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Marr and Dukk made their way up the stairs, through the passenger seating area and into the cockpit.
They took their seats. Dukk on the left and Marr on the right.
Dukk took a long look at the controls. The first time, seven hours earlier, had been very rushed. It had been in the early hours of the morning. The DMD, an AI driven machine embedded into the structure of the rig, had nearly completed its twelve-hour long calculations. Those calculations were to find a safe path through the dark matter. The process was called a traverse. It would bring them from the orbit of the planet in one system to the orbit of the target planet in another system, light years away. His priority at the time was getting the rig to full power. His focus had also been to get the crew hooked up to the med control system. A system, connected from the back of the seat to a fitting at the top of their spines. A system that would send a cocktail of drugs into the bloodstream to ensure they didn’t go into cardiac arrest as the rig traversed. Earlier, Dukk didn’t have the time to really get familiar with the controls. He had time now.
The flight controls consisted of two identical consoles. Each console had a vertical wrap around screen that sat just below the windshield, and a horizontal screen that sat just above the knees. Both screens were interactive and fully customisable. From here one could control every aspect of the rig. Joysticks sat on either side of the seats. And each seat had its own holographical projector. In the centre console and in the ceiling above the two seats, were further interactive screens with gauges, switches, and indicators for critical system components.
On her console, Marr opened the traverse controls and projected the count down.
“We’ve got sixty minutes until the traverse. What’s the plan?” Marr asked.
