“Are you sure this is a good idea?” asked Fallor as he lay on his back nervously fumbling through a bundle of cables underneath the console.
“Do you have a better one? It’s all we can afford after your screw up on the Tranti run,” shot back Strin “and besides, it won’t hurt the ship. It’s just a simple interface patch-in.”
Inside he wasn’t so sure. Most ships that tried to traverse the Insidrion Void were in better condition. They were also better armoured, powered and shielded. Strin let out a sardonic chuckle as he unspooled a bundle of thick cable.
Most ships were a lot of things, but not the Bernard. It was thousand tonnes of failure, doomed from the start. The Bernard had been constructed in high orbit around Earth, a hundred light years away, only to be steered from one disaster to another, changing hands countless times over ten decades until it had ended up here… about to attempt traversing the Insidrion Void.
Why had he bought this piece of crap? There were plenty of other ships he could have had, ones that might have actually been capable of making this run. But he knew why. It was all about the cargo tonnage. And the timing. The timing was very important.
“Hurry your fat Dravian ass up or I’m taking it out of your share.” Strin grumbled. “You know the window is closing. If we don’t get there first we might as well sell the ship because we sure won’t be cashing in any credits.”
Fallor finished what he was doing and levered his feathered, somewhat avian body, up off the floor. He stretched his stumpy vestigial wings and shoved a tool back into his belt. “Well then where is he then? He’s a day behind schedule.”
“He’s matching velocity now. Twelve more hours and we’ll be on the other side of the Void.”
“Nine out of ten.”
“Alright, quit telling me. I know the odds.”
………………………………………
The Insidrion Void shrouded Corlis, the fourth planet of the Galden home system. The name was most likely the Galden’s sick idea of a joke, because it wasn’t a void at all, it was an asteroid field. A particularly dense one.
The Galden tried their best to clear corridors through the Void to facilitate access to the planet’s surface. Controlled implosions. Massive amounts of aggregate-foam intended to slow down and bind the smaller particles together. Diverting passing comets in order to plough large swathes through the field. They’d tried everything at one time or another but the density and chaos of the field closed any gaps in short order. Trillions of lumps of rock and ice ranging in size from dust specks to mountains smashed against each other in an endless maelstrom. Hitting any one of them could spell instant doom for a ship. It was anyone’s guess why very little of the material fell down the gravity well to rain onto the surface of Corlis. The science-types were still trying to figure that one out.
Why would anyone try to fly through such a dangerous place?
At the centre of the Void was the most sought after commodity there was: the plant known as Luminar. It was the only organism in the known universe that produced Flux matter, which was in turn the only substance that could fuel a warp core. To say that it was worth its weight in gold was a comical understatement. Compared to Luminar gold was only slightly more valuable than dirt. Unfortunately it only grew on Corlis. There was something special in the mix there, an undefinable factor, but nobody was sure if it was due to the planet or the plant itself. Yet another mystery for the science boffins to work on. They had however figured out how to keep it alive off planet, although once the plant was uprooted the machinery needed to keep it viable for transport was bulky and cumbersome, taking up large amounts of cargo space. The small and agile spacecraft usually favoured to traverse the Void could only carry a few plants, severely limiting supply.
Luminar only grew for one month of the galactic standard year and the local Galden authorities strictly limited access to a defined harvesting season. Showing up in orbit around Corlis even one day early would get you shot out of the sky by ground based defences, but the Void prevented deployment of large scale military fleets around the planet and so far nobody had tried to push the Galden on the matter.
To attempt to traverse the Void longstanding Galden law mandated the employment of a Pilot, specialists who studied the Void’s structure and rhythms in order to increase their chances of making it through intact. Most Pilots were Cryx, an insectile race whose compound eyes and strong spatial awareness helped them deal with environments where danger could come flying from any direction at considerable speed. Cryx adopted a slow measured pace to ease their way through the Void, hopping between low density patches in a dance that generally took days, sometimes weeks. They worked in pairs, rotating control to avoid fatigue. With a success rate of 99.5% most captains were happy to employ Cryx Pilots despite their exorbitant fees. The low risk of loss was an acceptable tradeoff for a potential financial gain great enough to set up a crew for the rest of their lives.
