(Came back after a brief hiatus for the holidays. Pilot part two let’s gooooo!!!!)
Read part one here
The few days of packing her ship and preparing for departure went by in a strange daze to Aurora. She’d done it many times before during training, and even for her maiden voyage across to Godlon, but something about this felt different. Perhaps it was because it was her first true trip on her own. Her first real job. Travelling to Godlon was more of a straight-out-of-college contract more than anything else. An internship.
Here, she had done it all by herself. Or at least, mostly by herself.
Police surrounded her ship at all times, making sure that the supplies loaded onto it were legitimate and safe for transport. The quiet part that Aurora quickly picked up on was that they were also here to protect from anyone trying to steal them. With all the desperate people in Godlon who could barely make by, a few pieces of food being given to an off-worlder who gave them this food was something that seemed unbelievable to them. The captain of the police, Julie Layrin, assured them that this would be a temporary measure, just enough for them to get their food back in the future.
Perhaps some believed it. That this inexperienced pilot could magically find where all their supplies, their life sources, had disappeared to. But it was hard to listen on an empty stomach. And these desperate times were certainly getting more and more desperate.
Aurora sighed. She could hardly blame them. If she were in their boots, she would have already tried to make a run for the food. The cops constantly surrounding her didn’t help. Despite the militaristic upbringing she had, she never liked the police as they patrolled around her, taking what things she could nip from dumpsters or scraps, stopping her from getting the education she proved she could complete. It felt strangely wrong to be working for the police. She flew to get away from them, not become their lap dogs.
But the work was needed. She could complain all she wanted but with the debt she was in with the academy, she had to pay of her expenses somehow. Payment from the police would be fine for now. And it was at least for a good cause. Helping the people struggling here would be well worth it in her books.
Aurora spent most of her time inside, updating SAM with all the information it needed for their next trip and analysing flight patterns. It had too little data to conclude anything, much to her disappointment, but it did have some places to start looking. Dark spots that hadn’t been captured while they flew through it, points of interest from the ships manifesto, blueprints hinting at important locations. Stuff like that. Enough to get her on the right track.
She stood outside her ship as they loaded the final stocks of food and water into her storage compartment, already loaded with spare parts and replacement components. The ship looked incredible again. The hull damage from before had been repaired by a proper crew this time around, her flight suit was updated to feel less claustrophobic, and it was filled with enough fuel to last for two months.
Plenty of time to explore the freighter.
She made one final look over her tasks list when Captain Julie Layrin appeared by her side. She glanced up to her and nodded politely.
“Nearly ready to take off?” the captain asked.
“Just about,” Aurora said, turning back to her notes. “Cargo’s good, fuels good, engines good. Hull too looks good. Just been reviewing places to start looking for when we actually get there.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to do that in space,” Julie said. “How are you feeling?”
Aurora looked back to her, curious about the question. There was something about the way she said that. The words almost had a worried aura to them. That what she was about to go into wasn’t something she would return from quite the same way. She slowly nodded.
“I’m alright,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“We are putting a lot of hope in you,” the captain said, putting her hands behind her back in a formal stance. “I don’t want to hear that you are having second thoughts.”
“No second thoughts here,” Aurora said. “Anything new I should know before I head out?”
She shook her head. “Without any comms we’re still in the dark. There have been mechanics working around the clock to get it to work, but no dice. Just as they fix up one part, another fails.”
“The way you say that sounds like you believe sabotage is at play.”
“You guess right. I don’t like it. I’ve suggested extra police in that area for security but we’re tight as it is. Even one body guard would put another place at risk. Still, it’s something we just have to deal with. Like the old spacefarers.”
Aurora nodded and looked back to her ship. A mechanic gave her a thumbs up as they exited, which she returned. She glanced back to Julie and put a hand on her shoulder.
“We’ll get your supplies back,” she said. “Me and SAM.”
Julie looked down to her and smiled weakly. “Just don’t get too reliant on that AI of yours. Space is lonely but you need to trust yourself. You sure you can trust it?”
Aurora shrugged. “Hey, I trust SAM with my life. And it’s paid off.”
She flexed her now fully repaired hand and headed onto her ship. She waved to the crew as they waved back, happy faced and excited to hear the news as soon as they could. The airlock closed around her and she felt like she could finally breathe again.
“Captain on the ship,” SAM announced over the ships internal audio system. “Please head to the deck to begin take off procedures.”
“On my way,” Aurora smiled, rushing up to the helm and grabbing the controls eagerly. She flicked the ships engines to life and began to prepare for takeoff. Lights blinked on, a familiar rumbled began to hum through the ships floor, and artificial gravity pulled her into place.
She took a deep breath and reached for the radio, signalling to them that she would begin take off. They responded in kind, directing her along the flight-path designated for her. Once she was in the atmosphere though, she was on her own.
Just how she liked it.
She flew up and out into the air as easily as ever. The lower gravity from the planet made the accent easier than ever, though the heavy cargo she carried made it somewhat more cumbersome to fly. Though her skills combated any difficulty that arose.
