jeriendhal | Fic: Altered Trajectory (cont.)

By the end of the second day of their flight they had settled into an all too familiar pattern for Rufus, and one of the major reasons he normally had piloted the White Knight himself. Which was to say the utterly screaming boredom involved in being locked in a space the size of a small closet with another person for an extended period.

“I spy with my little eye, something that starts with the letter S,” Hazel said.

“Space. Star. Seat. Star Tracker, Navigational. Single Use Missile Defense Pod actuator,” Rufus replied wearily.

She held up a ration bar with the smiling face of a Terran marine mammal on the outer foil. “Tasty Sam’s Seal Flavored Snacks. Want one?”

“Pass,” he said, trying to ignore the rumble in his belly. He’d been sticking to ration cubes dispensed from the fighter’s recycling system, ignoring Hazel’s pointed observation that if he wanted to keep from being spacesick, it was better not to think about how they were made. They were as bland as tofu, and just about as much fun to eat unseasoned, but at least they were easy on the stomach.

“How close are we to the target coordinates?” she asked.

Rufus glanced down at his cockpit display. “Less than 50 light minutes. Time to slow down.”

“Dropping out of superluminal.” There was no outward sign that they had dropped from lightspeed travel, but Rufus got that familiar hairs on the back of the neck feeling as they transitioned from the realm of the impossible back to a place where physical laws didn’t require a philosophy degree to understand. He rechecked his instruments, noting that Hazel had brought them to a stop nearly dead center in the middle of the target area specified in the codes Mac had paid such a heavy price for.

“Transmit the signal, Rufus.”

“Transmitting.” He tapped in the recognition code and sent it out into space, transmitting on ordinary radio frequencies, not the FTL UltraNet. “No immediate reply.”

He saw Hazel frown. “How long should we wait?”

“I don’t know. The instructions Mac downloaded didn’t specify what we were to expect. Presumably Drisden would have informed Lady Softpaw when she transported him to give his report.”

“Well with all due respect to the late Mr. Drisden, I am not going sit in this seat for two weeks waiting for…” There was a loud screech from the White Knight’s computer as a half-dozen warnings lit up on Rufus’ display.

Hazel let a out loud curse and then shouted, “Weapons lock! Someone has weapons lock on us! Where the frell are they?”

Rufus caught a glimpse of something outside the cockpit window to port, a sculpted shape that spoke of a people willing to devote the resources to making a starship beautiful as well as practical. Then the White Knight shuddered like it was caught in the hand of a giant as the other ship pulled them toward it, until they were overshadowed by a gleaming white cruiser easily a kilometer long and nearly a quarter of that length wide.

This is Admiral Skora Gisko of the Varn Dominion, a voice called out from radio. Identify yourself or face destruction.