But Strin didn’t have days if he wanted lift the first cargo off Corlis. He had hours, and that meant a different approach was called for.
He had first heard about human Pilots at a dive bar in the Sagittarius cluster. Apparently they had a more, shall we say, cavalier approach to the Void. The average human Pilot could make a traverse in less than 12 hours, but as with most good things in life there was a catch. On average humans only made a successful traverse 90% of the time. Nine out of ten.
………………………………………
The inner airlock door cycled open to reveal a pink skinned creature leaning casually against the bulkhead.
“Hi, i’m Dave” said the human, extending a stubby hairless appendage towards Strin, who looked at it unsure what to do. He stared at the hand blankly before raising his eyestalks upwards to find Dave gazing straight at him. Strin was an Ovis, at one time a herd species ingrained with an ancient fear of predators. Direct eye contact made him nervous. He stood frozen.
Oblivious to Strin’s discomfort Dave dropped his hand and brushed past him to wander in the direction of the bridge. The clanking of the human’s footsteps on the metal deck diminished as he soon rounded a corner.
“Cool, I haven’t seen an Oxford-class in a long time. Not since I left Earth. Where’d you find her?” called Dave over his shoulder as he marched onward. Strin came to his senses and quickly hurried after him.
“It was in a junkyard around Silico Prime. The owner sold it to me cheap. I think he thought he was playing a joke on me by letting me have it.”
Dave chuckled. “Yeah not much demand for these old clunkers anymore. Too big to make fast courier ships but too small to compete with the Supermax freighters doing high volume haulage.”
Feeling defensive Strin replied “It’s been upgraded since then with new avionics and point defences. I couldn’t afford a new reaction drive but I had the old one tuned for better acceleration and efficiency. It runs much cleaner now.”
To Strin’s surprise Dave abruptly stopped and deftly pulled up an access panel in the deck. Before he knew it the human had wriggled into an access tunnel and was quickly crawling his way into the bowels of the ship. Strin’s dismay grew rapidly as Dave was soon out of sight.
“Umm… what are you doing?” he squeaked, scampering forward to keep pace with the noises of Dave’s underfloor progression.
A faint voice answered. “Just checking the primary reaction mass coupling. Cheap repair docks often try to save money by reusing the original seals because they think nobody will notice.” Dave laughed somewhat maniacally. “Let me tell you, you’ll notice when you’re pasted across the side of an asteroid the size of a small moon. If you want to make this traverse in six hours I need everything in shipshape.”
“Six!?” Strin squawked in alarm. “I thought you said twelve?”
“Twelve for a round trip, sure.” shouted Dave as a loud metallic clang could be heard echoing around the passageway. Its pulsing rhythm mirrored the throbbing headache quickly developing at the base of Strin’s eyestalks.
“Isn’t that a bit… perhaps a lot… suicidal? Human pilot failure rates are already pushing 10%”
“Chillax brovis, my success rate is 100%.”
“I find that statement somewhat intellectually dishonest given the fact that you wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t.” stammered Strin. He really needed to sit down.
When no answer was forthcoming Strin continued forward into the bridge. Fallor looked up from what he was doing to see his captain visibly disturbed.
“Who shat on your ration pack? That’s the human expression, right?” Fallor quipped. “Hang on, where is he?” Suddenly Fallor yelped in fright as the deck panel he was standing on was abruptly thrust upwards. A pink hand rose out of the newly formed cavity.
“Hi, I’m Dave. Pleased to meet you.”
“I know what it does, but what is it?” asked Fallor as he wiggled the stick back and forth.
“That, my friend, is the control stick of an F-14 Tomcat” replied Dave, his face beaming with pride. “It was a sweet-ass fighter jet that was used in Earth militaries hundreds of years ago. Pretty cool huh?”
Fallor looked at it again. The world ‘Maverick’ had been scrawled in almost child-like handwriting on the object’s base. “Must be pretty worn out if it’s hundreds of years old.” With an air of disinterest Fallor placed the control stick back onto the console and continued patching the device into the Bernard’s flight computer.
