It felt as if my stomach was projected out with the energy, just to be tugged back by the compensators, making me nauseous. I smiled wanly at Vashon, who looked over to me and looked proud that this time I hadn't spewed my guts out in the bags they supplied at the strap-down seat I was in.
Nope. I spewed into the control room. And unfortunately, all ship's power except emergency lighting and life support is dumped into maintaining the point singularity until the bump cycle was completed sixty seconds later, meaning no gravity. And vomit in zero-G? Not pretty.
Half the people in the room groaned and some got hit by the spreading plume of my stomach contents. The other half took it in stride, except for my ex-best friend who was squealing and giggling at me as his magnetized mobility platform held him in place. I felt flush and growled out as I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, “A real class act there, Glitchy. Wait until I tell Flower.” That zipped his nonexistent lip instantly, his iris in his optical port spun wider.
I looked to the captain, who was looking back at me, eyebrow cocked. “Sorry. Thought I had it that time.”
He grinned at me and shared, “That's all right, for my first few months as a cadet, I had the same problem. Imagine if, on your first bump, you spewed all over the back of the Admiral's head.”
“You didn't?” My eyes were wide as I imagined the scandalous incident.
He winked at me and said, “It just takes time for some sensitives.”
Sensitives? I wasn't a sensitive. They were usually captains or navigators because they had the ability to feel and sometimes see rifts. His eyes widened. “You didn't know? What do you think happens when we project a point singularity? Space is warped in a controlled manner, and that warp is similar to a rift, so you feel dragged along with it.”
What? I just kept blinking at him as I shoved a knot of dread down that was rising as I reminded myself that we technically were declaring our independence from old Earth with our little sedition. If not... if I really was a sensitive, I'd have been shipped out on the first vessel heading to Earth once it was discovered. All sensitives were required by the Galactic Federation to go to Earth for training, whether they wanted to or not.
Then with the feeling of weight returning to my body as the bump cycle finished and artificial gravity returned, a wet splattering sound indicated my, umm, donation to the chaos of the bridge splashed the consoles and people unfortunate enough to be under the plume.
I squeaked out to everyone, “Sorry.” I got some glares and some well-meaning looks of support. Then I had to grin as Vash made her way to my side, handing me a bottle of water. “Gee... thanks.”
She looked far too amused.
I had what they called my sea legs after the third and final bump to get us up to cruising speed. And with that, we retired to the quarters they had for us on the command level, in the cabins just down the corridor from Captain Voss.
After freshening up after the unfortunate incident in the bridge, Vash and I settled in. It would be two weeks before we reached our destination.
I looked around and made a realization. With Glitch trundling off to visit with the new pingers on the Vega, including Torch, who worked in the high radiation areas of the engine room where us fleshies couldn't survive, Vashon and I... were alone.
She watched me as I worked my way through it, her smile growing as my realization did. I had her all to myself for the better part of a month. She moved so silently as she gracefully moved to the military-style bed, looking almost coy in her armor as she sat and patted the hard mattress beside her.
My mother didn't raise her many slow Vega's. I stepped up to her, my own smile growing to match hers as I sat and she clasped both of my hands in hers. I whispered, “Hi.”
“Hello yourself.” She ran a hand through my hair as she looked at me as if for the first time, sending a thrill down my spine, and making my extremities tingle. Then she kissed me, gently running her tongue along my lower lip until I granted her access as my passion flared to white-hot intensity while her hands ran down my body to grab the hem of my shirt.
I went to help in a frenzy, then the door chime sounded its three gods be damned tones. “Flarking bootwaffles! Can't we have just one moment alone?”
Standing, I stomped to the door, grumping like a petulant child, then I growled out as I hit the door control and it started to open, “This better be important you crystal licking bootwa... umm... Lady Perigrine, Ms. President, ma'am.” I ended in s sputter as I took a step back.
Way to go Fixit, that'll win you all sorts of points.
She chuckled at me, her eyes twinkling in amusement as she said, “Again, Abigail please Vega. We're practically family after all. I'm not interrupting anything am I?”
I deflated my arousal thoroughly quenched now. Nothing like your girl's mom walking in to ruin a perfectly good sexually charged moment. I moved aside and made an ushering motion as I said, “Not anymore. And Fixit then, please... Abigail. Nobody calls me Vega.”
Vash, who had stood to step up to me raised a hand, “Umm...”
I quipped, “That's different, you've seen me nak... umm. So, Abigail, what brings you to our quarters as they were?” Just kill me now, could I get any more embarrassed?
“Is someone aroused in here?” Sai asked as she stepped in after Abigail, sniffing the air, her whiskers twitching. Oh, by all means, make it worse assassin purr-bot. I stomped my girl's foot because she looked completely amused at my discomfort. A fat lot of good it did me, her armored foot may as well have been a block of steel.
Exhaling in exasperation I asked, “You can all just shut up now. I need to find the nearest airlock and go for a long walk on orbit.”
The wenches chuckled.
