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Rest, Rousing, Realization and Returns
July 6, 4433
Chapter 1: Rest
The stars shone with a crisp intensity, their light had made the journey of eons crossing the cold vastness, approaching their fate at relativistic speeds. From across the galaxy, chance had aimed the ancient light from thousands of stars at the faint pinprick of steel which grew exponentially larger as the photons converged upon it. Penetrating the stardock's wide viewing windows in a virtual instant of time, they were snuffed out exactly one virtual instant later as they impacted his retina. LeberMac blinked.
The Sergeant confronted the stars as he stared out of the viewpane of [IA] Headquarters. He had completed his survey of the Pherona system for any easily-mined ores, and found it wanting. Any valuable ore deposits were already guarded by hive bots, and the damn things were getting smarter. Future mining expeditions would have to go in escorted, pulling military resources away from where he needed them most. That had put him in a dark mood, with the re-emergence of [BLAK] and the meddling of the [IGPK] guild in economic affairs it made a nice triumvirate of new headaches for him. It was times like these when he wondered why he had been tapped for the Sergeant position, but in truth he knew why. The Itani Alliance was having difficulties.
He had been chosen for the job not because of his outstanding combat record, or his stellar reputation, or his wealth of riches. He had none of these; he had been chosen because he was... convenient. Just at a time when strong leadership was required, it seemed that all the true leaders of the Itani nation had gone AWOL. Sadly, he had been the best available pick for the job, which did not bode well for the future of the Alliance, and he knew it. Hard times were ahead, and that required careful planning, which in turn required a clear head.
"I need a vacation," he muttered.
"Whatcha say, boss?" Holdan's voice interrupted the Sergeant's train of thought. Holdan looked up from his AGT-configuration control systems check and regarded his sometimes-wingman with mild concern.
"A vacation, Holdan. Time away from work devoted to rest and relaxation. Noun." LeberMac shot back with a sarcastic grin.
Holdan rolled his eyes and thought that perhaps a vacation would at least spare him from Leber's constant sarcasm and bad puns, not to mention the tequila binges and dented Valk hulls. "Sure thing. I'll call up [BLAK] and tell 'em that we've gotta put the pirating on hold until you get back, OK? I think I have Shape's comm frequency around here somewhere. Oh and I'm sure that Lecter will take a sabattical from CtC until you're ready to defend it again..."
"I'm serious, Holdan." LeberMac looked directly at him. "I'm taking a couple of days, starting now."
"Oookaaaay... I'll cover for you for now but Smit's gonna be mighty pissed when he finds out." Holdan said.
"It's alright. I need some time to compose my thoughts." LeberMac paused. "Maybe three days."
"Oh, sure! Just take two weeks while you're at it!" Holdan blurted out, "When Smittens comes back and fires ya, who should I tell him to replace you with?"
With that sarcastic twinkle in his eye, LeberMac replied "Hell, I dunno. You can tell him to hire Borb for all I care. I'll be back in three days, it won't come to that, don't sweat it."
"Ha! That'll be the day!" Holdan laughed out loud, "Borb in [IA], as Sarge?" Holdan had a good laugh, but the look in Leber's eye told him that he was really leaving. "Hm. Mind if I ask where you're goin'?"
LeberMac thought carefully and replied, "Sedina." He regarded the all-too familiar expanse of Divinia's blue-green starfield out the station's window and added, "... I like the stars in Sedina, the color's an interesting shade of gray-violet..."
"Whatever." Holdan snorted. "Don't get your ass shot up in B8. Remember those pirates are back - in force."
LeberMac nodded, mentally synced with [IA]'s Deep Blue computer core, cued the authority command codes to Holdan for the time being, and made his way to the docking bay. This little rest would do him a world of good, and he'd be back in no time.
He spotted his Valkyrie across the hangar deck, double-parked at a strange angle, and with some new dents he didn't remember having before last night. As he made his way toward the sleek fighter he noticed Smittens' MSC Ragnarok, with some matching dents on the rear quarterpanel and a shattered tequila bottle on the floor nearby.
"Hrmmm... Never a better time for a little quick R&R..." he mused as he checked the stacked crates of his enormous "ready-stash" of tequila that he'd ordered placed on the flight deck. The crates took up an entire berth next to his reserved space, but he knew that most of the crates of his precious mezcal tequila were empty, he was unfortunately running out of his favorite libation. He reached out his hand for the nearest bottle... and stopped. No. Not this time. This time I'm gonna relax without the worm. He closed and locked the container and hopped into the Valk's cockpit before he could change his mind, easing the engines up to power, boosting from the docking bay and into the embrace of stars.
There are more ancient things in the universe than the stars, those relatively calm spheres of fusing hydrogen. Elsewhere throughout the universe prowl the relics of the beginning, leftover objects from the first moments of time like sparks and motes in the fires of creation. These objects include the well-known wormholes, spacetime strings, even primordial quantum singularities that are invisible except for their awesome gravitational effects. Moving at incredible speeds, these speeding singularities pour out radiation and tear apart spacetime in their wake. This particular rogue black hole had been travelling for over 16 billion years, gathering mass along its path, and it was now about to pass through the area of space known as Sedina. As it approached it made an ugly funhouse mirror of the stars it had passed, leaving a trail of quantum fuzziness and swirls of dark matter behind it. It barreled through the system and towards an unsuspecting Valkyrie emerging from the Odia wormhole...
The wormhole closed and LeberMac was greeted by the calming gray-violet skies of Sedina. They were beautiful. But he also knew that these skies could be deadly, there was no reason to tarry. He made calculations to plot his next jump in-system, but the jump engines would not engage. Strange. He was 3 km away from any known celestial object in this region of space, yet there was nothing out there but the stars...
His calm was suddenly and rudely replaced by the annoying klaxon of the gravimetric warning sensor. Something was VERY wrong. He barely had time to adjust the grav sensors to maximum sensitivity before the singularity whizzed past him at less than 1,000 km. The actual size of the singularity was about that of a Heavy Assault Cruiser, but its mass was equivalent to several suns the size of Helios.
