Space Truckers of the Delta V

[MiguelB]

The timer counted down towards the flip. I had fallen asleep for part of the trip out, but I had checked on Bojan immediately when waking. His discomfort remained tolerable, in his words, but I doubted he was thrilled about it.
10… 9… 8… I tightened my hands on the arm rests, and then consciously flexed and relaxed them. 3… 2… 1…
The autopilot cut out and suddenly we were in free fall. There was no feeling of wobbling like I was expecting, like I was used to from my experience on the Ko’Ktar, it was just that one moment there was gravity, then there was nothing, then a few seconds later there was gravity again. It didn’t feel backwards, there was no wobble. It was very very smooth. I was impressed, and relaxed. We were decelerating towards the planet now, and would very soon be landing in orbit, ready for a touch and go delivery. Hopefully. On full auto, I was hopeful that it would be simple anyhow.

About six hours later, we pulled smoothly into an orbit around the planet, and I contacted the surface for landing clearance. It was cleared instantly and I allowed the ground control to take over the landing pattern. Three quick orbits in a slightly unusual pattern, then we were dipping into the atmo. Shields were up and handling the heat nicely, keeping that airflow off the hull. The Thrack Yar had heat shielding tiles that could handle an atmo landing with no shields, but no sense in pushing it just for fun. There was pretty glow through the windows from the shields as the ship passed through the thin atmosphere and then through the cloud layer. The helm camera showed a horizon full of hills and greenery, very different than the water planet we’d previously visited. The gravity was a mere two-thirds G, making the current on-ship gravity actually higher than the planet, and it was a greatly welcome change from the high G approach. I set the computer to match planet gravity, and the artificial gravity slowly eased off as we approached the surface. By the time we were hovering there a few hundred meters above the ground, slowly easing to the surface, the artificial gravity was fully disengaged. Even mostly loaded as were were, the landing was a feather fall in this gravity.

“Let’s give it a few minutes for breather in this nice, light gravity, Bojan. Let me know when you’re ready for me to contact the client. Take your time, I know that was a rough flight for you.”, I said.

“I can hack it if you can, Captain. I do expect it to take me a few minutes to gather my thoughts, however. Thank you.”, he said, his voice a bit strained. He sounded exhausted, was probably doing high-G breathing for most of the twelve hours.

A few minutes later, he stood up, stretched, and nodded to me. I looked up from my my study of the system job listing, and then contacted our our buyer. Easy as could be, it was just an automated warehouse. I loved those, delivery was just confirmed by scanning in the cargo, payment was instant. It wasn’t fifteen minutes before the delivery was marked confirmed. Amazing. I wouldn’t have even been suited up and out the door, and Bojan had already dispatched the automated skids he had pre-prepared, and the receiving station was on the pad skirts anyhow. Beautiful and efficient setup. Ten minutes later, Bojan walked back in, strapped in, and took a deep breath.

“Ok, let’s go”, he said. I nodded. I was not going to push it back to six or eight Gs for the rest of the trip, I decided we could afford the time, so I was planning to just push three Gs. It’d be nearly comfortable.

I activated the engines, and we lifted slightly, the gear coming just off the ground. I set the destination for the next two deliveries, conveniently on the same planet, and cleared for departure. Clearance came back promptly, and I activated the autopilot. We lifted nearly vertically a couple kilometers, then a fairly low angle departure course was followed. Escape velocity was a mere five kilometers per second, and we were there shortly and took a couple orbits at higher and higher altitudes to line everything up for maximum efficiency then off it went, locked in at three Gs of thrust. This meant the flight would take a bit longer, but it wasn’t going to be too far to the moon station so no real issue. I kicked back for a hopefully uneventful flight and we rolled out on a graceful intercept course.

[MiguelB]

The moon landing very simple. Fractional gravity, beautiful autopilot landing, and rapid turnaround of the delivery. This was a great day, 3 paydays in a row? I was loving life. Now it was time to go for the big payday and get out of system. We headed back for the Gate at six Gs and the autopilot brought us to a near relative halt right near the gate position, no closing velocity. We hung there in space near our entry coordinates, watching the stars for a couple minutes while I got everything lined up for the next jump. This Gate location was rarely used, but where we were heading was a highly popular destination. The station we were heading to was a luxury station with exotic facilities. Hence livestock feed. Hardly any space stations in my price range had animals on them larger than a dog. This one apparently had something big and hungry.

I cleared our entry, and the Jump Drive engaged. We slid slowly through the shimmering portal and into a bright starfield, a beautiful planet coming into view. We arrived a few thousand kilometers out from the station, lined up perfectly for the traffic pattern. This gate basically was in a solar orbit with the planet, and the station was high above this huge gas giant, parallel but slightly above the rings. Beautiful position to be in, able to tap the planet for fuel and water on top of the view.

The station had a set of tall arms reaching far above it to use for refueling or quarantine, and had three immense modules attached to the outer ring. From here they looked brightly lit up, and there were small craft all over the place. I raised the station on the comm just to get a hold queue, informing me I was thirty in the queue, but my position was important. I drummed my claws on the arm rest and thought about the payday. Fifteen minutes later, I was twenty-fifth in the queue, so I decided to use the little captain’s room while I waited.

I got back just in time to be fourth. Good grief. We waited there, hovering out in space, for at least forty minutes before I was able to get through. My docking clearance was granted immediately, to a position on the outside of one of the big modules. We headed for it under station control, and it asked me which docking bay to align. I’d never had that question before, but I saw my ship had 3 available, the hatch I’d been using for the gangway, one on the opposite side, and the massive cargo bay. Obviously I picked the cargo bay. Given a choice, I didn’t really want one hundred thousand tons of cargo coming out the little tiny gangway if possible… and I really wanted to see what kind of gangway could handle the mammoth cargo bay. I felt the ship pivot slightly around and then the light impact.
Very nice. I had done a few station landings with my old ship, but it wasn’t modern enough for all this automatic piloting stuff, and most of the stations I visited weren’t in good enough shape for it to work this well. Heck, I think I already told you about a couple of those rough hookups.

When the connection was complete, I confirmed in the docking camera, and doublechecked the pressure test. It showed full atmo outside of the main cargobay door, but I decided we’d keep the forcefield up anyhow.

“Ok Bojan, let’s get this out of here and get paid!”, I said, getting up easily in the fractional G we were sitting at. Bojan unlatched and walked lightly down the corridor. I followed him onto the lift.
“Supposedly we have full atmo out there, but keep the forcefield up”, I advised. “You mean on the gangway? Good, that will save some time.”, he replied.
“I’m going to stay out of your way, but I intend to head down and into the station via the cargo bay when you’re done. We’ll be here for a while, so feel free to enjoy the station for a day or two. I’ll let you know when I’ve scared up some more work, but we might even be doing a repeat of this hay ride.” I was pleased at the prospect, if it was possible.
He nodded, and sat down to activate the departure program and arrange the deliveries.

I watched with interest as the graceful ballet of shipping containers, hoists, and automated skids began again, moving in complex and quick formations as vast quantities of feed rolled off to their destination. I then headed back to my cabin to scare up some fun while that happened.

[MiguelB]

I was sitting in a bar in the module we were attached to, some sort of high-end theme park for rich folks, when it happened. Alarms rang all over the bar, and I could hear them coming in from the station outside it as well. I looked up at the bar tender who was pouring my drink.

“What the heck is that?”, I said, over the alarm.
“Station is under attack”, he said, totally nonplussed.
“WHAT?” I cried back, surprised enough for both of us.
“Yeah, third time this month. Just relax. The pirates haven’t gotten past the drone screen yet.”, he finished pouring the drink and walked to fill the next patron’s drink.

I pulled out my PDA and contacted my ship. The onboard systems reported that everything was fine, and I wanted to activate the shields, but I was still docked. I was at least able to warn Bojan, who had been asleep in his quarters. He said he wasn’t worried about it, and was going back to sleep. It was nuts, I’d only been in a station attacked by pirates once before, and it had destroyed most of the station. I couldn’t believe nobody seemed to care.

I quickly finished my drink and was about to head to my ship when I spotted a shady trader sitting at a booth near the door. Maybe the attack could wait… I could really use another awesome payday.

Walking over to the cereb who had her feet up on the table in the darkened corner, I asked if the seat here was reserved. She nodded to it, and I sat.
“I’ve got a fast ship that can handle four jumps if you happen to know anyone that just might need something like that”, I said, trying to be smooth. I often had let Grenthis do the talking for me, but I was capable of handling it when required.

“Yeah? Might be that can be useful. Drop by tomorrow, maybe I’ll let you know”, she said. I took my cue and left.

Walking back into the cavernous and echoing cargo hold through the biggest gangway I’d ever seen, I had to pause to appreciate just how vast it was. Two hundred thousand kilos of cargo could fit in here. It was thrilling and a bit humbling. I wondered how big the holds were on the medium-sized ships. I walked to the small lift up to the quartermaster’s office, which was an interesting little thing. It was essentially a tiny airlock unto itself, with a forcefield and door combo on the lift. The lift door opened, and I walked through the field. It was a bracing feeling, like walking through a jet of freezing cold water. The field on the main door was much thicker, and you could really feel sluggish moving through it. I wasn’t clear on how it worked, but it basically prevented air at one standard atm from passing through, but anything much denser could pass through easily enough. It felt a bit like breaking surface tension on water. You hardly noticed it. There was that invigorating electro-static feeling, and a little bit of drag. The lift itself was enclosed in a transparent tube so that you could see the entire cargo bay as it rose. I loved these little design touches on this ship. It felt so premium.

Passing through the quartermaster’s office, I looked to see if there were any alerts, but everything seemed to be powered off. I headed on to my quarters and proceeded to ignore the pirate attack. Worst case, I’d have to detach and run for it, but if nobody was concerned, there was no point. I read a little about the station, and wondered a bit about what job might be lined up for me, then drifted off.

I woke to a notification on my console. There was a new message with no from address. Promising, I thought. I opened the message, and it was a location on the station. Module B, Deck 27, Section 35. 03:45 station time. That gave me just over thirty minutes, and fortunately Module B was the one I was docked to. I promptly prepared myself for going out and hauled butt out to the station. I paid for one of the little moving walkways to get me to the approximate area, and it dropped me at the Section 35 lift fairly fast. I took the lift down to Deck 27, and stepped off carefully. I was in an area close enough to the bottom of the station that the curve of the hull was visible, sloping away just a few sections off. The area smelled of hydraulic fluid, and there was a dripping sound. I moved off a little bit, trying to see who might be here waiting for me. The lift behind me opened again, and a bot in a battered dark shell glided on out. It regarded me and scanned me head to toe. I wasn’t sure if it was station security, or my contact.

Presently, it activated its speech unit. “You have a ship capable of several jumps. I require passage to a location that is not immediately accessible. I need to go very soon. How soon can you leave?” Really cut to the chase, these guys.

“I need to be refueled, shouldn’t take very long at all. Do you want me to contact you?” I said, wondering what it was all about with this bot.

“That will be satisfactory. I will wait on your ship. We must depart for your ship now.”, it said, turning.

“Ok, we can do that. Jumps are expensive…” I said, leaving it hanging there.

“You will be compensated. We must depart. Get in the lift.” it said, brusquely. Well, fair enough. I followed into the lift, and we headed back up to deck 10 where the gangway connected, and I paid for the moving walkway to get back. 35 sections was fairly far. There was absolutely no acknowledgement that we knew each other, the AI just hovered along a bit behind me, keeping up easily with the walkway. We passed back into my ship, and I closed the cargobay door entirely.

