by S E Zbasnik
"Everything's going all woo woo woo," the pilot said, flapping his hands up and down.
"Charming."
Orn swiveled to find the dulcen standing behind Cap, his hand clinging to the doorway to stop from flopping on the floor. "Since when do we let passengers on the bridge, Captain?"
"I am observing," Taliesin simply said.
"Shove it, dwarf," she fought through the rattling to get to her minimal sensor data. The best the ship came with was the occasional sweep to tell them if they were about to drive straight into an errant asteroid, planet, or orbiting restaurant. Putting together the picture outside the hull was like sticking together a puzzle without being able to look at the box or the pieces. A few softer ruptures bounded under her feet and it all came back. "Depth charges."
"Depth awhat now?" Orn asked, his fingers flying over the panel that locked out his foot pads. Bouncing back and forth like an unbalanced load wasn't the best time to be pressing down on the acceleration.
"It's an old trick Crests use to drag out ships they don't want to damage; concussive rounds that rattle but don't burst the hull."
"So we're being depthed by Crests, fantastic. I believe this is when I tender my resignation," Orn began.
"Not today, Orn," she said. Punching a few buttons, the ship spiraled into the closest it came to an unpredictable pattern, the "everyone look to your left to spot the meteor shower" maneuver.
The shaking stopped, but the few working gravity boosts screamed in pain as the Elation flipped and sped in her rotations, dodging about in space as if she walked straight into a cobweb. Stomachs merged with throats and then back down to feet while the ship danced to her personal tune.
A frazzled engineer tried to cut over the comm line, "What in the fuck are you doing?" but she was quickly relegated to the back channel before getting anything approaching an answer.
As soon as it started, the pirouetting spaceship leveled out, tottering through space like it didn't suddenly suffer a seizure trying to escape a bug. Orn sighed loudly, assuming it was all over, and began to organize his scattered trash pile.
But the Captain held her breath, hoping this had all been some major accident. Oh I'm sorry, you're the Elation-Cru, I wanted the Ablation-Crow, my mistake. She glanced towards the assassin looking ceiling-ward, as if he could see through the thick hull to find a clear coast. This wasn't going to end on a happy note.
A small switch flashed and then beeped in a hurried succession. Three sets of eyes turned to it, but it was Orn who fiddled with the thing and gulped deeply, "Either WEST has really upped its prank subroutines, or there's actually a Drake ship baring down upon us."
"Location?" the Captain asked, as if it would help.
"Uh, ahead of us, or beside, possibly behind...this thing's maps haven't been updated in decades."
"Are they not required to announce their intentions before destroying or boarding a vessel?" Taliesin asked in the form of a statement. He knew damn well what regs were, but these Crests were a long way from their space. All of Variel's instincts told her none of this was "on record."
She was about to say as such to the elf when a new beep joined the others flashing about a ship getting too close for comfort. "Cap, it's, they're calling us," Orn said and then muttered to himself, "Sweet fucking crap, a Drake."
"Connect through, but..." she was about to add "not on screen" but the dwarf was too quick. She steadied herself as that damn panel rose again. Maybe breaking it off would work...
At such close proximity the screen lit up as soon as it connected and the calm face of Sovann appeared, sitting in her Knight's throne. A few lesser Crest soldiers eyed up the screen from their stations scattered around the bridge decorated in a demure cat spot motif. "You are the Constellation Cruise?"
"Elation-Cru," Variel said, hoping it'd be enough to throw her off but knowing it wouldn't. It was her own damn fault for being too lazy to properly rename the damn thing, or buying replacement letters.
Sovann didn't smile, she merely shifted her weight from one leg to the other and leaned forward, "You were docked at Eclipse Station 5 orbiting Samudra less than three days ago."
"There isn't much reason to deny what you already know, you must have our flight plan," Variel hated this part, the monster circling the prey letting it think it had a chance to wit its way out.
Sovann swiveled away a monitor and rose, her sword glowing in the stark fluorescent light of the Drake. "Yes, it is some interesting reading. Snakesmouth, the Alari Desert, even the shifting winds of the gargoyle homeworld. All hotspots for people of a certain criminal nature."