The wave of spacetime in the wake of the speeding singularity slammed into the Valkyrie like the impact from 20,000 concussion mines. LeberMac was thrown into the side of the cockpit, shattering his left arm into bone shards and cracking ribs against the instrument panel. The inertial dampeners immediately drained the ship's battery to compensate as the sleek fighter tumbled in the tailings from the hurtling black hole. He coughed up blood from his punctured lung and jabbed the index finger of his good arm at the position locator and got more bad news: worse than the impact - he was being pulled along with the singularity and would soon become an integral part of it if he didn't act quickly.
He pointed the nose of the Valkyrie at the optimal angle of escape and jammed the turbo. The damaged gravimetric engines fired for mere seconds before sputtering out - they needed more time to recharge. Seven seconds, that's all that was needed for the UltraCharge battery to come to full potential. Seven... Six... Five... Unfortunately the hazard warnings from life support, artificial gravity and long-range scans indicated that those systems has just failed. Four. The ship made groaning noises as if protesting its harsh treatment, and the FTL warpdrive motivator was crushed by the pressure like a tin can. A jump would be impossible now. Three. He grimly realized that he had one chance: there was enough energy left to make an attempt to insert himself into an orbit around the singularity. It was getting harder to think and move, and his surroundings looked strange, as if darker and closer, pressing in on him. Two. Concentrating on the task of survival, he struggled to form the thoughts that commanded the onboard computer to calculate the trajectory, using the remaining energy to boost to that orbit. One.
Seconds felt like years scraping over his soul. He felt heavy, his blood coalesced into floating pools in the cockpit and froze where it touched the unwarmed transparent-xithricite canopy. Lightheaded from the relativistic effects and the loss of blood, he collapsed to the floor, feeling his last second of life stretch into infinity. The onboard Navcomputer of the shattered Valkyrie faithfully obeyed its owner's last command and attempted an orbital insertion around the fleeing singularity mass. LeberMac began to lose consciousness as he noticed that the only possible orbit at this point would take him ever so slightly inside the event horizon. Not even the Valkyrie could withstand the crushing pressures of that for long. There was no escape; with panicked eyes he looked at the battery indicator as the countdown hit... Zero. The gravimetric engines of LeberMac's IDF Valkyrie fired for the last time in a desperate shove against inertia.
The warning klaxons inside the cockpit doppler-shifted below audible range, replaced by a hollow ringing in his ears that was more imagined than real. Lights in the silent shuddering cockpit began to redshift, followed by the reddening light of the local sun, then the distant shining stars of Sedina transmuted from white to red, winking out one by one, leaving him in darkness. Gravitational tidal forces tore at the Valkyrie like a huge beast as time itself slowed to a crawl. Thought became blurred, his contorted body frozen in its struggle against physics to establish an orbit with an escape trajectory around the singularity. He felt the ebb of his awareness, the chemical signals of his finely tuned Itani psyche were no longer able to transfer threads of thought between axons; the thoughts were torn from his mind, thread by thread, down into the black emptiness until there was but one left. He held onto it with every ounce of mental ability, commanding it to stay, willing it to remain. It was futile. The event horizon approached. The horror of the singularity enveloped him and his existence came to an abrupt halt.
There is nothing.
More accurately, the absence of nothing. Not exactly silent, not precisely dark, not just odorless or tasteless, there was nothing THERE. Future vectors of probability looped back on themselves, unable to escape the pull, their flight caught in the grasp of the massive unstoppable emptiness. Time progressed on the outside of the singularity, but inside the core of darkness time had no meaning. A last desperate thought passed quietly in stasis over the existence vacuum while the singularity moved through the sea of time, watched only by the cold brilliance of the stars.
<standby, more to come, please note date above>
Chapter 1: Rest
The stars shone with a crisp intensity, their light had made the journey of eons crossing the cold vastness, approaching their fate at relativistic speeds. From across the galaxy, chance had aimed the ancient light from thousands of stars at the faint pinprick of steel which grew exponentially larger as the photons converged upon it. Penetrating the stardock's wide viewing windows in a virtual instant of time, they were snuffed out exactly one virtual instant later as they impacted his retina. LeberMac blinked.
The Sergeant confronted the stars as he stared out of the viewpane of [IA] Headquarters. He had completed his survey of the Pherona system for any easily-mined ores, and found it wanting. Any valuable ore deposits were already guarded by hive bots, and the damn things were getting smarter. Future mining expeditions would have to go in escorted, pulling military resources away from where he needed them most. That had put him in a dark mood, with the re-emergence of [BLAK] and the meddling of the [IGPK] guild in economic affairs it made a nice triumvirate of new headaches for him. It was times like these when he wondered why he had been tapped for the Sergeant position, but in truth he knew why. The Itani Alliance was having difficulties.
He had been chosen for the job not because of his outstanding combat record, or his stellar reputation, or his wealth of riches. He had none of these; he had been chosen because he was... convenient. Just at a time when strong leadership was required, it seemed that all the true leaders of the Itani nation had gone AWOL. Sadly, he had been the best available pick for the job, which did not bode well for the future of the Alliance, and he knew it. Hard times were ahead, and that required careful planning, which in turn required a clear head.
"I need a vacation," he muttered.
"Whatcha say, boss?" Holdan's voice interrupted the Sergeant's train of thought. Holdan looked up from his AGT-configuration control systems check and regarded his sometimes-wingman with mild concern.
"A vacation, Holdan. Time away from work devoted to rest and relaxation. Noun." LeberMac shot back with a sarcastic grin.
Holdan rolled his eyes and thought that perhaps a vacation would at least spare him from Leber's constant sarcasm and bad puns, not to mention the tequila binges and dented Valk hulls. "Sure thing. I'll call up [BLAK] and tell 'em that we've gotta put the pirating on hold until you get back, OK? I think I have Shape's comm frequency around here somewhere. Oh and I'm sure that Lecter will take a sabattical from CtC until you're ready to defend it again..."
"I'm serious, Holdan." LeberMac looked directly at him. "I'm taking a couple of days, starting now."
"Oookaaaay... I'll cover for you for now but Smit's gonna be mighty pissed when he finds out." Holdan said.
"It's alright. I need some time to compose my thoughts." LeberMac paused. "Maybe three days."
"Oh, sure! Just take two weeks while you're at it!" Holdan blurted out, "When Smittens comes back and fires ya, who should I tell him to replace you with?"