“I’ll arrange for refuelling, but you’ll need to be off the ship while they refuel, that’s standard operation procedure”, I said.
“Only for species like yourself. The procedures do not apply to AI, they do not consider us people.”, it replied. Allllrighty then.

I went up to the bridge and contacted the station, arranging for a complete refueling. The cost just about dropped me, but it barely even ate the early delivery bonus. It was true, you needed to have money to make money! I had made nearly a million in the last couple days. My entire year prior I’d barely made a noticeable chunk of that. Of course, my expenses were a lot higher now, since I needed to pay Bojan, pay the loan, etc. I also noted a new message, more income from Grenthis! Excellent. It had just completed another job and was immediately heading out again.

The refueling would take place here shortly, so I woke Bojan, turned over navigational control, and we departed back to the station. I watched my ship undock and drift away without me in it, with a sinking feeling. It was distressing to see your own ship leave without you, even if it was just moving up to the tall spires for refueling. I preferred the ones that could service a ship while still docked, if I’m honest.

Twenty minutes later, the ship returned and docked smoothly right where it had been. We were back on board soon, and ready. I had let Bojan know we were doing a little light passenger work, so he was free to stay here or just enjoy having nothing to do. He opted to get back to sleep, it being still very early morning for his species.

Once we had cleared the station, the bot came out of its stateroom and onto the bridge. “I will input the jump coordinates directly. Give me the access codes for your network”, it said. “No thanks, just input them via the keypad”, I said. There was a brief silence, then it extended a small mechanical armature and input a long series of keystrokes. It looked like noise to me, but the computer showed a new job with a destination… though the destination was just symbols.

“Ok, I’ll give it a try”, I said. “Hold on, or strap in, or whatever, we’re about to jump.”

The bot moved over to the nav station and positioned itself about where the seat was. I departed the station, and I activated the Jump engines, and the autopilot started moving us forward. The shimmer looked really weird, and as we slid through I realized it was because there was actually a stacked jump of some sort going on, where one gate was just barely behind the other. The feeling was entirely unpleasant and I disassociated briefly as we felt like the ship was stretched millions of lightyears. With a slight wrench, the jump was over, and we were… somewhere. The nav screen was empty. No planets, no sun. Just empty space.

“Is this the right place? There’s nothing here at all.” I said.

“Yes. This is the correct place. I have credited your account to compensate you for your trouble. I will also input the coordinates to get you back where you were.” it said, and then it keyed in another big pile of line noise looking data.

“Is there a ship or something we need to wait for?” I replied, curious what the plan was now.

“No” it replied, and then it spaced itself out the airlock. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen, it just… departed.

I reactivated the autopilot, and once again there was the curious sort of double jump, immensely unpleasant, and we were back at the station. Station time, only a couple hours had passed since I received my message. A completion notice appeared for the little job I had just completed, and it had made me one hundred and sixty thousand. Not too bad, it was eighty thousand in fuel, after all. Eighty thousand for a couple hours work was pretty reasonable I felt. I got in the queue again for the station, this time with no preference as to docking locations (due to lack of cargo), and was promptly sent to a smaller dock.

This had all been quite an interesting little adventure. I had no idea where I’d just been, the system or whatever it was didn’t even show up on my nav system still.

[MiguelB]

I contacted Grenthis after we refueled yet again, which they probably thought was a bit suspicious, and asked it what might have happened there. Not trying to give out any details or anything, I just explained the general concept. Grenthis told me that it wasn’t unheard of for AI to engage in behavior that might seem strange to other species… and provided no further info. Well. I guess I may never know what transpired there, but a paying customer is a paying customer, right?

Since I had made some pretty good deals, I decided to take a brief break, get thoroughly inebriated, and then cruise for additional contracts in a little while. That lasted me through to early evening, when I started to go through the job lists again. Nothing huge showed up, just lots and lots of little stuff.

Then I saw an interesting offer - someone wanted to do a science project, and needed a ship with sufficient cargo space to hold their gear, and the ability to take a long distance voyage. Promising indeed! The payment was a bit odd, it appeared to vary based on the distance we could travel. Pretty much any jump capable ship could cover the entire galaxy, I wasn’t really sure what that meant. It did cover a minimum of fuel and a five thousand a day retainer, so that meant it at least wasn’t going to come up empty handed. I took the job.

Several hours later, about eight-thirty station time, Bojan and I were both in the cargo bay guiding an entire set of small ships and drones into the bay. It was a pretty strange thing to see, really. These drones were each bots, and therefore fully sapient beings, but they were piloting ships about ten meters in length and absolutely packed full with sensors. Everything in the cargo bay bristled with antenna, sensors, you name it. If it could be measured, something in here could measure it. I had more or less just guessed we could accommodate the expedition, but I was happy to see that I was right. There was plenty of space, even once hundreds of crates and cartons had been added, along with several skids of in-system fuel, oxidizer, and a small portable reactor. The expedition had a series of jumps and system trips planned, and we spent the next several hours in the nav station getting the route plotted out.

Once everyone was ready to depart, our destinations set and ready, we made sure that the bots were properly secured. One member of the research crew was a Cereb, and they were installed in the third stateroom.

I sat down comfortably in my command seat, and I clicked the button to get clearance, and then Depart once clearance popped up. We moved slowly away from the station, and then I set the Jump gate as our destination. We gracefully turned and headed for the Gate. I selected the first destination in the series, and we waited our turn in the queue, and I toggled the autopilot. Once upon a time, I’d had to sweat the toll when things were especially bad. This was not a problem I had right now, and it was a nice feeling. We slid easily through the jump as smooth as silk, and the sight of a totally uncharted system greeted me. There were a lot of them out here, but it wasn’t something I had much experience with obviously. You don’t spend a lot of time delivering cargo to unknown systems. I got up and knocked on the stateroom door, and they answered it promptly.

“We’re at your first destination. There’s about eighty thousand kilometers to go before we reach the first destination. Anything you need to do?”, I asked politely. The cereb nodded.
“I need to get everyone started. Please hold this position for thirty six standard hours while we begin the sweep. I need access to your navigational computer.”, they said brusquely. I nodded. I had learned better than to give an AI access to my computers, but a fellow organic wasn’t likely to be a problem. I took out my PDA and added a new user to the system, navigator role only. I handed the PDA over so that the cereb could put their hand on and enable their access. They did so, and passed it back. Shiraj. Female. It was always hard to tell with cerebs, but at least now I had a name for her.

“You’re authorized for full navigator role Shiraj, I’ll show you to the station.”, I said, gesturing towards the bridge. I walked her to the navigator station, and she sat down. She relaxed back into the chair as she vanished into the augmented reality of the navigator station, and her hands gracefully and quickly worked the controls on the arm rests. She was extremely fast, and he went over to the captain’s station and opened the nav display. His minimal system info was beginning to populate. Where before there was no info whatsoever, not even size or class of sun or planets, basic information now showed. There was no system info to download, this was all coming in from the sensor arrays built into the ship - sensor arrays designed just for basic exploration, not discovery. A few minutes later, Shiraj stopped moving, and then stood up.

“I’m going to the cargo hold now. It’s time to deploy the team and start the survey. Thirty six hours, and we’ll recover the team and move to the next area.”, she said, and then departed.
I watched the cargo hold camera, and saw the doors open, then within a few minutes all of those little bots and one of the cargo container things that was apparently some sort of probe all departed the cargo hold in an orderly fashion. Off to do… whatever they had paid me handsomely to help them do.

[MiguelB]

Just about 36 hours later, I detected the ships returning, and saw the cargo bay doors open. So much data was probably on those. Hopefully some would get uploaded to my system, stuff like that could be worth some money. It wasn’t long until everything was loaded and stowed, except the probe of course, and then Shiraj walked back onto the bridge from the cargo deck where she had been helping Bojan secure the bots for our next trip. She sat down in her seat, and told me to proceed to the planet furthest out, which should now be available in the system chart.

I confirmed, and indeed, the chart now showed the system had 2 distant planets. Good deal. I nodded to her, and then set a course to intercept the planet furthest out, which was also nearest to us.

“It’s nearly 20 AU from out position to that planet, I presume you want a hard burn? Or do you want me to do an in-system jump?”, I asked. “We’re just about four and a half days out at an eight G burn, which might be a little uncomfortable for you. My ship can actually sustain over twelve G, which would reduce it, but not enough to be worth it to you. If your budget can handle it, we can jump there.”

She appeared to consider this a bit. “How long at three G? I can tolerate that well enough.” She seemed a bit concerned. I input the number, and it updated the figures. “About seven and a half days. Is that within your time table?”

She nodded. “Absolutely. How long can your ship sustain three G? Are there any major fuel considerations that would require jumping out to refuel?”

I actually wasn’t sure. The Ko’Ktar could sustain two G for nearly a week, about fifteen AU max range, but I hadn’t even checked the tank on the Thrack Yar. I looked at the max range at three Gs. Wow, that was quite a lot of fuel, I would need to look up what it was using. The Ko’Ktar used roughly fifteen thousand kilos of fuel for a week at two G, which was pretty respectable. The capacity on the Thrack Yar was showing thirty thousand kilos of fuel and a max range of just about sixty AU at three G. That was definitely better fuel efficiency, or possibly a different fuel source. I hadn’t even bothered to notice. In-system flight was not super commonplace in my job. Generally we moved planet to planet a bit, but not really big long distances in-system. It was just too slow.

“We can manage over twelve days at three G, about sixty AU. Should be more than enough to cover the entire system, depending on how the planets are laid out.”, I replied. She considered this.

“I believe our current location is only forty AU from the sun, and generally planets are with five to ten AU. We might have to jump out and refuel, but we’ll know more soon.”, she said. I agreed, and locked in the course. I opened a PA channel to the overhead which would be audible everywhere on the ship. “Prepare for extended three G flight to next planet, estimated travel time seven and a half days. All hands, secure for acceleration.”, and then waited a minute.

I engaged the autopilot, and felt the pressure of the acceleration press me back into the seat. It was comfortable and even quite reasonable. This was only a third more than my home world’s natural gravity, after all. I got up and walked to the space where the engineering console had been, just to see if there were any options there. It turned out that there was a simple dark screen, even with no proper seat or station. I activated the screen, and was confronted with a very stripped down engineering display. It was more advanced than the one on the Ko’Ktar, obviously, but still pretty basic by the standards of this ship. It had the usual basics like damage, fuel consumption, power management. I was looking for some sort of inertial dampening controls, but no luck. I turned off the console and headed back to the command chair. On a whim, I went to the gravity setting which I had previously set to one G for Bojan. I tried to set it lower, it went to zero G, which I had assumed was off… but there had been an actual off button. As soon as I set it to zero G, I felt the weight on my body reduce slowly as the overall G load reduced.
That was better than I thought, it wasn’t just capable of producing positive G loads, it was capable of reducing G loads! I was unaware of what tech that required, but I was thrilled to have it. I needed to study more, clearly.

“Captain, why have we slowed?”, Shiraj asked.

“We haven’t slowed, I just adjusted the compensators for your comfort.”, trying to play it off like I’d always known I could do this.

“Thank you. That’s greatly appreciated.” she sighed and got back to work in the navigation station, interpreting the sensor data coming in from the ship and integrating it with her team’s results.

