Deadly (interior) designs. Part 8 added and Pic
Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 12:36 pm
Hi Joe Cook
OK first attempt at some fiction. I havent really tried creative writing since school, and there it earnt nothing but scorn from my English teacher "sounds like a third rate budget sci fi movie"
I have put no thought into a set theme, plots, style, pace etc that should go into proper story telling.
This is mainly an exercise in "grounding" my current project, trying to see it through the eyes of someone who would use the real thing. As Ive been designing the bridge and coming up with ideas Ive had some form of "backstory" growing as I work. Ive realised as I go that ideas that I think "look" cool, would probably not be so usefull in reality, and Ive made some decisions which are pure style over substance, and so figure that a real user would have to suffer the consequence of those sort of choices.
Heres a picture of the inspiration for the ship bridge that Nathan and Hera work in. I imagine it to look far better in the story than my unfinished creation does in real life... Theres more pictures around page 3 of this thread.
Heres an external Picture of how I imagine the ship to look:-
Still looking for tips pointers and suggestions to help with future writing
.
Ive kept the original draft for these parts which when the storys done there will be links to files of the various stages of story development. But this is the current stage, hopefully the hours my wife has put in have cleared up the worst of the errors. I expect more than a few have slipped through, it was no mean task.
Part 6 I still expect to change a lot to fit the newly expanded insight into the storys origins and destination, So it has been truncated to the point that I will stay the same, the remainder of that part will be rewritten substantially.
Systems, no. Drives, no. Misc, no. Nathan was tap tap tapping through menus on the console on to the right of his chair, trying to find the option to ionize the thruster bearings, it was in there somewhere. Most thrusters don't have the ability to rotate, and so don't have this problem, this was just one of this ships many idiosyncrasies. All the while Nathan's right hand was on the controls, attempting to evade the enemy with random manoeuvres.
Where was it?
Damn.
The screeching of laser draining the ships shields told Nathan that he had let his attention wander too long, his foe had a bead on him, his head turned to the main view screen and scanner, both hands grasped the controls; a dive, a half roll clockwise and a climb had pulled him out of the way of the deadly beams, but not as efficiently as it should. The upper rear thrusters were still down 5% of their movement range, costing him manoeuvrability. In the current situation it could end up costing him a lot more than that.
Damn reductionist styling. It was probably the height of fashion 150 years ago in some forgotten corner of the Galaxy. What sort of idiot puts style ahead of functionality. A Spacecraft isn't a fashion accessory, its a workhorse and a weapon.
The bridge in which he sat was featureless, featureless and uncluttered, excessively so. No ship of the line would ever have been so badly designed as standard, unless for use by some two headed 8 tentacled space faring species who could have put it to good use.
The floors were tiled and white, grip studded near the entrance, the ceiling was bare and made of the same smooth but non reflective white material as the walls, which were also mostly bare. The white colour added to the ambient light and the surfacing managed to reduce even the detailing of shadow or reflection. The material, a heavy plastic of some sort perhaps, broken by lights (currently a flashing red ambient light to warn them of hostilities of which they were all too aware) and several jet black control panels and one large display screen, spanning the width of the bridge in front of the pilot and co-pilot seats. Even the display panels were featureless and flat. It looked great - if minimalist styling was your taste. In a space craft it was pure glitz, it wasn't minimalist, it was ostentatious, it was faux minimalist. A century and a half of occupation hadn't done it any favours either, a truly minimalist design would be pure functionality, direct control switches and levers etc. A ship this size needed a lot more control and management than could be seen here. Instead of the normal array of switches, levers and dials, this ship had endless menu systems, worked via pointing at the control panels. Meaning, that in order to do just about anything on this ship you had to know where in amongst the thousands of potential options the one you wanted was.
Some long dead being had clearly thought the styling "made a statement" but all it said to later owners, was that the first owner was a pretentious prat. For all that, they clearly had been successful. Apart from the styling the ship was incredibly well built, no expense had been spared in components throughout, sadly the same could not be said for maintenance by later owners.
The last owner had attempted to streamline the menu system by reconfiguring it, a disastrous attempt that had left half the systems on the ship unusable. Nathan had acquired it at a bargain price as a result. He had purchased a medium \ large trading ship for the cost of a well used Adder. He did however have to spend an agonising month rebuilding the menus and control system to even get it usable.
A ships interior was normally fairly customisable, pilots like to put their own touch on a ship, however the functional controls were normally left well alone, apart from some home brew mods some pilots liked to carry out.
Nathan would dearly loved to have scrapped this menu system in favour of a standard lay out. However he had soon discovered that this control system wasn't just a graphical front end for a normal control system, the whole ship was wired differently. There was no end to end connection controlling the various servos, systems, sensors etc. There wasn't a big junction box hooking up a processing unit to standard wiring, whoever had this built, did it properly. Every single thing on the ship was ran over an optical bus system, again money had been spent, the bus system had more than adequate bandwidth to handle the signals in any situation. Moreover the level of redundancy was insane, there were four completely separate and individually routed bus spines, so the ship could function even with up to three of those completely severed - Like that was ever going to happen without the ship breaking up completely. Overkill, over priced and archaic.
Regardless though, rewiring a ship this size to run on standard controls and refitting with standard components would have cost far more than the ship was worth. The awkward controls and dated grandiose décor had seemed a small price to pay for the discount he had got on the ships purchase. However the décor was an embarrassment, his co-pilot a necessity on a ship this size, had burst out laughing after first seeing the bridge. Now it looked as if it may cost him more than his pride, his life and hers...
Screams again from the shields, as his opponent caught him off guard, again, day dreaming - at a time like this. Damn that bridge design.
Hera screamed over her shoulder, "Eyes on the screen halfwit." Nathan took to the controls again, pulling off a classic corkscrew, but just didn't quite have the dive ability to come back up behind his opponent. Damn the sticky thruster. He shouted over at Hera, "Get that top thruster mount ionised fast." She replied with her normal caustic sarcasm, "Before or after I try to boost the rear shields to make up for your daydreaming?" “After,” he said. Her next before or after question was lost in a klaxon sound, as the rear shield power was completely drained...
Further evasive manoeuvres got him out of the way of the beam just in time, he tried a simple up and over to bring him up behind the enemy, it almost worked. Instead, he ended up staring at the belly of the ship, a Mk1 Wolf. It wasn't the angle he hoped for, but he finally got in a few shots of his own, his beam lasers splashing around Wolfs underbelly, as Nathan slowed down, hoping to still come in on the Wolfs rear section. The enemy was good enough to not let that happen and instead dived past the nose of Nathan's ship and headed off behind. Just then, Hera shouted, "Got it!"
Nathan dived hard himself and took off after his opponent, who had misjudged Nathan's ships dive\climb rate, which was boosted well above normal for this type of ship. Now he was on the Wolfs tail, and quietly forgiving the first owners flamboyant styling, whatever they may have lacked in taste, they made up for with engineering.
_______Part 2_______
The Wolf was the faster of the two ships. But the pilot knew better than to run in a straight line for too long. The Wolf quarter rolled left and climbed slightly. Nathan held back for a second on following, his patience rewarded: it was a feint designed to throw Nathan in the wrong direction; the Wolf rolled right ¾, then climbed at, what Nathan could only assume, was maximum pace.
The Wolfs feint told Nathan a lot about his enemy. For a start, that he didn't check to see if his feint had been bought, before pulling off the planned escape manoeuvre. Nathan instinctively knew his opponent was panicking, now the tables were turned.
Nathan followed the second manoeuvre, stabbing the lasers all over his opponents exposed upper hull and then straight at his exposed rear end. The subtle change in his lasers interactions with his target, told him that he had completely drained its shields. It was just a matter of time now, and the Wolf pilot had to know that.
"Incoming!" shouted Hera, "Four contacts on intercept course. 19 KM.”
"Friend or Foe?" replied Nathan, the news spoiling his aim.
Hera went through the menus at speed and produced an image from their side view, on a screen on the side wall behind Nathan. Looking over her shoulder, she studied the image, "A Krait, a Cobra mk 1, another Wolf and an Asp - looks like trouble to me."
"How's the shields?"
"50%," replied Hera.
Nathan had to finish the Wolf fast, there was no doubt these were friends of his. He couldn't let the Wolf recover and add to the odds. The Wolf tried a 180 climb to head towards his cohorts. Nathan saw the danger in pursuit, but if he let the Wolf go, the chances were, he would be pursued by the faster wolves. He made his decision in a split second and followed the Wolf, coming round faster than the Wolf expected, again shooting at his upper section as he flew past.
The Wolfs hull splintered, vented burning atmosphere. Nathan stabbed the lasers a few more times and the remains of the Wolf disappeared in a mini nova.
"No bounty, that's odd, 15km to nearest mark," Hera said, "turn and run?"
Nathan's answer never came; the sound of incoming laser, glancing the void around his ship, told him that running was not an option. The lead Wolf had military lasers.
"We're going in, keep an eye on the injectors, they wont like this much," Nathan said, as he hit the injectors to close the distance, diving ever so perceptibly as he went to try to keep out of line with their weapons.
"Will I like this much?" asked Hera.
"Depends, do you believe in an afterlife?" replied Nathan, "I'm going to need you to keep an eye on that Wolf, we might come out alive if we can avoid the millys."
Nathan targeted the Wolf, just as the Asp started taking shots in the void, around the space above Nathan's ship. "Oh... that's not fair!" cried Nathan with dismay.
Two military equipped ships at once. As if the numbers alone weren't enough of a problem. Nathan re-targeted, choosing to attempt to cut down the odds, rather than try to take out the fire power first. Even a Pulse laser would kill you with enough shots. The two military equipped ships were bound to sport enhanced shields as well.
"That's a lot of credits out there," he said to no one in particular.
"5k," Hera read out. "The Cobras launched a missile!" she panicked.
Nathan ignored this, ECM programming was her job. She was quite capable.
All four ships were now firing, all the shots going high. His ruse had worked, but the assailants had cottoned on and dived themselves. Too late. Nathan dived hard, then pulled up to point death at the Cobra. The beam connected, held, and then a brief flare, and the Cobra was gone. At least they weren't all expensively equipped.
He passed behind the 3 remaining ships just as they started to dive. He over shot and then tried to bring his ship round to get a shot at their rears. He failed. They scattered, to come at him from 3 different angles.
Nathan didn't have time to decide which ship to target next; he just headed for the one straight on, the Krait as it happened. The Krait sped on its heading. Nathan realised his mistake, his ship paid the price: military lasers from both sides tore at his shields. Nathan slammed on the injectors for a brief second, just enough time to kill his throttle, then released them again.
The sudden acceleration and deceleration threw off his opponents completely. They had already manoeuvred to chase him along, what had appeared to be his trajectory. Nathan gave the ship half throttle and climbed 90 degrees.
"Shields at 30%!" screamed Hera.
"Front or back?" replied Nathan, distracted as he tried to pick a target. He chose the Wolf. Nathan got a good long shot at the Wolfs right hand side, before pulling a 180 and hitting the injectors violently to get out of the way of the Asp, who had been trying to line up a shot at his rear.
Beam lasers playing on the outskirts of his shields, just in front of the forward view point, told Nathan, the Krait had turned and rejoined the fray. Nathan guessed he was above and behind. He brought his ship up hard, rolling, turning the world up side down and then continuing the manoeuvre as a dive, using the injectors again, to bring to bear on, where he thought he would find the Krait. He was wrong, the Krait had used its injectors. Nathan found the enemy ship filled his view screen.
Time stood still in two cabins. The Krait cabins pilot became a spectator, as his death played out before him. For Nathan the experience was different, he wasn't frozen, he moved at normal speed, but time was slowed. He had the time he needed to target and fire a missile and a burst of laser and dive again.