Orn couldn't have looked more guilty if he tried. Despite spending most of his adult life lying through his teeth, the guy could not hold a poker face in front of law enforcement if his life depended on it, which it typically did.
Variel wasn't buying it. "A curious thing that a Crest, a major one at that," Sovann puffed up in pride at the lie, "would send a Knight to investigate the possibility of smuggling."
"Smuggling is a serious issue for the entire galaxy," Sovann said as if she were running for office. Though she might be; public service was a natural step for some Knights who wanted to screw over larger swaths of people.
"And you must have proof of some smuggling on our part, then?" Variel asked the Knight striding closer to her screen as if she could jump through the camera and attack. "No Knight may invade a ship without a writ of contention."
Sovann paused, a hard smile taking over her lips, "You seem to know a great deal about Knights, Ms. Tuffman."
Shiting shit! But she didn't let her internal swearing flash to her face. Trying to maintain a calm she muttered, waving her dismissive hand, "A relative of mine was in the Crests."
"Ah, of course," Sovann turned back to what had to be her second, and accepted an old pad, "We have reason to believe you are harboring a highly dangerous and very much wanted fugitive onboard your ship. That gives us all the reason we need to board you for a thorough search."
"I see," Variel fought a panic screaming up her throat. The questing glare of the elf landed upon her back. Even Orn was turning to look at his boss and then the dulcen, trying to fit together what the hell was happening. Now wasn't the time to explain, now was the time to lie her way out of this mess. "Well, we'd be more than happy to cooperate with any Crest investigation. Just give us a moment to unjam the airlock. Your charges fused together the hatch."
"By the Seven...you pirates and your hunks of shit," Sovann cursed, but waved her hand. "Very well, you shall have ten minutes." She turned away from the screen, giving her people the command to end communications and the screen went blank.
Variel furiously flipped through the navigation screen, "No, no, no." She reached across Orn and punched another button.
"So when do we start guessing who's the wanted murdering psychopath?" Orn asked, as he was pushed away from his console by a desperate captain.
The three dimensional map of space lit up and she skimmed through, zooming in and out in a mad dash that gave the dwarf a headache. Orn wiped his eyes and continued, "My money's on the orc, he's too quiet. It's always the quiet ones."
"I am far more reserved than our good doctor," Taliesin admitted, uncertain how Variel intended to get herself out of this mess.
"The assassin? Ever heard of too on the nose? Now your sister on the other hand..."
Taliesin ignored the dwarf's barb and asked, "What do you intend to do, Variel?"
"Variel? Are we all on a first name basis now?" Orn swiveled back to his captain as she inputted a flight path save into the computer. "Oh! What about Gene? Quiet AND terrifying."
"Orn, how quickly can you go from a dead stop to a wyrmpinch?"
"Two minutes," he shouted as if she asked him his multiplication tables.
"Not fast enough, we're dropping the safety gauge off and slipping into the event horizon right as it opens. That should take a minute, I pray."
"What are you considering?" the assassin p
ushed.
"A Drake's weapons take 90 seconds to heat from a dead start. We pull them so that giant flame mouth isn't facing us. Then, as they're prepping for an invasion, we burn the engines."
"On a still broken inertia injector?" Taliesin pointed out the largest flaw in her plan.
But she continued to flip a few switches, "Yeah, Ferra's gonna kill me, but I'll be dead later."
"She'll only get to you after she's done tearing through me," Orn muttered, but he began turning off all the safety regs. WEST booted himself up, asked what the hell was going on, and was promptly sent back to sleep.
"Timing is critical," Variel said, "Orn, when they're as far behind us as they can get and you're about to start the burn, touch my leg below the camera line."
"Uh, not that I'm sure you're passable for being such a large sentient and all Cap, but I'm a married man."
