The SS Jeopardy sat silently in the darkness. Finally, a moment of peace. I’ve always been a fan a quiet moments in my ship. Some music in the background, maybe. Reading a book if I could find one in a form I could read. The comms always set my teeth of edge. I’m still not sure if it’s the frequency coming through or if I genuinely just don’t like interacting with others at times.
Out of habit, when first setting my course, I set the comms to observation mode. It let me listen to what was going on within reach, but not actively transmit. I screen my calls.
“Tell me you’re still alive,” Wade’s voice said.
I rubbed my face. It was back to normal, but the come down and shapeshifting back to normal, coupled with going around the space clock for a day or two, I was spent.
“Negative, I am a veggie substitute meat popsicle.”
No one out here ever gets my references. It depresses me sometimes.
Wade began to lecture me about how this was all a bad idea and how he wasn’t sure why he went along with it. Meanwhile, I got comfortable in my chair. It was a comfortable chair. It reclined and had lower lumbar support. One must be comfortable on long drives through space. Once he calmed down I waited a moment before responding.
“Yeah. Well. Shit happens.”
I’m good with words.
“Thanks for the gift by the way,” I said sitting up. After shaking off some cobwebs from my brain I found the box and put the blue hula girl on the dashboard. Consider the office decorated for Christmas.
“I know how you get,” he said a bit morose. “I trust the disguise worked.”
“Yeah, about that.”
“You didn’t read the note.”
“I didn’t read the note.”
“I’m not sorry, all the same. The, uh, Security Sector was utilizing recognition like never before.”
How the hell does he know that?
“How the hell do you know that?” I asked.
“Steve noticed a substantial jump in approved overtime and allocations to those departments.”
I grunted, contemplating the bureaucracy. “I didn’t think the Empire would give overtime. Or pay their people for that matter.”
“They do,” Wade piped up. “But the taxes on the wages are so high that they lose money by staying after.”
“Typical.”
“The Emperor doesn’t make the decisions anyway. It’s all a front.”
It was an old conversation we had many times. It was usually an indicator of how much he had to drink, how far down the rabbit hole he would go. There may or may not be some correlation between my antics and his consumption levels. Entertaining nonetheless.
“Hey, uh, Wade,” I interrupted. “We should probably keep this short in case they try to track us.” That was true, but I was more tired than a Sigma Centaurian sloth with all that gravity and helium and all.
“All right. Where are… wait.”
“Yeah, better if I don’t say.”
I had no idea where I was going, other than to sleep for a lightyear or two at cruising speed.
“We’ll work it on our end. Don’t worry,” he reassured me. “Reach out when you need anything.”
“Thanks, got it. Over and out.”
I looked around the Jeopardy. It was quiet. I was alone. Just me and my thoughts, and my tinnitus. Dark metal and plastic surfaces, surprisingly balanced with bright blue light. Not too blue. I’d launch myself into the sun if I lived in an office cubical. Call me particular, but I keep the lights at a timer to adjust the warmth. Helps keep my circadian rhythms. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I’m in space, never on the same planet more than a few minutes. What do I need that for? I have insomnia, okay? And trust me when I say I’m a much better person when I have my eight hours of antimurder sleep.
The lights dimmed slightly to a warmer orange. It meant that I was now, according to my biology, two evenings later… if I lived on Mars. Sixteen hours awake and eight hours of sleep never worked for me. Once I was no longer bound to the Earth I tried the Martian clock. My theory worked. If only the Earth days were about six hours longer, I’d sleep like a baby every night.
Miss Blue Bobbles on the dash stared at me in silence. I flicked her skirt to give her some life. Made me feel not quite so alone all of a sudden. Back to business.
Switch for capacitors. On.
The power stores buzzed and whirred.
Jets set to prime. The ship droned.
Orientation…up.
Lights…down.
Life support. Yes, please.
Seat belt. Optional.
Miss B maintained a steady sway as the hull vibrated.
The yellow warming lights blinked off. Ship was ready to fly.
Launch.
You know that feeling of being on a train just before it moves? When you think you’re moving backwards. Preceding takeoff that occurs. I hate that feeling. I hate rollercoasters. That sinking feeling doesn’t sit well with me. As the sensation intensifies, gravity is then inert in the immediate area.
Gnk, gnk, gnk.
The landing gear retracted. Another set of red lights blinked out.
I need to grease those axels, I thought, hearing the sound. No time.
Then the sinking feeling.
