The explosion of white light flashed across his
retinas as the Universe formed around him. The glow of the systems solar body
filled his view, and the cockpit, with its warm, deadly orange light.
"Systems check please, exit protocols"
his voice croaked across the empty room, his hands manipulating the controls as
he spoke, orienting the ship away from the star directly ahead.
After every jump, he pondered who decided to place the jump beacons so close
the systems sun, he knew it was related to the mass of the star and its gravity
well that provided a stable destination lock for the ships faster than light
drive, but why not make it a little further away? He never dwelt on it too long
though as once the faster than light drives disengaged and you were catapulted
back into real space, you had seconds to navigate away from the huge stellar
body or risk the engines shutting down to prevent impact with the
aforementioned celestial monster.
"SYSTEMS CHECK , AYE" the disembodied voice of his ship’s
Artificial intelligence replied in its synthetic tone, "POWER
GENERATION SYSTEMS – NOMINAL, LIFE SUPPORT –NOMINAL, RCS THRUSTERS – NOMINAL,
JUMP DRIVE – COOLING CYCLE ENGAGED, INTERROGATING LOCAL SYSTEM CHARTS –
POSITION VERIFIED, CHOWEI SYSTEM"
His concentration drifted as the AI listed the ships status, knowing if there
was an issue it would let him know in no uncertain terms. Looking to the
left side of his flight chair, he paused allowing the navigation hard light
panel to form from the ether; scrolling through the destination list, he
located a name and thumbed it to lock it into the ships navigation system.
Returning his gaze to the window, the hard light panel faded back into nonexistence.
Ahead, appearing as though in front of the cockpit window, a myriad of
thin orange lines, formed again from hard light, plotted the orbit paths of the
systems celestial bodies, a slight shimmer indicated a new course had been
accepted from the navigation computer to the heads-up display. A new icon
appeared, designated Swigert Port, home.
Gently moving the flight controls, he turned the
ships heading to align with the icon, only when the two matched he eased the
throttle forward and felt the gentle hand of the ships artificial gravity on
his chest as the ships speed increased, it would still take half an hour before
the ship entered the port’s controlled space, half an hour in a state of
heightened alert.
Chowei wasn’t as safe a system as it once was,
pirate activity was on the increase and on his way back, he’d picked up System
Security chatter to that effect, reports of three missing ships, lost on the
relatively short trip from the system jump beacon to the port.
Checking the scanner, he watched as slowly it
picked up the system traffic; it seemed to be taking longer for the scanner to
recover after exiting hyperspace. Even with top of the line systems it took a
few seconds for the scanners to retune their sensitivity from the overwhelming
power needed to navigate the hyperspace currents to the relatively tiny power
output of a ships engine, but he was sure that it was taking longer and longer
for the switchover to occur, he’d have to look at that when he got station
side, that was an expense he could do without.
Tiny fireflies appeared on the HUD as the scanner
picked up the system traffic and displayed them as small glowing orbs. Pushing
the selector on the control stick he cycled through each target, after all, it
was prudent to know who was in the shipping lanes with you. Two short range
Eagle fighters and a mark 3 Viper belonging to system security, good to know
they were on a patrol, that should deter any casual opportunists. A type 9
freighter, no threat there, but the last contact caught his attention. It was
the armoured wedge shape of a combat vessel, in this case a Core Dynamic Space
Superiority Fighter known as a Vulture. Allowing the scanner to pause for a few
more seconds would allow the ships AI to interrogate the Vulture’s Friend or
Foe ident system, which would confirm if the ship was a threat or not, the
problem was, if your ships ident is tagged, you are informed of the tag in case
it’s a prelude to an attack. Weighing the options; the System Security
presence, the proximity to Swigert Port, the fact there was only one potential
hostile, he allowed the ships to handshake.
His heart sank. The ship belonged
to an organisation known as Torval’s Shield, a clandestine organisation, known
more by reputation than anything else; they operated across the entire sector,
with links to every gangster, pirate and corrupt government out there. Whilst
no one could pin any illegal activity on them specifically, it was always a
strange coincidence, that the Shield had a strong presence in those anarchic
systems. One of the few things everyone DID know about them however, was
their ships NEVER went anywhere alone.
“Boost power to the scanner and tune
sensitivity to maximum, look for ships on the edge of the system”. It would
take the ships AI a few moments to recalibrate and perform the scan, so he
turned his attention to the comm chatter, looking for anything out of the
ordinary.
“SCAN COMPLETE, NOTHING IN SENSOR RANGE COMMANDER, HOWEVER THE BINARY
ASPECT OF THE CHOWEI SYSTEM WOULD ALLOW FOR VESSELS TO HIDE COVERTLY IN THE
CORONAL OVERLAP AND THEREFORE UNDETECTABLE TO CONVENTIONAL SENSORS”.
He
tapped at the comm screen to close it, nothing there either, all was quiet,
perhaps he was overreacting. “Keep scanning, passive mode only.” No sense
“pinging” his way through the system drawing attention to himself. If it came
down to it, he could probably handle one Vulture. His ship “Gorgons Yawn”, was
a Delacy Cobra Mark three, a rhomboidal arrow head shaped, mid-range freighter.
It wasn’t the top of the line, certainly not since the Mark four, but he had
spent pretty much every credit he had on upgrading its various systems,
including the ships defences.
Keeping his eye on the scanner, he changed course
slightly creating more of sweeping approach to the station, on an arc that
would put him, for a brief time, on a parallel course with the System Security
vessels. It wouldn’t hurt to have back up in case things went, as they often
did, “pear shaped”.
However, the vulture seemed completely unaware or
at least unconcerned by his ships handshake, it was heading out of the system
on a perpendicular course, and he hoped it would stay that way. His eyes
flicked to the range data, two minutes and five seconds from the port, the
scanner still only displayed the identified targets, it seemed he had
overanalysed the situation, it was just a solitary ship passing through after
all.
He realised something was wrong a split second
before the alarm sounded.
