"You’ve got to get out clean when the mission’s over."

December 19, 2021 8:18 AM

"The lieutenant is not stupid; she is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, so I’ll have to be extra careful about how I rewire this security door panel so she doesn’t notice I’ve inserted something that shouldn’t be there, a tiny chip that someone from outside can activate to open the door without triggering any of the ship’s notification systems." "How to Defeat Gravity and Achieve Escape Velocity" by Miyuki Jane Pinckard (published this year) is a short science fiction story involving a crush, sabotage, abandoned asteroid miners, and a heist or two nested within a scheme.

From "How to Defeat Gravity and Achieve Escape Velocity":

Today, though, the lieutenant comes in. We all get real quiet because officers have their own mess and she’s never come into ours before. Also she’s head of security and she’s extremely tall and muscular and beautiful. Her hair is orangey-gold and spiky from being in her helmet, and her eyes are black infinity. She looks around at us. “At ease,” she says with a smile. But that just makes me tense up even more.

She walks over to me. I don’t know what to do. What I know of protocol suddenly goes out of my brain. Do I stand? Salute? Keep my head down?

“Good work today, Tech Masipag. You repaired that door in record time.”

Because it wasn’t really broken to begin with. Stupid stupid stupid. If I’m too fast I’ll draw attention and the last thing I want is for her to become suspicious of me, but at the same time I also want her to think I’m doing a good job. “Yes, ma’am. I mean, thank you, ma’am.”

“I’m recommending you for a commendation.” She has a soft lilt to her words, her vowels so rich and opulent like cream. The way she says “commendation” like she’s rolling that word around on her tongue like a piece of ripe mango—

Ros elbows me. “You’re supposed to be happy about that, Mar.”

I can feel my face getting hot. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

She cocks her head. “Stop by my quarters at 14:00. I need your signature on the incident report.”

posted by brainwane (12 comments total)

Great story!

My sister had a couple ferrets at one point. I never met them (we were living in different states), but nothing she told me about her experience ever made me think I'd want them as pets.
posted by solotoro at 3:15 PM on December 19, 2021

Good justice and lusty arc. Thank you again Brainwane!
posted by k3ninho at 3:50 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Another excellent story shared—thanks!
posted by librosegretti at 5:08 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

typical... moving in after hardly talking. they'll be back at the bar in a month - separately.

(really good desc of crush feelings and internal dialog)
posted by j_curiouser at 5:34 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I never met them (we were living in different states), but nothing she told me about her experience ever made me think I'd want them as pets.

Many years ago I knew a guy who had them, his apartment stunk. Cats aren't exactly odorless but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Those options being rough equivalents stuck out in this story, but otherwise it was quite good.
posted by axiom at 7:46 PM on December 19, 2021

struck me as a character who never even had enough life opportunity to see or smell real cats and ferrets. knew about them from media.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:53 PM on December 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Thoroughly fresh and enjoyable. Thanks Brainwane. You’ve done it again.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 11:40 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Some friends of mine used to be ferret owners. I never noticed much smell; they are rambunctious, tons of fun, and terribly prone to cancer apparently. After a while it got too depressing to keep replacing dead ferrets; they're snake owners now.

(Loved this story, by the way. Lots of subtle world-building, you get a clear picture of the society from context instead of from exposition dumps)
posted by ook at 7:56 AM on December 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

Fun story, thanks for posting. It’s a tiny thing, but “This asteroid is small but extremely dense, at 1.6 G” jumped out at me — it turns out that even a ball of pure palladium 1.6 times the mass of the earth would be 90% of the radius of the earth, so not small for an asteroid. But then, maybe the standard G of an asteroid-dwelling society is far smaller than ours.
posted by mubba at 11:46 AM on December 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

It wouldn't need to be that massive. The force felt due to gravity at the surface of a body is proportional to mass, but it is also inversely proportional to the square of the radius of the body, ie how far you are from the center of mass.

Given palladium's density of about 12 g/cm³, if I've done the math right (a big if!), then you're looking at a sphere of radius 1560 km, somewhat smaller than the moon in size, with a mass of about 4.8x10¹⁹, which is a lot, but only about one hundred thousandth of earth's mass.
posted by solotoro at 1:54 PM on December 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

(4.8x10¹⁹ kg, that is)
posted by solotoro at 2:55 PM on December 21, 2021

Oops, you are right, solotoro, that was completely neglecting the inverse square law. But if I haven’t made another mistake, I calculate a radius of about 4677 km, 73% of earth’s, and a mass of 5.14⨉10²⁴ kg, 86% of earth’s.

M = 4/3 π (4677 km ⨉ 1000 m/km ⨉ 100 cm/m)³ ⨉ 12 g/cm³ ⨉ 10^-3 kg/g = 5.14⨉10²⁴ kg
F/m = G M / r² = 6.674⨉10⁻¹¹ m³/(kg s²) ⨉ 5.14⨉10²⁴ kg / (4677⨉10³ m)² = 15.69 ​m/s² = 1.6 ⨉ 9.81 m/s²

posted by mubba at 7:59 AM on December 22, 2021