Time returned to its normal flow. Nathan felt the customary after affects of the flood of chemicals through his body. Straight to the task at hand, he climbed again to get a line on the remaining Wolf and Asp, who had been passing over his head. Targeting the Asp, he completed the manoeuvre to come in behind, but in an inverted position relative to both the Asp and Wolf. He couldn't have asked for a better position.
Nathan opened fire on the Asp, his beam lasers, whilst not as powerful as military lasers, still ate rapidly at the shields reserves. The Asp held its course for a few seconds, then spewed laser from its rear gun emplacements. Nathan's shields disappeared in a heart beat, eating fast into the reserves. Rear military lasers.
"Missile!" screamed a panicking Hera again.
Time stood still again, but this time only for Nathan. He had time enough to spot the missile which had been launched at point blank range, to pull up enough for the missile, to shoot past underneath his ship and then to consider his action briefly. He jammed his injectors on briefly, maintaining the course set by avoiding the missile, heading up and over the top of the Asp and from above the Asp continued on to the left, to draw a bead across the Wolf.
Above and to the left of the Asp now, he was safe from laser fire for a few seconds, and vented his hormone fuelled aggression on the Wolf, tearing its shields to shreds with his beam laser, only dimly aware of the sound of the ECM firing repeatedly.
"Its a hardhead!" wailed Hera, as the missile, avoided seconds ago, came back round.
Nathan was disciplined enough not to hang on to his firing line, to try to kill the Wolf before the missile reached him. He pulled up 90 degrees and hit his injectors again. This time the noise just wasn't right, a whir, a clunk, a whir, but they worked, They were complaining about all this sudden start stop work.
"I told you to keep an eye on those injectors!" bellowed Nathan unfairly, as Hera continued to hit the ECM. Nathan was running blind now, the Wolf and the Asp realising what was happening, were quick on the pursuit.
Nathan had a missile chasing him and two sources of military laser all round the space in front of him.
"Shields at 20 and 50"
Nathan killed the throttle, dove through 180 degrees and hit the injectors again, whir, clunk, clunk, whir. Nathan shot straight under the missile, just in time to see the ECM finally do its job. He was now hurtling straight at the two ships. Without even bothering to target them, he fired on the Wolf, his laser playing across the front of the ship, along its underside. Nathan realised he had managed to get a good strike on the already depleted rear shields.
The tell tale signs of a hull rupture - oxygen venting. Just another few seconds. Incoming fire from the Asp hit the front of Nathan's ship. His shields disappeared, the reserves were going down fast.
Boom!
The cabin was filled with a dazzling blue flash, Nathans mind reeled, he was still alive, that wasn't his ship exploding. He saw a bright blue circle of light. Had the Wolf witched out? No, that was not a wormhole, it was growing and it was far too bright. The Asp detonated, the ball of blue expanded.
Nathan was shocked for a few seconds, unable to believe what the Wolfs pilot had just done. Nathan hit the injectors again, Whir, Clunk, Clunk, Clunk, Thwunk. Panic.
______Part 3_______
Nathan tried the injectors a second time, Whir, Clunk, clunk, clunk, Thwunk. Again, Whir, Clunk, Clunk, Clunk, Thwunk.
The blue ball was expanding apace, filling space in an impossible manner. Nathan sat mesmerized, seeing his doom expanding before him.
He barely had the presence of mind to turn his ship away and hit full power, a futile gesture, but he couldn't help trying. His ship had failed him, his beautiful ship, he had cursed the cabin décor, he had cursed the interface and the bus system so many times, but had always had total faith in the mechanicals. Now here at the end the mechanicals were what had failed him.
He remembered first seeing the ship in a docking bay at the orbital station over Larais. Nathan had been flying hard for 5 years at the time, He still had his first ship - an Adder, purchased against the wishes of his parents when he received his trust fund that was supposed to give him his start in professional life, enough for an apartment on Zaonce. His parents were generous and well off, but Nathan was a disappointment and that was his final act of disobedience...
Now he had given that Adder teeth. It was well equipped, but it wasn't big enough for bulk transport or fast enough for urgent courier work. When he first started flying, he had tried his hands at many ways of making money with the ship. He had started trying to trade normally, but 2 tonnes of space wasn't enough for trading TC's. He had made some money on the gems and precious metals market, but not enough to build a business on.
As a "nameless" Adder pilot, no one had been willing to take a chance on him as a courier for small valuables. Slowly he had saved enough for his fuel scoops; they had paid for themselves many times over. His biggest profits came from bounty hunting, not the bounties themselves - these barely covered costs, it was the cargo he scooped. Zero outlay, 100% profit.
It took him 3 years of hard work reinvesting every credit he made back into his ship to get it to its current state, then the next two years saving hard towards a larger faster ship. He had expected to be working for at least another 2 years before he could afford something like a Cobra Mk3 and to give it the bare essentials of space trading.
Nathan's most recent encounter with a lone Krait had gone well, two tonnes of computers and a couple of credits per gram profit on the assorted gemstones he was carrying from Oresque. He sat back looking at his CR rating on the screen: it was going up slowly. Perhaps he should celebrate with a meal out on the station, not that this planet had much to offer.
He went though the local guide, and flicked through the local ads. One stood out immediately: 75,000CR, above a 3d picture of a beautiful white ship. His first thought was "typo". But he couldn't help but inquire. The seller confirmed the price, but said that it "needed some work". Nathan's every instinct screamed "never buy a ship from a private sale". He had heard the stories, but this ship, this price, he had to at least go and look at it in the flesh. He wasn't going to buy a ship from a private sale.
Nathan arranged a meeting with the seller at the ships berth, unsurprisingly the seller was available immediately. Most pilots, like Nathan lived on their ships, their private fortress amongst the stars, their own domain. Few pilots felt entirely comfortable outside their durasteel wombs.
Nathan hailed an auto cab and took the short trip to the right docking bay. On the approach he saw the picture had been unduly flattering; the shape was undeniably graceful, but the on screen picture hadn't shown the scarring on the hull and some of the lower quality repairs carried out. Still, he had no intention of buying a ship from a private sale, so it didn't matter. He was only here for curiosities sake after all.
Nathan stepped towards the ship and a hatch opened smoothly on the side. Out stepped a man in his late 40's, hair already graying, overweight and clearly down on his luck. The look on his face clearly said that he didn't expect the ship to sell.
"Here she is," the seller said, gesturing to the ship, trying to sound cheerful. "The finest built ship you will ever see," he continued slightly sadly.
Nathan tried and failed not to show his polite disbelief. A standard line if ever there was one, "this ones special" - every ship is special to its owner.
The seller introduced himself as Steven Fenaso. "You take a look over her and make your own mind up. If you know anything about ships, you will see for yourself what I mean," Steven said in a slightly injured tone.
"So why Exactly is the price so low?" Nathan inquired
The seller replied with some hesitance ,"I offered her to the station dealers, but they wouldn't touch her as she's so rare, and well, to put it bluntly she doesn't work... Right now that is. You see its a rare ship in more than just its looks, it works, well, differently. Its got a very odd control system, that can be a bit of a pain at times. It's user customizable," he said, "and, well, I was trying to streamline things a bit, you know, make it easier to find the essentials."
Nathan looked at the seller quizzically, baffled by what he was saying, making things easier to find?
"You will see in a minute," he said ,"anyway, let's just say I made a mistake, and now there's nothing. She's dead where she is."
Nathan looked at the man with a degree of sympathy. He understood what the man was saying. Somehow he had killed his ship.
Nathan inquired ,"Why haven't you taken her to the repair bay?"
The seller said, "She wont go, at all, not even round the station. I've had one of the guys come out to take a look and he just shrugged his shoulders. Didn't have a clue where to begin."
Nathan said ,"What's gone? The reactor?"
"No no no, the reactor's fine, the hatch wouldn't open without power. It's the control system itself, it's gone. It's blank."
Nathan struggled to comprehend, how could a ships control system be blank? Dead he could understand, lifeless, unpowered, disassembled even, but blank???
"Come inside, I'll show you," said the older man.
Nathan followed the man onto the ship. Inside, the ship was surprisingly light, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, all white. They seemed to be made to look like sheer stone work, marble maybe. Odd, but never the less it would have been very expensive when it was first done.
The passage ran right towards the cargo area, but they turned left, towards the front of the ship. They passed several doors, all of which appeared to be able to function as bulkhead airlocks, that would have cost, what's more the doors had been made to fit the same aesthetic as the passageway, very costly for a ship produced in small numbers. Somewhere some small workshop had put a lot of time and effort into this ship.
The passage way turned slightly to the right and terminated in a double layer airlock door, recessed into the wall, beautifully done. Wasted effort really. Any ship badly enough damaged to be venting atmosphere wasn't likely to survive long enough for the crew to be worried about Asphyxiation.
Nathan noticed the entry system on the side of the door. At roughly chest height, the smooth black panel lit up as the man approached, he tapped a few times at certain illuminated areas and the door split in the middle and opened up to allow them on to the bridge.
Nathan gasped as he took in the view of the bridge. "What were they on?" There wasn't a button, a dial or a lever in view. Just more black panels like the one beside the door.
"How do you fly this thing?” he gasped.
The seller responded, "Well, these panels are both input and output and user definable. Anything you want to change, you just go through the menus and change - from just about any panel you want... ingenious really," he sounded less than convinced himself on the last point.
"Somebody chose to throw 11 centuries of accepted wisdom on spacecraft control to the wind for the sake of style?" Nathan exclaimed.
"What were they on?" he repeated.
"Well, anyway, here's what happened, I was trying to make things a bit simpler to run, because you need to move fast sometimes out there," he paused, "and now there's nothing."
To illustrate the point he stepped up to the pilots chair on the right, spun round to face the front and tapped on the screen. All the black panels lit up, several buttons and keypads could be seen on the front screen and apart from that, some kind of command prompt.
It appeared the whole ship control system was routed through some sort of computer front end, which Mr Fenaso had managed to erase.
"Here's the deal, I'm broke. I haven't got a bean to my name. I couldn't afford to pay my co-pilot, so he left - cant blame him for that really. I tried to change things around, to try to run the ship by myself and messed up. I've had enough, I'm calling it quits. 75,000 is a pittance for a ship like this, its worth 350,000 at least, but I want out. 75,000 credits and its yours. I will settle down somewhere ground side. Its a steal," he said, "the deal of the century. But I haven't got any options. The ship itself is fine, you get it checked, it's as good as it gets."
Nathan sensed the man's agony and despair, he felt for him. But this was a private sale, there were millions of hard luck stories in space. Nathan wasn't about to let this one cloud his judgement.
"Lets see what's under the hood," Nathan said.
The seller brightened up, "Too right."
Nathan was given a guided tour under the panels through the service level.
The seller was right, this ship was well built, it was clearly an artisan build and built with real pride. Some odd decisions in places, but all the systems themselves were well specified. It really was a great ship, it was just dead.
Nathan sat himself in the pilot seat and swivelled round to face the panels again, that prompt looked familiar. The cogs in his head were turning, where had he seen it before?
Nathan realized it was from part of a theory course he had covered on computers, including scientific operating systems. There was a system out there used for advanced maths modelling, and the prompt had looked just like this.
Nathan racked his memory, trying to remember what he had learnt. Software development was the career his parents had planned for him, before he chased his dreams into space. He had been good at it, but it didn't hold any promise to a young man like him, he craved the feeling of holding his own destiny in his hands.
After a few minutes he managed to remember some basic commands, the system responded. He was right, it didn't help much, this wasn't a simple problem. But it meant the computer wasn't damaged, just the software. Nathan's mind was racing.