Dave’s face fell as Fallor’s ambivalence took the wind out of his sails. “Well… it’s a replica” he said meekly.
“I still don’t understand what it’s doing on my ship” grumbled Strin from the other side of the bridge, where he was seated in the captain’s chair running pre-flight checks. “Why can’t you just use the standard ship controls like every other Pilot?”
Dave’s eyes lit up once more as Fallor completed the connections and a status light on the control’s base lit up green. He flashed a slightly feral grin at his shipmates and wrapped his hand around the stick.
“Because it’s not enough to just do something, you have to do it with style. And nothing has more style than this bad boy.”
Strin and Fallor exchanged unimpressed glances before strapping themselves into their seats. Dave didn’t notice since he had closed his eyes and was murmuring something under his breath, lips moving slightly with some unheard incantation. His eyes popped open and he quickly buckled his own restraints before sliding his chair closer to the console.
“I feel the need, the need f…”
“Hurry it up, we need to get moving. Need I remind you that time is of the essence?” Strin glowered at Dave, which was no small feat given his lack of eyebrows.
“…for speed.”
Dave eased the thrust lever forward and the Bernard started to pick up speed. The three of them were gradually pushed further into their seats, special smart-padding adjusting to spread their increased weight evenly. The bridge lights dimmed at Dave’s command, allowing his pupils to expand, making it easier for him to see the many asteroids that made up the cloud in front of them. Set below the forward viewing window were monitors showing the outputs from radar and collision detection systems. In their illumination Dave’s face now looked focused and intent.
Within a minute the first chunk of rock sailed past the ship, then half a minute later came the next. The Void didn’t have clear boundary but its density generally increased fairly rapidly before levelling out about a quarter of the way in. The Bernard’s superstructure groaned softly as the g-forces built and upon reaching the Void proper it sliced into it like a knife.
Strin’s finger-like manipulators clutched the restraint straps tightly. He had traversed the Void before while crewing on other ships, but never as captain, and never at such speed. He was no natural pilot, normally relying on autopilot to get him where he wanted to go, but he knew enough physics to know that the faster they flew the harder it would be to change direction when they needed to. And they would definitely need to. But this is what he paid Dave for. He needed speed. He had to be first on Corlis or else all was lost.
Ideally he would have been able to warp in directly above the planet, bypassing the Void completely, but the vagaries of Flux technology wouldn’t allow it. A Flux-Warp drive didn’t work by accelerating ships to superluminal speeds, nor did it take them into some kind of hyperspace. Flux-Warp drives technically allowed a ship to exist briefly in two places at once, fluctuating between them more rapidly than could be perceived by anything but the most sensitive instruments, until it solidified at the destination. The catch was the immense amount of torsion this exerted on the fabric of space time. When the Flux field collapsed both origin and destination points snapped back to their original positions, imparting a huge amount of speed to the object being transported. It was only the Flux field itself that stopped the ship being turned into hot slag by the resulting g-forces. In the environment of low orbit around Corlis a ship blinking into existence at high speed could only go in two directions: screaming straight down into the face of the planet, or hurtling upwards into the meat grinder of the Void.
Chairs shifted on their gimbals as the Bernard changed course to avoid the asteroids blocking their path. Old computer monitors showed the graphics of new software, sinuous lines of trajectory snaking around the plotted positions of the rocks ahead. Strin had spared no expense when upgrading the Bernard’s navigation system and it chimed almost happily as it incorporated incoming data from the network of sensors that surrounded every face of the Void.
Dave eased the rate of acceleration down to cruising speed and the pressure pushing Strin back into his seat was replaced by an almost gentle side to side motion as the ship pitched and rolled.
Asteroids whizzed past the windows with increasing frequency. There was no sound in space but Strin imagined a Doppler-like whoosh as they passed, there one instant, gone the next.
About an hour later Dave called out loudly so that he could be heard over the deep roar of the reaction drive. “We’ve got a low density corridor in front of us for a while, probably due to the last comet the Galden diverted through. It should take us deep into the heart of the Void if it holds open. If you want to move around now’s the time. Smoke’em if you got’em.”
