by L P Peace
She watched as the spit disappeared into the water and grinned.
'Someday,' she announced to the planet, 'all life on this planet will be descended from this sexy piece of ass.' She slapped said ass. 'You are welcome, Mustafar!'
With that, she turned and headed back to the fighter.
'I'm gonna go into cryo and get them to wake me up in a million years so I can be a goddess here!' she called out. 'You remember that name, Mustafar.'
Beyond the thick rock the Raptor was parked on, the thinner mantle crust cracked suddenly. The rumble that followed filled the void of sound Sophia had gotten used to.
'Fuck!' She took off running towards the Raptor as the whole mantle suddenly disappeared under the lava, which boiled and spat as though enraged to her act.
She climbed up the wing and hit the canopy button even before she'd taken her seat. The solid amot canopy closed, the screens lighting up to show the view outside.
Sophia switched on the engine. She didn't have time for checks. Didn't have time to go through her pre-flight routine. Instead, she got the ship powered up and took off even as she was still strapping herself in, her tools all over the floor.
She switched one panel of the screen over to the view below her. The lava was spitting higher and higher. There was some kind of pressure, and it was about to erupt—only this wasn't a volcano, was it? It didn't look like a volcano when she set down. It didn't look any different from any other patch of the moon.
But she had no idea what was going on under the mantle, under the thin surface of the planet.
As she watched, a massive stream of lava erupted over a hundred feet away, reaching the same height as the raptor and then exceeding it by several hundred feet!
She was using the atmospheric engines. She hesitated, weighing what impact activating the FTL in the atmosphere would have against humanity's fate. When another massive plume of lava erupted, this one much closer, Sophia triggered the FTL engine and jumped.
The warm yellow of the Tilka plant's flowers was cooling. They would grow the secondary orange bud soon and then pollinate.
Ronin wasn't much for flowers, but the warm yellow reminded him of the atolls where he spent much of his time when he was back on Keris, his homeworld. It also brought a bit more colour to the brown, grey, and olive tones his mother had insisted on decorating his ship in. Ronin would have left it as it was, but his mother had insisted and it wasn't worth the argument.
It did make the place more tolerable to live in, he acknowledged grudgingly as he looked around the one-room living space. His mother had divided the space up in a comfortable and homely way. The back of the cabin was his bedroom, with built-in cabinetry. A long, waist-high chest of drawers divided the bedroom from the small living and dining area. On the narrower end of the room, a small galley filled every need Ronin had in terms of food and drink, as well as hiding a medicine cabinet. Behind that was the small two-man cockpit.
Ronin walked from the main room through the bedroom, past the escape pod and bathroom, and crossed the small hall into the cells.
There were three of them, each with a small bathroom. Ronin wouldn't be using them for this job. Hadn't used them yet, but he was ready. He was more than ready; he was eager. Eager enough that he'd practically worn a track in his ship from the number of inspections he'd done.
Five solars ago, Ronin had helped a group of ex-slaves escape recapture. The head of his unit of bounty hunters knew the ex-slaves were free under the law, and while they weren't in IGC space, they still had to operate under IGC laws. Ronin had done the right thing, but it cost him.
Ronin shook off the past and stepped back into the main room.
All of that was over now. He'd worked hard to regain his licence. Finding the right kind of ship, getting hold of the ex-military armour to replace his formal Insagence uniform. Vaulting every hurdle and barrier placed in his way, including the mark on his honour, when Insagence spread lies to save face. Even his teammates, who had agreed with Ronin's actions, faded away, too terrified of losing their jobs and reputations to stand with him against the lies.
He would never regret standing with the ex-slaves, in particular the small, brave human, Sarah, and her charge, Ann, who had been the real target of the mission. He would never regret helping them. But he had paid dearly for it.
A few rotes ago, Ronin was called to a private meeting with the Fedhith representative to the IGC. Ila was the person who approved licences for bounty hunters and mercenary forces and had approved him on the spot. Not long after, Ronin received a call from the Bentari representative. He was given general coordinates where he was told he would find an alien ship, from which he'd been told to retrieve a data packet. It wasn’t the kind of job a bounty hunter normally did, but it was easy, it paid and it meant he’d have a recommendation from Hekalion Dar. That wasn’t something Ronin could afford to turn down.
Something about the mission didn't sit right with Ronin. It was the same feeling he got when he'd boarded the Bentari ship five solars ago with his comrades. He shook the feeling off. He had a job to do and this job would lead to others. It would lead to the restitution of his reputation and him reclaiming his career. Nothing else mattered. Whatever the job was, he'd do it and be grateful he was given the opportunity in the first place.
A proximity alert sounded, drawing Ronin from his musings and into the cockpit.
All of that was a long time ago. It was a new beginning now. Time to leave the past behind and move forward.
They had reached their destination.
Ronin was caught off guard by the thought. No, he had reached his destination. He swallowed against the force of memory, of camaraderie and friendship. The excitement of going on the hunt with close friends. Even further back, the camaraderie he felt before battle when he was a Kerisian Army member, sequestered to the IGC. That was long before he retired to take up bounty hunting. They were different days, a different era, a different Ronin.