It was the opportunity of a life time, a great ship, not flyable for now, but he felt sure he could get it up and running again. It was a private sale, caveat emptor. He would have to sell his beloved Adder, and it wouldn't leave him much cash left to equip the ship with. The current owner had sold off many of the "extras".
_________part 4_________
Nathan hit the injectors again. Whir, Clunk, Clunk, Clunk, Thwunk.
The mini nova behind him, sprouting new blooms as it reached clouds of quirium, left from the Krait and Cobra. The deadly inferno expanded further, hungry for more quirium to feed its appetite.
Nathan looked to his left, Hera was scrambling through the menus.
He remembered first meeting her, shortly after getting his ship working.
It had been a long, hard struggle, slogging away at the code for up to 20 hours a day. An entire month in dry dock. Sitting, staring blankly at a screen. Trying one technique after another. Slowly, carefully charting the ships computers hardware calls, language extensions.
Bit by bit he had managed to write analytical programs to probe every corner of the system, it was slow progress, he had to be careful, the risk of a sudden witch drive trigger by a random command, was a very real possibility. Even an accidental trigger of the ships weapons could be disastrous.
His lucky break came whilst trying to chart where the ships CSM Computers (critical systems and monitoring) interacted with the main computers. CSM controlled the reactor, life support, access and logging devices. These computers were normally pretty much tamper proof and resilient, designed to withstand a ships demise under most circumstances.
The CSM would continue feeding data to the ships main computer, as long as they were connected. Nathan had written a program to look for where this data was being saved, the format it was being saved in might well prove useful.
As things turned out it was more useful than he could have dared to hope. His algorithms turned up an area of storage that held data. Even at first glance, Nathan knew this wasn't the CSM's files.
After all his hard work and expectation of harder to come, a file recovery was all it took to get the ship running again. The data held was a back up of the software for running the ship in its pristine unaltered state. Lost but not destroyed.
The gamble had paid off, he had a real ship. Now he needed a real co-pilot. He didn't hold out much hope of finding a good one in a backwater hole like Larais, but still it was worth checking. Nathan decided to check the local BB from the bar he had been frequenting, whilst searching for inspiration with fixing his ship.
Nathan had long since decided that this bar alone was part of what earned the planet its description in "the guide". But then, what could you expect from a planet populated by Rodents?
Nathan still hadn't decided yet if the bar keep Guiseppi was a really ugly offworlder, or a laraisian \ human hybrid experiment. He certainly smelt like a rodent. The bars furniture really wouldn't look out of place at a refuse disposal site. He wasn't sure if the small piles of broken glass, rotting food scraps and festering unidentifiable objects were an intentional laraisian "quaint" décor or merely galcop health code violations.
It didn't matter either way, Nathan would be glad never to see that face or that bar again.
"The usual?" Guiseppi called out, as Nathan walked in - the bars only patron at this time.
"No thanks, 'sepp. I'll have a clean glass this time, I'm celebrating."
Nathan wasn't sure he wanted to know what Guiseppi was doing whilst he had his back turned to him, ostensibly he was making a show of cleaning the glass, but Nathan wasn't sure.
The one thing that Nathan was sure of, was that the drink itself would ensure nothing harmful survived to be imbibed, not so much the sterilizing effect of the alcohol, Nathan was just sure the taste was so vile as to kill off anything submerged in it. Even if it survived that, it was unlikely to be any more harmful than the drink itself.
Rodents have odd tastes, Nathan remembered his pet Hamsters from his youth, which delighted in coprophagy. Nathan was almost positive, that the native species shared this trait, it went a long way to explain the quality of the food and drinks on offer.
Nathan sat down on a chair that could only be described as such, because of the manner in which it was used by the regulars. On Lave it would have been described as refuse for recycling. In better still parts of the galaxy, and there are many, it might have been placed in a gallery and labelled as a sculptural commentary on human colonization...
10 minutes later, Nathan was still dividing his time between staring at BB pages and staring at the drink, trying hard to decide which was the less appealing. There were many vacancy required ads on the board. He had contacted several already via the built in comm link, each time meeting a rodent face.
For all the homely comforts he supposed this world had to offer a rodent, there seemed a lot of them that were desperate to get off the station. Each one he asked the question, "have you worked on a ship before?" Every time came the reply, "no, but I know what to do," at which Nathan did his best to gracefully hang up.
For political reasons it wasn't possible to search ads by species. Nathan had nothing against Rodents per se, but he would rather a co-pilot he had more in common with. Viewing the 8th ad of the day, the screen was filled with a human at last, as a bonus an attractive female human. The background of the view was a little more worrying, it appeared to be a medical bay. "Hi, I'm Hera Lightingwaver, and I would like to work on your ship," the recording said. Nathan hit the "contact advertiser" button.
Hera answered almost immediately, still in the medical facility apparently. "Hello, Hera Lightingwaver."
Nathan tried and failed to keep the smirk from his face. The galaxy produced many odd names, this wasn't the funniest, but it was up there. The look on Hera's face told Nathan he had managed to cross the line without speaking a word. "Yes?" she questioned .
"You're looking for work on a ship?" Nathan asked.
"Yeah, not just any bucket of bolts though. I'm not entertainment."
"Have you worked on a ship before?" Nathan questioned again.
Hera's reply was offended and scornful "Worked on a ship? I was born on a ship, an Anaconda actually. There's no ship I cant manage and no job I cant handle. Unless you're a lot older than you look, I've spent more time flying ships than you've been alive. I was docking the Anaconda manually whilst you were still at preliminary school."
She could only have been a handful of years older than Nathan at most, but there was no doubting that she had plenty of experience.
"Why are you looking for a job?" was Nathan's next question. It seemed odd that a member of staff like this was unemployed...
"My family's ship was destroyed by a pirate convoy near the witch beacon. My father forced me into the pod, but all that's done is landed me here and broke, in a rats vet centre." she answered, "The pods insurance was in my parents name and they are refusing to compensate for the lost anny, which means I have to get off this station myself. You know what hospital food tastes like?"
"Yeah," Nathan grinned, remembering a childhood spell in hospital without much fondness.
"Well, this is a Rats hospital. Its worse."
Nathan preferred not to imagine what the budget hospital equivalent of the local provender tasted like.
"As I said, I'm hard up, but I'm NOT desperate. What are you flying?"
"A modified Kintari Trader, MK2," was Nathan's reply.
Hera raised her eyebrows reassessing Nathan, "That's something a bit different, let's talk business then."
_________Part 4.1__________
A short time later Nathan met Hera at the docking bay, where his ship had been sat for so long. He was thrown back a month to when he had been on the other side, the person being introduced to and shown round the ship. The feeling made him smile.
Hera appeared at the entrance to the bay. Nathan opened the hatch to the ship and stepped down.
Nathan waited at the entrance ramp and watched as Hera moved towards the ship.
Nathan felt slightly awkward about formalities, unsure of exactly the right protocol here, he was a prospective employer, but they had already spoken on the phone. Formal? Informal? Familiar? He extended his hand and said, "Nathan Okonawae." "Hera Lightingwaver," she replied, following his lead.
"She's not named yet," Nathan said, turning things more casual, “but welcome aboard.”
"Thank you. She could do with a lick of paint couldn't she?" asked Hera, slightly disappointed.
"One thing at a time. She's spent a lot of time in dry dock - computer problems," Nathan realized his mistake immediately, he had just handed this conversation entirely over to Hera. She had the upper hand already and he was sure she knew it.
"Hmm, so she's got more than cosmetic problems then?"
Nathan knew as well as any pilot that the only thing worse than buying a ship from a private sale was taking a job as ships crew. Given the rate of attrition in space, becoming a crew member was putting your life in someone else's hands. Who you worked for and in what ship, played a big part in your survival chances.
Nathan replied, "Not any more, it was just computer problems. The previous owner made a big mistake. I purchased the ship and fixed it. Everything is 100% now."
Nathan was not lying, the ship was indeed in perfect order now. He had ran many diagnostics and everything was running as it should do, at least the computers told him so. As far as he could see his gamble had paid off big.
"OK, lets take a look round," Hera said doubtfully.
Nathan led Hera through to the bridge, he turned around just in time, to see the look of incredulity on her face, as she took in the bridge décor. The reaction smarted a bit, but he had to agree with her first reaction.
"Nice décor, now tell me, where do you keep the controls?" Hera mocked.
Nathan walked to the nearest black control panel and started tapping through the menus, as Hera looked over his shoulder.
"Its all touch-screen and menus. You can set them up pretty much however you want, run any function from any point."
Nathan looked to Hera, her face aghast.
"Seriously? The ship has no manual controls? This is what you expect me to work with?"
Nathan could see things were sliding out of control, this "interview" was an Anaconda docking accident in progress.
"At least give it a go," Nathan was pleading now.
Hera sighed and stepped up to the panel and started navigating her way round the menus, inspecting the ships various systems and looking in detail at the figures presented, understanding, knowledge, scrutiny and perfect confidence in her face, as she studied the display. Nathan could tell that this woman knew her business.
"The reactor could be more efficient. The engines need a retune. The injectors are a bit ticky. You've only got beam lasers and only at the front?" she shook her head.
Nathan was dismayed, "The diagnostics say everything is fine."
"No, the diagnostics tell you everything is within tolerances, that's not the same thing as running perfectly. Can you fly this thing?”
"Well enough," Nathan replied, feeling as if he was back in his youth, his manhood being questioned.
She looked over his flight uniform, "No insignia, What's your rank?"
Nathan knew before he answered that his youth, rather than his skill was against him, "Dangerous. I'm better than that of course, just there's only so many kills you can squeeze into a few years in space."
Hera looked him in the eye's and challenged him, "Let's see you in the sims, see how good you are."
Nathan was uncomfortably aware, that he felt he was the one looking for a job. But here was an exceptional woman, a woman who could make all the difference in this next chapter of his life.
Two hours of intense simulations later, set up by Hera - three times his virtual self was thrown to the void. He knew he had failed the test. Hera stood in the background controlling the sims in real time, throwing problem after problem at him.
Finally she illuminated the bridge and looked at him, weighing her options.
"Three times you died there, that's three times I would have died for the paltry wage on offer."
"It wasn't a fair simulation. It never gets that bad out there," Nathan was angered by the accusation, even more so because he knew he had failed. He had been flying at his sim best and came up wanting. It was impossible odds.
"It can and it will, and I don't want to be around when it does. You're not bad, but you're not the best. I want to get off this rock, how about we work out a deal? I will co-pilot you to a civilised system of your choice without any wage, but take a 20% share of any spoil along the way, then you pick up some other mug."
Nathan realised that she was trusting her life to him, for a short while at least, and getting to civilised space for free, was an attractive proposition.
_______Part 5________
Nathan tried the injectors one last time, Whir, Clunk, Clunk, Clunk, Fizz.
Smoke poured out from a vent by his feet.
Hera rapidly verbalised her thoughts,"Its no use, they're shot. Checking for any systems in range. Negative. Using a fuel pod. Back to Inonri?"
Nathan had to admire her initiative and decision making, as he had on many occasions. Hera was not afraid to make a decision normally reserved for the captain of a ship, if her life or the ships well being depended on it. She had saved his life on more than one occasion like that.
"You think there will be more waiting for us there?"
Hera replied calmly once again, "Does it matter?"
"Good point, hit it!"
15
14
The vortex of destruction grew apace. Did they still have the 15 seconds left it would take for the witch jump?
Nathan remembered the incident that led to Hera taking up the full time co-pilot position.
Heading in from the witch point beacon towards Orerve orbital station, a refuelling point en route to Zaonce, which was the system Nathan and Hera had agreed to as an end point for their sojourn together.