Strin squinted at Dave suspiciously. “You didn’t bring anything you planned on smoking, did you? You know that the ship’s atmosphere is a closed system.”
“What are you, a narc?” Dave chuckled lightly before turning his attention back towards the screens.
Fallor unbuckled himself from his seat and stood up, grav-plates kicking in automatically. “I’m going to check the cargo hold, make sure nothing has shifted.” He moved towards the door that led to the passageway beyond, his wings outstretched to help him keep his balance as the floor rocked beneath him.
Strin watched him go and called after him “Just make sure you strap in quickly if I give the warning, and make sure you suit up. That hold is big and if a fast mover hits us there the pressure doors won’t keep it from venting.”
“Yes mother” replied Fallor sarcastically. Then he stepped through the door and was gone.
Strin and Dave sat in relative silence for a moment, Dave concentrating on piloting and Strin contemplating the fortune they would make if they were successful.
Dave was the first to speak. “So why are you so intent on making such a big score? Any Luminar run is decent money, even if you’re not first to make it back with a cargo. Why the rush to be first?”
Strin’s eyestalks drooped, a sign of sadness amongst the Ovis. “Let’s just say I owe some bad people a lot of money” he replied, “and if I don’t make good on it someone’s going to pay the price for me. Someone who’s done nothing to deserve it.”
Dave let a deep sigh whistle through his teeth. “Been there, hombre. What do you think got me into this business? Not many humans take up an occupation with a 10% death rate unless there’s something nasty pushing them.”
“What got you in the hole?” Strin enquired.
“Let’s just say Major League Spaceball is rigged and leave it at that.”
The silence resumed as both of them pondered their past life choices.
Strin glanced at the screen in front of him. It was displaying a zoomed out view of the entire Void. Small white lights represented all the natural objects being tracked by the sensor net. It couldn’t display them all of course, just the biggest ones. In between the dots of light were the unseen hazards, the ones you really had to look out for, zipping around like angry lance-bugs looking to sting. Green lights represented the other ships trying to make the traverse. They were spread out evenly around the periphery of the Void, trying to avoid each other. There were enough flying objects trying to kill them in the Void. No sense getting in each other’s way.
As Strin watched distractedly one of the green dots nearest them turned red and grew to five times its previous size. Suddenly an alarm started blaring. He looked across at Dave. Strin wasn’t great at reading human expressions but there was no mistaking this one. Dave was scared.
“What was that?” cried Strin.
“That was the Parallax Joy” replied Dave, “they just exploded. Their warp core was breached, it’s gone critical.”
Strin turned his attention back to the screen. A shock wave was spreading from the Parallax Joy’s last position. As it moved across the screen the white dots of asteroids were being knocked out of their orbits, smashing into each other with a force far greater than before. It was heading towards the Bernard.
“This corridor is about to slam shut with us in the middle of it.” Dave’s voice was deadpan. “We’re in a blender and someone just flicked on the switch.”
Strin slammed the intercom button down so hard he thought he heard it crack. “Fallor, sit down and strap in right now! Things have gone pear shaped.”
Fallor’s voice had a faint crackle as it came out of the speaker on the bridge. “You don’t say. I thought that soul rending alarm meant my lunch was ready.”
Trust Fallor to joke at a time like this. Strin’s eyestalks waved in agitation. “Another ship’s gone nova after their warp core failed. There’s a shock wave heading our way. Things are about to get hairy.”
“That’s what she said” interjected Dave, his hand extended palm out towards Strin in some kind of human congratulatory gesture. The expectant look on his face indicated that he thought he was hilarious.
The speaker crackled again. “Is now a good time to tell you i’m allergic to vacuum?”
Strin’s manipulators danced across a touchscreen as he tried to squeeze more data out of the sensor net. “I’m stuck on this death trap with a couple of comedians.”
“Don’t worry, Mr 100% is on the job” chirped Dave, “I’ll get us out of here.”
“Nobody calls you that!” barked Strin angrily.
“They will after today.” Dave almost looked like he was enjoying the situation.
