Being in deep space is a sensation like no other: everything is silent except the gentle clicks and whirrs of the ship’s vital functions. If you were especially daring, you could power off all non-essential modules (save life support, of course) and watch ice form in and around your ship. My breath started to fog in front of me whenever I took a breath.
I was a strange changeling, and could sit like this for hours and just be lulled into a trance listening to the ship creak and groan. Unfortunately, my co-pilot wasn’t so strange.
“Venture! Turn the ship back on or I swear I will take you back home!” whined the storm-grey mare to my left, her teeth chattering. I gave a heavy sigh and complied with Her Highness’s request—it wouldn’t do to have a mare in a bad mood in a confined space with me for another sixteen jumps.
Two-hundred and seventy-two light years later, we arrived at the little-visited system of Gamma Coronae Austrinae. I checked the navigation panel for some stations to land at.
“Alrighty, Luyten, which sounds the best: Shuttleworth Hub...or Shuttleworth Hub?”
“I suppose Shuttleworth Hub will have to do.” she replied with a small laugh.
I grinned. “Great choice, considering it’s the only station we can land at!”
Her reply was lost in the fwoosh BANG of entering normal space from supercruise.
“Gutamaya Victor Echo November, request docking before entering this secure facility. Keep in mind, weapon fire restrictions are in place around this starport.” The flight controller said at me.
“Acknowledged, docking requested, four thousand meters from touchdown.” I replied. No response graced my ears.
“I hate the Federation.” I grumbled as I piloted my two-hundred-meter ship towards the dimly lit landing pad. “So fucking entitled…not even bothering to reply…” The Palarion touched down with barely a whisper on the rather unkempt landing pad.
”Ship lockdown confirmed, enjoy your visit to this Federal starport.”
“So why did we stop here? We didn’t really need to…” came the voice of reason.
“In all honesty, to waste their time.” I replied, inputting the command to launch the ship.
I should mention that instead of having two entrances, most starports only had one, so you the landing pad cycled you around so that you’d face the right direction to leave, preferably under the horrendously slow speed limit of a measly one hundred meters per second.
Taking its sweet old time, the landing/launch pad dropped down a few meters, flipped us around, and then popped back up and released the couplers. Almost immediately, I slammed the throttles to their stops and hit the boost, causing the flight controllers to whine incessantly about how I’d get fined if I caused damage to someone. I told them to loosen up and live a little.
I didn’t stick around to see how’d they react to that.
“So Luyten! Where to next?” I asked my faithful co-pilot. The mare in question shrugged.
“I honestly don’t know. I’ve never been out of Capricorni.” I groaned, and selected the galaxy map function on the ship’s computer.
A holographic interface popped into existence and I searched for Empire-aligned systems near us. The closest few that seemed worthwhile to visit were: Vaka, Kappa Fornacis, and Lamba-2 Phoenicis. In all honesty, we could go to all three, but I just didn’t feel like jumping around all day.
Luyten chimed in that there was a really good noodle shop in Lambda-2.
I didn’t ask how she knew that.
As it turns out, the noodle shop was very good. And as I was enjoying my first hot meal in a few days, I just happened to glance out the window towards my ship, and couldn’t believe my eyes—there were four or five teenagers attempting to graffiti the Palarion. It was almost funny, the way they couldn’t quite reach the underbelly, as it was about five meters above them, but after a few minutes of watching them fail miserably, I decided to do something about it. I changed into one of the Imperial Navy uniforms that had a stylized eagle superimposed over three bars, signifying the rank of Commander.
“…can’t believe someone took our fucking landing pad!” one of the teens complained as Luyten and I trotted over.
“I wasn’t aware you could own public property” I said, injecting the slightest bit of ice into my voice. The group of miscreants was taken aback. One of them must have been particularly stupid, because he followed up with this:
“It’s not like it’s your ship, or anything. Changelings aren’t allowed to get pilot’s licenses.” He chuckled.
His friends’ quiet whispering turned into a very tangible silence.
“Maybe here they aren’t. but where I come from, anyone can do anything.” I retorted, signaling for the main cabin door to unlock. Luyten and I walked up the main stairs on the front landing strut, leaving the ignorant teens to either vaporize in the ion exhaust of the thrusters, or get some common sense and leave the pad. As the grey-brown dust cleared from the pad, there were no burnt corpses in our wake, so I assumed the group left in time.
A few hours after we left the strange ponies of Lambda-2 Phoenicis, I decided I wanted to go to Achenar. Seeing as it was only two jumps from Lambda-2, it seemed like a great idea at the time.
Luyten was particularly happy about this.
“Do you think we can see the Princess?” she asked for the fourth time in five minutes.
I sighed for the fifth time in five minutes.
“Yes, Luyten, I think we’ll be able to see the Princess.”
In case you forgot your history lectures from secondary school, the galaxy was split into three main superpowers: The Solar Federation, Lunar Empire, and the Alliance of Neutral Citizens. While the Alliance generally stayed out of most conflicts, the Federation and Empire have had more cold wars than either party would care to admit. Somehow, though, each head of state remained diplomatically friendly with the other. Some skeptics believed war was on the horizon, others denied it outright. Either way, tensions were rising between minor factions, as seen in Lambda-2, and I’ve even heard rumors of Majestic-class Interdictors being deployed to high-population systems to keep Federation terrorist cells at bay.
I figured being in the heart of Imperial space, and flying a ship only obtainable if you had more money than sense, and connections to the right people, we wouldn’t get bothered by the local police.
How wrong I was.
“There it is! The capital of the Royal Lunar Empire: Capitol!” I proclaimed in a grandiose voice, standing up on my hind legs to add to the effect.
I was suddenly thrown into the canopy when the INV Retribution decided to interdict us. Luyten, fulfilling her job as copilot, throttled down to zero and submitted to the annoying process of being interdicted.
Two fwoosh BANGs echoed around the cockpit as the Retribution dropped into normal space behind us. I peeled myself off the canopy and slumped down in my seat while I waited for the police vessel to scan us.
The scan finished, and shortly afterwards, the ship’s mainframe displayed a message:
INV_Retribution requesting voice comms. Accept Y/N?
“Something tells me this isn’t a routine patrol stop…” I said, accepting the voice communications link.
Rough static filled the cockpit before resolving into a quiet hiss in the background.
“Greetings, Fleet Admiral Dawn! Welcome back to Achenar, enjoy your visit!” called a smooth voice from the [ i]Retribution. “Chief Warrant Officer Warren, at your service!”
And with that, he jumped out.
“Did I hear that right?” asked Luyten. “Fleet Admiral Dawn?”
I just sat there with my mouth hanging open, thinking about all the ships I could fly now. With my mind MIA, Luyten took the controls and pointed us in the right direction to Capitol, and from there, we would land at one of the Imperial Palaces.