Variel ignored him, trusting he'd do his job, and opened up the comm line. The cursed screen that could so easily throw off any duplicity rose. For once she was happy to have the thing still hooked up. "Knight of the Drake ship, we have almost finished our repairs and are preparing to receive you," Sovann smiled, believing she won their little pissing contest, "but I'm afraid we cannot maneuver around, you shall have to meet us."
Sovann sneered, "Delightful. Ensign!"
"Sir, it could be a ruse," he said, calling Variel's bluff clear as day. Stupid comm screens. "Faking damage to get us into a vulnerable position."
"So they can, what, shoot their sightseeing pods at us? Rare for a cruise line to be armed, rarer for one from before most stars were born," Sovann laughed at her crack about the Elation's age, earning a glower from Orn. "But we shall remain on the line, until we are in position. Yes, Captain?"
"Agreed," Variel said, and leaned back, trying to look as if she didn't have a care in the world.
Orn's right eye trailed down to the sensor data beeping like mad as the Drake swung about, its heavy head that burst a photon fire thick enough to tear through any hull and some small moons slowly drifted away from them. Even the assassin seemed on edge, not used to the epic play of a space battle.
Fifty meters, twenty meters, ten...his finger danced over the ignition key when the Drake slid fully into place. Gulping once, he let his hand graze Variel's thigh and she rocketed forward as if someone knocked her from behind, punching her fist through the screen. Sovann's confused face flashed momentarily before the entire thing sparked to darkness.
Orn's fingers flew across the panel, flipping and reflipping every damn button. The MGC flooded through the cabin as the small wings extended. A bit of her blood dripped onto the console and Variel wiped it away absently; she was too focused on the sensor data. "The ship is turning...Orn."
"Thirty more seconds," he shrieked through a clenched jaw, his fingers working the concerto that was space flight.
"There's a massive energy spike coming off their ship, Orn."
"Twenty."
"The head is definitely getting hotter," Variel's teeth were on edge. This would either end in escape or them being blown to star dust.
"Ten."
"They're prepping to fire," she shouted.
"NOW!" Orn shouted and jammed both fists forward as his foot smashed down onto the pedal and the Elation-Cru dropped straight into the wyrm hole.
The wyrm opened up a bit harder than usual without all the wining and dining. The scathing purples and blues of the bending to space they plowed through tingled with a dangerous vein of red. It was a sign she wasn't quite ready for the intrusion and could flip this latest passenger through the excess dimension right back to where it came.
"Steady, Orn," Variel said as calmly as possible as her ship shook like a dog out of the bath.
"Steady what?" Orn watched helplessly as the MGC conduits handled all wyrm pinches. No spatial engineer would trust his sextant to a commercial pilot, much less someone about to rend space into a few lopsided dimensions. Pinching the XYZ axises out through a second set of coordinates required precise calculations and a whole lot of computation that no one outside of brainzilla could accomplish on the fly.
The red flashes increased, ripping through the purples and blues as if it was spatial tissue paper. It very well could be. No one ever spent much time studying the insides of the Omega Axis (as it was supposed to officially be called). Most prevailing mages argued that by all logical data the very wyrm everyone traveled through to get to the conference shouldn't even exist. They also liked to spend hours at dinner trying to convince everyone that dessert wasn't real.
"Wherever we're heading is coming up," Orn said, watching the display counting down as the little map swung their location to a distant section of the galaxy.
"There is no opening cresting," Taliesin said, watching out the turbulent windows.
"Orn?" Variel asked, trying to find the black crack that would open to let the invading ship out of her Omega space.
"What do you want me to do? Do I look like a mage?" the dwarf shrieked, trying to not panic as he punched a few of the nonessential buttons and ordered a coffee from the defunct machine in the galley.
"Has anyone ever reported what happens if a ship fails to break through the exit port?" the elf asked, his own calm mask tilting on its axis.
"One," Variel grabbed onto the dwarf's chair as the red lightning cracked close to the hull, "the Mariac."
"Tree shelter us," Taliesin said, closing his eyes tight. Even the elves knew of the cursed Mariac, lost in the early days of space flight into the unstable wyrm holes and never heard from until a few millennia after its disappearance appeared drifting through space, unmanned and unscarred save for a continuous howling echoing through the damaged comm line.