The monitor still showed the shock wave coming towards them. Although its frontier was slowing as it expanded they had less than two minutes before it reached them. At that point it was all up to the skill of their Pilot.
Dave jammed the thrust lever forward sharply and the backs of their seats hit them like a champion prize fighter. The main drive screamed in protest as the demand put on it exceeded anything it had been asked to do before.
“Our best bet is to stay ahead of the wavefront for as long as we can” yelled Dave. He quickly pulled on a padded headset that would dull the noise and allow them to communicate without shouting. Strin saw what he was doing and did the same. Dave’s much calmer voice came over the intra-ship channel, “The further away we are when it catches up with us the more energy will have dissipated.”
The almost gentle side to side motion of the last hour was gone, replaced with violent swerves as Dave evaded incoming asteroids. Barely audible over the thunder of the drive were the frequent staccato bursts of the manoeuvring thrusters, pushing the ship in every direction except backwards. At the speed they were doing now the ship’s inertia made steering difficult and Dave had to rely heavily on the sensor data they were getting to anticipate upcoming course corrections.
The rocks speeding past ran the full range of sizes. The Bernard’s hull rang with the impact of a smaller particle, but luckily it wasn’t moving fast enough to do any real damage. Strin watched in awe as two large chunks of what looked like ice collided next to them, the smaller one shattering across invisible fault lines before it disintegrated into a thousand sparkling shards. To their good fortune most of those shards were thrown away from the Bernard and it rapidly increased its separation distance from the collision.
There was no doubt when the shock wave reached them. Whereas previously the various objects around them had been drifting in seemingly random directions, a surge of newcomers suddenly arrived on the scene, all moving in near-unison. Many smashed into the random drifters, some breaking up on impact. Others knocked their targets into new trajectories, adding them to the army that made up the wavefront.
Strin snapped out of his trance as Dave reoriented the ship to run before the wave, speeding along with it. He heard Dave’s voice. “If we move with the wave we’ll decrease our speed differential to most of the roids. They’ll be easier for us to avoid. Ha, I bet you a hundred credits we make it out of this alive!”
“Wasn’t it gambling that got you into this mess?”
“Sure, and I intend to gamble my way out of it too.”
Abruptly the noise of the main drive died and Strin was no longer pinned to his seat by acceleration.
Fallor’s voice piped into their headphones. “Umm, guys… we have a problem.”
“Tell me something I don’t know” sighed Strin in defeat.
“I think radiation from the blast has tripped the safeties. The crew areas are shielded but the drive isn’t. It’s shut down, i’ll need to manually restart it.”
“Think you can fit it into your busy schedule? You know, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“I’m at the main electrical panel now.”
Dave leaned over towards Strin with a worried look on his face but kept his eyes on the window ahead. “Is it too late to get out of that bet?”
With the drive out of operation only their inertia carried them forward. The manoeuvring thrusters gave them limited mobility, allowing them to change course, but without their primary means of propulsion the odds of survival were slim. Dave’s attention flicked rapidly between the navigation screen and the forward viewing window, small precise movements of his wrist on the control stick guiding them around the myriad of hazards before them.
Strin felt like he was falling, and it wasn’t just because of the lack of gravity.
A frustrated voice came over the comm. “The main circuit’s fried, I’ll need to swap in a spare board.”
“How long will that take?”
“I’ve already started. A minute, maybe two.”
“Is this a bad time to mention a new problem?” interjected Dave. He pointed at the navigation readout. The computer was rapidly cycling through possible trajectories around a mass of asteroids up ahead, but it wasn’t finding a safe route. A few seconds later it flashed a red warning message: No solution found.
Dave interrogated the system quickly before explaining, “There are ten asteroids whose trajectories intersect ours but without the drive’s thrust the computer can only figure out how to avoid nine of them.”
“Nine out of ten?” stammered Strin. His head was spinning.
“Fuck me, you mean it’s literal?!?!” shouted Fallor. Even through the padded headphones his voice could be heard echoing from the rear of the ship.
After a brief pause Dave shouted over the top of them. “Quick Strin, when you had this thing refitted did they make any changes to the cargo hold?”