With that sarcastic twinkle in his eye, LeberMac replied "Hell, I dunno. You can tell him to hire Borb for all I care. I'll be back in three days, it won't come to that, don't sweat it."
"Ha! That'll be the day!" Holdan laughed out loud, "Borb in [IA], as Sarge?" Holdan had a good laugh, but the look in Leber's eye told him that he was really leaving. "Hm. Mind if I ask where you're goin'?"
LeberMac thought carefully and replied, "Sedina." He regarded the all-too familiar expanse of Divinia's blue-green starfield out the station's window and added, "... I like the stars in Sedina, the color's an interesting shade of gray-violet..."
"Whatever." Holdan snorted. "Don't get your ass shot up in B8. Remember those pirates are back - in force."
LeberMac nodded, mentally synced with [IA]'s Deep Blue computer core, cued the authority command codes to Holdan for the time being, and made his way to the docking bay. This little rest would do him a world of good, and he'd be back in no time.
He spotted his Valkyrie across the hangar deck, double-parked at a strange angle, and with some new dents he didn't remember having before last night. As he made his way toward the sleek fighter he noticed Smittens' MSC Ragnarok, with some matching dents on the rear quarterpanel and a shattered tequila bottle on the floor nearby.
"Hrmmm... Never a better time for a little quick R&R..." he mused as he checked the stacked crates of his enormous "ready-stash" of tequila that he'd ordered placed on the flight deck. The crates took up an entire berth next to his reserved space, but he knew that most of the crates of his precious mezcal tequila were empty, he was unfortunately running out of his favorite libation. He reached out his hand for the nearest bottle... and stopped. No. Not this time. This time I'm gonna relax without the worm. He closed and locked the container and hopped into the Valk's cockpit before he could change his mind, easing the engines up to power, boosting from the docking bay and into the embrace of stars.
There are more ancient things in the universe than the stars, those relatively calm spheres of fusing hydrogen. Elsewhere throughout the universe prowl the relics of the beginning, leftover objects from the first moments of time like sparks and motes in the fires of creation. These objects include the well-known wormholes, spacetime strings, even primordial quantum singularities that are invisible except for their awesome gravitational effects. Moving at incredible speeds, these speeding singularities pour out radiation and tear apart spacetime in their wake. This particular rogue black hole had been travelling for over 16 billion years, gathering mass along its path, and it was now about to pass through the area of space known as Sedina. As it approached it made an ugly funhouse mirror of the stars it had passed, leaving a trail of quantum fuzziness and swirls of dark matter behind it. It barreled through the system and towards an unsuspecting Valkyrie emerging from the Odia wormhole...
The wormhole closed and LeberMac was greeted by the calming gray-violet skies of Sedina. They were beautiful. But he also knew that these skies could be deadly, there was no reason to tarry. He made calculations to plot his next jump in-system, but the jump engines would not engage. Strange. He was 3 km away from any known celestial object in this region of space, yet there was nothing out there but the stars...
His calm was suddenly and rudely replaced by the annoying klaxon of the gravimetric warning sensor. Something was VERY wrong. He barely had time to adjust the grav sensors to maximum sensitivity before the singularity whizzed past him at less than 1,000 km. The actual size of the singularity was about that of a Heavy Assault Cruiser, but its mass was equivalent to several suns the size of Helios.
The wave of spacetime in the wake of the speeding singularity slammed into the Valkyrie like the impact from 20,000 concussion mines. LeberMac was thrown into the side of the cockpit, shattering his left arm into bone shards and cracking ribs against the instrument panel. The inertial dampeners immediately drained the ship's battery to compensate as the sleek fighter tumbled in the tailings from the hurtling black hole. He coughed up blood from his punctured lung and jabbed the index finger of his good arm at the position locator and got more bad news: worse than the impact - he was being pulled along with the singularity and would soon become an integral part of it if he didn't act quickly.
He pointed the nose of the Valkyrie at the optimal angle of escape and jammed the turbo. The damaged gravimetric engines fired for mere seconds before sputtering out - they needed more time to recharge. Seven seconds, that's all that was needed for the UltraCharge battery to come to full potential. Seven... Six... Five... Unfortunately the hazard warnings from life support, artificial gravity and long-range scans indicated that those systems has just failed. Four. The ship made groaning noises as if protesting its harsh treatment, and the FTL warpdrive motivator was crushed by the pressure like a tin can. A jump would be impossible now. Three. He grimly realized that he had one chance: there was enough energy left to make an attempt to insert himself into an orbit around the singularity. It was getting harder to think and move, and his surroundings looked strange, as if darker and closer, pressing in on him. Two. Concentrating on the task of survival, he struggled to form the thoughts that commanded the onboard computer to calculate the trajectory, using the remaining energy to boost to that orbit. One.
Seconds felt like years scraping over his soul. He felt heavy, his blood coalesced into floating pools in the cockpit and froze where it touched the unwarmed transparent-xithricite canopy. Lightheaded from the relativistic effects and the loss of blood, he collapsed to the floor, feeling his last second of life stretch into infinity. The onboard Navcomputer of the shattered Valkyrie faithfully obeyed its owner's last command and attempted an orbital insertion around the fleeing singularity mass. LeberMac began to lose consciousness as he noticed that the only possible orbit at this point would take him ever so slightly inside the event horizon. Not even the Valkyrie could withstand the crushing pressures of that for long. There was no escape; with panicked eyes he looked at the battery indicator as the countdown hit... Zero. The gravimetric engines of LeberMac's IDF Valkyrie fired for the last time in a desperate shove against inertia.
The warning klaxons inside the cockpit doppler-shifted below audible range, replaced by a hollow ringing in his ears that was more imagined than real. Lights in the silent shuddering cockpit began to redshift, followed by the reddening light of the local sun, then the distant shining stars of Sedina transmuted from white to red, winking out one by one, leaving him in darkness. Gravitational tidal forces tore at the Valkyrie like a huge beast as time itself slowed to a crawl. Thought became blurred, his contorted body frozen in its struggle against physics to establish an orbit with an escape trajectory around the singularity. He felt the ebb of his awareness, the chemical signals of his finely tuned Itani psyche were no longer able to transfer threads of thought between axons; the thoughts were torn from his mind, thread by thread, down into the black emptiness until there was but one left. He held onto it with every ounce of mental ability, commanding it to stay, willing it to remain. It was futile. The event horizon approached. The horror of the singularity enveloped him and his existence came to an abrupt halt.