My ship surged upwards. Miss B took to more life as the life and blood drained from my head. No matter how hard I tried, I don’t know how the jet pilots did it. That hiccup and squeeze to keep the blood in their head.
I went limp. A sensation to which I was otherwise unaccustomed.
Coming to, I knew what I would see. Albeit, the spectacle held subtle differences in each place. My ship was free of the planet’s gravity.
Vision undimmed as the twilight brightened through the windshield. The sphere. The horizon. The blues and golds and blacks. That thin crisp line of white, brighter than what little light of the star responsible for it I could see. Everything is always so much more beautiful from far away. It is only once we get close do we see the flaws, the ugliness pocking its visage. Beautiful as we all may be, I know the secret. We are all ugly and flawed underneath. As far as I’m concerned that levels the playing field.
C’est la vie!
Just as quick as the horizon appeared, it disappeared below. Only the stars of far away lit the way now. The stars that many of which no longer existed, guiding me to their decaying carcasses. Star ghosts. Neat.
I still hadn’t entirely worked out my plan from there. At least not where I would go first, so long as it wasn’t prison. Or to be a ghost among the stars. Snort. So I set a course along the suns path, out and away towards the next system. This would allow me time to sleep while putting some distance behind me with the help of a jet stream of photons. I should have checked, but I didn’t, that when my ship was staged that it was properly refueled. Either way, letting the sun nudge me along, it would be just enough charge to keep the lights on, the cab warm, and not burn throughout whatever spheres I did have. Plus, it minimizes my sound profile from sonar and blah, blah, blah.
It was a road trip with a few quadrillion units in my purse.
A sigh of relief came over me, easing me back in my seat. Freedom. There’s nothing like it. Above all, that is most likely what brought me here in the first place. To be free of everything. Oh, man. Nap time.
I double checked the course. It was a long dead zone of light and far spaced asteroids, wide of any planets with enough of a gravitational field to draw me in, or otherwise be discovered by life. Comms, off. If someone hails I will be suspected of being a dead heap of junk floating in space. They wouldn’t be far off.
My rack was calling my name for sure. My eyes and body never felt so heavy in zero g. Fortune would have it I lived in a one room studio flat. Not a few paces more from the cockpit was what I called the ‘cockpit.’ A double wide bunk with lots of soft blankets and pillows. I may not have been rich but I was space ghetto rich. My sanctuary. My existence in this little box consisting of a bed, a chair, and a bunch of switches around a single window. The rest was storage packed with random shit. A lot of shit I needed, or might need. The rest was of no intrinsic value; call them sentimental or souvenirs.
I barely remember crawling into my bed, dimming the lights. Normally I would have been too wired to sleep, the Galactic Empire being after me and all. But hey, I’ll take it where I can get it. Racked out, I passed out as the stars passed by.
Errt errt errt.
I was having the weirdest dream.
Errt errt errt.
Something kept going…
Errt errt errt.
Existence was futile so I tried to continue to not exist through it.
Errt errt errt.
Errt errt errt.
“Huh?” I sat up blearily.
Errt errt errt.
Ever sleep so deep you’re not sure where you are when you wake up?
Errt errt errt.
Degree by degree, my soul returned to my body.
Errt errt errt.
I was in a gray room.
Errt errt errt.
It was smaller than the gray room I last recall waking up in.
Errt errt errt.
It looked vaguely familiar. The sensation of needing to do something came over me.
Errt errt errt.
I lunged for the control panel. Knowing where I was, in my ship anyway, I had no idea where I was or what was happening. How I got there was a little familiar. Something about having an otherwise ordinary day with unordinary repercussions.
Errt errt errt.
“Warning,” an irritatingly loud voice errted.
Errt errt errt.
Jesus Space Christ, how do I turn that off?
Errt errt errt.
“You’re fucked,” it errted again.
Errt errt errt.
When it comes time, there’s no time to explain a bunch of things that can simply be culminated into…
“Errt errt errt. You’re fucked.”
The ship was being triangulated. A beam of radiation from any one or two distinct directions could mean anything. My ship currently had 357 locks. So to be exact, I was being trihectapentacontakaiheptagonulated. Couldn’t be a coincidence; I don’t believe in such things.
There was still time. The advantage of space is there’s a hell of a lot of it. And no matter how far between there is generally something to hide behind. My trajectory was on a photon field. You know what else lies on photon fields? Photon farms. Duh.