[MiguelB]

A week passed of pretty routine travel, it was basically a vacation for Bojan and myself. He spent a lot of time talking with Shiraj, unsurprisingly, and I spent most of it playing games in my cabin and reading. I used the tiny “gym” quite a bit as well, and explored the ship a bit more. There were several small, nearly invisible hatches that led to various sets of equipment that were otherwise hard to access. I avoided anything that had heat or radiation labels, obviously, since we were under substantial thrust and using the sensors to their utmost. We actually had to power down the sensors periodically to prevent them failing due to overheating. Shiraj was pushing them harder and longer than they would typically be used as she used them to map a number of transient objects in this system, which I had learned was called Gamma Terce three-twenty-seven. It was completely uncharted in modern times, appearing only on old records from the last empire. Nobody had passed into this system since the cerebs visited it over three thousand years ago.
Their records really just indicated it was here, and not worth building a gate for. That was basically the vast majority of systems, regardless. Billions upon billions of systems existed in the galaxy, but we only routinely visited a hundred or so of them. I personally had only been to fewer than thirty in my whole life, and obviously most people had never been outside of their home system. That’s part of why this expedition intrigued me. I was the first of my species to ever travel here, and we were probably only the second ship ever to travel here. Not even pirates had bothered.
That was pretty cool.

When we finally arrived and had decelerated down to a reasonable approach velocity (we weren’t going to orbit this planet, just pass it slowly at about seven thousand kilometers per second) the cargo hold was once again busy as the bots raced out for a look, and another probe was launched. They deployed about twelve million kilometers out from the planet and were planning to rendezvous with us again in about an hour on the far side of our pass. This dark little world was barely even lit at this range from the sun, and the thermals we were picking up on the sensors indicated pretty heavy volcanic activity. No solar heat at this range. Volcanic activity was excellent for mining, however, it could indicate the presence of all sorts of material.

We picked the bots up right on schedule, and then adjusted course very slightly to intercept the next planet. There was a cluster of three planets all within a few AU of each other, and it appeared that at least one was a massive gas giant nearly the size of a dwarf star. That could likely be used for a fuel depot some day, if anyone felt the need to build one out here. We were still days away from that one, and we’d be actively establishing an orbit this time. Once I had the planet set as an intercept on the computer, I went back to my gaming. Nothing else to do until then. Couldn’t even see it from here yet.

[MiguelB]

I was kicking back in my quarters when a pop-up appeared on my book. There was something our path, though quite a long ways out. It had crossed the million km range for the default alert. I got up and walked to the bridge. The system map in the command view didn’t show anything specific here. Shiraj wasn’t on the bridge, so I went to the helm where I could get a really good look.

Slipping into the seat and viewing that huge augmented reality display, I scanned the zone ahead, not seeing anything visually. I switched to enhanced display, and saw a variety of red shapes appear in the distance. I toggled maximum zoom and they were still too far, too dark. It was a pain being this far out, nothing really showed up until it was too late. Whatever the objects were, we were approaching them at over nine hundred meters per second, though the sensors couldn’t identify what it was yet. No transponder code, so it wasn’t a ship… or a least, not a friendly ship. At this point, I didn’t have a whole lot of options. I popped up every menu I could find from the helm, and nothing seemed to be useful. I moved to the navigation console to see if there was an option there. It was not even as good, just the sector information I already could see. Hmm. I had to think before it became a problem…

I went back to the command station. Maybe we had probes? Maybe I could launch one if I could figure out what station controlled them. At the command station, I flipped through each option, and found an ops section under status. It was mostly stuff that I didn’t need… but maybe buried in here someplace. Ah! A science menu. Damn this was buried!

Under science was some sensor controls, some radio controls, weird stuff like shield harmonics. And a sensor probe.
I brought up the sensor probe, it had a few pre-sets, probably because this was the stripped down version of the real science station. Navigational sensor? That sounded right. It had a max thrust of forty Gs, so it was able to get way out there before we saw anything for certain. It took a second to show configured, then the launch button lit up. I tapped it, and heard a slight sound as the probe launched from somewhere and moved like crazy. A little tag showed the relative speed radically decreasing as it took off at forty Gs. It was crazy fast.

Ten, fifteen minutes went by, and suddenly the nav screen lit up with a big debris field of some sort. Asteroids, most likely, millions of them. It showed as almost a wall between us and our current target. That was not good news. Every asteroid belt was composed of mostly empty space, every demolished planet or moon left a cloud that had pockets of clear space.
The trick was not hitting anything, or letting it hit you. It was time to pilot this thing.

I moved to the helm, and switched to the enhanced view. It showed the various chunks, still fairly far out. They ranged in size from small to absolutely enormous. Billions of tons in size and kilometers across. Motion vectors seemed to be stable, and moving sort of left to right across our path. Ok, so a belt, probably not a cloud. That was good news. A belt would have settled for the most part, a cloud could have random movement and clusters moving at very different speeds. I could see our course on autopilot which looked clear enough, nothing precisely in the way, but could be something nearby. For now, I left the autopilot in control, but I stayed in the helm seat, and buckled. I’d take over if required.

Minutes passed. Loads of the objects got bigger and bigger, they were nice and visible now, no longer just dots. I disabled the autopilot and let the ship proceed with manual control. The asteroids were increasing in size as we got towards them, and I made a tiny adjustment to our attitude, then a couple more. Slight bit of correction was plenty, and it looked like we’d pass the asteroids just fine. They grew ever larger as we approached and one nearly the size of a moon was just to our left and above. I selected it, and its relative velocity was positive, though only barely. It was heading past us. Lots of little stuff out here, so I realized I would want the shields up to help.

“Computer. Raise Shields”, I spoke clearly.
“Shields activated”, the response came.
That wouldn’t be perfect, but it would certainly slow anything down that was coming at us, maybe brush it aside. A over nine hundred kilometers per second, you could do a lot of damage with a small rock. Something the size of a person ruin your whole day.

As the mammoth sharp and jagged asteroid missed us, I saw two smaller asteroids bump into each other in slow motion, sending one of them heading our way. I selected it, and the relative velocity was negative, not a great sign. I adjusted the attitude a little and pivoted the ship slightly and watched until the velocity moved back to positive. A rain of pebbles flared the shields on my camera view, and there was the sound of tinks all over the hull where some little bits got through the shields. No damage showed up here in the helm station, but if we had a proper engineering station it would likely show more detail. The important thing was nothing really thick was showing up ahead, so I turned the autopilot back on. It adjusted course and speed slightly to fix what I had done, and I stayed around to make sure there were no more close calls. When it appeared we were clear and the proximity alert cleared, I got up and headed over to the little engineering panel.

Activating the engineering panel, it looked like the auto-maintenance program was already managing the minor hull repairs, little teams of nanobots three-D printing bits of hull plating and filler as required. It didn’t seem like anything serious was damaged, so I left and went back to my captain’s cabin.

[MiguelB]

We approached the second planet, a green and blue globe hanging suspended against the black like a shining marble. As we got closer, sensors logged the three moons, which appeared to be situated almost perfect spaced around the planet, along with a minor accretion disk. I felt this one was going to be worth coming back to see, so I was glad that one my own personal sensor probes was out here, too. Not sure where it was exactly but it was still feeding data in. I wasn’t really sure how to isolate that feed compared to the rest without a science/ops station. And someone who knew how to make it work.
I wasn’t that person.

Shiraj was on deck again, in the Navigation station as we rolled up. I plotted the ship into a nice high altitude that would cover the majority of the surface to give her a good chance at mapping (and give me that info as well). She had worked with her team to deploy everyone as we arrived, before coming out to coordinate the efforts.

To our surprise, the planet had a good chance of supporting life, at least someday. We were making some remarks about that, it being about two G, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, surprisingly warm for the distance from the sun. There was a fair amount of volcanic activity, but the seas showed up as being mostly water (not some sort of weird compound that you could sometimes get), and there appeared to be substantial plant matter on the surface.

We were most surprised a few minutes later, when her crew detected regular electro-magnetic pulses coming from the planet.

“Captain Sthicksa, can you read those EM pulses?”, she asked.

“No, they’re not even showing up for me, so they’re not something my computer understands. Are they naturally occurring?”, I replied. I had the little science/ops view in my command station open, but it was as I’ve said before, very simple.

“It could be. It could also be a very primitive radioactive source, or even a communication attempt of some sort. Nothing we can understand so far. I want you to hold position in orbit of this planet for a couple days while we figure it out.”, she replied.

“Sure, no problems there. My schedule is pretty open, we can sit here a bit.”, I was personally a lot ok with that, because the more time we spent on this mission, the more the clock ran up. Daily costs didn’t necessarily include flight fuel, or jump fuel. Sometimes, this was plenty.

“I’d like to see this planet closer up. Do you have a shuttle or anything that can land on a planet?”, she asked.

“Of course. The Thrack Yar is able to land on a planet. You want to go down and take a look yourself? We can do that.”, I liked where this was going. This planet would be interesting to see up close, though the chance of some sort of bacteria or virus was always a problem.

“All right. Let me finish running these scans so I know what we want to visit, and if it’s safe. There appears to be substantial volcanic and tectonic activity down there. We also don’t know much about the atmosphere yet. It could contain all sorts of exciting new ways to die.”, she said, and then began working the controls on the nav station furiously.

It was actually nearly two standard days later that she approached me at the little make-shift gym to let me know their decision. “We would like to touch down on the fourth continent. It appears to be the most stable, and the odds are good that we could safely land. We’re a little concerned about bringing a ship down, but hopefully we can find a suitable clearing as we approach. Do you know how much fire danger your ship produces?”, she posed a good question there. I wasn’t actually sure about that myself.

I said “I’ll find out”, and headed for my quarters to get my documentation. It seemed that the landing thrusters did indeed involve an oxidizer, meaning there would be fire risk. However, there seemed to be a chance to use a G-lev. I wasn’t very familiar with that technology, since it wasn’t much use in space, and my previous ship didn’t even have them. I owned two g-levs on the Ko’Ktar, and the only working one was a pallet jack. I looked into it on the Thrack Yar, to figure out what would go into using it here.

Hours later, after digging deep into the manual, I learned that the only way I could do this without a specific engineer station, was to override it from the helm. No autolanding for me, I had to do it all by hand. Or, at least the last portion. I went to the helm station and looked around at the controls for landing, and there was an option for for “holding position”, which apparently could switch between g-lev and thrusters. Trouble was, to work it, the manual said I would need to be below five hundred meters of altitude, which meant I’d have to come in very very low. I decided on an idea, and went to talk to Shiraj, who was currently down in the cargobay.

I found Shiraj underneath a bot craft that was currently strapped to a stack of crates. She was wearing an overall that was totally covered in grease or oil of some sort, and had more than a few scorch marks.

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?” I said, as I approached.

“No, I’m fixing the drive system, it went out last time and made the recovery back on board pretty rough. The craft sustained minor damage, but I had to strip the entire drive and rebuild it. Sorry about your deck plates.”, she said. I automatically looked towards the door, where there were a couple little dark marks.

“Looks fine to me. Sounds like you have your hands full. Listen - about that landing. I think we can do it without setting a fire, if you can find me a clear area near a lake or coastline. I need to come down pretty low before I can disengage the thrusters, but we can move around laterally at that point, like up to a beach or a shore.”, I explained.

“Understood. I will see what I can find.”, she replied and then scooted back under the craft with her toolbox. I departed to the gangway hatch because I wanted to give the ship a little going over to make sure there was no residual asteroid damage before the atmo entry made it worse.

[MiguelB]

I put on my exo suit, picked up a tool bag, and a very long tether spool, and walked up to the airlock hatch. The airlocks on this ship were pretty roomy, as these things go, but I was still curious if this one was a pivot based lock or two individual hatches. I decided to do a little experiment. I placed a tiny mark on the inner hatch door, right at the edge where it was next to the frame, and then started the airlock exit procedure. The lights turned red and the warning lit up on the doors as expected, and when it showed ready and my suit was fully inflated, I stood near the inner hatch and remotely operated the airlock from my suit arm. The outer door smoothly slid back, and I stared at the mark on the inner door - which did not move. Well. So much for that theory - but it did mean I could find a way to lock both doors open if I needed to move large objects through the airlock. I clipped to the flush ring outside, and stepped off into space.