There is nothing.
More accurately, the absence of nothing. Not exactly silent, not precisely dark, not just odorless or tasteless, there was nothing THERE. Future vectors of probability looped back on themselves, unable to escape the pull, their flight caught in the grasp of the massive unstoppable emptiness. Time progressed on the outside of the singularity, but inside the core of darkness time had no meaning. A last desperate thought passed quietly in stasis over the existence vacuum while the singularity moved through the sea of time, watched only by the cold brilliance of the stars.
<standby, more to come, please note date above>
OK FM Have at it. (Your opportunty to critique, LOL.)
July 16, 4433
Chapter 2: Rousings
Outside the [IA] Stardock at Coranis Watch, silence pervaded the vacuum. A dark blue and bright steel shape whispered across the surface of the station and purposefully came to rest at its carefully chosen location. The surveillance clamps of the concealed tiny Centurion Mk II softly kissed the outer hull and magnetically anchored it in place. From inside the station the faintest of whirrings could be heard as the corvus-made acoustic surveillance device integrated itself through the hull above the crowded room and began its task.
Borb keyed the "record" switch and prepared to wait it out. From his experience as the spy Shinas, he knew these [IA] council meetings could make eternity seem short; however, the pain of sitting through the endless (and pointless, in his view) discussion was [BLAK]'s last ditch attempt to discover the bit of information that had stubbornly eluded them for the past week. LeberMac had disappeared without any kind of warning, as if swallowed by the very darkness of space.
Their search was not born out of any concern for LeberMac's welfare, but out of the method of his sudden vanishing act. This is what had troubled Black Lance, since when someone disappeared in the galaxy, they were usually the ones responsible for it. Even though he alone was not a dangerous threat to them, the fact that they still did not know his location made them nervous - even the smallest threat can become deadly when they have the advantage of surprise. If this was the beginning of a new [IA] plot to bring destruction to [BLAK], then they needed all the information they could get. Hence, his presence at the station. The council meeting had been going on for approximately 6 hours already, but Borb knew that the last topic of the meeting was the one he was here for.
Turning his attention back to his assignment, Borb matched the surveillance resonance to the inverse of the [IA] privacy jammer, using the subtle variations of the soundwaves hitting the station hull itself to eavesdrop. The signal came thru and he gritted his teeth against the forthcoming tedium echoing up from the council chamber...
Smittens was talking in a disinterested voice, "...And that wraps up the mess hall menu item discussion, by a vote of 26 to 1 the saltypuke stew menu item is discontinued in favor of chicken noodle soup. Remnants of the stew will be disposed of in appropriate biohazard containers for disposal. Now on to Kepler's memo on the use of guild office supplies for personal use..."
He couldn't stand it. Procedures, motions, more talk. If he stayed where he was and was forced to listen to the endless droning he's go stir crazy. Time to slip into the Shinas personality and do some face-to-face intelligence gathering, if only to save his sanity. The surveillance device could easily autorecord the rest.
He expertly unclamped his Centurion from the automated listening device, covertly jumped through several sectors in Divinia to make sure he was not followed, and then jumped back to Coranis Watch from the Jallik wormhole. He changed out of his black combat apparel and into the [IA] pilot uniform, preparing his Shinas identity by attaching the voice splint and donning the synthmask.
"[IA] Stardock this is Shinas, requesting permission to board."
"Cleared for priority docking, [IA] Patrol. Welcome Back, Shinas." the stationmaster replied.
Borb/Shinas shook his head at how truly easy it had been to infiltrate [IA] as he guided the fighter into the docking bay with his expert, light touch. With the council meeting going on, the bay was full, but he noticed an empty spot next to Smittens' MSC Ragnarok. He parked his ship, adjusted his synthetic mask and hopped out. As his steel-toed boots hit the bay's floor he noticed where he had parked: LeberMac's reserved stall. That was interesting, but not half as interesting as what was stacked next to him. He saw the tequila crates and smiled, knowing that he had 11 cu's of empty hold, which would accept almost all of the tequila if he was careful about removing every ounce of the packing material and wooden crating. Real wood from old Earth, he noticed, worth almost as much as the tequila itself. He shrugged and started packing the bottles as tightly as possible into his hold. "This trip may pay off after all..." He mused.
Meanwhile on the station's surface above, the listening device dutifully performed its service, recording to datacube the proceedings while simultaneously broadcasting a live audio stream to Borb's Serco implants. The important part of the meeting was finally starting...
"WELL, WHEEERRE IS HE!?!" Smittens bellowed above the din of the crowded council chamber of the Itani Alliance, slamming down the datapad into the synthwood table's surface and bringing the myriad conversations among the members to a halt. Sarge had been missing for 11 days, and they were no closer to finding him than they were a week ago. He focused his gaze upon Holdan.
"Holdan, report on your search status." Smittens ordered.
"There's been no contact since his departure on leave." Holdan dutifully reported. "Nothing. No wormhole activations after his last jump into Sedina. The trail stops cold."
"Debris? Signs of weapons fire?" Smittens queried, "Distress calls?"
Exasperated, Holdan repeated himself for what seemed like the hundredth time this week, "I TOLD you Smit, there's NOTHING there. We've been over the system with a micrometer, and after his emergence through the Sedina wormhole, there's no contact. I can't explain it." The council hall began to emit a vague rumbling of voices whispering theories as to what may have happened.
Smittens let the hushed speculation die down as he returned Holdan's stare for a few interminable seconds, and without glancing away from Holdan he asked, " Yasumoto, Financial trace?"
"None." Yasumoto said, "He didn't get a chance to spend a single bloody credit on leave. None of his accounts shows any activity. No one else using them either, his money's still all there. All 84,000 credits."
Obviously exasperated, Smittens half-mockingly asked Kernel.Panic "Well, k.p, did we read the tea leaves? Or did Santa Claus swoop in with the Tooth Fairy and spirit him away to Never-Never Land?"
Kernel.Panic replied with a steely resolve that belied his youth, "We'll find him, don't give up."