You thought asteroid fields had a lot of shit in them? These antiquated and inefficient farms have massive equipment. The panels are large and radioactively osmotic otherwise they’d blow away in the endless other waves flying around. Material cost on them used to be criminal. Some took entire planets of material to create. To top it off, a planet’s worth of material solar panel wouldn’t even create enough power to power a planet. It was absurd. I thought humans were glutinously inefficient. Though, I can only imagine what they would do if they had more than their own planet of material to work with. Point being. They were big and had a lot of radiation of types coming and going. Should confuse the shit out of anything looking for signals or signs of life.
Somewhere I read the fields created a type of static that caused sterility. Eligible bachelor as I may be, I’ve yet to rule out children so it was time for a change my underwear. Several commands later, the ship was on its way to find a parking spot. Once it was there it was going to get very cold despite the sunlight and radiation. Manuals for the spacesuit recommend being able to be fully sealed in it in eight minutes. Eight minutes is a long fucking time. I can do it in thirty seconds. Because I value my life, believe it or not.
When I finished changing, I checked my course. I was a little disappointed at the result. The nearest array was an old junker, torn with holes and chunks floating around it. Not very big. They were unthankfully more obsolete than I thought. Best I had in a pinch. My ship looked so much better than the giant fragmented metal waffle. Fingers crossed.
The ship floated up to the backside of the busted array. There was a clunk and shudder as the magnets on the landing gear stuck to it. Systematically, I shut down all the other systems. It was about to get very cold.
Since humans or human like creatures are hard to find out here, I had to settle for a suit of something sort of similar. I think it was a lizard person. All I had to alter was the tail and it suited me well enough. Top of the line though. Lizard people rule over a number other creatures for good reason I suppose.
I needed to have some idea where the hundreds of assholes after me were. My ship’s systems would likely give me away though. The suit had a heads up display with minimal output. The solar array was mostly dead but should have enough output to mask my radar.
I forgot to dehumidify the cabin before shutting down the system. The chill crept into the suit as frost formed on the windshield. Wiping it with my hand all I could see were the distant stars. Darkness and ice all around. The HUD, however, showed me something alarming.
Red dots crept into the edges of my view. And crept. And crept. As the view on the screen got smaller my eyes got wider.
A cruiser passed by the windshield. They were freakin’ close. And another over there. Then another up there. It was a dragnet of thousands of ships. It was a bad time to have to take a piss. The cold didn’t help. I was a big boy. I could hold it.
God damn it, I had to piss.
But the ships kept come and going.
I may not be above a lot of things, but I was not about to piss in my suit. The only downside to the suit was lizard people don’t piss and shit like we do. I didn’t have a cloaca to excrete urea paste out of.
Two and a half eternities later, the ships disappeared into the blackness of space. Their radar signatures eventually went mute according to my little readout. And my teeth were floating.
You think having to piss and be cold is one thing, try doing it in zero gravity. It’s a whole new sensation when your bladder pushes everywhere besides down.
I pressed the power button on the console.
Nothing.
I took a slow, deep breath. Sometimes the cold does that.
Off, then back on.
Some lights I didn’t recognize flickered faintly on the console.
“You piece of shit solar panel,” I declared.
I must have been grounding out on the old piece of shit solar panel.
Flicking the power button on and off, I hit the magnetic release buttons as fast as I could. I think one may have disengaged.
Again.
Nothing.
A much deeper breath.
It’s hard to think when you can’t piss at absolute zero in a lizard suit.
Guess I was going outside.
Ugh.
Careful not to launch all my stuff into space, I depressurized the ship and opened the hatch. Spacewalks scare the shit out of me. Tether or no, climbing around on the outside of my lifeline screams trouble. Plus, I hate dealing with electricity.
I thought of the number of other times in my life I had been electrocuted as I crawled hand over hand towards the solar panel.
I mean, I know how it works and everything. After years of studying a many things, I could should you all the equations.
Nothing obvious that I could see between the ship and the panel.
You can know everything there is to know about how it works, but you can’t readily see it.
I climbed a little closer.
All it takes is a weak insulator and it can arc.
I was starting to think this thing was so dead that I was probably going to have the opposite problem of being electrocuted. There was a relay box, I could see. Whatever destroyed the array broke it off right on the other side of the juncture. The connector must have ripped right off.
The circuit maps formed in my mind as I crawled closer. Something must have crimped, closing the circuits. There was no obvious power bank on what was left of it.
With any luck I could push the thing off and let the sun charge it up enough to-
Bright white light.