Then Abigail looked at her personal assistant. “You've seen there are no boogeymen from old Earth in here to jump me, now go wait in the corridor or I'll find a water bottle to spray you with.”
It was my turn to grin when Sai opened her mouth to show off impressive cat-like needle-sharp teeth as she hissed. Then she shook her head and muttered, “As you wish, ma'am.” Then Sai slunk out without a sound, the door closing behind her. I liked that she felt comfortable enough with the woman she was protecting to act like that toward her.
Then the President was gone, and Vashon's mother stood in her place. “Hello, ladies. I was wondering if you'd have supper with me. The farther we get from Prime, the less work I can do with the time delay between transmissions. And I get restless. I figured I could spend some quality time with my two favorite girls.”
I wasn't getting any anytime soon was I? I said, “We'd be delighted.”
Vash was quicker than I was and was already at the controls on the bulkhead and a table folded down out of the wall. She pulled three of the four folding chairs connected to the bulkhead in the space left from the tabletop and set them around the tabletop, holding a chair first for her mother then for me. I felt like a princess in one of those romance waves my Ranger liked to watch when she thought nobody was looking.
She ordered dinner from the galley for us and we just chatted about anything and everything except work. It wound up being a pleasant evening. I had even invited the ornery cat in to eat with us.
Chapter 6 – Hecate Station
Eventually, I did wind up getting some quality alone time with Vashon over the following days. It was almost like a mini-vacation for us, even though she sometimes had to connect to the cities on Prime with a long time delay, to fix things, or override things for the engineers there.
Is there anything more sexy than an intelligent, strong, smart woman who can not only connect directly to the new Prime info grid but can interface directly with all the floating cities' control matrices?
Glitch got thrown into the brig on our sixth day, for dangling a soldier who was imbibing a little too much from some bootleg moonshine that one of the engineers made, using a makeshift still he had assembled out of spare parts, over a plasma vent in the main engineering core. The sloshed soldi
er was badmouthing Glitch and the other pingers, saying they were just killing machines and should all be scrapped for parts. Apparently, his technician wife was killed on Starlight City when the rogue pacification code was sent and the pingers went berserk, killing anyone who even remotely resembled a tech or engineer.
When he tried to hit Glitch with a coupler compression spanner, my bestie decided it was best to restrain the man so he didn't harm himself or others. Apparently, hoisting the man by his umm, undergarments was not an approved method of restraint.
The Sargent at Arms saw fit to confine them to the brig for brawling and sleep it off for the night as he did in any other case. Apparently, the stress of floating in space for extended periods makes everyone a little crazy.
And like any other drunken brawl, he put them both in the same cell so that when they sobered, they could see what idiots they had been. Glitchy complained for two days after that that he wasn't drunk, and he didn't fight, why did he have to sit in the brig with the cognitively impaired fleshie who wanted to kill him?
But the midshipman did apologize to Glitch, who gave the man a fist bump when they were let out. Vash jokes that Glitch was released into her custody, and she's been calling him 'felon' just because he whines about it. I'm so glad my two favorite people get along so well and can pick on each other in fun.
We had just finished inspection of the Chirpers, the simplest part of my stalling tactics of the Great Bluff, when Captain Voss called us, Lady Peregrine, and McGreery, to the bridge.
We had just arrived when the Rift Termination Satellite relayed a video feed to us on the main view screen that was beside the huge floor to ceiling space observation windows, that was ten feet thick of ablative, transparent ceramisteel armor plating.
He turned when we arrived in a group, and Sai hopped off of Glitchy to stand behind the President, her tail twitching as she took in the entire bridge to assess threat levels. Personal assistant my arse.
“Good, good. You made it just in time.” He had one eye on one of the two huge countdown timers, which only had a few seconds left on it we were two hundred thousand miles from the rift termination, at a perpendicular angle to it to avoid accidentally being in the path of the bump drives of a ship coming out of the rift. Though that was almost an impossibility, as bump drive systems identify any vessels in their path and power down so accidents like that don't happen.
A man in tactical called over the busy bridge, “Hecate Station transfer in ten, nine, eight...”
I started to get excited and grabbed Vash's hand as Glitch started vibrating in excitement, causing a drizzle of sparks to fall from where his orb connects to his mobility platform. I swear I'm going to fix that one day. It could wait just then because all my attention was plastered on the screen.
The fact that a Medusa class shipyard had rift jump capability was staggeringly mind-boggling. I had a hard time grasping the fact that entire floating cities like New Terra had jump drive cores. But these shipyards dwarfed those cities by a long shot.
“...three, two, one. Transit!” That last part was unnecessary because the spectral light flare of a vessel breaking out of subspace into physical space is something you can't really miss. But where I've seen countless wave documentaries on it, and have seen a couple pinpricks of light through a telescope from Prime's surface from incoming ships into the system, this... was no pinprick of light.
We were basically as far from the rift termination as the moon city of Luna One was away from Earth itself, the flash from the screen was matched by that of the one viewed directly out the bridge's windows. It bloomed like a sun, causing us to shield our eyes.