Smittens softened and said "Aye, k.p we will. However, current circumstances require that I scale back the search. We're not calling it off, but we've got reports of increased Hive activity centered on Sedina, so those forces deployed in that area are hereby retasked to investigate the hive as their primary responsibility. Understood?"
The halls echoed with a "Yes SIR!" and Smittens dismissed the gathering, nodding to the departing members as the hall emptied and the last guildmember left. The meeting had lasted almost 7 hours- it was nearly midnight - he really HAD to find a way to keep these meetings shorter. With a tired gesture he hit the overhead lights from the stage's control board, flicked off the privacy jammer and was about to make his way back to his quarters when something caught his attention. Something didn't belong, something was not the same as when he began the meeting. He looked around for signs of subtle changes in his surroundings, but soon realized that it was not what he saw, but what he heard.
A tinny-sounding whine coming from overhead. Smittens looked up and squinted, trying to locate the source of the sound, then looked back down to the [IA] privacy jammer switch. He flicked it back on. The whine disappeared. He flicked it off. The whine returned. With a shock he realized that he knew exactly what the whine was: A corvus-made surveillance device with built-in privacy jammer waveform cancellation, he had used them before while secretly in the service of [BLAK] under his alter-ego Starbucks Ninja. Of course, only a few people in [IA] had ever discovered this, three were on extended sabbatical and now the other one had mysteriously vanished. So he could not reveal HOW he knew that there was a spy in-station, but he could at least make an exterior sweep of the station and "discover" the device then. He wondered which pilot in [BLAK] had been snooping - this was going to be awkward. He cued up [IA]'s Deep Blue interface to see who the on-deck pilots were.
"Kernel.Panic, Stukov, report to duty on docking bay 3," He whispered into his subcranial [IA] comm device. "NOW. But be discreet. We have a situation."
Elsewhere in spacetime...
Gravitational lensing pulled and reflected images of the steel blue-gray nebulae like taffy around the perfectly black singularity as it made its way through Sedina. In the span of 10 days the ancient mote of nothingness had travelled completely across the system and was passing through the remnants of Sedina's Oort cloud, well on its way towards Latos. It had picked up a small amount of mass as it passed the local wormhole anomaly, a curious mass of advanced metals, technology, and flesh. The additional mass had settled into an orbit that teetered on the edge of oblivion, halfway in and halfway out of the black hole's icy reach. It would circle that way for eternity, the grasp of the gravity sink was too strong to resist, and within its grasp time stood almost perfectly still.
Punctuated flashes of consciousness, spread out over days of realtime, struggled with the paradox of sometimes-existence within a sensory vacuum. The fragile orbital balance of the crushed ship teeered on the razor's edge of the event horizon, periously close to eternal damnation yet tantalizingly out of reach. For the threadbare consciousness it was a torturous hell. It mouthed a silent scream as the impersonal universe pretended not to hear, and the singularity quietly continued on the path it had followed since the beginning of time.
Chapter 2: Rousings
Outside the [IA] Stardock at Coranis Watch, silence pervaded the vacuum. A dark blue and bright steel shape whispered across the surface of the station and purposefully came to rest at its carefully chosen location. The surveillance clamps of the concealed tiny Centurion Mk II softly kissed the outer hull and magnetically anchored it in place. From inside the station the faintest of whirrings could be heard as the corvus-made acoustic surveillance device integrated itself through the hull above the crowded room and began its task.
Borb keyed the "record" switch and prepared to wait it out. From his experience as the spy Shinas, he knew these [IA] council meetings could make eternity seem short; however, the pain of sitting through the endless (and pointless, in his view) discussion was [BLAK]'s last ditch attempt to discover the bit of information that had stubbornly eluded them for the past week. LeberMac had disappeared without any kind of warning, as if swallowed by the very darkness of space.
Their search was not born out of any concern for LeberMac's welfare, but out of the method of his sudden vanishing act. This is what had troubled Black Lance, since when someone disappeared in the galaxy, they were usually the ones responsible for it. Even though he alone was not a dangerous threat to them, the fact that they still did not know his location made them nervous - even the smallest threat can become deadly when they have the advantage of surprise. If this was the beginning of a new [IA] plot to bring destruction to [BLAK], then they needed all the information they could get. Hence, his presence at the station. The council meeting had been going on for approximately 6 hours already, but Borb knew that the last topic of the meeting was the one he was here for.
Turning his attention back to his assignment, Borb matched the surveillance resonance to the inverse of the [IA] privacy jammer, using the subtle variations of the soundwaves hitting the station hull itself to eavesdrop. The signal came thru and he gritted his teeth against the forthcoming tedium echoing up from the council chamber...
Smittens was talking in a disinterested voice, "...And that wraps up the mess hall menu item discussion, by a vote of 26 to 1 the saltypuke stew menu item is discontinued in favor of chicken noodle soup. Remnants of the stew will be disposed of in appropriate biohazard containers for disposal. Now on to Kepler's memo on the use of guild office supplies for personal use..."
He couldn't stand it. Procedures, motions, more talk. If he stayed where he was and was forced to listen to the endless droning he's go stir crazy. Time to slip into the Shinas personality and do some face-to-face intelligence gathering, if only to save his sanity. The surveillance device could easily autorecord the rest.
He expertly unclamped his Centurion from the automated listening device, covertly jumped through several sectors in Divinia to make sure he was not followed, and then jumped back to Coranis Watch from the Jallik wormhole. He changed out of his black combat apparel and into the [IA] pilot uniform, preparing his Shinas identity by attaching the voice splint and donning the synthmask.
"[IA] Stardock this is Shinas, requesting permission to board."
"Cleared for priority docking, [IA] Patrol. Welcome Back, Shinas." the stationmaster replied.
Borb/Shinas shook his head at how truly easy it had been to infiltrate [IA] as he guided the fighter into the docking bay with his expert, light touch. With the council meeting going on, the bay was full, but he noticed an empty spot next to Smittens' MSC Ragnarok. He parked his ship, adjusted his synthetic mask and hopped out. As his steel-toed boots hit the bay's floor he noticed where he had parked: LeberMac's reserved stall. That was interesting, but not half as interesting as what was stacked next to him. He saw the tequila crates and smiled, knowing that he had 11 cu's of empty hold, which would accept almost all of the tequila if he was careful about removing every ounce of the packing material and wooden crating. Real wood from old Earth, he noticed, worth almost as much as the tequila itself. He shrugged and started packing the bottles as tightly as possible into his hold. "This trip may pay off after all..." He mused.