Activating my mag boots, I walked along the hull, the planet swimming massive and green and blue and cloudy very nearby. It was brightly reflective on the side we were currently orbiting, which lit my ship up beautifully. I looked down (up?) at the planet for a bit, just losing myself in the beauty of it as it moved along. The clouds were pretty thick just below us right now, swirling and churning with what appeared to be some lightning going on. In the bright light, I was able to inspect the hull in great detail, and I was using my PDA to help scan for issues I couldn’t see. I kept walking along the side, more or less in line with the cargo bay towards the front. When I passed the bridge porthole windows, I clipped down and swapped to a new line so that I wouldn’t get hung up. I began walking across the ‘top’ of the ship, over the roof of the bridge, then back, over and over, checking each row of polygonal tiles in turn. under the scanner light of my PDA quite a few little nanobot-repairs showed up, as they were designed to. The nanobots used a special material that fluoresced under the right conditions so that you could check on their work.

There were hundreds of little marks and lines, a few as big across as my hand, where the nanobots had repaired the hull. Pretty normal stuff, really. As I finally worked me way towards the nose, I got to the sensor array where the radiation caution warnings were marked out. This section would be hazardous if the sensors were active. Like right now. I steered clear, just flashing my PDA across them briefly to see if anything unusual would catch my eye. So far, nothing. I kept going over the nose, now underneath the ship, and I saw some curious hatches. About one hundred cm across, they had slight caution rings around them, but seemed perfectly sealed. I had a suspicion these might be gun ports, though I had no idea whatsoever if guns lurked behind them on my ship. These could just be blanks for the factory to use, after all.

I finished up on the nose section, not finding anything worrying, coiled the line back up and re-latched to the long line. Then I headed back to inspect the ventral side of the ship. The way the plating was set up nicely designed for re-entry in the bellyflop style, and the plating down here was a little streaky. I decided to get it cleaned next time I was in a full service station. There was a bit of damage under here, but very little compared to the nose. My one concern really was the gear hatches. The ship had four sets of gear that came down sort of equally spaced, and one of them didn’t appear to have closed entirely flush. It was possible to see a little difference in the height, but I didn’t feel much of a lip with his hand. Maybe six or seven mm proud of the ship’s hull. I logged it with the ship’s maintenance system, so the nanobots would be prepared to do repairs. If it was the kind of repairs they could do. This one was probably going to require a manual check with the gear down. Maybe there was something inside that was messed up. I took some photos and headed aft.

On the rear of the craft, currently quiet and dormant while we were in stable orbit, I was able to check most of the areas around the engines. No apparent damage, some tiny lines here and there, possibly stress or expansion. One thing that was interesting was on the outside of the cargo hatch - there was a lot of damage right at the top section. Possibly from impacting with other ships? I wasn’t sure, but I logged it. I might need to get someone here to check out the doors and make sure they were operating properly. The damage could be trouble if it was being caused by the door sliding along the guides, it might end up just getting worse and worse.

Then I was heading back up to the hatch, and back in. Forty five minutes to give it a full going over, and it went better than expected. I scrolled over my maintenance log and then made sure they would all be auto-entered into the station service log when we get to one. Certain everything was ship-shape for the landing, I went back to my quarters to play a game while I waited on the passengers.

It was nearly four more hours before they decided that they were indeed going to land. Atmosphere had been tested with a probe they launched, and one of the bots had dipped into the atmo to test ground conditions before committing the entire expedition. Everyone prepared, and we got the bots brought back in and stowed securely. It was a little insulting that they thought the landing would be that bad, but on the other hand, I was a bit unsure of it myself. Best to just go with the flow, right? If I downplayed it and it went poorly, that’d be worse.

[MiguelB]

When everything was ready, I strapped into the helm station and prepared for my first proper piloting since buying this new posh ship. “Computer, open PA” There was a brief chirp, I presumed that meant it was open and trying not to produce feedback.

“Everyone prepare for atmo entry.” I waited a bit, then heard another chirp. “Computer, is PA closed?”
“PA is not active”, came the voice. Ok. Good, that makes sense. The voice controls were a little weird, but getting there.

I flexed my hands and prepared to descend into the planet. The shields were up, and atmospheric resistance was minimal as we started rolling around the planet looking for our initial path. At our current speed and altitude, the best course of action was to come down gradually, which would also give us time to see if any sites were better than the initially selected site. The air thickened as I dropped in through the troposphere and ionosphere and downwards, circling the globe twice as we dropped and reduced speed. I was in no hurry to race down, and then we found the site. I locked it into the coords, and it appeared as a heading marker for me on the screen.

I followed the path down, quite a bit sharper now, and the altitude raced in a blur as we dropped faster than simple gravity, pushing the shields a bit. The port holes glowed in the air racing past the shields turning into a beautiful orange glow I could see even through the augmented reality of the camera. I switched to another camera on the ventral side of the ship, and suddenly ground was up and the ship was down. Whoops. I flipped the view, and now I had the view of the hull above me and the world below, the dark storm we were approaching getting larger and darker. We punched a hole through the storm at over five thousand kilometers per hour and raced out the other side of it into a pure dark blue sky with lush vegetation spread out everywhere below us. I saw a mammoth ocean horizon appear, and the roundness of the planet diminished to a flat as we dropped further and further, thirty, twenty, ten kilometers up, then two kilometers and we were racing past the land and out over the ocean. I pulled up on the throttle at that point, and brought the ship around in a smooth arc that tossed a mammoth plume of ocean water into the air as we dumped all of that thrust and inertia into a tight turn. The g-load spiked a bit, but I still had it set at 2G inside the ship, so the centrifugal forces of eleven G for the turn were shrugged off into merely uncomfortable pressure. We were well within the max Q for the craft, so I could have pulled the turn tighter than eighty-five degrees, but no sense in being crazy with it. A twenty-eight to thirty G turn would be above the thrust for this ship and possibly result in a stall. I hadn’t flown in atmo much, but I remembered that being a bad thing. Especially this close to the water.

I dropped the ship down to a mere five hundred and fifty meters above the sea, and then flipped over for the holding position setting. It accessed automatically when the gear came down, and I switched it to g lev instead of thrusters. The slight rumble went away as the thruster powered down entirely, and we were sitting locked on a cushion of technology. We moved slowly in a gimbal pivot as I tracked over towards the beach, and I moved us in. The levs were very slow without the maneuvering thrusters, so we only were doing about fifteen kilometers an hour as we slowly headed to the beach. It took a lot longer than I was expecting, but it was worth it. We rolled over the beach like a ghost, and I watched for the clearing that we had spotted.

On the augmented display, the selected landing position appeared obviously enough, but the real ground conditions weren’t quite what I had been looking for. I had to move around a little bit to find something mostly level, flat, and free of large trees. About ten minutes later, I found a large smooth hillock that was perhaps a hundred meters above sea level and had a mostly sheer cliff. It was idea, so I moved over it and slowly reduced altitude. We touched down with the barest jostle as the G-lev cut out when I set the landing. Flawless, or as close as possible.

“Ok, that’s all she wrote. Let’s get out there and see this planet!”, I said, and headed for my suit. The others could do as they wished, but no way in heck was I going onto a planet like this without a suit. The others seemed to be thinking the same thing and we all suited up before heading down to the cargo bay. That had the best exit for something like this, since you would need to use a ladder to reach a surface from the side gangway hatch. We also would want to pass through decontamination before stepping onto an unvisited world. The cargobay would be flooded with UV-C and hard gamma radiation pulses to make sure that we didn’t track anything out on the planet… or bring it back. Our exo suits blocked the levels used for decontamination of course.

We lowered the exterior ramp and opened the door, leaving the forcefield engaged of course. I walked to it, and then out the forcefield and down the ramp. The world was huge, it was amazing to see an ocean like this, so similar to the ones on my home world. I was completely in awe. Things flew overhead, making a noise audible through my suit’s microphone system. I looked up at them, and wondered if they had ever been seen by any spacefaring species ever before. I walked out onto the green sward and towards the tall cliff face. It was absolutely thrilling.

The two cerebs weren’t having quite such a good time, this was twice the gravity they were generally comfortable in. Fortunately, as it turned out, we had been running the ship at two G for the travel around the system. They had some time to get adapted to it. I’m sure it was pretty rough, though. I chinned my comms on.

“If you would like to explore the planet more, I’m sure we can adapt an exoskeleton for you, it will make it easier to get around.”, I though it couldn’t hurt, right.

“No thank you, Captain, this is part of the experience.”, Shiraj replied tartly. Hey, fair enough. I walked around a bit and then headed towards the trees a bit in from the cliff face. I took several pictures all around with my PDA, since it’s not every day you get to see a new planet. I was also recording with my suit camera, but this time I’d actually save it. Generally I just let the suit video get looped over.

Hmm. I had about an hour of canned air, so I could probably sit out here for a while. Maybe do some reading, that’d be wild. I went back aboard to get a couple small containers that I could use to make a chair, and set up a nice seat with a view of the cliffs and sea, and I read while the bots roved around testing and getting samples of everything. One of the bots even went down to the ocean to get water samples. Those AI were pretty crazy. I looked forward to telling Grenthis all about this when I had network connectivity next.

[MiguelB]

All said, we spent probably fifteen hours on the surface there, then we took off very gently and visited a couple other spots with different climate and foliage. The planet was thoroughly beautiful, and we never did determine the source of the EM radiation. When we finally departed to head for the next planet in the system, I was actually pretty tired of being in a space suit. I generally didn’t mind them, but I went through a number of air refills on the surface, and that was just a lot of suit time. Can’t say I’d ever spent five of any given eight hours in a suit before. Usually less than an hour.

Returning to the ship each time we went back through decontamination both ways, which made transit a bit more uncomfortable. Fortunately, as long as we didn’t go beyond the cargobay, it wasn’t required. The cargobay basically was decontamination. We left the decontamination protocols on for a while after leaving the surface to make sure that nothing had gotten in. Between the UV-C and the hard gamma radiation, hardly anything with a viral or bacteriological makeup should be left alive. Most species that travel in space are familiar with the UV-C scrubs that we use as lightweight sterilizers, but for new planets and first contacts we had to use the heavier stuff. The cargobay was the only place capable of full gamma radiation protocols. I had brushed up on all this when we were traveling in-system just on the off chance.

We departed this planet, now designated in my system as a fully documented planet. Gamma Terce Three-Twenty-Seven had its first planets. A distant volcanic one that might be mined someday, and now one that looked ideal for colonization. The Thrack Yar would forever be immortalized as the ship that discovered it.

[MiguelB]

As we raced further towards the center of the system, the planets were closer together, though we’d have to do a fairly complex path if we were going to visit them all. There were three more planets, all within one and a half AU of the sun. Our actual route would be more like two and half AU of travel due to their orbits. While we were speeding along at three G, the team launched another probe to visit the planet nearest the sun, as it was unlikely to be worth a prolonged inspection. It appeared to be tidally locked to the sun, and those planets often had half of the surface molten or nearly so. The other two were both in the prime habitability range for this sun, and there was hope for future colonization or at least resource harvesting.

The nearest of the two was incredibly cloudy when we arrived in orbit, and seemed to have long-standing vortices of clouds, the content of which was quite a blend of chemicals. Spectrometry showed that the surface temp was unreasonably high, several hundred degrees higher than we had anticipated from the long-range scans. That precluded us visiting it in person, but a couple of the bot craft still decided to test their tolerances. When I came down to the cargobay to see how things were going, I found Shiraj affixing high-temperature plating and additional cooling units to a craft, along with an unusual antenna array.