As the half hour passed and she made it past the atmosphere, radio communication suddenly sputtered out. The signal couldn’t reach out here now with their broken equipment. The final message she received over the pager was a simple ‘Good luck’.
Aurora swallowed and began warp travel.
*
The next few days went by easily. SAM kept an eye over most of the equipment as best as it had been programmed to, with Aurora monitoring it’s findings with her own experience. It wasn’t needed though. With the extensive maintenance this ship had gone through recently everything was working in complete working order. No strange malfunctions, no unexplained phenomena, no psychological defects on either crew member.
It was going as smoothly as Aurora could have hoped for.
She occupied her time with studies over the maps of the Hermes, both its original schematics and the scans she made previously. By the time she could tell where each bulkhead or pipe was from memory, they had managed to get half way there.
From this, she began to chart where she would need to investigate first. Captain Julie Layrin had given her a few places of interest, most notably for food and medicine. At the direction Aurora was flying, medical aid was the easiest to find first. Yet even that clear direction would be difficult to deal with.
The entire ship was a city in more ways than one. A major cargo section could be the size of a borough, filled with small but distinct areas for each item. Medical alone contained square kilometres worth of plasters and gauze. Finding what had happened to each individual batch could take days of study.
These thoughts occupied her brain as SAM announced they would be coming out of warp soon. She headed to the front of the ship and began to get everything prepared for arrival. A few minutes went by and she saw the familiar ship appear in front of her again.
It had hardly changed since she last saw it. That enormous city-sized structure stretched over her ship like a cliff against a small dingy. Lights flickered off of it in strange spurts of energy, hinting at a much larger force around her. Aurora could only wonder how big it truly was and how much it had once contained. Her plans helped keep her focused, yet even then it was hard to imagine where to start.
“Captain,” SAM spoke. Aurora shook her head, the AI’s voice snapping her out of the daze.
“Yes, SAM?” she asked.
“Course to first destination is approximately fifteen kilometres away. Do you wish for it to be marked?”
“Sounds good,” she said, taking back controls. “While you do that, begin a scan of the area. Make sure no-one else is around.”
“Affirmative.”
Aurora flicked the controls over to a low impulse drive, allowing her to navigate through the dark space that surrounded her, the metal scaffolding enveloping her world to the point that she could hardly see the stars far off in the distance.
After the relatively short journey over to the destination point, Aurora initiated a scan of the area for both signs of activity and any supplies she would be able to find. A few bits of frozen food here, a bit of fertiliser there, lots of water for growing. Though outside of what would have drifted away, nothing strange.
Over the next few hours Aurora flew through the freighter, finding supplies of varying quantity and quality. From what she could tell, there had defiantly been a grab on this place, though whether it was random pirates stumbling across the wreck or from a deliberate raid was impossible to say.
She sighed and looked up.
“Any thoughts, SAM?” Aurora asked.
“Currently no indication that this area has been raided or damaged outside of expected parameters. Recommending investigation closer to source of explosion and slash or sight of attack. Estimate position is available.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” she nodded. “Alright, set it up and we’ll head towards it.”
The ship flew carefully through the freighter, avoiding as much floating junk as it could while still maintaining a good level of speed. As they drew closer the frequency of this debris increased. Something big must have happened here, Aurora thought. This is way more than what I saw in training.
Thirty minutes passed as she flew closer and closer. Relative to how strange the ship was, not much appeared to be different. The cargo was much the same as ever, the design conforming to the general standard, sputters of electricity and light bouncing off the otherwise tall and dark walls. If it wasn’t for the navigation of SAM, she would hardly know where she was going.
That was, until she finally arrived.
This part of the ship was completely empty. No debris, no stray pieces of cargo, not even a light. Yet there weren’t any chemical or soot marks here that would indicate an explosion. Compared to the rest of the ship around her, this was wrong.
“SAM, what was this place?”
“Unknown.”
“What do you mean, unknown?”
“This part of the ships cargo was marked as ‘classified’. It is unknown what was here.”
Aurora put a finger to her chin as she thought. So whatever was here was important. And it probably was the reason this ship was destroyed. Yet what could be so important to retrieve that it warranted blowing up an entire freighter?
She didn’t get much time to think over the options.
“Alert: multiple ships detected. Recommending immediate-”
SAM’s voice cut out before it could continue speaking. A static ran though it as the lights on Aurora’s ships dimmed and faltered. Gravity soon lost it’s grip on her and she floated up.
Aurora, trained as she was, didn’t let the panic get to her. She’d done these simulations before. But out here in the dark of space, she couldn’t help but worry about what had hit her. About what could have disabled her ship so quickly that SAM couldn’t even tell her what was happening in time.
The lights around her finally failed. All that remained was a dim glow of a single console. She naturally gravitated to it, desperate to find some kind of hope in it. Yet all that remained on it was a few lines of text.
“Who are you?” it read. “What are you doing here?”
To be continued…
Thumbnail image courtesy of ‘Pexels Free Images’
Cheesman Chronicles 
Leave a comment