No matter how much he tried to shake off the past, it wasn't done with him today. It haunted his steps, tainted his memories, and cast shadows on his future. Being here, a moment so familiar to him carried the weight of his past.
Sitting at the console, Ronin dropped the ship from FTL and ran a scan of the area and almost immediately found the energy signature he'd been given. It was a dampening field, he realised. He brought up the section of space on the viewscreen and zeroed in on the source of the dampening field.
The ship was huge. It was made from unadorned amot that barely reflected the light of the stars around it. According to the scans, the radiant energy was active, but while there was reserve power, the ship wasn't getting nearly enough power to anything but basic systems.
Ronin studied the ship but didn't recognise the silhouette, something he'd been trained for in the military.
It was an awkward shape, built for space, but the aesthetic was clunky, at least on the outside.
Ronin pinged the ship. Nothing came back. No data, no idea about what race had built this ship.
A sense of unease rose. It had been there since his meeting with Ila, then Hekalion. It was too neat that his licence had been restored at the exact time Dar came back with this job. Now the lack of information from a basic ping?
Ronin charted a course around the ship. Making sure to keep his distance, he observed the ship from every angle. There was no marking of the ship's registry and no name printed on the side. But there were holes in the hull. The vessel ship had been attacked by boarding pods, an army of them from the myriad wounds to its flanks.
His sense of unease increased.
On the other hand, he'd found the fore docking bay.
He approached it, sending an automatic docking request in a variety of languages. It was Amaran that triggered the hook up between ships systems. The alien ship took control and Ronin watched, his sense of foreboding clawing up his throat.
Something was wrong with this job.
The thick amot doors ope
ned, and Vernaya glided inside, setting down next to two amot shuttles.
Powering down the ship, Ronin stood and walked into the main living space. To the right was a wardrobe where he kept the ex-military armour. Beyond that was the escape pod, which sat next to the small facilities.
He approached the wardrobe and opened it. When he saw the matte black suit inside, he grinned. This had been his best purchase.
He quickly donned the suit, noting how it stretched and conformed to his shape. When he placed the helmet over his head, a light came on inside.
'User?'
'Ronin Dosh'Ventis.'
'User confirmed. Applying settings.'
Everything in the suit conformed to Ronin's preferred settings. The armoured suit would relay sensory information back to him, set a comfortable temperature, and a dozen other jobs and a hundred functions. This suit had been the best in Kerisian military tech, right up until the latest model came out two solars before. Ronin would kill to get his hands on one of the new suits, but this was the next best thing. His mother, one of the chief designers, offered to get hold of more suits so he could build a staff, but Ronin didn't trust anyone enough to work with them again. He'd been betrayed by his Insagence team. He'd never give another person the chance to do the same again.
Ronin walked out of the room, down the hall and stairs and into the cargo bay. The ship's bottom was divided into four chambers: a secret storage compartment near the cargo ramp, the bay itself, and a storage area. Beyond that was access to the two-story engine room. Ronin went into the storage area, which housed many of his personal effects, and went to the munitions cabinet. A few metri later, he was armed and lowering the ramp onto the strange ship carrying a bag of tools and tricks.
The alien docking bay was large and bright and decorated in light greys, silvers, and beige. The two amot shuttles sitting within seemed almost out of place there. Turning, he walked to the exit, the doors opening automatically.
Beyond, the hall was decorated in the exact same colour scheme. The ship seemed to be running on backup power. The docking bay's bright lights dimmed behind him, and the hall lit up as he stepped through. Perhaps the backup generators had been going longer than they were supposed to?
Ronin walked through the halls, observing everything, looking for a logical idea of how the ship was laid out. He needed stairs or a lift to take him to the bridge, which, he assumed, was on the top floor.
He came to a junction. The long hall continued in front of him. to one side, the hall turned left. There was a small hall with a curiously odd thin set of double doors at the end to his right. As he approached, the doors opened automatically. Inside was a lift.
'Okay, so there is some logic to this ship!'
Inside there was no control panel of any kind.
'Bridge.'
Nothing happened.
'Cintra?'
'Ronin?'
'Translate my spoken language to Amaran.'
A small chime announced in the suit. 'Done. All spoken language will be heard as Amaran.'
'Bridge.'
The lift took off. According to the momentary disorientation Ronin always felt within a lift, it was going up.
When the doors opened, there was a set of eight steps in front of him. Beyond that, he could see a walkway either side of a raised dais. He went up the steps and saw seats at consoles around the platform. He walked around them and took another two steps up to the platform upon which sat a flat viewscreen. It looked like some kind of tactical station.
In front of the platform was a chair pointing towards the main viewscreen. The captain's chair?
The front of the bridge was curved. Two consoles in front of the captain's chair also faced the viewscreen, and two more platforms conformed to the curves. Those faced out into the bridge, away from the screen. A chair on each showed they were active workstations.
Except they weren't active. Nothing here was. The ship was abandoned, yet it felt like any moment, the crew would be back. Whoever they were. Whatever race they were. They would be back.
Ronin placed his bag on the tactical station and opened it. He'd have to plug in a power supply to each console, in turn, to see if he could find the information Dar wanted.