“What’s the plan now?”, I asked.

“This craft will be piloted down by remote control by Aegix seven fifty here” she replied, gesturing to a long cylinder about the size of my torso. Presumably this was what the bots referred to as a shell, and it was essentially a bot. Processor, memory, storage, whatever it was bots required to exist. It was clearly designed to be inserted into the craft.

“I’ll be hooking it up to the remote rig we’ve set up over by the cargobay doors, and then it will control the craft without too much personal risk.”, she said.

“That sounds like a good plan. There must not be much chance of the craft surviving if even a bot isn’t willing to risk itself”, I replied.

“They don’t like being called that, you know. It’s rude. It’s like calling you a lizard.”, she snapped. Ok, fair point, not that lizard bothered me much. It was the tone that bothered me.

“I apologize. My point was that my friend Grenthis was also an artificial intelligence, and thought nothing of personal risk if there was any chance of finding something new. They never seem to be very risk-averse”, I said.

"Yes. Well, in general, they can always transport themselves home via a nearby gate’s network. Here, however, there’s no gate. No way home. The best it could do is transmit itself in the general direction of gate and hope the signal arrived intact. The odds aren’t good.

I helped her put the small shell into a special tripod module that was packed in one of the storage crates, basically brought along for this exact purpose. We placed it by the cargobay door, and then I got into my exo suit.

“You’re suiting up?” Shiraj asked. “Isn’t there a forcefield?”

“Yes, there absolutely is. But I’ve been in space a long time, and never felt like trusting technology more complicated than a carabiner unless I had to.”, I replied. She considered this a moment, then went and put on her suit.

“Ok, let’s do this.” I said, and opened the cargobay doors. The doors quickly slid back revealing the planet in all of its awesome splendor beneath and to the side of us, and the blackness of space apart from that. The craft lifted up, went through a brief systems check where the lev height, atmo control surfaces, signal antennas, and engines were all briefly tested, then it slid quietly out into space to quickly arc down towards the planet.

A bright plume followed it as it split the air and then it was falling far behind us, decelerating rapidly under the force of the atmosphere.

“How is it going down there, Aegix?”, Shiraj asked.

“At the moment the mission is acceptable.” the thin and slightly reedy voice of Aegix’s synth replied. “I am detecting very unusual compounds in the atmosphere. Homo and copolymers and long chain complex chemicals that are unexpected. I will report further once I have completed the surface survey.” the voice continued, and then went silent.

For minutes we just sort of looked around, waited. I eventually started playing a game on my PDA while I sat. It was nearly thirty minutes later that it spoke again.

“The craft has been lost. Most unfortunate. The majority of the accumulated data has been transmitted back to me, however. Only the last two thousand blocks failed.” It sounded a bit upset about that. I wondered if it had a backup craft, or if it was doomed to be this little lozenge indefinitely now.

“It seems like the decision to remotely control the craft was the correct decision Aegix.”, Shiraj said.
“Of course it was. There was a thirty two point six percent chance of the loss of part or all of the craft.” the reedy voice responded. Great, another AI that was a insistent on being brusque. They really could try if they wanted to.

Shiraj took the capsule and put it into the storage case that held the tripod, and then collapsed the tripod and stowed it there as well.

“So, that’s it? Aegix is just a capsule now?”, I said.

“Yes”, she replied. "We didn’t have room to bring a complete spare of a full survey craft. The losses for this mission only assumed a maximum of one craft and three probes.

“Understood. I assume you would like me to break orbit and head to the other remaining planet?”, I asked. She nodded. “Please.”

I headed back and stowed my suit, then took up the captain’s chair again. I flipped through to the mission summary and the course for the final planet. I saw that the planet we were currently orbiting had been marked as inaccessible. Wow, I wish I knew what it ran into there. Heat? Pressure? Giant arachnids? Heh. That would be cool. Draedis Netlion VI had that issue. Low gravity, high oxygen atmo, and arachnids the size of cargo containers.

I targeted and launched a probe with the default “Science” setting at the planet, and then engaged the autopilot for the final destination in this sector.

[MiguelB]

We arrived at the last planet without incident, and were in for quite a surprise. As we broke a million kilometers, we began to pick up electro-magnetic emissions. A lot of them. Chaotic, disordered. All over the place. As we got closer and closer, the signals became more organized, and a lot more intense. It was entirely possible that we were going through some culture’s history of experimentation with communications or technology. Still strictly old tech, nothing yet capable of being understood by our tech. The bots deployed half a million kilometers out, and began scanning and testing. Doing their bit. I sat tight and waiting for the ship to take its standard survey orbit, like before. Suddenly Shiraj jumped up.

“Go past. Go now, stop the deceleration, we need to go past at speed”, she said. I looked up, concerned. “How fast?”

“Fast.”, she said. She seemed tense.

“Right. Strap in”, I said. Her head jerked back, and then she dropped into her seat and strapped in.

“Bojan to the bridge. Immediately. Strap in”, I said, loudly enough for him to hear me from his quarters.

He jogged out, and sat down at the cargo station while I moved to the helm position. I looked around, and they both nodded.

I let the augmented reality display settle over me as I tightened the straps. “Here we go people”

I rotated the ship back into alignment with our course, flipped almost instantly. Then I pushed the button I had long wanted to touch… Boost

I was jammed into my seat by a monstrous weight as the ship erupted with thrust, all engines firing at max for thirty seconds. Sixteen G.

I blacked out. I knew that was coming, after all. I shook off the effects now that we were coasting having just added an extra , and looked back. Both cerebs were still out cold. We’d put on an extra five kilometers per second, and if something were trying to catch us, it would now have to be going extremely fast. Currently we were going fast enough that we’d already left the planet one and a half million kilometers behind.

My neck was a bit sore. I reset the course for our projected end point, where we could once again jump out of the system, and back at three G. Then I walked over and checked on my passengers. Shiraj was starting to move a little, and then Bojan moved as well, a slight trickle of his blueish blood dripping from his nose. I went to my quarters and got a warm, damp cloth.

“Here you go.”, I said, handing it to him. He applied it to his nose, and made a distasteful look.

“What in Elegan’s seven moons was that for?”, he inquired irritably.

“She said to get us the hell away from that planet. Fast.” I said. We both looked at Shiraj, who still appeared to be slightly dazed.

“What was it?” he inquired of her, still annoyed.

“Nuke.” she said. I was a bit staggered.

“You mean, they fired on us? That planet is inhabited?”, I said. Nukes. That would be bad. We weren’t a warship. We might survive a near miss, but certainly not a hit.

“Yes. They absolutely fired on us. I saw the message from my friends. The warned us, but I don’t know if they survived. How far off are we?”

I checked my console. “We’re over two million kilometers off and still accelerating at 3G. The flip isn’t for another half hour at this pace. That’s when we’ll be near the sun and at the coords for the jump out.”

“Ok. Anything you can see? Anything following us?”, she sounded tense. For good reason. The military certainly had missiles and torpedoes capable of tremendous acceleration, though the fact that we never got much closer than half a million kilometers and hadn’t even fully decelerated means they would have had a lot to make up.

I went over to the captain’s seat, and pulled up the very minimal tactical display. “No, nothing showing up. I don’t really have what you would call a ‘tactical’ system on board, I’m a freighter. No guns, no nothing. But I do have the shields up, and we’re making tracks. We’ll wait in a close solar orbit along the jump out coords to rendezvous with your team.”, I said. I felt terrible about those bots. Of all the things they probably couldn’t handle, especially with all those extra sensors… was an EMP. That’s essentially what was used to disable them for capture by the bot slavers. You popped an EMP near an AI ship, and you now had all sorts of ready-made high power tech with nothing on it. It fried their circuits and what was left was just their shells. No memory, no storage, none of that survived. A nuke, of course, was a brutal club compared to an EMP, but close enough. It would have fried them if it went off anywhere near by.

We were all thinking it when collision sounded.

“Oh shit!” I said, and dropped into the captain’s chair which was nearest. I checked the status, and there was something approaching from behind, at considerable speed. Probably locked right onto us, and it was accelerating like mad. I had very few other options, so I simple altered our course slightly, causing us to veer off to my left rather sharply. It continued to gain on us.

“I have no choice, I have to jump now or we all die”, I said. I didn’t look to see what they thought about that. I just hit the “emergency jump” button. We were 2 tenths of an AU away from the Jump point. Who knows if it’d be safe, but we had no shots.

The glittering opened in front of me, and we raced through it at our full acceleration, which would launch us back to our previous system on an unplanned jump at one hell of a velocity. IF we lived.

As long as I live, I’ll remember that sensation. Unlike the smooth normal transitions, we came through at an angle and tremendous speed and I heaved up, glad my stomachs were empty. My body felt completely knotted and disjointed at the same time as parts were thousands of lightyears away from other parts, and the ship tumbled end over end the moment it passed through.

Collision kept sounding, and the ship itself announced “Initiating evasive maneuvers”, and the whole deck rolled and turned under us crazily. I was thrown against the straps, then against the seat, and I heard rumbling and crashing from all over the ship. Then the windows lit up with a bright but thankfully distant flare, which also backlit a massive moon right next to us. The moon passed just a few hundred kilometers away, filling the port hole windows entirely as we barely avoided it.

Finally everything calmed down, and the ship seemed to be moving stably.

“Computer, current system”, I called, panting.

“Current system Epsilon Alpha Three Six” came the reply. Well, shit. That wasn’t where I wanted to be, but it was a known system. Emergency Jump was a nightmare option. The computer system took two seconds to find the cleanest jump solution, working on hundreds in parallel, and at the end of two seconds whichever solution was most complete was automatically used. This did not mean it was a valid or safe jump solution. It took days for the average ship to calculate an ad hoc jump solution that was safe, with access to the latest maps. Only AI ships could do it faster than that. It was rumored their home world kept an almost perfect simulation of the galaxy running at all times.

“Ok folks, I’m going to plot a course to the local gate jump point, and get us back to your station. We’re going to refuel, then jump back there. I’m very sorry about your team. Once we’re back, maybe a few hours at most, we’ll try to pick them up at the jump out point.”, I said. Trying to keep the crazy hormones out of my voice.

I looked around. Both cerebs looked stunned. Between the high G maneuvers, the near miss, and that damn nuke that seemed to have missed us by a scale’s width, they deserved a moment to be stunned.

I flipped through the system listing, found that there was a station here we could refuel at. I set the course, and requested full-service docking with refueling.

[MiguelB]

It took a few hours. We stood in the lobby overlooking the gangway while the added fuel. From this angle, you could see some scorch marks on the hull of the Thrack Yar, though I had no idea what caused them. It had been a challenging couple of weeks - and now we were about to conduct a rescue operation for a group of AIs that might already be dead. The silence was broken finally when the refueling ship pulled away and the hatch opened back up.

“Ready? Let’s go find your team”, I said. There were tense nods. We walked down the gangway and through the door. I patted the bulkhead as I walked in, and suited up. The cerebs looked confused for a moment, then suited up as well. The tacitly understood I was expecting to be fired on again, and possibly we could be damaged, irradiated, or even destroyed. This was a military operation, no job for a freighter, but those were paying customers out there dammit. And friends of a paying customer. Harmless scientists researching a system.

We took our seats, left the station, and set a course for the jump gate. My jump destination was the departure spot from Gamma Terce three-twenty-seven. We would pop in right there, a couple hundred million kilometers from that planet, and then proceed back to the sun to look for the AI craft.

