Working Relationship

“No, mom. You put the emotion-clause on the front of the statement so they know how it’s supposed to be interpreted.” Alex sat in the darkened bridge, illuminated by dozens of holographic displays. His mother’s image was front and center, bleary-eyed from the early morning call.

“That’s fine.” His mother may have ignored what he just told her. She may just have been half asleep. “Be sure to let the Shipmaster know she’s doing a great job.”

He nodded at his mother on the screen, eyes darting over to check the countdown timer and a wall of instruments. “She knows. Look, mom, we’re about to go back into realspace, I need to go.”

He didn’t tell her about the anomalous reading on the Sheridan-Reyes SAPRAM. Something in the destination system was wrong - possibly some kind of problem with the local star or someone keeping a whole bunch of Waverider drives warmed up. A stray thought notified the Shipmaster about it through his Amp.

“Ok Alex, you take care. I love you!” She smiled the same smile as always, both a little proud and sad that her son had managed to become a scoutship pilot. This trip out was two years and live communication was limited to FTL calls during a waveride, if there was time. There usually wasn’t.

“Love you too, mom.” He smiled and waved, then cut the line. Almost as soon as his mother vanished from the screen, Shipmaster Tshalen popped up in her place. Their heads appeared about the same size, despite the Shipmaster being shorter and proportionally smaller. Some people said Tsla’o looked like dogs; Alex could see the similarity.

The flattish head, dense blue-black fur and nostrils set wide at the end of a short muzzle spoke very highly of it. Her ears and the antenna that ran over the top of her head were folded down, as was normal. That was to say nothing of their weird legs.

“Pilot Sorenson. These readings are troubling. They were not present on the initial scan from the probe.” Her mouth moved strangely as his Amp translated everything other than his name. It was easiest to let the respective computer interfaces translate. It must have made the negotiations to get this mission set up far less onerous.

“Shipmaster Tshalen. They are indeed.” He tarted up his speech patterns to make the translation smoother. “The magnitude of the readings would indicate a fleet action or significant stellar event.”

“Agreement.” They both knew the waveride could be ended prematurely, but neither of them wanted to waste the month an emergency shutdown inspection would take. “I suggest as wide a course correction as is possible right now. In addition to this I will precharge the sublight engines to boost an emergency waveride.”

As she said it, he began to alter course. Less than a minute until they arrived, it wouldn’t be much of a change but it would put them further away from the anomaly. “A wise plan. Course has been corrected. Entering realspace in fifty-five seconds.”

“Live well Pilot Sorenson.” She shut the connection down. The ship would almost be dead in space if she was using the sublight engines as capacitors for the wave drives, with nothing but a handful of docking thrusters to shove the ship around with, but they would be able to jump back out in just over ninety seconds.

The Amp filled Alex’s brain with the surrounding space as they slowed to sub-light speeds. It was far, far worse than he expected. “Shipmaster. We need the Waveriders back up immediately.”

“It is seen.” Even through the translator, her words were terse.

Spread out in the darkness of the local system were two massive clusters of ships, a pair of Eohm fleets. The backbone of each fleet was a ten kilometer long home ship surrounded by a swarm of spacecraft of every conceivable size. It wasn’t unheard of them to make contact with each other, do a bit of trading.

The hostile action warning started going off in the back of Alex’s head as the computer superimposed a burning red dot on the nearest fleet. Another and another popped up, then a few dozen more as more Eohm ships became aware of of them and started to heat up their guns. To say the Eohm were intensely xenophobic would be an understatement.

The first dot flickered and became a line with a little cluster of data attached to it. Railgun, approximately fifty centimeter, radiological, 99% chance of impact in eleven seconds.

Alex gave the ship a nudge with the docking thrusters and the line turned yellow, then blue. The chance of impact dropped to zero as a half dozen more lines speared outward from the fleet. He opened the comm to the Shipmaster. “We need to go now.”

“Thirty seconds.” She was aware of this fact.

He glanced across the rapidly widening array of ordinance being thrown at them and shook his head, missile lock warnings blaring in his wetware. Docking thrusters wouldn’t dodge those. “I need my engines back.”

“There are-”

“We start eating missiles in twelve seconds. I need them now.”

“Can you not-”

“No, I can’t.” He cut her off again and pressed his credentials into the computer, overriding her control of the sublight engines. A distinct feeling of power flooded his body as he snapped out a roll and started to run, dumping flares and jamming pods behind them. “Just tell me when the waveriders are up.”