Meanwhile on the station's surface above, the listening device dutifully performed its service, recording to datacube the proceedings while simultaneously broadcasting a live audio stream to Borb's Serco implants. The important part of the meeting was finally starting...
"WELL, WHEEERRE IS HE!?!" Smittens bellowed above the din of the crowded council chamber of the Itani Alliance, slamming down the datapad into the synthwood table's surface and bringing the myriad conversations among the members to a halt. Sarge had been missing for 11 days, and they were no closer to finding him than they were a week ago. He focused his gaze upon Holdan.
"Holdan, report on your search status." Smittens ordered.
"There's been no contact since his departure on leave." Holdan dutifully reported. "Nothing. No wormhole activations after his last jump into Sedina. The trail stops cold."
"Debris? Signs of weapons fire?" Smittens queried, "Distress calls?"
Exasperated, Holdan repeated himself for what seemed like the hundredth time this week, "I TOLD you Smit, there's NOTHING there. We've been over the system with a micrometer, and after his emergence through the Sedina wormhole, there's no contact. I can't explain it." The council hall began to emit a vague rumbling of voices whispering theories as to what may have happened.
Smittens let the hushed speculation die down as he returned Holdan's stare for a few interminable seconds, and without glancing away from Holdan he asked, " Yasumoto, Financial trace?"
"None." Yasumoto said, "He didn't get a chance to spend a single bloody credit on leave. None of his accounts shows any activity. No one else using them either, his money's still all there. All 84,000 credits."
Obviously exasperated, Smittens half-mockingly asked Kernel.Panic "Well, k.p, did we read the tea leaves? Or did Santa Claus swoop in with the Tooth Fairy and spirit him away to Never-Never Land?"
Kernel.Panic replied with a steely resolve that belied his youth, "We'll find him, don't give up."
Smittens softened and said "Aye, k.p we will. However, current circumstances require that I scale back the search. We're not calling it off, but we've got reports of increased Hive activity centered on Sedina, so those forces deployed in that area are hereby retasked to investigate the hive as their primary responsibility. Understood?"
The halls echoed with a "Yes SIR!" and Smittens dismissed the gathering, nodding to the departing members as the hall emptied and the last guildmember left. The meeting had lasted almost 7 hours- it was nearly midnight - he really HAD to find a way to keep these meetings shorter. With a tired gesture he hit the overhead lights from the stage's control board, flicked off the privacy jammer and was about to make his way back to his quarters when something caught his attention. Something didn't belong, something was not the same as when he began the meeting. He looked around for signs of subtle changes in his surroundings, but soon realized that it was not what he saw, but what he heard.
A tinny-sounding whine coming from overhead. Smittens looked up and squinted, trying to locate the source of the sound, then looked back down to the [IA] privacy jammer switch. He flicked it back on. The whine disappeared. He flicked it off. The whine returned. With a shock he realized that he knew exactly what the whine was: A corvus-made surveillance device with built-in privacy jammer waveform cancellation, he had used them before while secretly in the service of [BLAK] under his alter-ego Starbucks Ninja. Of course, only a few people in [IA] had ever discovered this, three were on extended sabbatical and now the other one had mysteriously vanished. So he could not reveal HOW he knew that there was a spy in-station, but he could at least make an exterior sweep of the station and "discover" the device then. He wondered which pilot in [BLAK] had been snooping - this was going to be awkward. He cued up [IA]'s Deep Blue interface to see who the on-deck pilots were.
"Kernel.Panic, Stukov, report to duty on docking bay 3," He whispered into his subcranial [IA] comm device. "NOW. But be discreet. We have a situation."
Elsewhere in spacetime...
Gravitational lensing pulled and reflected images of the steel blue-gray nebulae like taffy around the perfectly black singularity as it made its way through Sedina. In the span of 10 days the ancient mote of nothingness had travelled completely across the system and was passing through the remnants of Sedina's Oort cloud, well on its way towards Latos. It had picked up a small amount of mass as it passed the local wormhole anomaly, a curious mass of advanced metals, technology, and flesh. The additional mass had settled into an orbit that teetered on the edge of oblivion, halfway in and halfway out of the black hole's icy reach. It would circle that way for eternity, the grasp of the gravity sink was too strong to resist, and within its grasp time stood almost perfectly still.
Punctuated flashes of consciousness, spread out over days of realtime, struggled with the paradox of sometimes-existence within a sensory vacuum. The fragile orbital balance of the crushed ship teeered on the razor's edge of the event horizon, periously close to eternal damnation yet tantalizingly out of reach. For the threadbare consciousness it was a torturous hell. It mouthed a silent scream as the impersonal universe pretended not to hear, and the singularity quietly continued on the path it had followed since the beginning of time.
Why didn't you ever write before!?!? Your good man I eagerly await more.
Heh, and yeah you have no idea how hard those IA meetings where for me. :P And really does any one care about budgeting for toiletries?
Heh, and yeah you have no idea how hard those IA meetings where for me. :P And really does any one care about budgeting for toiletries?
July 16th, 4433, moments before the IA meeting in Sedina
The week prior, Holdan had spent endless hours combing over the asteroids accumulated debris, as well as various listening devices in the Sedina-Odia wormhole sectors in his specially outfitted Tunguska Centaur Agresso, looking for any sign of LeberMac. While the two tossed sarcasm and bad puns at each other incessantly, they had become close friends in the months prior, and often winged together. The Agresso had become worn over time, and the seat cushions were due for a reupholstering, but they were comfortable, and fit Holdan’s wiry, athletic frame well.
Sighing, Holdan piloted his ship slowly into the dock, preparing himself mentally for the meeting. As he did so, two green Xith crystals in the shape of dice swayed slightly from controls overhead, prizes won from destroyed Serco convoys in the past week of CtC – time spent when he wasn’t out checking scans of wormhole traffic.