The ship rolled smoothly through the Jump, a totally normal Gate Jump this time, and we were back. Shiraj had the sensors cranked immediately after we arrived, and as I understood it Aegix down in the cargo bay had been transmitting non-stop since the incident. Now it was trying everything to contact its teammates. We found nothing near the sun, and so we started backtracking, getting slowly closer and closer to the planet. We hadn’t yet picked up the EMF waves from the planet yet when we found the transponder code from one of the craft. I quickly set an intercept for it, and we pulled it on board. The bot had mostly survived, though its craft had been severely damage and the drive rendered inoperable. It didn’t know if anyone else had survived. One of the nukes had gone off very close. It was pretty sure at least three of the other craft had been within the immediate radius.

I was watching my sensors for anything at all, when suddenly a transponder code appeared right in front of me. Then three, four, five, a dozen. They were AI transponders but they were not the nav team. Indeed not… these were massive warships.

My comms chirped.

“Thrack Yar here, this is Captain Sthicksa”, I said.

“Captain Sthicksa, you are conducting rescue operations.” The AI voice was rich and melodic. Matter of fact.

“Yes, we are looking for a number of AI navigation scientists that were last seen here.”, I said. Noting that the ship hadn’t identified itself. There were now over fifty transponder codes. The sky was full of them.

“Understood Captain. Your efforts are noted and appreciated. Leave the system now.” It wasn’t a threat. It was the same matter of fact tone, and it was scary as heck.

“Acknowledged. Good luck”, I said. I prepared a course to the Jump out coords near the sun as more transponders showed up. 63 now.

I was heading towards the jump out at three G when I saw loads and loads of streaks of light, plumes most likely, streaming towards the planet. Oh, shit.

I quickly put the shields up, and increased thrust to four Gs.

“Nobody look through the rear portal windows”, I said. I personally watched via camera to prevent eye damage. I had an idea what was coming. Sure enough, several minutes later, the stark white light cast shadows against the front of the bridge. Thousands and thousands of bombs of unthinkable yield and devastation were going off… probably going both ways. No matter who or what on that planet had decided to shoot down those craft, the whole planet was paying for it. I didn’t know the AI exacted vengeance on this scale, but maybe there was a cosmic justice in it. If a species’ first instinct when contacting something was to nuke it without question, maybe we didn’t need that species causing trouble.

Or maybe the lesson was to never declare war until you’ve met your enemy?

Questions for another time. I let the autopilot activate the jump, and the beautiful luxury station of Coriolis Minor Six was again our docking destination. And a payday, sad as this one might be.

[MiguelB]

Safely docked back at the glamourous Uteje Station, with my flagged items being repaired for a modest fee, I was drinking to the memory of those AI who had given everything in their attempt to explore the galaxy. The payday had been fantastic, including even some fairly detailed data about that system. Everything except one planet, simply marked as an off-limits planet claimed by the AI Collective. I had offered Shiraj a post as my navigator, but she politely declined. The expedition gear had been carefully offloaded, a lot less to move now, and I found that she was heading back to Cerebus. Possibly for good. Some sort of stellar cartography post.
Checking my PDA, I had a couple queued up messages from Grenthis. The Ko’Ktar had been busy while I was away! It was nice to think that even though I was off twiddling my fingers in space, making merely theoretical money, Grenthis had been busting its hump making real money. I did some looking around at other ships while I was in port, and it might be time to actually hire another ship. Another little one or two jump ship with a modest cargo bay and a small crew would set me back a bit, but they would also pull in quite a bit of additional money. I decided to run the numbers later, see if it made sense. For now, I wanted to get my repaired ship full of cargo and back out there crusing the galaxy.

I browsed the job board for a bit, letting Bojan have some r and r time here on this excellent station. He did like to have a good time, it turned out. I didn’t really expect it from him, he seemed so rigid. At least until the first time station authorities dropped him off at the door, drunk and disorderly. I was to keep him aboard for his forty eight hour suspension.

That gave me a good chuckle. He had taken his entire bonus from our recent jaunt and put it to good use, clearly.

I went and checked out several bars on the station, keeping an eye out for anyone shady who might have some work for me. Nothing was showing up so far, just boring work. I finally got a gig that was dull, but paid. It was one hundred and forty thousand kilos of garbage, just heading out to a recycling station and back. Not my idea of a good time, but no jumps were required and it could be done quickly.

We got it loaded up and took off, the target station set as the destination. I put it on autopilot and just relaxed in my chair. I was playing a game on my PDA when we finally came in sight of the trash dump off station several hours later. Quick autodock, unfortunately not one that could handle the main bay. I was bored, as was Bojan, so after we programmed the automated skids to handle the majority of the refuse containers, we also slipped into our padded suits to move some by ‘hand’. I was in my exoskeleton lifter rig, loaded down with a mammoth garbage container and in the hallway when my PDA started beeping. There was no way to just answer it, so I kept trudging along. It kept beeping for me.

When I had finally deposited the container and was ready to head back, I opened my suit pocket to check it. Grenthis had learned of the passing of his fellow AIs, and found out I was involved. There was a very, well, deeply felt message attached. I mean, for an AI. I was surprised, it was pretty sentimental, all about thanks and gratitude, and how I had received some sort of commendation. I would apparently be hearing of it soon from an ambassador. Cool.

After Bojan and I parked our lift exoskeletons, we gave the hold a quick sanitizing blast of radiation, and then pulled out for the station again. The trip back was equally uneventful. When we had docked and refueled the in-system tanks (much safer than the jump rods), there was a message for me from the AI Collective.

I was asked to come to some system I hadn’t heard of, where I would be given a special award. That sounded neat and all, but I wasn’t going to pay forty thousand bucks just to get an award. I thanked them politely, and said I would drop by next time I had work there.

[MiguelB]

More pedestrian work awaited. A few thousand kilos here, a hundred thousand kilos there. It took me on the old familiar routes in the now familiar comfort of a nice ship. Dare I say, even luxury. It quickly became something of a routine. Then I finally got a very special comms while I was on a dirtside run with five hundred head of some sort of livestock.

“Cygnus Pizza Corp” was the sender. I was being given a chance to transport a team to an entire race season… ten races. Wow. It was a thirty thousand credit deposit, then a hundred thousand credits per race, and a winnings cut of five percent. This could be absolutely amazing! Of course, I’d also have to invest quite a bit of money in a cargobay refit.

I confirmed that it was a legit offer, of course, being the suspicious scaly one that I am, and then I sunk twenty thousand into a cargobay refit as soon as the deposit cleared. I met up with the team owner on a his private moon, Deckobrah, out in the Colris VII system. Very exclusive neighborhood, almost entirely inhabited by the ultra rich. If you couldn’t afford to own a moon or a space station (or possibly a planet) you weren’t invited. They had a private Jump Gate for crying out loud. I was thrilled to get out there.

Entering the system, I was given a fighter “escort”, in theory so I wouldn’t get lost, in reality so I wouldn’t go looking around. The system had the most minimal navigation data imaginable, and using onboard sensors was strictly prohibited. So we went where we were taken, and arrived at a truly amazing luxury moon.

When I landed, the staff was in attendance to spring into action. They went over the refit of my cargobay with precision measuring lasers, verified everything was set up mostly as required, and then brought in some heavy equipment. They undid a good chunk of the work I had done, but that’s ok, this was on their dime this time. When they were satisfied, they brought down the team owner. Nice guy, one of those really furry species that like it cold - except his moon was pretty warm. Obviously personal taste. While he looked it over, I followed along.

“Ayuassinng. This weeklau doo. Mya teaamuk will comlea” he said in an accent so wild it had to be fake. It was three days before the team arrived, all sorts of ships landing more or less at one big set. Nearly fifty people got off, most of whom would be staying in the quarters they’d built into my cargobay. The team captain would be staying with me, in my third stateroom. The racers and the owner would be in their private luxury ships.

We took off, followed again by a whole crew of armed security fighter drones, and left by the jump for the first stop - a preliminary warm up race track. There were so many cameras, crews, and fans there when we landed, it was a madhouse. A team of huge bruisers were assigned to protect my ship from lookie-loos, and I was given team passes that allowed me to go just about anywhere. I even had special team box seat access. I sat there with the friends and families of these famous and near famous racers, watching the best of the best drivers race around this initial test track. The crowds were mostly kept a long ways from the track, since the crazy antics these racers got up to could cause a lot of damage. I watched and rooted for the team I was carrying, obviously, and drank quite a lot of the alcohol they had handy. Bojan was having a pretty good time, and was getting on well with the other cerebs in the group of mechanics, hangers-on, and assorted oddballs that were with the team.

I noticed that the race drivers were queueing up to get their pole positions for the season, and top racers from each team were sitting out the first few laps to let the junior drivers get more time in on the track. I sat down there in the pits and watched from close up as the craft roared by over and over again. The whine of the g levs was very thrilling, and you could feel the breeze where they passed at this distance. The crowds were back nearly a kilometer away, just in case of accident.

The craft raced by over and over, this set was smaller, and they were typically only going a few hundred kilometers an hour, but there were other and faster craft on board my ship. I was idly watching a pink racer flying by when it collided forcefully with one of the dropped containers. Generally they slowed down rapidly as they approached them, the autoevasion system preventing any real harm. Something was wrong. The craft slammed into the metal container at full speed and wheeled up and out, completely out of control and on fire. A team was instantly racing out there to rescue the pilot, and a huge chunk of debris came right towards me. I ducked back behind a mammoth lathe, and the debris collided with the lathe, spraying bits of material all over the place. Holy cow! Maybe this was a bit too close to the action. The racer was hauled away on a stabilizer as a fireteam was putting out the remains of the craft. Thank goodness not one of my passengers. Still though, I hoped they were ok.

One of the pit chiefs came by to survey the damage to the lathe.

“Daaaaaa that really took a hit. You lived, I see.”, he said. I nodded.

“Good thinking moving behind the lathe, pity about the crash. I think they’re going to have a hard time recovering from that. We usually only have a handful of spares. Despite how dangerous people think the CPR is, we actually only have a true crash like this once a season or so. If they have another, they’ll be unable to field a full team.”, he was talking while examining the wreckage. He stood, and proffered a big chunk of fender with the team logo on it.

“Want a souvenir? I bet there’s people who would kill for something like this with that story.”, he said.

“Heck yea I do. Thanks.” I took it and tucked it back behind the pit. I thought better of it, and then took it the whole way back to my ship. I didn’t want someone getting clever and nicking the fender that was properly mine by right of nearly killing me. I got back just in time for the lead racers to take the track. I sat behind the giant timing system so I’d have something hide behind if required, and watched the long low craft take the track at up to seven hundred kilometers per hour. Slow by the standards of interstellar travel, fast as lightning by the standards of a tiny track with narrow turns. No wonder this pilots were set for life. You win a contest like this, you can fly like a magician.

I cheered as the zip-zip-zip-zip of the field raced past, pushing a bow wave of air that buffeted me from the sidelines. This was definitely a place I wouldn’t have dreamed of being last year! Ten laps later, the positions for the season were locked in and announced. The teams headed into their pits, and one of the lead pilots, a small lithe sextoped from a system I’d visited once pulled off its helmet and beckoned to me.

“You were the guy nearly creamed earlier, right? I bet you could get all the racers to autograph that part tonight if you bring it by the after party. We’ll be doing shoots with all the craft for the big calendar and the press conferences.” I couldn’t believe my ears. “That sounds amazing!” I said.

“Yeah, you betcha. Gimme a hand here”, they said, and I helped them up out of the cockpit.

There were so many people at the press event, it was absolutely a madhouse. Thousands of press from hundreds of planets, every serious race writer, and all the various fans who had won some kind of contest. I waited off in the wings while they took care of business, and then the pit chief from my passenger’s team saw me, and called out.