They expected trouble, but Orerve was a vital refuelling point. Nathan had spent plenty of time in the system before and was not overly concerned. He might even pick up some cargo along the way to pay for the quirium and maybe even cover a brief stay over at the station facilities, as it was a human world.
Hera raised the alarm, "Incoming 22km, 3 contacts," and took the ships torus drives off-line before the computers even detected the mass lock, bringing the ship rapidly to a halt.
"20km, an Adder, A Cobra MK1, and a Moray. Definitely up to no good. What do you want to do?"
"Want to do? Take them out from this distance with my military lasers..." said Nathan with a grin, "However given that I only have beam lasers its time to get up close and personal."
Nathan hit the injectors but left the throttle at minimum. A sudden speed change could work to his advantage in the coming battle.
"15km," Hera was unnecessarily reading off her display.
Nathan had the group targeted. He could see on his display the distance, at least to the Adder.
"10km!"
Nathan stopped the injectors and lined up his HUD with his target. The group were all now approaching Nathan, cautiously. Hera's previous advice had worked, it threw them off. They didn't expect someone to approach them, then slow down. They were used to fast fight or flight.
Nathan had the Adder lined up, he quick pulsed the trigger to minimize the overheat. He had to make his weapon last. The Adder was slow to react, Nathan's aim was true. By the time the pilot reacted it was as good as over. He attempted to turn tail and flee but disappeared into dust.
"7.5km!"
Nathan knew the fight had begun in earnest now, and the two remaining ships would be eager to avenge their comrade. Nathan's first action was to dive under them, full injectors and bring his speed up to maximum. These were not big ships he was fighting, but as he knew himself they were more than adequate to destroy a less than able pilots ship. They had to be to make a living in their trade.
"5km!"
Laser pulses started to play in the space around Nathan's ship, several struck home, eliciting an audible groan from the shield generators.
"Shields at 90% front!"
Pulse Lasers, that was a good thing, these pirates were poorly equipped and so probably below par on their skills as well.
The ease with which Nathan managed to pull out of his dive and loop round to gain the view of the ancient Cobra's aft confirmed that opinion. A sitting duck. Out for the easy kills.
A few seconds later and the Cobra erupted in flames, slewing from its path as its reactor blew, the wreckage disintegrating as it ripped through space, leaving behind a pair of intact cargo canisters.
Nathan was half tempted to scoop them immediately but the Moray had him in his sights. One pulse, then a second, then a third, all on target. Nathan had better deal with him immediately.
"Shields at 60%, don't even think about waiting for the cargo," warned Hera.
Nathan hit his injectors, killed his throttle, then looped round fast, allowing the Moray to pass over head. Bringing his ship round to bare, he had the Moray where he wanted it, in his sights. The Moray in death looked as interesting as it did in life, as it began to bloom atmosphere before flowering into fire and shards of hull, finally dulling and withering to nothing, but leaving another couple of cannisters.
Nathan began the process of lining up to gather the valuable (he hoped) commodities with his fuel scoops. The computer did a quick scan on each as it came aboard.
Narcotics, Minerals, disappointing, but enough to pay for fuel. Hera had already targeted the two cannisters left by the Cobra to save him looking around for them. Nathan chased them down.
Computers, slaves...
Nathan wasn't quite sure what would happen next. He was unsure of Hera's views on the two lots of "controlled" trade goods. Nathan himself was not always sure of his own views, he was no idealist, and business was business, but humans as a general rule he freed. Alien species occasionally if they gave him good reason. Nathan did not like to turn away too much free cargo.
Narcotics, Nathan had no qualms in selling on, the less lethal intoxicants out there. Truth be told, Nathan needed the credits. But not as badly as he needed the co-pilot. How to broach the subject?
"Keep an eye on things for a bit, leave her on current speed and heading, make sure we didn't pick up any unnoticed damage," Nathan rattled off his instructions and then explained, "I'm going to check on the new cargo."
Nathan headed out through the door on his right and made his way to the cargo bay. Suited up, he entered the airlock as soon as he got the green light. He glided his way over to the four new containers. He really wished he had the computer extension that checked the manifest on the containers as they were scooped. First up was the computers, checking the manifest, one ton of used data pads. He had picked up worse before. On a world like this one they would still fetch a very tidy sum. What they lacked in individual value they made up for in density. Small and portable. On this planet they might have espionage potential as well, they would sell.
Next up the minerals, a relatively low end copper ore, nothing special.
Now onto the more worrying ones. The Narcotics turned out to be munja juice, a relatively harmless aphrodisiac.
The "slave" was a male feline with a foul mouth. Nathan had attempted to open the dialogue politely – it always paid to be polite, there was always the chance that the slave had rich family who would pay well for their safe release. As far as Nathan could gather from the rabid response, The Great Ghangra was going to shred him with his bare claws and eat him raw, following which he would stalk and consume the rest of Nathan's extended family one by one. Any being stupid enough to throw such insults around at a being who held their fate in their hands would get as good as it deserved. Normally.
Hera however might have a different opinion. He may have to free this one.
Nathan arrived back on the bridge. Hera spoke first, "Are the goods intact?"
"Yeah, intact but that's a cat with an attitude problem down there. Slavery apparently doesn't suit his species."
Hera's reply in a warning voice, slightly surprised and relieved Nathan. At the very least he wasn't going to have to worry about her reducing profitability for the rest of the flight. "If you free him I'm still going to want my 20% share of his value."
“After the way he just spoke to me, you won't have to worry about getting your 20%,” Nathan replied, unable to suppress a smile at Hera's credits first attitude.
Nathan sat back in his chair and spun round to face the pilots display, he engaged the torus drive and sat back and relaxed to watch the planet grow slowly larger.
“Incoming single contact 22km...” Hera didn't get a chance to finish her line, the warning chime and the bridge lighting turning red, told Nathan that the single contact was hostile, had them targeted and would be closing fast.
No point going in slow this time.
“20km”
Laser was playing in the void around Nathan's shields.
Hera was quiet, studying her display.
“Military lasers. We haven't got the shields for this. Well equipped and aggressive even for a pirate.”
The comm blinked to life, a voice said “You won't live to regret harbouring a member of the Lightingwaver Family”
Laser struck home, Nathan barely had time to buck the opponents aim.
Their words clashed, spoken at the same moment.
“Shields at 20%,” was what Hera said.
“Care to explain?” Nathan raged at Hera.
“How could he know? How did he find me? The damned rats must have sold out. Figures.”
“What's this about Hera?” Nathan said warningly.
“If we live, I will tell you all about it. I'm sorry. I thought this died with our ship. For now all you need to know is that he WILL kill you if you don't kill him.”
“That much I guessed,” Nathan snarled, still fuming, but turning his attention back to saving their lives.
The Fer-de-lance was well equipped. Nathan assessed the situation, there was no way he traded his way to that equipment with the limited cargo space of the ship. This pilot was a professional killer, deadly at the very least. Maybe elite. This was not looking good.
Nathan knew his ship was the faster, but that wasn't much advantage given his opponents superior weapon range.
In the agility stakes, despite its larger size, Nathan had a slight advantage, but not enough. Turning, twisting, barely missing the razors of death shaving his vessel. It was all Nathan could do to keep the ship from imminent destruction.
One of the beams glanced Nathan's aft. The shields squealed in protest. Nathan could feel the pitch of his reactor change as it struggled to keep up with the demands.
Hera read, “Shields at 40:70. Trying to boost charge rate.”
Nathan's brusk interrogation took place in spurts between manoeuvres,“Why am I going to die Hera? What's all this about? I think I deserve to know.”
Hera's sorrowful reply came hesitatingly,“This man was once my fathers employer. The family Anaconda? That was his pirate outfits cargo hauler. My father was its captain, my mother was that man's wife.”
Nathan had a brief bead on the Fer de Lance, he took full advantage, not bothering to spare weapon temperature. He did not know when he would get a shot in again.
“My father wanted out, he mutineered, took the ship, took my mum and disappeared. That was about a year before I was born. He has pursued us on and off since then”
Laser played all over the upper section of Nathan's hull.
“Shields at 30:50”
Nathan had a good shot again, This time he held it longer, at least if he died he would have given a good account of himself.
“The man is unhinged and Elite. He led the combat himself in that ship.”
Elite. A minimum of 6400 souls destroyed, in this case mostly pure murder for gain. But elite or not this man had to be getting on now. Maybe he was slowing down. Laser played across Nathan's ship again, maybe not.
“Shields at 10:20. I'm so sorry. I thought he would be satisfied with my father, mother and the ship all destroyed. I thought it was all over.”
Nathan looped 180 degrees, then back the other way using the thrusters. The ships hull felt taught, Nathan could feel the twisting force he was putting his ship through, it was a desperate ploy.
It failed. Laser played across his ships underbelly. Nathan reflexively hit the injectors to get him out of the path of the beam.
“Shields gone, Reserves at 70%”
Looking around his radar, the Fer de Lance was coming up for a shot at his rear. One more hit and it would all be over. Nathan pulled up hard, looping over to face the enemy and hit his injectors again. Trying to avoid the aggressors firing arc, he blazed at full speed towards the pirate. Nathan didn't really know what he planned to do. He just knew he had to keep himself out of the lasers path. But that made it hard to get a shot himself... The Fer de Lance was coming up fast, it was bringing up its nose to bring its weapons to bare on Nathans hull. Nathan dived to counter this. Too far. He was on a collision course.
“Roll!” Screamed Hera.
Nathan dove hard right across the pirates nose, rolling as he went, bringing himself straight across the firing path of those deadly lasers, a terrible mistake, a rookie error, but the pirate hadn't reckoned on that suicidal behaviour and had instead watched his radar, looking for Nathan to make an attempt to get behind him again.
A sudden whooshing noise and a few bumps, and then an explosion under Nathans ships belly, as he passed the pirate. The Fer de Lance was gone. The Great Ghangra was no more, having been turned into one of several projectile weapons...
“What Happened?” Nathan questioned.
“I dumped the cargo in front of him. It was the only way,” Hera replied in a quaking voice.
It was one of the great laws of space, a captain made the decision to dump cargo and no one else. She had violated one of the prime laws governing ship crew behaviour. The cargo belonged to the captain alone.
“I saved our lives!” Hera stated.
Nathan roared back “It's your fault we were in that situation in the first place, you fixed your mistake with MY cargo.” No crew with this on their record would find work in space again, Nathan knew it, Hera knew it. “You came aboard MY ship, with this assassin on your tail, YOU nearly get me killed, YOU dump my cargo! Give me one good reason not to end your career now. You're not even full time crew, just a working passenger. Are there others out there hunting you? Anything else I should know?”
“I'm sorry, I had no idea he would pursue me. I didn't mean to bring you or your ship into danger. I'm sorry about the cargo, It was a spur of the moment decision, I'm used to having that authority as the captains daughter. If you don't report this, I will work for free long enough to cover double the cost of the repairs and the lost cargo.”
“Why would I want a cargo dumping, trouble magnet on my ship?” Nathan shouted, though his fury was already dropping as the adrenaline from the combat wore off.
Now Hera's injured pride raged “Why would you want me on board?” Hera's skill as a crew member was beyond doubt, she took Nathans words as a slight at her abilities. She paused and calmed herself, “I've said I'm sorry, I've offered to cover the costs AND I saved your life and your ship. I have apologised for the trouble that I didn't foresee, there's no other trouble I know of out there.” Hera's temper flared once more as she said in a rising tone, “If you really think you can get a more skilled member of staff to work on this ship then report what happened, and good luck with your new crew. But my offer stands. Double your expense's.”