Strin considered the question quickly. “No, nothing. Why?”
“So the port and starboard access doors are the original ship design?”
“Of course.”
“Fallor, lie down and hold on to something!”
Dave pointed the ship at the smallest of the ten asteroids while his free hand tapped two toggles on the console.
“Uh guys, the hold doors are opening” said Fallor.
“What the hell are you doing?” demanded Strin.
Dave didn’t answer. He stared at the asteroid with laser focus. On the collision detection readout the numbers indicating the time to impact plummeted down with sickening speed. Four. Three. Two…
Two things happened simultaneously. Dave slammed his control stick to one side as lights lit up on the console indicating that the cargo hold doors were now fully open. The view outside changed as the Bernard swiftly spun on one axis, bringing it side-on to the asteroid.
“Whaaaa…” was all Strin managed to scream before the counter reached zero.
Oxford-class ships had one unique design feature that most non-human ships didn’t. The addition of separate cargo doors on the port and starboard sides allowed them to be loaded from both sides at the same time. Other races eschewed this design, believing that it compromised structural integrity. Eventually humans followed suit as most ports across the galaxy didn’t have the infrastructure for dual-loading anyway. But the Bernard was an old ship. The positioning of the two doors and the lack of internal partitioning within the cargo hold meant that an object could travel clean through the ship when both doors were open, which is exactly what the asteroid did. In the blink of an eye it shot through port door and out the starboard, an almost perfect bullseye.
On any other ship they would have been dead, smashed to bits.
“Haha!” yelled Dave thumping the console in delight. “100% baay-beee! Suck on that, cold uncaring universe!”
Strin couldn’t believe it. Nobody in the recorded history of the galaxy had ever pulled off a trick like that. He stared gobsmacked at Dave as the human continued to whoop and holler. After calming down a bit Dave glanced at Strin and extended his hand palm out again.
“Don’t leave me hanging brother. High five.” he said.
Strin copied the gesture, feeling it was the right thing to do, and was surprised when Dave hit his hand with a loud slap. A curious human ritual it would seem.
Just then the deep roar of the engine returned.
“We’re back online” reported Fallor.
“My man! I owe you a high five too.” said Dave.
“Don’t take it, it stings” cut in Strin.
With the main engine back online and the energy of the wave now all but exhausted things got much easier. Dave had little trouble keeping them clear of the asteroids, which were growing smaller and less numerous as they approached the inner edge of the Void. Soon they were moving into high orbit around Corlis.
According to the computer the breakneck speed of their flight from the shock wave meant the traverse had taken less than four and half hours. Surely that was a record, thought Strin.
Their celebrations were interrupted by a stern voice over the comm.
“Oxford-class ship, designation ‘Bernard’. Your planetary approach is unauthorised. Remove yourself from Corlis-orbit until the approved harvest season has begun. Failure to comply immediately will result in you being fired upon.”
Strin cursed. He’d been so wrapped up in the happiness of being alive that he hadn’t connected the dots. Their record breaking traverse meant that they were too early. The Luminar season hadn’t officially begun yet and their presence here put them in direct contravention of Galden law.
Seeing Stin’s agitation Dave made a calming gesture with one hand. “Let me handle this” he said. Pressing the console’s ‘Transmit’ button he spoke into his microphone. “Bernard to Ground Control, this is Mr 100%. Suggest you go fuck yourself.”
Shock and fear made Strin’s eyestalks stand up razor-straight. His mouth moved trying to form words but nothing came out.
There was moment of silence. Surely any second now they’d be blown out of the sky by a plasma cannon.
“Dave… is that you?” broadcast Ground Control. “Hey everyone, Dave’s here! Dave you rotten void-crawler, get yourself down to landing pad four. You still owe me a chance to win back that hundred credits.”
Slowly turning in his chair Dave faced Strin with his whole body, a grin on his face and one eyebrow arched. You had to hand it to humans, no race in the galaxy could look quite as smug.
“Now, about that no damage bonus” he said.
THE END.
===============================
By /u/bott99 on /r/HFY