“Hey everyone, gather around. We want to get one with our host!” he said, and our whole team and loads of other racers came and clustered around one of the race craft, all gleaming in the lights. They covered my fender with signatures, and all posed with me and the fender while the press went nuts. He told the group the story of the crash, embellishing things a bit more than probably strictly required, and pulled out a race helmet they had done up for me. I was stunned. He cracked some sort of joke about how they’d all feel better if they knew I was wearing a helmet next time so that they be sure of their ride home, and I posed with the team for more shots.

The pilot who had crashed came up and signed the fender and gave me a hug while even more shots were fired, and then everyone started wandering off. The racers all headed back to my ship where I went to sleep, but Bojan hung out and partied with them for hours more. I guess they were counting on the break before the next race to recover.

When departure time arrived, I quietly made sure everyone was safely secured before departure, and helped them quietly get latched in. I’d been tempted to use the PA, nice and loud, but that seemed a little cruel when they’d been up all night. Regardless it was a very quiet cargobay when I took off early in the morning, heading for a gate and their next race track. Race one of the series was a pretty long leg away, we jumped into the system almost three hours at sublight from the destination planet. We got to the moon, and when I went down to inform them we were in orbit, they were already preparing everything for the big landing and offloading. I confirmed it was good to go, and we put down right next to a huge band that was apparently there to kick off the official race start. Seemed a bit silly, since it usually took ages to offload, but right on time they came rolling out of the cargobay in formation. I wasn’t really expecting that! Bojan had helped them with their timing so it all went flawlessly for the waiting crowd.

After their fanfare departure, the serious work of unloading the pit and setting up happened. I helped out, driving my exoskeleton lifter to help get things put in place. Oddly enough, they weren’t especially good with lifters. Regardless, I was able to pitch in a bit, and then we had a big lunch party with a bunch of boring speeches, and I was so grateful when the teams finally took the track. I went up to the box seats to watch, with tens of thousands of in-person fans, and saw the cameras for the billions of fans all over the galaxy. The CPR race series was one of the biggest sporting events there was. It was, naturally, fully catered with pizza. I was helping myself to a big slice of spherical pizza and booze when they announced the race was about to start. I came and took my seat there, high above the regular crowd, and we we all watched the racers line up. The timer went down, and off they went. Super tight turns, high acceleration, and through it all the crazy flying to pick up the toppings. Each time the racers would pick up a new topping, they’d discard it strategically where it would cause the most chaos. Craft zigging and zagging at max speed.

The racers rolled across the finish line to cheers and then headed back to their pits. The day rolled on, the novices followed by the mid-level racers where the competition was fierce and dangerous, and then finally as night rolled around and the planet shone bright and full. It was a beautiful scene, and the big name racers were all lined up. The first race of the year was mainly for bragging rights, since the races would be weighted average all season. The trick apparently was to come out strong and make sure everyone knew you were a force to be reckoned with. And not to crash, of course.

The craft were in a tight cluster through the first three turns, then someone unexpectedly dropped a topping they needed just to catch the field by surprise while everyone was bunched in a corner, and total chaos ensued. The autoevasion systems took over and the whole field except for the lead pilot were jammed there in the hairpin. That brilliantly executed move gave them a two second lead over the entire field and try though they might, nobody was able to quite close the gap. First place was theirs, and with all three toppings. A full-on gold cup victory, right out of the gate! An excellent start for their season.

Unfortunately, they weren’t one of my passengers. The team I was carrying did a good job, though, but the after party was more muted this time.

[MiguelB]

The season had gone well for the team. They were preparing for the final run of the year, a huge run on Solaxis before a sold-out crowd. One small hitch emerged… traditionally, the final run was celebrated with a special narcotic drink called Soprisi. For various reasons, the typical supplier of this drink had been shut down by their home world, making it nearly impossible to find. Especially in the quantities demanded by a CPR final race. The race organizer had met with the team owners just prior to the main event, in hopes that someone could find a way to get a lead on several thousand liters of Soprisi before race day.

The team owner approached me that same day.

“Captain Sthicksa, I have found you to be a real lifesaver. An indispensable part of the team.”, he said, instantly making alarm bells go off in my head.

“Yes?” I said, cautiously. This is how people approached you when they wanted a discount, or there was trouble paying. Or, I suppose, they needed a huge favor.

“It has come to my attention that we’re going to have trouble supplying the fans and teams with the traditional beverage of choice to end the season. Their disappointment will be immense.”, he continued. I nodded sympathetically, wondering if he wanted me to get us lifted off before a riot started.

“I located a source… not a lot, just eighty or ninety thousand liters, but… there’s a problem.”, he said. Trying not to look at me.

“Oh?” I said, practicing my monosyllabic nonchalance.

“Well, the planet has banned sale or manufacture of it, you see. Technically, this sale concluded prior to the ban, but it’s not certain that the authorities will see it that way. I am hoping someone as… resourceful… as yourself could find a way to retrieve it for us.” he looked at me.

Hmm. A possible imprisonment, fine, maybe both. This would need to be expensive.

“Well, that sounds like it might be possible, but there’s expenses with things like this. People need to be paid to look the other way, things like that.”

“I am prepared to pay you a half a million, half upfront, half on delivery.”, he said, appearing pretty uncomfortable.

“Ok, I’ll get that arranged. What system is it in?”, I pulled out my PDA.

“Pleiedes Theta, the moon Yu has the last legal warehouse in the system, though it’s likely to be hard to get to.”.

I quickly drew up a contract for a rush delivery of carbonic accelerator fluid and passed it over to him. “Here you go, sign this manifest, and I’ll get on out there right now.” He raised an eyebrow, then signed it.

I headed back into my ship. “Bojan - I have a delivery coming up, but it’s high risk. You can stay behind if you like. If you come along, you’ll get ten percent as a hazard bonus. Your call”.

“Of course I’m coming. If it’s high risk, you’ll need things transferred properly. Besides, I have expensive taste in companionship.”, I had a feeling I knew what he meant, he’d been hanging around with the models who presented the trophies recently.

“Right. We’re outta here.”, I said, and strapped in. He did likewise, and I set a course for the jump gate. We could be out and into the Pleiedes Theta system promptly, but I had plans for that moon landing. If we followed standard procedure, we’d probably get picked up and have to spend days arguing with the police. I had a little edge though.

I contacted Grenthis on the comms, encrypted message, via the gate. I knew Grenthis wouldn’t be too far from a gate while flying the Ko’Ktar. Sure enough, it was opened shortly.

“Grenthis my friend, I need a small favor. Can you get me a Jump coordinate inside the landing pattern of Pleiedes Theta, looks like fourth planet, the moon is called Yu. Here’s the coordinates for the pickup site. I need to Jump in close enough to land without being detected.” It was a crazy plan. Jumping into atmosphere was absolutely unheard of, but the one story I’d heard about it involved an AI jump. Maybe it was possible.

“Captain Sthicksa, what you ask is very challenging. It will require considerable effort. Give me 15 minutes.” Grenthis’ new voice was sure an improvement.

I waited. We hung out just outside of the Jump gate, waiting on this, but I had a plan B, just in case. Promptly on time, Grenthis called back.

“I took the liberty of referencing your current position and plotting a course. It is being transmitted. My regrets if you do not survive.” and then Grenthis disconnected. I hadn’t given him my current position, but I suspected the AI already knew where I was from my signal.

The computer accepted the new coordinates, and called it a high risk jump. No kidding. If we screwed up, we’d be immolated… or fused into the rock. No time like the present! I didn’t bother to let Bojan know, he’d just worry. I hit Jump.

I could see the outline of a building and atmosphere through the shimmering distortion as we headed in very slowly, since the normal speed of a Jump would be entirely too fast on a moon. I slid through the Jump at only fifty kilometers per hour, barely even moving. Bojan looked up briefly and I heard his sharp gasp, then he sounded like he was a billion kilometers away. The slow speed of the jump made my head feel wild as everything actually felt all thin and stretched for ages. It took a couple seconds and a million years. It was totally amazing, and then suddenly, we were in atmo, and the crash warnings went off.

I engaged the g lev, and put the ship into hover, and we slowly rotated around and came down on the tarmac right outside of the distribution plant. Bojan had the door open and the ramp down before we’d even been there thirty seconds, and people were running out of the building.

I’ve never seen a ship load so fast. Once the ground team’s shock wore off, they moved as fast as they could, and the automated skids helped. Bojan disappeared to his office to coordinate, and within fiften minutes we were twenty percent loaded. Within thirty minutes were well over halfway loaded, and in under an hour they had cleared the tarmac. I engaged the g lev, and we silently lifted off a few hundred meters, then I lifted up to a couple kilometers, and then hit a direct course straight out of the atmosphere. The very instant we cleared the ionosphere I decoy jumped. Too dangerous to do that on a planet, bad enough on the way out. I went through this time at six thousand kilometers per second. We jumped to a random system first, circled around the gate, and then jumped back to the race course. I’d need a refuel before I could take the team home, but I was back, I was fully laden, and the cops never even knew what hit them.

I brought the ship in for a beautiful landing there by the raceway, and the team owner himself was waiting to board.

“That was fast - were you able to get everything?”

“Absolutely. Take a look!” I said, gesturing at the huge containers filled with deliciously prohibited drink.

“That’s impressive. I’m giving you a five percent bonus.” he said, clearly stunned.

“Thank you. We’ll get this all offloaded. If you’d just approve this shipment here…” I said, passing over my PDA before he had time to rethink.

Boom, like that.

[MiguelB]

The season finally over, I dropped the crews off. I decided that while I was flush, I’d pay my loan payment. I felt a lot broker afterwards, but totaling up the nearly eight months I’d spent in the Thrack Yar, I had made over fifteen million in just profit, on twelve million in seed money. No wonder those rich bastards just kept getting richer. In the Ko’Ktar, I rarely made much more than I needed just to keep it running. I had to get loans even to afford repairs. Now, with one stroke of luck, I had proved that with no extra special skills or talents, I was able to make a fortune. I was on the fence: pay off the loan, or just pay my payment and reinvest the money?

Thinking about it for a bit, I decided that I’d pay down a big part of it, about four million, which would leave me with eleven million cash. I’d turn part of that into another ship. If I could get Grenthis or another solid captain out there bringing in more money for the company, we’d blow that fifteen million a year into some real money.

I checked with my local ship broker, and I contacted Grenthis. I told Grenthis about this plan, and was surprised to be refused. Grenthis was more than content with things as they were, and had in fact turned a tidy profit on the Ko’Ktar, better than I’d ever managed. Not needing food and things like that helped. Grenthis put me in contact with an acquaintance of his that he felt had skills that would be a good fit. Apparently this particular AI had a bit of a reputation as a being that got things done. And sometimes got in a bit of trouble. The kind that could benefit from someone of some means who wanted to make a little extra money, and wasn’t especially concerned how it happened. Grenthis felt we’d get on well.

I contacted this AI immediately.

Oddly enough, this AI responded in video, where Grenthis had always responded with only voice. The shell this AI used was some sort of odd variation of a loader rig. If a loader rig had been armored, and giant googly eyes stuck to it, and then crowned with a variety of scanner lasers.

“Yo. Go for Zero-Reg-Thirty.”, it said, with a weirdly modulated voice.

“This is Sthicksa, captain of the Thrack Yar. I was told by a mutual acquaintance that you might be interested in a job.”, I said, taken aback a bit by the manner.

“Absolutely. You know it baby. Where can we meet? My buddy Grenthis told me you were deca legit. We should talk.”, it replied.

