Warning: spoilers for RENEGADE by Joel Shepherd

the remainder a cage-like shell for a rotating crew cylinder

(of the shuttle that has just docked with the Phoenix)

Then past berthing crew at the grapples, and tight space between bulkheads, secured with netting and acceleration slings where marines could ride out manoeuvres while waiting to board a shuttle.

The umbilical lines were humming, and he grabbed a passing handle and made sure to tuck his hands in as it yanked him up the core tube. The space was narrow and always claustrophobic, but it was the only way to move between the gravitational quarters and the non-G midships when the crew cylinder was engaged. Some designs used elevator cars, but on a ship with as many crew as Phoenix, no one had time to sit around waiting for cars to arrive.

ran into a corridor, heart-in-mouth the way you always were when moving about in combat — a hard thrust here would turn a ten meter corridor into a lethal drop, head first. Most crew injuries in combat were impact-related, self-inflicted by manoeuvre, and some huge number of spacers had died over the ages by simply being out of a chair or acceleration sling when bad news appeared on scan.

(Combat Marine Major Trace Thakur)

You pull out the racks like this, then lay your clothes flat and use the covers to hold them in, so they don’t fly around in manoeuvres or when we cut G.

Just remember, always pull the net across when you sleep

as Trace demonstrated how the net pulled across the bed, and secured to the bed rim by steel latches

And most important…” she reached the space between wall table and closet, where a canvas wrapping stood from ceiling to floor. Hit the release and the canvas seals ripped as a couple of acceleration slings hummed into the room on steel runners in floor and ceiling. “These will deploy automatically if bridge sounds the ‘take hold’ — big alarm, flashing lights and announcements, you can’t miss it. When you hear that alarm, get in the sling. Don’t do anything else, just get in like you’ve been shown, and brace. Do not stay in bed — even with the net across, the rear thrust will just put you through the wall, you’re lying perpendicular to thrust and you’ll slide off. If you need any help, use personal coms, but again, if we’re under thrust, no one can actually move to help you.

Thrust correction hit them, unannounced, and suddenly gravity cut in half as the correction pushed the ship ‘down’, then sideways as cylinder rotation took them around.

(Lieutenant Commander)

To rendezvous with it we’ll need to proceed with a one-G burn for the next two hours and seventeen minutes. We are currently at burn-minus-five minutes, I repeat, at burn-minus-five minutes. All hands prepare for a one-G burn.

An alarm sounded, high and wavering up and down, like some mournful animal’s howl, and the room lights began to flash in time.

all that this means is that the wall opposite the door is about to become the floor.

So, first you disengage the bednet, then you sit on the bed with your back to the wall. Once you’re out, put the bednet back on so the sheets don’t go everywhere. That’s it. You’ll notice that all the thrust-ward walls on the ship have green lines where they join the ceiling.” Lisbeth looked, and sure enough, a green stripe ran from wall to wall.

That’s so you know which way gravity will go when we burn. Always remember which wall has the green stripe — we call it the G-wall.

where spacers had called it the ‘K-wall’, because it was the one that killed you

Okay, I’m sitting with my back to the wall

Right, as soon as we thrust, the crew cylinder will stop rotating. You wait ten seconds, then the all-clear will sound, and you can move around. Obviously all the things that require cylinder rotation to work, won’t. So the toilets, showers, etcetera.

Now she was flat on her back. It was the oddest thing, but not quite as scary as she’d imagined. The wall, as Major Thakur had said, was now the floor, and she was lying on her back with her feet up in the air. The ship sounded different, the white noise of cylinder rotation that became so omnipresent that she’d gotten used to it, had now disappeared. In its place was a low, rumbling thunder, and the metallic rattle and squeal of separate parts vibrating against each other.

and the speakers announced the all-clear

Her bunk bed was now vertical before her, sheets fallen in a heap within the bednet. Carefully she stood up. If thrust suddenly stopped, she reminded herself, she wouldn’t fall — she’d be weightless. Even that previous ‘normal’ gravity had only been the function of the rotating crew cylinder. Without it, everything floated.