“IA Stardock, Coranis Watch, this is Holdan. Ready for refuel…and if you would buff out a few new dings in the starboard wingtip, ‘twould be appreciated. Take care of her…” he paused, “and if you don’t…” Holdan gave his customary frown, and noted the look of understanding on the attendant’s face. Not known for being unfair or needlessly harsh, Holdan was however known for taking care of his equipment – and wingmen.
As LeberMac’s wingmate, Holdan was usually informed of Leber’s movements. However, as he paced in the break room before the meeting, he found himself wishing he that was out searching, rather than having to explain the week’s events to Smittens once again. Leber’s absence had been missed that week in CtC, but due to overtime work by IA that week, they had both covered for Leber’s absence and made a sizable dent in the Serco’s convoys, particularly because Sarge’s dissapearance had been in such close proximity to Sedina B8.
But…
There was still no sign of LeberMac…
The week prior, Holdan had spent endless hours combing over the asteroids accumulated debris, as well as various listening devices in the Sedina-Odia wormhole sectors in his specially outfitted Tunguska Centaur Agresso, looking for any sign of LeberMac. While the two tossed sarcasm and bad puns at each other incessantly, they had become close friends in the months prior, and often winged together. The Agresso had become worn over time, and the seat cushions were due for a reupholstering, but they were comfortable, and fit Holdan’s wiry, athletic frame well.
Sighing, Holdan piloted his ship slowly into the dock, preparing himself mentally for the meeting. As he did so, two green Xith crystals in the shape of dice swayed slightly from controls overhead, prizes won from destroyed Serco convoys in the past week of CtC – time spent when he wasn’t out checking scans of wormhole traffic.
“IA Stardock, Coranis Watch, this is Holdan. Ready for refuel…and if you would buff out a few new dings in the starboard wingtip, ‘twould be appreciated. Take care of her…” he paused, “and if you don’t…” Holdan gave his customary frown, and noted the look of understanding on the attendant’s face. Not known for being unfair or needlessly harsh, Holdan was however known for taking care of his equipment – and wingmen.
As LeberMac’s wingmate, Holdan was usually informed of Leber’s movements. However, as he paced in the break room before the meeting, he found himself wishing he that was out searching, rather than having to explain the week’s events to Smittens once again. Leber’s absence had been missed that week in CtC, but due to overtime work by IA that week, they had both covered for Leber’s absence and made a sizable dent in the Serco’s convoys, particularly because Sarge’s dissapearance had been in such close proximity to Sedina B8.
But…
There was still no sign of LeberMac…
August 15, 4433
Chapter 3: Realizations
The dark amber liquid sloshed languidly within the heavy bottles, formed from thick, real glass. Pickled over the millennia in its liquid grave, the pale gusano worm floated and bounced around the interior as if it were still alive. There was a loud clink as the last bottle was stacked neatly next to its brothers in the hold of the Centurion Mk. II. The cargo hold held 11 cu's, and it was now almost completely full of tequila bottles in a precise geometric stacking arrangement, maximizing space.
Feeling very smug and pleased with himself for his little "appropriation", Borb/Shinas closed the cargo hatch door slowly, carefully, making sure that the bottles would not interfere with the latching and sealing mechanism. He touched the control panel and the door latched, air hissed out under pressure and the hatch made a smooth seal with the rest of the ship. The docking bay of Coranis Watch echoed with the hiss from the sealed compartment.
Tuned into the proceedings still through his Serco implants, he heard Smittens call for the end of the [IA] council meeting. He was about to relax in the knowledge of a job well done when there were several odd clicking sounds transmitted through the microphone, alternating with some kind of ground loop interference humming. He froze in place next to his ship and strained to listen through the device for any clue as to what had happened. Smittens was whispering, but to who? He was able to make out a few words, "... bay 3... discreet.. situation..."
Frak. He looked at the big number "3" painted on the wall of the docking bay that he was in and realized he'd overstayed his welcome. No time to lose. With a single bound he heaved himself into the cockpit of the Cent and keyed his mic.
"[IA] Stardock this is Shinas, requesting immediate departure clearance."
"Negative Shinas, on-deck combat patrol has launch priority. Hold position until cleared. Confirm," the stationmaster stated plainly.
Borb's mind raced as he explored his options. He couldn't stay where he was - even a cursory inspection of his ship would reveal the control and latching mechanism for the Corvus surveillance device. He could destroy his ship but that would make it obvious who the infiltrator was. He was out of options.
Sigh. He was going to have to shoot his way out of it again.
"[IA] Stardock, this is Shinas. Open bay 3 doors. Now."
The stationmaster was hopping mad when he got back on the comm frequency, "Damnit boy, you sit there until you are cleared, understand?"
"Oh, I... Understand." Borb/Shinas flipped the saftey off on his ship's gauss cannon and calmly fired two bursts from the weapon into the docking bay door, blasting a Centurion-sized hole in it and decompressing the chamber. Packing material and wood from the tequila crates smashed through the opening along with a myriad assortment of tools and paperwork, vanishing into the vacuum of space.
"Guess I'm cleared for departure now, eh pal?" Borb growled into the stationmaster's ear and boosted out of the dock, spinning his ship around 180 degrees and planning to end the life of that annoying stationmaster. However, before he could fire he was distracted by the motion of an airlock door opening from the station to the docking bay...
Smittens met up with Stukov and Kernel.Panic outside of docking bay 3, already suited up for combat operations.
"What's going on?" Stukov asked. "I didn't get an alert notice."
"We're just going for a little run around the station, boys, " Smittens said, "just a quick orbit. You both ready?"
Kernel.Panic nodded. Stukov looked first at k.p and then at Smittens. "Ready as I'll ever be."
"Good." Smittens said, "Now lets get moving." All three pilots donned their protective gear, cycled the airlock to the docking bay and stepped out onto the hangar deck.
It exploded around them and they caught sight of Shinas' Centurion boosting through a ragged hole in the docking bay doors. Kernel.Panic and Stukov were blown across the bay by the concussion towards their IDF Valkyries and were scrambling to avoid the same fate as the tequila crates. Smittens had been jolted in the opposite direction, he picked himself up and gathered his bearings, noticing the ship floating just outside the dock, weapons hot. All three immediately grabbed onto something solid while everything that wasn't tied down was expelled into space. They noticed Shinas' ship spinning around to face the dock, weapons powered.