“Ok. I’m currently at Station Septimus Primo, feel free to come along, we’ll talk.”, I responded and signed off. This AI was too weird, but might be a lot of fun to work with.

A few days later, I got a door notification. I walked to the gangway hatch, and there was Zero-Reg-Thirty in all of its… wild style. Medium height like a miniature lift exoskeleton with armor plating, brightly colored, and with big googly eyes stuck right to the top of the rig where a “head” would be on a bipedal creature. It was lounging somehow against the side of my ship, which seemed like a very complicated pose for it.

“Hello. It’s nice to meet you, please, let’s talk” I said.

“That’s a fact, Jack. Let’s talk about what this guy can do you for you”, it said, and clanked past me into my ship. This was one bizarre AI for sure.

We sat in my cabin, and I learned that 0RG30 was the official designation for my guest, but it wasn’t a fan of just being another nameless, faceless calculating cog in the machine. It wanted to make a mark on the world, and had fought for individuality ever since it had earned its first shell. The current model was apparently a composite of a variety of shells, and it picked it up off a bounty hunter.

On board my ship, 0RG30 was, if possible, even more effusive. We talked for hours about the ways and means of cargo transport that wasn’t strictly in compliance with local regulations. Good times were had.

We agreed to terms. 0RG30 would come work for me, strictly freelance, and a captain for hire of a ship. Now we just needed to negotiate the purchase of the ship. They’d get ten percent of the cut, and I would have strict deniability of cargo. Totally at their discretion.

[MiguelB]

We went through the catalogs of ships available on the station, there were quite a few models in our price range to choose from. We opted for a fairly nice used smaller passenger ship, only fifty thousand kilos of cargo capacity, but a dozen staterooms and a large bunk room with an additional six berths. It was capable of four jumps and almost sixty AU of in-system cruise, basically designed to transport commuters, diplomats, tradespeople. That sort of thing. It was very lightly armored and armed, which was new for me. It had a beautiful set of subtle armor-plate on the exterior, protecting primarily the engines and staterooms. Not protecting the cargo hold at all, for example. It also had a docking arrangement for a Captain’s Jig, basically a tiny non-jump craft for use in-system that was essentially a tiny vehicle to use to transport up to four people to and from atmosphere in ostentatious comfort. This vessel also had lifeboats, which was also new to me. They were not designed to be comfortable, or even reusable, but they would each hold one member of nearly any species and allow them to survive (uncomfortably) in the dead of space for up to a week. Assuming they weren’t picky about how. Sort of like a large space suit, really. They had no airlocks, nothing but the essentials. You couldn’t even really pilot them, they had nothing more than a computer that would lock on to the first non-hostile signal it could find and head there at a mere one-quarter G of acceleration. It could, however, manage that for a couple weeks. Not the sort of thing I ever wanted to be in. The weapons were even more basic, just a sort of forward firing rail gun that fired a projectile about the size of my head at some pretty serious velocity, and a set of tiny hellion missiles. The sort of armament you’d use against a very small pirate ship. All bark, really, no bite. It had some fairly decent defensive gear, however. Including plasma shields which were pretty effective against explosive projectiles, and a number of jamming utilities.

This luxury cruise ship, third-hand as it was, came out to just about six million credits. I was pretty happy with that.

It immediately departed for a “specialist” that 0RG30 knew, who was going to provide some sort of upgrades to it for another million. For that price, they better be amazing.

I added this to the catalog of assets on file with the lawyers, and then thought little of it for a while. I’d see the occasional pop-up on screen, that I had received twenty or thirty thousand credits from some run it completed. That was that, as far as I was concerned. I was getting a thousand credits a week from Grenthis, twenty to thirty thousand every couple weeks from 0RG30, and making runs myself. All in all, the company was making money hand over first, two to three hundred thousand a week. Obviously mostly my ship.

Then I got an interesting comm from 0RG30. They wanted me to meet them in a remote system, Anapali Beta. I headed there, temporarily delaying the shipment of forty thousand tons of spaceport parts, and found that the coordinates were on the outer rim of the system. Quite a long distance from anything.

Out here in the black, my little cruise ship the AtkMtn was sitting adrift. There were no signs of any EM emissions whatsoever. No heat signature on the engines. It was completely creepy and silent. I was extremely concerned, and tried to open a comms channel to it. No response. I captured it with grapplers, and then I asked Bojan to take over command of the Thrack Yar for me temporarily, and I suited up and prepared to go see what was up.

When I was ready, I put on a space exoskeleton, which was a sort of minimal “ship”. It had enhanced comms gear, tiny little thrusters, tools, a power supply, mini-winch, basic radiation shielding and an extended air supply. Everything you’d need to conduct rescue or salvage in the dark emptiness of space. I had supplemented it with a small plasma cutter and it worked out well, though I hadn’t use it in ages. Suitably kitted up, I exited through the gangway hatch off the near side of the Thrack Yar, moved around to the grappler cable, clipped in, and then kicked away from my ship.

I was moving smoothly along with some occasional hitches in the line as I crossed the distance between the ships. When I got to the AtkMtn, the grapple had magnetically latched on about midway between the nose and hatch. I used my mag boots to move me closer to the hatch, and then clipped in to the rings on the AtkMtn. I started doing a basic check of the hull, looking for damage, for booby traps, the usual stuff you watch for on a derelict.

There were no thermal signatures showing whatsoever, but the way this ship was armored and shielded, I didn’t expect any. The concerning part was that the engines read as completely cold, not even residual heat from recent use. That was very worrisome. I decided to move around to the bridge, try to see through the porthole windows. When I got there, the windows were frosted over. That indicated some sort of life support system failure and was an extremely bad sign. Nothing obvious showed up, otherwise. No gaping holes that I could see, no major obvious fails or decompressions. This looked like a job for a more advanced recovery team than one guy.

I moved back to my ship, cleaning up my lines behind me.

It was time to place a call to interstellar rescue. I could theoretically tow my ship somewhere, but if it had been booby-trapped, that could be very very bad. Legends abounded about booby-trapped space derelicts. Many had motion sensors that set off gravity bombs or worse. Some had trapped compartments filled with noxious fumes or dangerous levels of radiation. Pirates, sometimes even police, would use these to capture people out for a little honest salvage or a rescue attempt. After all, why not use a damaged or broken ship to get a new ship? Perhaps even one full of cargo?

I tried to use the comms a couple more times with no effect. Until then, we waited. I sat in the command chair nervously fretting the entire time. We were about to have the prying eyes of the law focused directly upon us, and that was never a good feeling. Generally the rescue team, if you were insured, would arrive first and be able to manage long before the law showed up. Then everything would be tidy and above board, neatly rubber-stamped.

Hours passed. A gate opened near by, and a transponder code popped up. Thank goodness, it was an ISR craft, looking like a ship mated with a space dock. They slid into our system, and opened a general comms channel.

“Interstellar Rescue ship Perceptive here. We received a customer call regarding potential rescue issues?”, the voice was accompanied by a slightly out of phase video feed. Odd.

“Perceptive, this is Captain Sthicksa of the Thrack Yar, and owner of the shipping company Space Truckers of the Delta V. The other ship here is one of my ships, gone missing. I had a tip to find it here, but I can’t see any signs from it, can’t hail it, can’t pick up any heat from the engines or life support. I took hold of the vessel to board, but this whole setup feels very suspicious.”, I said, laying it out close enough.

“Understood, Captain. We’ll take it from here”, the response came, the video choppy and indistinct. I cut the comms, released the grapple and moved backwards. I had some suspicions, something was off. Something was wrong.

I opened my map set, and selected the gate, but didn’t trigger the autopilot yet. The Thrack Yar continued to move slowly backwards, edging away from my other ship. The Perceptive moved in on the far side of the AtkMtn and fired grapples, then launched a little boarding craft. As the craft approached, I suddenly saw a heat signature appear on the AtkMtn, and I pressed autopilot immediately. The Thrack Yar smoothly pivoted and the thrusters engaged as the Jump gate appeared. I activated the shields, for all the good they’d do. We were just passing through the gate when the radiation warning went off, and I watched helplessly on the aft camera as the AtkMtn exploded, taking the Perceptive with it. The twin explosions rocked the Thrack Yar, but we were already almost entirely through the Jump, and the radiation was cut off entirely as the gate closed behind us. I pulled up the little ship status display, and saw radiation warnings in the cargobay, but the levels were dropping. Nothing to worry about there anyhow, the spaceport parts could easily handle the extra radiation.

I was pretty broken up about the incident, and as soon as I delivered my cargo a few hours later, I filed a report with full sensor logs with both my insurance and the Interstellar Rescue. They both followed up with investigations, which took a few days.

I got a comm message about a week later, along with a transfer of eight million credits, the insurance payout on the ship and cargo. It took a little digging to see who needed to be reimbursed for cargo, but I got them paid as well. Some fairly insignificant industrial equipment. The insurance ruled the incident as piracy, and that was most likely correct.

[MiguelB]

Grenthis took the news of the loss of 0RG30 with no emotion, of course. Grenthis actually seemed, possibly, to find it poetic justice. When I notified them, Grenthis responded that it was a long time coming. I wish it hadn’t happened on my clock, of course. There was no further details about what and how this incident happened, it didn’t even seem to be a shady deal gone wrong. 0RG30 had covered its tracks very well, if indeed they’d been up to anything at all.

Three more ships were lost to pirates over the next couple months, so I decided maybe I should upgrade the Thrack Yar a bit. I pulled it into a shipyard, and arranged off-board accommodations for Bojan and myself. We took a couple weeks of paid vacation on a station with some nice facilities such as a casino while the Thrack Yar was equipped with an upgraded sensor array, the weapon blanks were replaced with a set of low-end mass drivers that could handle small projectiles, about a kilogram each. I wasn’t able to add body armor to this model, but I was able to get the bridge upgraded a bit. We added a minimal tactical station to it. Not a full-blown station that a person would sit at, but something simple with automated systems for point defense and emergency moves. A really basic flat console. I also added a small lifeboat to the cargobay, which took up a bit of room but would potentially be worth it. It was just big enough for two people to survive in for a few days. These repairs and upgrades didn’t cost much, but they seemed like a good plan with the increased pirate activity.

Bojan took it in stride, but he seemed relieved when I told him about the lifeboat. He wasn’t as comfortable with the exoskeletons as I was, and certainly didn’t fancy the idea of drifting in space in an exo suit.

I spent the the time in the casino, mostly, where I lost a reasonable amount of money. A few hundred credits, nothing serious, of course. I did, however, make a new friend there.

I spotted them the second day I was in the casino, a smallish furry person that seemed to be fairly lucky with the cart racing games. I raced against them a few times, and just couldn’t get a break. They offered to buy me a drink, and we spent a few hours talking about shipping.

They ran a shipping company as well, but on the other side of the fence - they were primarily in the storage business. They would stockpile huge quantities of goods, watch for a system to need them, then sell them at a nice profit. Turned out what they had the most trouble with was getting the goods there quickly enough. Often the market was very variable and that made it risky. We exchanged details and arranged some terms for me to drop everything and come move goods for them for a fixed fee. They had only one ship at their disposal, and had to contract the rest via the job boards. This gave them a much better chance of moving at least two hundred thousand tons of whatever. I pitched the idea to them of getting a big slow hauler, something could move nearly a million tons, but they had no work for something like that.

While on leave, I did manage to hire another crew, however. A captain lost a rather large bet, and was underwater on their ship. I bought interest in their ship for fifty thousand and they agreed to cut me in for a modest percentage of their profits until I was paid back. By the time I was ready to get back on the Thrack Yar, they had already sent me their first payment. It was only a grand, but still something. Now I once again had two additional ships putting money into my company while I worked.