It was a work of over two hacri as Ronin took apart workstation after workstation and jerry-rigged it to his power supply, but the data packet wasn't here.
He scanned through the ship’s specs. Below this room was a briefing room, and across the hall from that, the captain’s personal quarters. They were good places to start.
Putting everything back into his bag, Ronin headed out.
Endurance!
'Oh, baby! What are you still doing here? Didn't they like the look of you?'
Sophia flew around the ship. She hadn't expected it to be here, assuming the aliens would have taken it. She'd only come back to this location to get oriented before going on to meet the Tessans.
'Hmm… Should I stay, or should I go?' Check for survivors? Or go to the rendezvous and bring the Tessans back here?
What if there was someone on the ship? Sophia thought about the many-pronged alien device that was securely nestled in one of the Raptor’s many hidden compartments. She remembered the chatter when things had gone dark from the ship, right before the captain had given her the code to bolt.
'This is really stupid,' she said, before pointing her bird’s nose at Endurance. A quick flyby of the ship revealed the damage, but no devices like the one she'd found on her engine. That was to be expected if it was the same size as the one on her fighter. She'd have to scour the hull to find one.
Turning towards the Raptor bay, Sophia activated the docking request process and headed inside. A few minutes later, she was sliding down the wing.
Not a single Raptor had made it back to this bay.
Sophia took in a deep breath. No Kayleigh, no Eileen, No Richard, No Bohai, no one.
Returning to the Raptor, she grabbed a bag and packed up a few things to exchange them for clean versions. She was about to leave the cockpit when she thought of the device and retrieved it from its hiding place and dropped it in the bag.
Usually, on coming out of the bay, there would be people around. Other pilots, CO's, of engineers complaining. It was empty.
'Creepy,' she whispered. 'Hello? Anyone here? It's Sophia.'
Only silence greeted her.
Coming to the doors of one of the rec rooms, Sophia stepped close enough to activate the door mechanism. Inside, tables and chairs were fallen about. There was blood on one wall. Sophia sucked in a breath, her hand covering her mouth. That was the room where she got her new call sign: egg. Sophia was one of the newest pilots on board, and all the call signs were bird-based. She was the new egg, at least until they could come up with something better. She swallowed against a thickening throat.
Maybe coming here was a mistake.
Still, she continued on, down the hall.
She took a set of stairs up to the next level: crew quarters and an observation deck. That's where she'd seen Zoe for the first time when she came on board. Zoe had already been crew for over two months. Her relationship with Whittaker had crashed and burned. It was where Sophia had held her as she cried and called herself names. For Zoe, every failure was proof her parents were right about her. Here she was, crew on the most advanced ship, and political wrangling had stolen her job as the head of navigation. That dick wanting new ass was somehow her fault.
It had taken every ounce of restraint Sophia had not to confront her parents at the launch ceremony.
She walked by Addison's room, reaching out to touch the door. Addison was like Rosie, autistic.
A few minutes later, she was in the mess. Their plates were still in place. Hot chocolate was cold, congealed and sitting on the floor in unappetising lumps.
'Please let them be okay!' Sophia's voice broke.
Addison was terrified when the ship was attacked. Sophia had gone to her, instead of the bay and still remember
ed the look on Addison's face.
'I’m fine! Get to the bay now!’
She’d seen the fear there, though.
‘Please don’t go out there, Sophia! You don’t understand what it’s like!’ Rosie’s voice echoed through her mind.
Sophia rubbed at her eyes with balled fists, then dried them on her flight suit. A flight suit she could change, along with having a shower. But first, she’d check the bridge.
She ran to the front of the ship and took the only elevator to the bridge. The rest of the ship smelled of recycled air without the benefit of the citrus fresheners typical in space life. She guessed because of the power issues. But here, there was a new scent she’d never smelled before. Sophia took in a deep breath. It smelled like the ocean and sunshine, combined with something tantalising that she couldn’t pin!
When the doors opened and she took the steps up to the bridge, the smell remained.
It was fresh. It reminded her of being on the beach in Spain. The only thing missing was the movement of the air. Oh, that and a nice glass of wine, or sangria!
‘And the feel of sand in my toes,’ she said out loud, curling her toes up in her boots as she spoke, imagining grains of sand between them.
She stopped. Every console on the bridge had been opened up, wires cut and what looked like patches made with alien tech.
Inspecting them, she couldn’t find any trace of when this had happened. But surely if it had been the aliens who attacked Endurance, they had been gone weeks, hadn’t they?
‘So they stuck around to try and find the data packet?’ She looked around. Something felt off, but she’d seen no other signs of anyone else on board.
The scent may well have been a leftover from them.
Her lip curled at the idea she’d found the scent attractive. She found nothing about those aliens attractive. Sophia wasn’t like the vocal minority on Earth who let it be known that they hated all aliens. She wanted to be out here, exploring, discovering new things and meeting aliens. Oh but the ones who’d done this? Who attacked Earth regularly? The kind of aliens who’d taken Rosie from her safe, happy life and sold her? The type of alien who mentally tortured her and destroyed her ability to be happy? Those guys Sophia wanted to die painful, horrible deaths.