PArt 6 continues on my next post down:-
OK first attempt at some fiction. I havent really tried creative writing since school, and there it earnt nothing but scorn from my English teacher "sounds like a third rate budget sci fi movie"
I have put no thought into a set theme, plots, style, pace etc that should go into proper story telling.
This is mainly an exercise in "grounding" my current project, trying to see it through the eyes of someone who would use the real thing. As Ive been designing the bridge and coming up with ideas Ive had some form of "backstory" growing as I work. Ive realised as I go that ideas that I think "look" cool, would probably not be so usefull in reality, and Ive made some decisions which are pure style over substance, and so figure that a real user would have to suffer the consequence of those sort of choices.
Heres a picture of the inspiration for the ship bridge that Nathan and Hera work in. I imagine it to look far better in the story than my unfinished creation does in real life... Theres more pictures around page 3 of this thread.
Heres an external Picture of how I imagine the ship to look:-
Still looking for tips pointers and suggestions to help with future writing
.Ive kept the original draft for these parts which when the storys done there will be links to files of the various stages of story development. But this is the current stage, hopefully the hours my wife has put in have cleared up the worst of the errors. I expect more than a few have slipped through, it was no mean task
. Part 6 I still expect to change a lot to fit the newly expanded insight into the storys origins and destination, So it has been truncated to the point that I will stay the same, the remainder of that part will be rewritten substantially.
Systems, no. Drives, no. Misc, no. Nathan was tap tap tapping through menus on the console on to the right of his chair, trying to find the option to ionize the thruster bearings, it was in there somewhere. Most thrusters don't have the ability to rotate, and so don't have this problem, this was just one of this ships many idiosyncrasies. All the while Nathan's right hand was on the controls, attempting to evade the enemy with random manoeuvres.
Where was it?
Damn.
The screeching of laser draining the ships shields told Nathan that he had let his attention wander too long, his foe had a bead on him, his head turned to the main view screen and scanner, both hands grasped the controls; a dive, a half roll clockwise and a climb had pulled him out of the way of the deadly beams, but not as efficiently as it should. The upper rear thrusters were still down 5% of their movement range, costing him manoeuvrability. In the current situation it could end up costing him a lot more than that.
Damn reductionist styling. It was probably the height of fashion 150 years ago in some forgotten corner of the Galaxy. What sort of idiot puts style ahead of functionality. A Spacecraft isn't a fashion accessory, its a workhorse and a weapon.
The bridge in which he sat was featureless, featureless and uncluttered, excessively so. No ship of the line would ever have been so badly designed as standard, unless for use by some two headed 8 tentacled space faring species who could have put it to good use.
The floors were tiled and white, grip studded near the entrance, the ceiling was bare and made of the same smooth but non reflective white material as the walls, which were also mostly bare. The white colour added to the ambient light and the surfacing managed to reduce even the detailing of shadow or reflection. The material, a heavy plastic of some sort perhaps, broken by lights (currently a flashing red ambient light to warn them of hostilities of which they were all too aware) and several jet black control panels and one large display screen, spanning the width of the bridge in front of the pilot and co-pilot seats. Even the display panels were featureless and flat. It looked great - if minimalist styling was your taste. In a space craft it was pure glitz, it wasn't minimalist, it was ostentatious, it was faux minimalist. A century and a half of occupation hadn't done it any favours either, a truly minimalist design would be pure functionality, direct control switches and levers etc. A ship this size needed a lot more control and management than could be seen here. Instead of the normal array of switches, levers and dials, this ship had endless menu systems, worked via pointing at the control panels. Meaning, that in order to do just about anything on this ship you had to know where in amongst the thousands of potential options the one you wanted was.
Some long dead being had clearly thought the styling "made a statement" but all it said to later owners, was that the first owner was a pretentious prat. For all that, they clearly had been successful. Apart from the styling the ship was incredibly well built, no expense had been spared in components throughout, sadly the same could not be said for maintenance by later owners.
The last owner had attempted to streamline the menu system by reconfiguring it, a disastrous attempt that had left half the systems on the ship unusable. Nathan had acquired it at a bargain price as a result. He had purchased a medium \ large trading ship for the cost of a well used Adder. He did however have to spend an agonising month rebuilding the menus and control system to even get it usable.
A ships interior was normally fairly customisable, pilots like to put their own touch on a ship, however the functional controls were normally left well alone, apart from some home brew mods some pilots liked to carry out.
Nathan would dearly loved to have scrapped this menu system in favour of a standard lay out. However he had soon discovered that this control system wasn't just a graphical front end for a normal control system, the whole ship was wired differently. There was no end to end connection controlling the various servos, systems, sensors etc. There wasn't a big junction box hooking up a processing unit to standard wiring, whoever had this built, did it properly. Every single thing on the ship was ran over an optical bus system, again money had been spent, the bus system had more than adequate bandwidth to handle the signals in any situation. Moreover the level of redundancy was insane, there were four completely separate and individually routed bus spines, so the ship could function even with up to three of those completely severed - Like that was ever going to happen without the ship breaking up completely. Overkill, over priced and archaic.
Regardless though, rewiring a ship this size to run on standard controls and refitting with standard components would have cost far more than the ship was worth. The awkward controls and dated grandiose décor had seemed a small price to pay for the discount he had got on the ships purchase. However the décor was an embarrassment, his co-pilot a necessity on a ship this size, had burst out laughing after first seeing the bridge. Now it looked as if it may cost him more than his pride, his life and hers...
Screams again from the shields, as his opponent caught him off guard, again, day dreaming - at a time like this. Damn that bridge design.
Hera screamed over her shoulder, "Eyes on the screen halfwit." Nathan took to the controls again, pulling off a classic corkscrew, but just didn't quite have the dive ability to come back up behind his opponent. Damn the sticky thruster. He shouted over at Hera, "Get that top thruster mount ionised fast." She replied with her normal caustic sarcasm, "Before or after I try to boost the rear shields to make up for your daydreaming?" “After,” he said. Her next before or after question was lost in a klaxon sound, as the rear shield power was completely drained...
Further evasive manoeuvres got him out of the way of the beam just in time, he tried a simple up and over to bring him up behind the enemy, it almost worked. Instead, he ended up staring at the belly of the ship, a Mk1 Wolf. It wasn't the angle he hoped for, but he finally got in a few shots of his own, his beam lasers splashing around Wolfs underbelly, as Nathan slowed down, hoping to still come in on the Wolfs rear section. The enemy was good enough to not let that happen and instead dived past the nose of Nathan's ship and headed off behind. Just then, Hera shouted, "Got it!"
Nathan dived hard himself and took off after his opponent, who had misjudged Nathan's ships dive\climb rate, which was boosted well above normal for this type of ship. Now he was on the Wolfs tail, and quietly forgiving the first owners flamboyant styling, whatever they may have lacked in taste, they made up for with engineering.
_______Part 2_______
The Wolf was the faster of the two ships. But the pilot knew better than to run in a straight line for too long. The Wolf quarter rolled left and climbed slightly. Nathan held back for a second on following, his patience rewarded: it was a feint designed to throw Nathan in the wrong direction; the Wolf rolled right ¾, then climbed at, what Nathan could only assume, was maximum pace.
The Wolfs feint told Nathan a lot about his enemy. For a start, that he didn't check to see if his feint had been bought, before pulling off the planned escape manoeuvre. Nathan instinctively knew his opponent was panicking, now the tables were turned.
Nathan followed the second manoeuvre, stabbing the lasers all over his opponents exposed upper hull and then straight at his exposed rear end. The subtle change in his lasers interactions with his target, told him that he had completely drained its shields. It was just a matter of time now, and the Wolf pilot had to know that.
"Incoming!" shouted Hera, "Four contacts on intercept course. 19 KM.”
"Friend or Foe?" replied Nathan, the news spoiling his aim.
Hera went through the menus at speed and produced an image from their side view, on a screen on the side wall behind Nathan. Looking over her shoulder, she studied the image, "A Krait, a Cobra mk 1, another Wolf and an Asp - looks like trouble to me."
"How's the shields?"
"50%," replied Hera.
Nathan had to finish the Wolf fast, there was no doubt these were friends of his. He couldn't let the Wolf recover and add to the odds. The Wolf tried a 180 climb to head towards his cohorts. Nathan saw the danger in pursuit, but if he let the Wolf go, the chances were, he would be pursued by the faster wolves. He made his decision in a split second and followed the Wolf, coming round faster than the Wolf expected, again shooting at his upper section as he flew past.
The Wolfs hull splintered, vented burning atmosphere. Nathan stabbed the lasers a few more times and the remains of the Wolf disappeared in a mini nova.
"No bounty, that's odd, 15km to nearest mark," Hera said, "turn and run?"
Nathan's answer never came; the sound of incoming laser, glancing the void around his ship, told him that running was not an option. The lead Wolf had military lasers.
"We're going in, keep an eye on the injectors, they wont like this much," Nathan said, as he hit the injectors to close the distance, diving ever so perceptibly as he went to try to keep out of line with their weapons.
"Will I like this much?" asked Hera.
"Depends, do you believe in an afterlife?" replied Nathan, "I'm going to need you to keep an eye on that Wolf, we might come out alive if we can avoid the millys."
Nathan targeted the Wolf, just as the Asp started taking shots in the void, around the space above Nathan's ship. "Oh... that's not fair!" cried Nathan with dismay.
Two military equipped ships at once. As if the numbers alone weren't enough of a problem. Nathan re-targeted, choosing to attempt to cut down the odds, rather than try to take out the fire power first. Even a Pulse laser would kill you with enough shots. The two military equipped ships were bound to sport enhanced shields as well.
"That's a lot of credits out there," he said to no one in particular.
"5k," Hera read out. "The Cobras launched a missile!" she panicked.
Nathan ignored this, ECM programming was her job. She was quite capable.
All four ships were now firing, all the shots going high. His ruse had worked, but the assailants had cottoned on and dived themselves. Too late. Nathan dived hard, then pulled up to point death at the Cobra. The beam connected, held, and then a brief flare, and the Cobra was gone. At least they weren't all expensively equipped.
He passed behind the 3 remaining ships just as they started to dive. He over shot and then tried to bring his ship round to get a shot at their rears. He failed. They scattered, to come at him from 3 different angles.
Nathan didn't have time to decide which ship to target next; he just headed for the one straight on, the Krait as it happened. The Krait sped on its heading. Nathan realised his mistake, his ship paid the price: military lasers from both sides tore at his shields. Nathan slammed on the injectors for a brief second, just enough time to kill his throttle, then released them again.
The sudden acceleration and deceleration threw off his opponents completely. They had already manoeuvred to chase him along, what had appeared to be his trajectory. Nathan gave the ship half throttle and climbed 90 degrees.
"Shields at 30%!" screamed Hera.
"Front or back?" replied Nathan, distracted as he tried to pick a target. He chose the Wolf. Nathan got a good long shot at the Wolfs right hand side, before pulling a 180 and hitting the injectors violently to get out of the way of the Asp, who had been trying to line up a shot at his rear.
Beam lasers playing on the outskirts of his shields, just in front of the forward view point, told Nathan, the Krait had turned and rejoined the fray. Nathan guessed he was above and behind. He brought his ship up hard, rolling, turning the world up side down and then continuing the manoeuvre as a dive, using the injectors again, to bring to bear on, where he thought he would find the Krait. He was wrong, the Krait had used its injectors. Nathan found the enemy ship filled his view screen.
Time stood still in two cabins. The Krait cabins pilot became a spectator, as his death played out before him. For Nathan the experience was different, he wasn't frozen, he moved at normal speed, but time was slowed. He had the time he needed to target and fire a missile and a burst of laser and dive again.