A moment later, I gulped. Not only was a seemingly endless piece of engineering filling the screen as it flew past the satellite like it would go on forever, but... I could actually see it gleaming in the light of our sun as it lumbered. There were dozens of mostly completed ships in the various drydocks, some only days from completion. And it just kept going and going on the tactical observation screen, didn't it have an end? Well of course it did, being a twin to Medusa Station.
I whispered, “Wow...”
Voss looked pleased and he smirked, his eyes plastered on the behemoth too as he said in awe, “I know, right?”
It was Abigail who said from where she stood absently grasping McGreery's arm with both her hands, her voice sharing that awe we were all experiencing, “This alone was worth the trip.” McGreery patted her hand as he nodded. A couple seconds later, Lady Peregrine realized what she was doing and released him, taking two quick steps to the side as he gave her an amused look, waggling his brows.
“Oh come now, Abby, I'm not that bad to be around, am I? I remember the days you preferred my company.” He winged his chin slightly towards Vash.
She muttered, “You left me. Remember?”
They shut their mouths so fast I heard teeth click when Vashon held up a halting hand as she stepped between them. They both looked... guilty. I had to learn that one. “You ruin this moment for my girl, and I'll make both your lives a living hell.”
They were wise and didn't respond. We all stood in silence as we watched the station slip through the silence of space and I felt woozy when Hecate spun up its bump drive and streaked away as our compensators held us anchored in place instead of being pulled along with it.
That was amazing.
We looked at the other countdown. It would be another six hours before Hephaestus Station made the jump. Enough time to get my girl alone then have a good meal.
Chapter 7 – Great Bluff
It seems that the universe either has bad timing, or it is just a crystal licking ass. Because the Singing Bird who had a gravity spike permanently in the rift, transmitted an incoming transit just as we reached the doors to the bridge. Alarms started wailing as tactical was barking out, “Unscheduled transit!” and I closed my eyes.
Only one curse would do at that moment. “Fuck!”
We all feared the worst, this was it. With the slightest nod of his head to one of the bridge officers, red lights started strobing throughout the ship as someone said over the ship-wide address system, “Code black! All hands to battle stations! This is not a drill!”
I could feel the power fluctuations in the artificial gravity field as weapons were brought online, and the humming of the massive capacitors for the main cannon powering up. It was the only operational cannon of the main weapons compliment on the ship. The only other weapons that were live were all the point defense weapons in case of fighter tumbril attacks close in.
The timing of the pacification attempt of Prime was unfortunate because like everything else in our dark fleet, the Vega wasn't quite finished yet. It had flown in to our rescue no more than a barely operational hulk, firing its main cannon from beyond its effective range, but it was enough to cause the enemy vessel to cut and run, not knowing the Dreadnought, in its state at the time, was no match for them.
But the eight tri-cannons on the Vega were just days away from activation. In the meantime... I moved quickly over to stand behind the captain's chair with Vash, our eyes on the tactical screens and we saw hot-points on the Vega bloom with power displays consistent with active weapons systems.
Voss looked back at me with a dry, dubious look. I just grinned at him. These false energy weapon signatures were set up just in case of this exact scenario, on the unfortunate event that any enemy vessels arrived in-system before the Vega was fully armed. I assured him, “Their scans won't be able to tell the difference.” Well, I was like eighty-three percent sure, we haven't done extensive testing on it.
He smirked. “Cold comfort if it comes down to a shooting war and we have to start throwing dishes or the ship's cook's five-day-old meatloaf at them.”
Vashon assured the man, “I had that meatloaf last night, and I assure you, it is weaponized.” They shared the same cocky chuckle that war types like them are oft to have.
Then in a blinding flash, and a transit as spectacular as the Hecat
e, and an entire assault fleet with the identification beacons of the Galactic Federation of Old Earth completed their rift jump into the Tau Ceti system.
Two dreadnoughts, two tumbril carriers, five destroyers, one minelayer, and twelve swift littoral combat ships. And behind them lumbered a Herculean Class Hunter Killer that dwarfed the entire fleet of enemy ships.
What the flarking hells was that thing doing here? At around the same size as our capital floating city New Terra, it was built to fight off incursions of the Others. And had enough firepower to reduce a planet's surface to rubble.
The Others were a warlike alien race who had a single-minded drive to be the only technological race in existence. In the early years of intergalactic colonization of the galaxy, when mankind was starting to map out the network of rifts with the men and women of the Rift Jumper Contingent, we had found the only two intelligent races Earth has ever come across.
The first was the peaceful, praying mantis-like race, we deemed the Da'ha'mal since we can't pronounce their true name with the guttural clicks and trilling of their tongue. They lived on a small desert planet and made rudimentary space going vessels to capture comets to harvest the ice to provide the water needed to keep their race alive.
They told us of another race, they called the Others, who would come from time to time to wipe out their technological infrastructure and kill as many Da'ha'mal as they could find. A group of Rift Jumpers had inadvertently entered their system during one of these cullings, as a tanker ship sped towards its home with the harvested water it had.
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