The wall screen above the table was now at her feet. And the table rim, she saw, had a thick edge that now doubled as a seat, as the twin chairs were of course bolted to the ‘floor’, now beside her. She sat on the table rim, and contemplated the door. It was far above her. How odd, the room had seemed tiny when that wall had been the wall. Now that it was the ceiling, the door looked like the mouth of a well she’d fallen into, and was now trapped at the bottom of. And yet the Major had said that once thrust had begun, she’d be free to move around. How the hell?

Then she noticed that the rim of the top bunk had rungs on it, like a ladder. She hadn’t noticed that before, and if she had, wouldn’t have guessed why. Now it was obvious.

Atop the bunk, she could reach the door quite easily. The door did not open immediately, and a beeping alarm sounded in the corridor outside. Then it opened, very slowly. When it stopped, Lisbeth grabbed the rim and walked her feet up to the end of the bunk. That got her shoulders out the door, and…

“Ware!” came a call as some legs passed her, and jumped the door she’d opened. That had been why the alarm in the corridor — the doors now became trapdoors into which people could fall.

The corridor looked different, floor on one side, ceiling on the other. She followed the spacer who’d passed, and saw her jumping the doors at her feet whether they were open or not. That seemed like a good idea, and Lisbeth copied. Most insystem freighters did not have this problem, of course, as they were designed so that ‘aft’ thrust was the floor, in a vertical stack. Without jump engines, they’d accelerate at 1-G toward their destination, then turn over at halfway and decelerate at 1-G all the way in. Jump engines made it possible to gain or lose enormous velocity instantly, and so most insystem travel for FTL ships was coasting without thrust, with gravity from cylinder rotation only.

first trunk corridor. It ran a good portion of the crew cylinder from fore to aft, and now as she approached the corner, the once-innocuous passage yawned at her feet with a sheer, endless drop. Traction lines she’d not seen before had appeared, and now ran up and down the shaft, one line heading up, the other down. Spacers rode it up and down, standing on the little footrests, clipped to the rope with their harness. The woman Lisbeth had been following took a little wand from a pocket and extended it to the length of her arm. Then she took her harness clip, unhitched it and mounted it on the extended wand. A fast clip to the upward rope, then it caught on the next empty handhold. The woman stepped off as her harness pulled tight, and swung to the rope, put her feet in, and rode it up.

Lisbeth watched in amazement as someone else got off at her level, and using the wand to clip the harness to another rope line that extended into the corridor from above — that must have also popped out automatically when the thrust kicked in, Lisbeth thought. She hadn’t noticed it before. They didn’t even stop the rope, just hooked, jumped and swung into the corridor mouth like some tree swinging primate.

Only now the corridor was doglegged forty-five degrees sideways, and the ropeline simply dragged at the corners — she saw someone coming up below having to walk up the wall to get around without banging the corner. Here on the outer side of the dogleg was a big elastic net sticking halfway out into the corridor. To catch falling spacers, she realised.

thankful the rope handholds were offset so that descending and ascending spacers wouldn’t hit that corner at the same time

That corner was cushioned, and opposing it on the far wall was another big elastic net. So any falling spacer who missed the first net would hit this corner, obviously, and bounce across to land in that net. Theoretically. She wondered how many who did so didn’t survive it. In a 10-G push, a five meter fall was like fifty meters at 1-G. Even a two meter fall would probably crush you like an egg. What was left after a tumble down this corridor at 10-G, she didn’t want to think about.

Beyond, the corridor end was approaching. Now this looked simple enough, and she unclipped her harness and simply stepped off as the rope passed its end pulley and went around. There.

Engineering HQ was built with its back to the rear cylinder bulkhead. The main entrance door was now a hole in the floor with a rope ladder on one side, and a rope on the other.

She was to one side of a bridge not unlike the main bridge, with various scan posts before wide screen arrays. People still sat in those chairs, flat on their backs, and talked back and forth or on coms. Here on the ‘floor’, people who wanted to talk to them stopped and looked up. Getting in and out of those chairs would take a boost, Lisbeth thought.