"Don't cash in your chips just yet, I see the universe's crack!" Orn shouted, as the familiar zip of black shuddered before them. It began to widen, but far too slowly.
"We're not gonna make it," Orn muttered.
"We'll make it," Variel responded back, willing her belief into existence.
"How do you know?"
"No other option," she shook off the fear of getting lost in the alien space of the wyrm, and watched the black crack expanded, pouring stars into their view. "Brace for deceleration!" she shouted to the ship.
A string of red lightning glanced across the bow and turned around for another full attack just as the Elation-Cru slipped through the narrow crack, her afterburners sealing the tear behind. Space zipped by at an alarming speed, far too fast for a drop out of the pinch. Stars warped and bended, and a planet, at first just a speck in the night's sky, began to loom into a real danger.
"Orn?"
"That inertial thingie we keep failing to fix is cracking. Slowing isn't much of an option."
"There's a fat planet about to smash through our front windows, stop this damn ship!"
"Okay, but it's your ass," he said. Overriding the last safety, he yanked down on the control stick and pulled the ship to as hard of a stop as one could in space.
The back end squealed like a banshee caught in a chute. Half the control panel lit up in rage but the metallic air receded and MGC transferred from the engines out to the storage sails. They weren't going to wind up as splots on the window or ceiling. Slowly, the planet crested to a gentle crawl into view as if they intended to drop into orbit above her.
Variel unclenched a fist burrowing into the dwarf's chair and left a few nail indents behind. She pretended to pore over data while getting a modicum of calm back into her overwrought system. "Nav's coming back on line, as are our few sensors. Doesn't look like anyone's noticed us yet."
"If I may be so bold as to inquire into your personal need for a near death experience, but where in the hell are we?" Orn cursed, poking at a shaking map that was in no mood to play these hide and seek games.
"One of the places a Crest would never go," Variel started when the bridge door, locked down during any flights of idiocy, slammed open and an enraged elf stormed through.
"What ar
e you doing?!" Ferra's eyes blazed like the red lightning of the wyrm. She clutched a wad of black plastic melted into such an abstract shape it could sell for billions as art.
"Hello, dear," Orn said meekly, trying not to cower fully from his enraged wife.
Ferra dropped her prize onto a few of Orn's favorite posters where it clanged hard before rolling onto the floor. She scooped her husband up with her spindly arms and raised him to her eyes, "You broke my fucking ship!"
"It was me, actually," Variel interceded, saving her pilot, "I broke my fucking ship."
Ferra let her husband's collar slip through her fingers, as she tried to form something of an argument for how she should disembowel her boss and toss her to the packs of roving Rancors. It was difficult to get past who actually paid the bills for the ship and who kept said ship operational. She sputtered through a rage that couldn't find an outlet before relying upon the simple, "Why?"
"That is a very good question," Orn asked. Free from his wife's accusations he turned them on his own boss.
Variel crumbled for a moment under the glare of both dwarf and elf, her oldest employees who never pried much into her history and all were happy for it. "It's a long story," she tried.
"With the inertia injector a husk of goo, we have all the time in the universe," Ferra muttered, crossing her arms. Orn copied his wife, one of the rare times he appeared to be on her page.
"Look..." the captain got out just as alarm bells jangled across the bridge. "What now?"
Orn flipped a few switches up and Ferra flipped them back. She reached under her husband's questing fingers, trying to right the still smoking crater she yanked her prize out of in a fit of rage. WEST pumped out enough fire retardant foam it was going to take weeks to clear the engines.
"Someone's opening the wrym," Orn read, and pointed to the starboard bow.
Ferra glanced up at him, grabbed his hand and turned it port. "That way." Sure enough, a fresh tear shattered inky space and a far too familiar Drake ship tumbled out.
"That's impossible," Variel said as the universe zipped itself back up. The Drake seemed to be shaking the cobwebs off its wings before the metal monster would turn about and consume its prey.