Time returned to its normal flow. Nathan felt the customary after affects of the flood of chemicals through his body. Straight to the task at hand, he climbed again to get a line on the remaining Wolf and Asp, who had been passing over his head. Targeting the Asp, he completed the manoeuvre to come in behind, but in an inverted position relative to both the Asp and Wolf. He couldn't have asked for a better position.
Nathan opened fire on the Asp, his beam lasers, whilst not as powerful as military lasers, still ate rapidly at the shields reserves. The Asp held its course for a few seconds, then spewed laser from its rear gun emplacements. Nathan's shields disappeared in a heart beat, eating fast into the reserves. Rear military lasers.
"Missile!" screamed a panicking Hera again.
Time stood still again, but this time only for Nathan. He had time enough to spot the missile which had been launched at point blank range, to pull up enough for the missile, to shoot past underneath his ship and then to consider his action briefly. He jammed his injectors on briefly, maintaining the course set by avoiding the missile, heading up and over the top of the Asp and from above the Asp continued on to the left, to draw a bead across the Wolf.
Above and to the left of the Asp now, he was safe from laser fire for a few seconds, and vented his hormone fuelled aggression on the Wolf, tearing its shields to shreds with his beam laser, only dimly aware of the sound of the ECM firing repeatedly.
"Its a hardhead!" wailed Hera, as the missile, avoided seconds ago, came back round.
Nathan was disciplined enough not to hang on to his firing line, to try to kill the Wolf before the missile reached him. He pulled up 90 degrees and hit his injectors again. This time the noise just wasn't right, a whir, a clunk, a whir, but they worked, They were complaining about all this sudden start stop work.
"I told you to keep an eye on those injectors!" bellowed Nathan unfairly, as Hera continued to hit the ECM. Nathan was running blind now, the Wolf and the Asp realising what was happening, were quick on the pursuit.
Nathan had a missile chasing him and two sources of military laser all round the space in front of him.
"Shields at 20 and 50"
Nathan killed the throttle, dove through 180 degrees and hit the injectors again, whir, clunk, clunk, whir. Nathan shot straight under the missile, just in time to see the ECM finally do its job. He was now hurtling straight at the two ships. Without even bothering to target them, he fired on the Wolf, his laser playing across the front of the ship, along its underside. Nathan realised he had managed to get a good strike on the already depleted rear shields.
The tell tale signs of a hull rupture - oxygen venting. Just another few seconds. Incoming fire from the Asp hit the front of Nathan's ship. His shields disappeared, the reserves were going down fast.
Boom!
The cabin was filled with a dazzling blue flash, Nathans mind reeled, he was still alive, that wasn't his ship exploding. He saw a bright blue circle of light. Had the Wolf witched out? No, that was not a wormhole, it was growing and it was far too bright. The Asp detonated, the ball of blue expanded.
Nathan was shocked for a few seconds, unable to believe what the Wolfs pilot had just done. Nathan hit the injectors again, Whir, Clunk, Clunk, Clunk, Thwunk. Panic.
______Part 3_______
Nathan tried the injectors a second time, Whir, Clunk, clunk, clunk, Thwunk. Again, Whir, Clunk, Clunk, Clunk, Thwunk.
The blue ball was expanding apace, filling space in an impossible manner. Nathan sat mesmerized, seeing his doom expanding before him.
He barely had the presence of mind to turn his ship away and hit full power, a futile gesture, but he couldn't help trying. His ship had failed him, his beautiful ship, he had cursed the cabin décor, he had cursed the interface and the bus system so many times, but had always had total faith in the mechanicals. Now here at the end the mechanicals were what had failed him.
He remembered first seeing the ship in a docking bay at the orbital station over Larais. Nathan had been flying hard for 5 years at the time, He still had his first ship - an Adder, purchased against the wishes of his parents when he received his trust fund that was supposed to give him his start in professional life, enough for an apartment on Zaonce. His parents were generous and well off, but Nathan was a disappointment and that was his final act of disobedience...
Now he had given that Adder teeth. It was well equipped, but it wasn't big enough for bulk transport or fast enough for urgent courier work. When he first started flying, he had tried his hands at many ways of making money with the ship. He had started trying to trade normally, but 2 tonnes of space wasn't enough for trading TC's. He had made some money on the gems and precious metals market, but not enough to build a business on.
As a "nameless" Adder pilot, no one had been willing to take a chance on him as a courier for small valuables. Slowly he had saved enough for his fuel scoops; they had paid for themselves many times over. His biggest profits came from bounty hunting, not the bounties themselves - these barely covered costs, it was the cargo he scooped. Zero outlay, 100% profit.
It took him 3 years of hard work reinvesting every credit he made back into his ship to get it to its current state, then the next two years saving hard towards a larger faster ship. He had expected to be working for at least another 2 years before he could afford something like a Cobra Mk3 and to give it the bare essentials of space trading.
Nathan's most recent encounter with a lone Krait had gone well, two tonnes of computers and a couple of credits per gram profit on the assorted gemstones he was carrying from Oresque. He sat back looking at his CR rating on the screen: it was going up slowly. Perhaps he should celebrate with a meal out on the station, not that this planet had much to offer.
He went though the local guide, and flicked through the local ads. One stood out immediately: 75,000CR, above a 3d picture of a beautiful white ship. His first thought was "typo". But he couldn't help but inquire. The seller confirmed the price, but said that it "needed some work". Nathan's every instinct screamed "never buy a ship from a private sale". He had heard the stories, but this ship, this price, he had to at least go and look at it in the flesh. He wasn't going to buy a ship from a private sale.
Nathan arranged a meeting with the seller at the ships berth, unsurprisingly the seller was available immediately. Most pilots, like Nathan lived on their ships, their private fortress amongst the stars, their own domain. Few pilots felt entirely comfortable outside their durasteel wombs.
Nathan hailed an auto cab and took the short trip to the right docking bay. On the approach he saw the picture had been unduly flattering; the shape was undeniably graceful, but the on screen picture hadn't shown the scarring on the hull and some of the lower quality repairs carried out. Still, he had no intention of buying a ship from a private sale, so it didn't matter. He was only here for curiosities sake after all.
Nathan stepped towards the ship and a hatch opened smoothly on the side. Out stepped a man in his late 40's, hair already graying, overweight and clearly down on his luck. The look on his face clearly said that he didn't expect the ship to sell.
"Here she is," the seller said, gesturing to the ship, trying to sound cheerful. "The finest built ship you will ever see," he continued slightly sadly.
Nathan tried and failed not to show his polite disbelief. A standard line if ever there was one, "this ones special" - every ship is special to its owner.
The seller introduced himself as Steven Fenaso. "You take a look over her and make your own mind up. If you know anything about ships, you will see for yourself what I mean," Steven said in a slightly injured tone.
"So why Exactly is the price so low?" Nathan inquired
The seller replied with some hesitance ,"I offered her to the station dealers, but they wouldn't touch her as she's so rare, and well, to put it bluntly she doesn't work... Right now that is. You see its a rare ship in more than just its looks, it works, well, differently. Its got a very odd control system, that can be a bit of a pain at times. It's user customizable," he said, "and, well, I was trying to streamline things a bit, you know, make it easier to find the essentials."
Nathan looked at the seller quizzically, baffled by what he was saying, making things easier to find?
"You will see in a minute," he said ,"anyway, let's just say I made a mistake, and now there's nothing. She's dead where she is."
Nathan looked at the man with a degree of sympathy. He understood what the man was saying. Somehow he had killed his ship.
Nathan inquired ,"Why haven't you taken her to the repair bay?"
The seller said, "She wont go, at all, not even round the station. I've had one of the guys come out to take a look and he just shrugged his shoulders. Didn't have a clue where to begin."
Nathan said ,"What's gone? The reactor?"
"No no no, the reactor's fine, the hatch wouldn't open without power. It's the control system itself, it's gone. It's blank."
Nathan struggled to comprehend, how could a ships control system be blank? Dead he could understand, lifeless, unpowered, disassembled even, but blank???
"Come inside, I'll show you," said the older man.
Nathan followed the man onto the ship. Inside, the ship was surprisingly light, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, all white. They seemed to be made to look like sheer stone work, marble maybe. Odd, but never the less it would have been very expensive when it was first done.
The passage ran right towards the cargo area, but they turned left, towards the front of the ship. They passed several doors, all of which appeared to be able to function as bulkhead airlocks, that would have cost, what's more the doors had been made to fit the same aesthetic as the passageway, very costly for a ship produced in small numbers. Somewhere some small workshop had put a lot of time and effort into this ship.
The passage way turned slightly to the right and terminated in a double layer airlock door, recessed into the wall, beautifully done. Wasted effort really. Any ship badly enough damaged to be venting atmosphere wasn't likely to survive long enough for the crew to be worried about Asphyxiation.
Nathan noticed the entry system on the side of the door. At roughly chest height, the smooth black panel lit up as the man approached, he tapped a few times at certain illuminated areas and the door split in the middle and opened up to allow them on to the bridge.
Nathan gasped as he took in the view of the bridge. "What were they on?" There wasn't a button, a dial or a lever in view. Just more black panels like the one beside the door.
"How do you fly this thing?” he gasped.
The seller responded, "Well, these panels are both input and output and user definable. Anything you want to change, you just go through the menus and change - from just about any panel you want... ingenious really," he sounded less than convinced himself on the last point.
"Somebody chose to throw 11 centuries of accepted wisdom on spacecraft control to the wind for the sake of style?" Nathan exclaimed.
"What were they on?" he repeated.
"Well, anyway, here's what happened, I was trying to make things a bit simpler to run, because you need to move fast sometimes out there," he paused, "and now there's nothing."
To illustrate the point he stepped up to the pilots chair on the right, spun round to face the front and tapped on the screen. All the black panels lit up, several buttons and keypads could be seen on the front screen and apart from that, some kind of command prompt.
It appeared the whole ship control system was routed through some sort of computer front end, which Mr Fenaso had managed to erase.
"Here's the deal, I'm broke. I haven't got a bean to my name. I couldn't afford to pay my co-pilot, so he left - cant blame him for that really. I tried to change things around, to try to run the ship by myself and messed up. I've had enough, I'm calling it quits. 75,000 is a pittance for a ship like this, its worth 350,000 at least, but I want out. 75,000 credits and its yours. I will settle down somewhere ground side. Its a steal," he said, "the deal of the century. But I haven't got any options. The ship itself is fine, you get it checked, it's as good as it gets."
Nathan sensed the man's agony and despair, he felt for him. But this was a private sale, there were millions of hard luck stories in space. Nathan wasn't about to let this one cloud his judgement.
"Lets see what's under the hood," Nathan said.
The seller brightened up, "Too right."
Nathan was given a guided tour under the panels through the service level.
The seller was right, this ship was well built, it was clearly an artisan build and built with real pride. Some odd decisions in places, but all the systems themselves were well specified. It really was a great ship, it was just dead.
Nathan sat himself in the pilot seat and swivelled round to face the panels again, that prompt looked familiar. The cogs in his head were turning, where had he seen it before?
Nathan realized it was from part of a theory course he had covered on computers, including scientific operating systems. There was a system out there used for advanced maths modelling, and the prompt had looked just like this.
Nathan racked his memory, trying to remember what he had learnt. Software development was the career his parents had planned for him, before he chased his dreams into space. He had been good at it, but it didn't hold any promise to a young man like him, he craved the feeling of holding his own destiny in his hands.
After a few minutes he managed to remember some basic commands, the system responded. He was right, it didn't help much, this wasn't a simple problem. But it meant the computer wasn't damaged, just the software. Nathan's mind was racing.
