw each other ever chance they get.

“The project we are starting will probably be boring in comparison.” Dinah chimed in.

“That’s ok, I can handle boring, I just don’t want to get me shit wiped anymore.”

“We understand that, but what makes you qualified for this mission?” Aidyn asked him.

Deogh was as tall as Aidyn but much wider. Not a fat man, but stocky. He was not quick witted, but he turned out to be very composed and had over 1000 day’s piloting between Earth and Mars. He had even made a trip to Saturn on a survey, but that was a onetime deal and his time in suspension, technically made him older than anyone either Aidyn or Dinah knew. He was born 156 years ago and his name was phonetically pronounced “Dough”.

“Qualified?” Deogh pronounced, smiling; “I can fuckin’ fly, and I will leave here before I complain about things. I’ve never broken a contract”

He made the short list along with several others, who were all sent to the simulator for evaluation.

The simulator was rudimentary and considering the depth of qualifications to pilot, it was not too difficult.

Dinah came up with an idea to complicate the tests and started tossing in malfunctions. First was propulsion failure, not a tough one, backup systems are pretty standard as well as the mandatory emergency ejection system to remove the crew from harm’s way.

She next introduced failures in the sweeper fields, which wreaked havoc on the effectiveness of the work and wound up really testing the ability of the pilot to make some hard calls. When to quit or continue, that kind of thing.