It was the opportunity of a life time, a great ship, not flyable for now, but he felt sure he could get it up and running again. It was a private sale, caveat emptor. He would have to sell his beloved Adder, and it wouldn't leave him much cash left to equip the ship with. The current owner had sold off many of the "extras".
_________part 4_________
Nathan hit the injectors again. Whir, Clunk, Clunk, Clunk, Thwunk.
The mini nova behind him, sprouting new blooms as it reached clouds of quirium, left from the Krait and Cobra. The deadly inferno expanded further, hungry for more quirium to feed its appetite.
Nathan looked to his left, Hera was scrambling through the menus.
He remembered first meeting her, shortly after getting his ship working.
It had been a long, hard struggle, slogging away at the code for up to 20 hours a day. An entire month in dry dock. Sitting, staring blankly at a screen. Trying one technique after another. Slowly, carefully charting the ships computers hardware calls, language extensions.
Bit by bit he had managed to write analytical programs to probe every corner of the system, it was slow progress, he had to be careful, the risk of a sudden witch drive trigger by a random command, was a very real possibility. Even an accidental trigger of the ships weapons could be disastrous.
His lucky break came whilst trying to chart where the ships CSM Computers (critical systems and monitoring) interacted with the main computers. CSM controlled the reactor, life support, access and logging devices. These computers were normally pretty much tamper proof and resilient, designed to withstand a ships demise under most circumstances.
The CSM would continue feeding data to the ships main computer, as long as they were connected. Nathan had written a program to look for where this data was being saved, the format it was being saved in might well prove useful.
As things turned out it was more useful than he could have dared to hope. His algorithms turned up an area of storage that held data. Even at first glance, Nathan knew this wasn't the CSM's files.
After all his hard work and expectation of harder to come, a file recovery was all it took to get the ship running again. The data held was a back up of the software for running the ship in its pristine unaltered state. Lost but not destroyed.
The gamble had paid off, he had a real ship. Now he needed a real co-pilot. He didn't hold out much hope of finding a good one in a backwater hole like Larais, but still it was worth checking. Nathan decided to check the local BB from the bar he had been frequenting, whilst searching for inspiration with fixing his ship.
Nathan had long since decided that this bar alone was part of what earned the planet its description in "the guide". But then, what could you expect from a planet populated by Rodents?
Nathan still hadn't decided yet if the bar keep Guiseppi was a really ugly offworlder, or a laraisian \ human hybrid experiment. He certainly smelt like a rodent. The bars furniture really wouldn't look out of place at a refuse disposal site. He wasn't sure if the small piles of broken glass, rotting food scraps and festering unidentifiable objects were an intentional laraisian "quaint" décor or merely galcop health code violations.
It didn't matter either way, Nathan would be glad never to see that face or that bar again.
"The usual?" Guiseppi called out, as Nathan walked in - the bars only patron at this time.
"No thanks, 'sepp. I'll have a clean glass this time, I'm celebrating."
Nathan wasn't sure he wanted to know what Guiseppi was doing whilst he had his back turned to him, ostensibly he was making a show of cleaning the glass, but Nathan wasn't sure.
The one thing that Nathan was sure of, was that the drink itself would ensure nothing harmful survived to be imbibed, not so much the sterilizing effect of the alcohol, Nathan was just sure the taste was so vile as to kill off anything submerged in it. Even if it survived that, it was unlikely to be any more harmful than the drink itself.
Rodents have odd tastes, Nathan remembered his pet Hamsters from his youth, which delighted in coprophagy. Nathan was almost positive, that the native species shared this trait, it went a long way to explain the quality of the food and drinks on offer.
Nathan sat down on a chair that could only be described as such, because of the manner in which it was used by the regulars. On Lave it would have been described as refuse for recycling. In better still parts of the galaxy, and there are many, it might have been placed in a gallery and labelled as a sculptural commentary on human colonization...
10 minutes later, Nathan was still dividing his time between staring at BB pages and staring at the drink, trying hard to decide which was the less appealing. There were many vacancy required ads on the board. He had contacted several already via the built in comm link, each time meeting a rodent face.
For all the homely comforts he supposed this world had to offer a rodent, there seemed a lot of them that were desperate to get off the station. Each one he asked the question, "have you worked on a ship before?" Every time came the reply, "no, but I know what to do," at which Nathan did his best to gracefully hang up.
For political reasons it wasn't possible to search ads by species. Nathan had nothing against Rodents per se, but he would rather a co-pilot he had more in common with. Viewing the 8th ad of the day, the screen was filled with a human at last, as a bonus an attractive female human. The background of the view was a little more worrying, it appeared to be a medical bay. "Hi, I'm Hera Lightingwaver, and I would like to work on your ship," the recording said. Nathan hit the "contact advertiser" button.
Hera answered almost immediately, still in the medical facility apparently. "Hello, Hera Lightingwaver."
Nathan tried and failed to keep the smirk from his face. The galaxy produced many odd names, this wasn't the funniest, but it was up there. The look on Hera's face told Nathan he had managed to cross the line without speaking a word. "Yes?" she questioned .
"You're looking for work on a ship?" Nathan asked.
"Yeah, not just any bucket of bolts though. I'm not entertainment."
"Have you worked on a ship before?" Nathan questioned again.
Hera's reply was offended and scornful "Worked on a ship? I was born on a ship, an Anaconda actually. There's no ship I cant manage and no job I cant handle. Unless you're a lot older than you look, I've spent more time flying ships than you've been alive. I was docking the Anaconda manually whilst you were still at preliminary school."
She could only have been a handful of years older than Nathan at most, but there was no doubting that she had plenty of experience.
"Why are you looking for a job?" was Nathan's next question. It seemed odd that a member of staff like this was unemployed...
"My family's ship was destroyed by a pirate convoy near the witch beacon. My father forced me into the pod, but all that's done is landed me here and broke, in a rats vet centre." she answered, "The pods insurance was in my parents name and they are refusing to compensate for the lost anny, which means I have to get off this station myself. You know what hospital food tastes like?"
"Yeah," Nathan grinned, remembering a childhood spell in hospital without much fondness.
"Well, this is a Rats hospital. Its worse."
Nathan preferred not to imagine what the budget hospital equivalent of the local provender tasted like.
"As I said, I'm hard up, but I'm NOT desperate. What are you flying?"
"A modified Kintari Trader, MK2," was Nathan's reply.
Hera raised her eyebrows reassessing Nathan, "That's something a bit different, let's talk business then."
_________Part 4.1__________
A short time later Nathan met Hera at the docking bay, where his ship had been sat for so long. He was thrown back a month to when he had been on the other side, the person being introduced to and shown round the ship. The feeling made him smile.
Hera appeared at the entrance to the bay. Nathan opened the hatch to the ship and stepped down.
Nathan waited at the entrance ramp and watched as Hera moved towards the ship.
Nathan felt slightly awkward about formalities, unsure of exactly the right protocol here, he was a prospective employer, but they had already spoken on the phone. Formal? Informal? Familiar? He extended his hand and said, "Nathan Okonawae." "Hera Lightingwaver," she replied, following his lead.
"She's not named yet," Nathan said, turning things more casual, “but welcome aboard.”
"Thank you. She could do with a lick of paint couldn't she?" asked Hera, slightly disappointed.
"One thing at a time. She's spent a lot of time in dry dock - computer problems," Nathan realized his mistake immediately, he had just handed this conversation entirely over to Hera. She had the upper hand already and he was sure she knew it.
"Hmm, so she's got more than cosmetic problems then?"
Nathan knew as well as any pilot that the only thing worse than buying a ship from a private sale was taking a job as ships crew. Given the rate of attrition in space, becoming a crew member was putting your life in someone else's hands. Who you worked for and in what ship, played a big part in your survival chances.
Nathan replied, "Not any more, it was just computer problems. The previous owner made a big mistake. I purchased the ship and fixed it. Everything is 100% now."
Nathan was not lying, the ship was indeed in perfect order now. He had ran many diagnostics and everything was running as it should do, at least the computers told him so. As far as he could see his gamble had paid off big.
"OK, lets take a look round," Hera said doubtfully.
Nathan led Hera through to the bridge, he turned around just in time, to see the look of incredulity on her face, as she took in the bridge décor. The reaction smarted a bit, but he had to agree with her first reaction.
"Nice décor, now tell me, where do you keep the controls?" Hera mocked.
Nathan walked to the nearest black control panel and started tapping through the menus, as Hera looked over his shoulder.
"Its all touch-screen and menus. You can set them up pretty much however you want, run any function from any point."
Nathan looked to Hera, her face aghast.
"Seriously? The ship has no manual controls? This is what you expect me to work with?"
Nathan could see things were sliding out of control, this "interview" was an Anaconda docking accident in progress.
"At least give it a go," Nathan was pleading now.
Hera sighed and stepped up to the panel and started navigating her way round the menus, inspecting the ships various systems and looking in detail at the figures presented, understanding, knowledge, scrutiny and perfect confidence in her face, as she studied the display. Nathan could tell that this woman knew her business.
"The reactor could be more efficient. The engines need a retune. The injectors are a bit ticky. You've only got beam lasers and only at the front?" she shook her head.
Nathan was dismayed, "The diagnostics say everything is fine."
"No, the diagnostics tell you everything is within tolerances, that's not the same thing as running perfectly. Can you fly this thing?”
"Well enough," Nathan replied, feeling as if he was back in his youth, his manhood being questioned.
She looked over his flight uniform, "No insignia, What's your rank?"
Nathan knew before he answered that his youth, rather than his skill was against him, "Dangerous. I'm better than that of course, just there's only so many kills you can squeeze into a few years in space."
Hera looked him in the eye's and challenged him, "Let's see you in the sims, see how good you are."
Nathan was uncomfortably aware, that he felt he was the one looking for a job. But here was an exceptional woman, a woman who could make all the difference in this next chapter of his life.
Two hours of intense simulations later, set up by Hera - three times his virtual self was thrown to the void. He knew he had failed the test. Hera stood in the background controlling the sims in real time, throwing problem after problem at him.
Finally she illuminated the bridge and looked at him, weighing her options.
"Three times you died there, that's three times I would have died for the paltry wage on offer."
"It wasn't a fair simulation. It never gets that bad out there," Nathan was angered by the accusation, even more so because he knew he had failed. He had been flying at his sim best and came up wanting. It was impossible odds.
"It can and it will, and I don't want to be around when it does. You're not bad, but you're not the best. I want to get off this rock, how about we work out a deal? I will co-pilot you to a civilised system of your choice without any wage, but take a 20% share of any spoil along the way, then you pick up some other mug."
Nathan realised that she was trusting her life to him, for a short while at least, and getting to civilised space for free, was an attractive proposition.
_______Part 5________
Nathan tried the injectors one last time, Whir, Clunk, Clunk, Clunk, Fizz.
Smoke poured out from a vent by his feet.
Hera rapidly verbalised her thoughts,"Its no use, they're shot. Checking for any systems in range. Negative. Using a fuel pod. Back to Inonri?"
Nathan had to admire her initiative and decision making, as he had on many occasions. Hera was not afraid to make a decision normally reserved for the captain of a ship, if her life or the ships well being depended on it. She had saved his life on more than one occasion like that.
"You think there will be more waiting for us there?"
Hera replied calmly once again, "Does it matter?"
"Good point, hit it!"
15
14
The vortex of destruction grew apace. Did they still have the 15 seconds left it would take for the witch jump?
Nathan remembered the incident that led to Hera taking up the full time co-pilot position.
Heading in from the witch point beacon towards Orerve orbital station, a refuelling point en route to Zaonce, which was the system Nathan and Hera had agreed to as an end point for their sojourn together.
They expected trouble, but Orerve was a vital refuelling point. Nathan had spent plenty of time in the system before and was not overly concerned. He might even pick up some cargo along the way to pay for the quirium and maybe even cover a brief stay over at the station facilities, as it was a human world.
Hera raised the alarm, "Incoming 22km, 3 contacts," and took the ships torus drives off-line before the computers even detected the mass lock, bringing the ship rapidly to a halt.
"20km, an Adder, A Cobra MK1, and a Moray. Definitely up to no good. What do you want to do?"
"Want to do? Take them out from this distance with my military lasers..." said Nathan with a grin, "However given that I only have beam lasers its time to get up close and personal."
Nathan hit the injectors but left the throttle at minimum. A sudden speed change could work to his advantage in the coming battle.
"15km," Hera was unnecessarily reading off her display.
Nathan had the group targeted. He could see on his display the distance, at least to the Adder.
"10km!"
Nathan stopped the injectors and lined up his HUD with his target. The group were all now approaching Nathan, cautiously. Hera's previous advice had worked, it threw them off. They didn't expect someone to approach them, then slow down. They were used to fast fight or flight.
Nathan had the Adder lined up, he quick pulsed the trigger to minimize the overheat. He had to make his weapon last. The Adder was slow to react, Nathan's aim was true. By the time the pilot reacted it was as good as over. He attempted to turn tail and flee but disappeared into dust.
"7.5km!"
Nathan knew the fight had begun in earnest now, and the two remaining ships would be eager to avenge their comrade. Nathan's first action was to dive under them, full injectors and bring his speed up to maximum. These were not big ships he was fighting, but as he knew himself they were more than adequate to destroy a less than able pilots ship. They had to be to make a living in their trade.
"5km!"
Laser pulses started to play in the space around Nathan's ship, several struck home, eliciting an audible groan from the shield generators.
"Shields at 90% front!"
Pulse Lasers, that was a good thing, these pirates were poorly equipped and so probably below par on their skills as well.
The ease with which Nathan managed to pull out of his dive and loop round to gain the view of the ancient Cobra's aft confirmed that opinion. A sitting duck. Out for the easy kills.
A few seconds later and the Cobra erupted in flames, slewing from its path as its reactor blew, the wreckage disintegrating as it ripped through space, leaving behind a pair of intact cargo canisters.
Nathan was half tempted to scoop them immediately but the Moray had him in his sights. One pulse, then a second, then a third, all on target. Nathan had better deal with him immediately.
"Shields at 60%, don't even think about waiting for the cargo," warned Hera.
Nathan hit his injectors, killed his throttle, then looped round fast, allowing the Moray to pass over head. Bringing his ship round to bare, he had the Moray where he wanted it, in his sights. The Moray in death looked as interesting as it did in life, as it began to bloom atmosphere before flowering into fire and shards of hull, finally dulling and withering to nothing, but leaving another couple of cannisters.
Nathan began the process of lining up to gather the valuable (he hoped) commodities with his fuel scoops. The computer did a quick scan on each as it came aboard.
Narcotics, Minerals, disappointing, but enough to pay for fuel. Hera had already targeted the two cannisters left by the Cobra to save him looking around for them. Nathan chased them down.
Computers, slaves...
Nathan wasn't quite sure what would happen next. He was unsure of Hera's views on the two lots of "controlled" trade goods. Nathan himself was not always sure of his own views, he was no idealist, and business was business, but humans as a general rule he freed. Alien species occasionally if they gave him good reason. Nathan did not like to turn away too much free cargo.
Narcotics, Nathan had no qualms in selling on, the less lethal intoxicants out there. Truth be told, Nathan needed the credits. But not as badly as he needed the co-pilot. How to broach the subject?
"Keep an eye on things for a bit, leave her on current speed and heading, make sure we didn't pick up any unnoticed damage," Nathan rattled off his instructions and then explained, "I'm going to check on the new cargo."
Nathan headed out through the door on his right and made his way to the cargo bay. Suited up, he entered the airlock as soon as he got the green light. He glided his way over to the four new containers. He really wished he had the computer extension that checked the manifest on the containers as they were scooped. First up was the computers, checking the manifest, one ton of used data pads. He had picked up worse before. On a world like this one they would still fetch a very tidy sum. What they lacked in individual value they made up for in density. Small and portable. On this planet they might have espionage potential as well, they would sell.
Next up the minerals, a relatively low end copper ore, nothing special.
Now onto the more worrying ones. The Narcotics turned out to be munja juice, a relatively harmless aphrodisiac.
The "slave" was a male feline with a foul mouth. Nathan had attempted to open the dialogue politely – it always paid to be polite, there was always the chance that the slave had rich family who would pay well for their safe release. As far as Nathan could gather from the rabid response, The Great Ghangra was going to shred him with his bare claws and eat him raw, following which he would stalk and consume the rest of Nathan's extended family one by one. Any being stupid enough to throw such insults around at a being who held their fate in their hands would get as good as it deserved. Normally.
Hera however might have a different opinion. He may have to free this one.
Nathan arrived back on the bridge. Hera spoke first, "Are the goods intact?"
"Yeah, intact but that's a cat with an attitude problem down there. Slavery apparently doesn't suit his species."
Hera's reply in a warning voice, slightly surprised and relieved Nathan. At the very least he wasn't going to have to worry about her reducing profitability for the rest of the flight. "If you free him I'm still going to want my 20% share of his value."
“After the way he just spoke to me, you won't have to worry about getting your 20%,” Nathan replied, unable to suppress a smile at Hera's credits first attitude.
Nathan sat back in his chair and spun round to face the pilots display, he engaged the torus drive and sat back and relaxed to watch the planet grow slowly larger.
“Incoming single contact 22km...” Hera didn't get a chance to finish her line, the warning chime and the bridge lighting turning red, told Nathan that the single contact was hostile, had them targeted and would be closing fast.
No point going in slow this time.
“20km”
Laser was playing in the void around Nathan's shields.
Hera was quiet, studying her display.
“Military lasers. We haven't got the shields for this. Well equipped and aggressive even for a pirate.”
The comm blinked to life, a voice said “You won't live to regret harbouring a member of the Lightingwaver Family”
Laser struck home, Nathan barely had time to buck the opponents aim.
Their words clashed, spoken at the same moment.
“Shields at 20%,” was what Hera said.
“Care to explain?” Nathan raged at Hera.
“How could he know? How did he find me? The damned rats must have sold out. Figures.”
“What's this about Hera?” Nathan said warningly.
“If we live, I will tell you all about it. I'm sorry. I thought this died with our ship. For now all you need to know is that he WILL kill you if you don't kill him.”
“That much I guessed,” Nathan snarled, still fuming, but turning his attention back to saving their lives.
The Fer-de-lance was well equipped. Nathan assessed the situation, there was no way he traded his way to that equipment with the limited cargo space of the ship. This pilot was a professional killer, deadly at the very least. Maybe elite. This was not looking good.
Nathan knew his ship was the faster, but that wasn't much advantage given his opponents superior weapon range.
In the agility stakes, despite its larger size, Nathan had a slight advantage, but not enough. Turning, twisting, barely missing the razors of death shaving his vessel. It was all Nathan could do to keep the ship from imminent destruction.
One of the beams glanced Nathan's aft. The shields squealed in protest. Nathan could feel the pitch of his reactor change as it struggled to keep up with the demands.
Hera read, “Shields at 40:70. Trying to boost charge rate.”
Nathan's brusk interrogation took place in spurts between manoeuvres,“Why am I going to die Hera? What's all this about? I think I deserve to know.”
Hera's sorrowful reply came hesitatingly,“This man was once my fathers employer. The family Anaconda? That was his pirate outfits cargo hauler. My father was its captain, my mother was that man's wife.”
Nathan had a brief bead on the Fer de Lance, he took full advantage, not bothering to spare weapon temperature. He did not know when he would get a shot in again.
“My father wanted out, he mutineered, took the ship, took my mum and disappeared. That was about a year before I was born. He has pursued us on and off since then”
Laser played all over the upper section of Nathan's hull.
“Shields at 30:50”
Nathan had a good shot again, This time he held it longer, at least if he died he would have given a good account of himself.
“The man is unhinged and Elite. He led the combat himself in that ship.”
Elite. A minimum of 6400 souls destroyed, in this case mostly pure murder for gain. But elite or not this man had to be getting on now. Maybe he was slowing down. Laser played across Nathan's ship again, maybe not.
“Shields at 10:20. I'm so sorry. I thought he would be satisfied with my father, mother and the ship all destroyed. I thought it was all over.”
Nathan looped 180 degrees, then back the other way using the thrusters. The ships hull felt taught, Nathan could feel the twisting force he was putting his ship through, it was a desperate ploy.
It failed. Laser played across his ships underbelly. Nathan reflexively hit the injectors to get him out of the path of the beam.
“Shields gone, Reserves at 70%”
Looking around his radar, the Fer de Lance was coming up for a shot at his rear. One more hit and it would all be over. Nathan pulled up hard, looping over to face the enemy and hit his injectors again. Trying to avoid the aggressors firing arc, he blazed at full speed towards the pirate. Nathan didn't really know what he planned to do. He just knew he had to keep himself out of the lasers path. But that made it hard to get a shot himself... The Fer de Lance was coming up fast, it was bringing up its nose to bring its weapons to bare on Nathans hull. Nathan dived to counter this. Too far. He was on a collision course.
“Roll!” Screamed Hera.
Nathan dove hard right across the pirates nose, rolling as he went, bringing himself straight across the firing path of those deadly lasers, a terrible mistake, a rookie error, but the pirate hadn't reckoned on that suicidal behaviour and had instead watched his radar, looking for Nathan to make an attempt to get behind him again.
A sudden whooshing noise and a few bumps, and then an explosion under Nathans ships belly, as he passed the pirate. The Fer de Lance was gone. The Great Ghangra was no more, having been turned into one of several projectile weapons...
“What Happened?” Nathan questioned.
“I dumped the cargo in front of him. It was the only way,” Hera replied in a quaking voice.
It was one of the great laws of space, a captain made the decision to dump cargo and no one else. She had violated one of the prime laws governing ship crew behaviour. The cargo belonged to the captain alone.
“I saved our lives!” Hera stated.
Nathan roared back “It's your fault we were in that situation in the first place, you fixed your mistake with MY cargo.” No crew with this on their record would find work in space again, Nathan knew it, Hera knew it. “You came aboard MY ship, with this assassin on your tail, YOU nearly get me killed, YOU dump my cargo! Give me one good reason not to end your career now. You're not even full time crew, just a working passenger. Are there others out there hunting you? Anything else I should know?”
“I'm sorry, I had no idea he would pursue me. I didn't mean to bring you or your ship into danger. I'm sorry about the cargo, It was a spur of the moment decision, I'm used to having that authority as the captains daughter. If you don't report this, I will work for free long enough to cover double the cost of the repairs and the lost cargo.”
“Why would I want a cargo dumping, trouble magnet on my ship?” Nathan shouted, though his fury was already dropping as the adrenaline from the combat wore off.
Now Hera's injured pride raged “Why would you want me on board?” Hera's skill as a crew member was beyond doubt, she took Nathans words as a slight at her abilities. She paused and calmed herself, “I've said I'm sorry, I've offered to cover the costs AND I saved your life and your ship. I have apologised for the trouble that I didn't foresee, there's no other trouble I know of out there.” Hera's temper flared once more as she said in a rising tone, “If you really think you can get a more skilled member of staff to work on this ship then report what happened, and good luck with your new crew. But my offer stands. Double your expense's.”
PArt 6 continues on my next post down:-
). I'm sure some of our resident grammar guru's will love to help out. Looking forward to the next chapter...
forgot...
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