Smittens looked up into the eyes of Shinas, a scant 100 meters away in the pilot's seat of the Centurion. Realizing too late that Shinas had been a spy all along, he watched as Shinas slowly peeled off his face, revealing the handsome mug of Borb II, grinning madly. The gauss cannon wound up and Borb fired two more shots as Smittens prepared to meet his maker.
The two shots instead impacted on Smittens' MSC Ragnarok, destroying the entire left side of the ship and fusing the FTL drive to the sublight engines. Apparently Smittens wasn't going anywhere, now. Borb whipped the ship over the surface of the station to the surveillance device, uploaded the data and then blasted the device for good measure. He then poured on the speed and warped out of Divinia in the general direction of Jallik.
The stationmaster gathered his wits, hit the emergency force field activation and the hurricane of escaping air ceased. From their Valkyries, Stukov and Kernel.Panic called out to their Commander.
"Holy Helio, Smittens are you OK? Smittens?"
"I'm FINE!" Smittens seethed. "What are you waiting for? After him!"
"Who, Shinas? What the hell does he think he's doing?" Stukov exclaimed.
"We've been had, boys." Smittens said, matter-of-factly, "Shinas is Borb II. Now... PURSUE!"
The two magnificent Itani Valkyries roared off the flight deck on an intercept course with the loaded Centurion while Smittens tried to find the next available ship to join in the chase - at this point, anything would do as long as it was ready for departure NOW. Stukov and Kernel.Panic screamed through the sparse Coranis asteroid field and punched through into empty space at 240 m/s. The two pilots were intent on catching their quarry, and both warped to the Jallik wormhole at precisely the right time, efficiently utilizing their fast charge batteries. The star patterns changed as they emerged into Divinia's gateway to the Jallik frontier system right next to the wormhole.
As their batteries recharged, they scanned the system for Borb/Shinas. He was nowhere to be found.
"Damn, he's FAST." Stukov said. "He's through the wormhole already?"
"Apparently. Let's go, C'MON!" Kernel.Panic ordered as flight lead. If Borb had information regarding what had happened to LeberMac, he needed to be captured and interrogated.
Both ships warped through to Jallik and continued their desperate search through that violet-hued system for the escaped spy.
It had probably been long enough.
Borb knew that timing was everything in chases like this, the years of cargo captures had taught him how to evade a pursuer. He poked the nose of the Centurion out from his hiding spot in the asteroids of Divinia N-13. His cargo clanked and rattled as the ship made for open space, preparing to jump to Artana Aquilus. He was sure he'd broken a few of the bottles in some of the maneuvering before, he could smell the scent of spilled alcohol wafting up from the storage bay. As soon as he made it past the asteroid field he punched the jump engines to make his escape. The universe burst into white-hot quantum uncertainty and the ship emerged at the wormhole to Artana, Borb started to relax and was about to boost towards the wormhole...
"Hello, Borb."
It was the voice of Smittens, broadcasting on the sectorwide guard channel. Borb made preparations for a 180 degree snap shot with his gauss cannon, but was stopped by the sound of Smit's voice again.
"Don't even THINK about moving. I'm right behind you, and with what I'm packing, you'd be obliterated in milliseconds. Hold position until we escort you back to [IA] Headquaters." Smittens' voice said over the comm.
Without moving his head, Borb glanced at his radar. Smittens WAS directly behind him, he had anticipated the deceptive jump and had smartly positioned himself directly behind the warp-in point, just in case Borb doubled back and tried to take the long way through Itani territory to get back to grayspace. There was no rear viewport on the Centurion, so he couldn't see what Smittens was flying, but he knew that if it was his usual MSC Ragnarok that he had no chance of escape. The slightest movement and he would be blown into his component molecules. But, he had one small chance. He hated to do it, but sometimes great sacrifices were necessary.
Muttering a silent prayer, requesting forgiveness from LeberMac (wherever he was), he punched the cargo eject button. Hundreds of tequila bottles exploded out of the rear of the Centurion with the jettisoned cargo hatch in a spray of glass shards and flash-frozen alcohol, taking Smittens completely by surprise. The cargo hatch bounced off the front of Smitten's ship with a thud and a multitude of still-intact bottles obscured his view.
Recovering from the initial shock of the unexpected move, Smittens fired off 6 glowing dull red shots from the plasma cannon, smashing through the cloud of tequila bottles, solidly impacting on Borb's Centurion as it whipped around for the snap shot with the gauss cannon, its armor suddenly reduced by half.
Borb's Centurion Mk. II spun around, expecting Smittens to be in his MSC Ragnarok, trying to get closer to nullify the effectiveness of the rockets, and was shocked at Smittens' bluff that he had just called.
Smittens was pouring plasma cannon fire down on him from his... tiny Govbus. Borb actually laughed out loud as the next couple of shots from the EC-88 hit him squarely, taking his armor down to 30%. He squeezed off two gauss blasts, knocking Smittens and his EC-88 into a roll and shearing off armor. The combatants circled each other in a dance of feints, rolls and strafes, with Smittens attempting to block Borb's escape to Artana. He was going to need help doing so; therefore he switched to the [IA] comm frequency...
"Kernel.Panic, Stukov, report to Divinia system, Artana Aquilus wormhole sector. I am engaged with Borb II, requesting assistance..." WHAM!
WHAM! The last two hits had taken the poor EC-88 down to a quarter of its armor. Smittens dove into an aggressive strafe/roll and emptied a full salvo of plasma cannon fire at Borb, hitting him once. He traded distance for time and the battle drifted ever closer to the Artana wormhole. The EC-88 was just not built for combat, but the battle continued; they traded another set of hits until both of their ships were smoking hulks and the battle has progressed to the very face of the wormhole. Each pilot was circling the other, letting their respective batteries charge for the jump into the next system when two new warp signatures appeared less then 1500 m away. The cavalry had arrived. Kernel.Panic and Stukov tore across the empty space between themselves and Borb, intent on their prey.
Borb knew when he was outmatched - 3 on 1 when he was at 8% armor was a losing proposition. He depressed the wormhole activation before the two Valkyries could make themselves useful and slipped away into Artana Aquilus. Smittens attempted to follow, but with the combination of the slow government battery's recharge and the damage to his FTL drive, Borb was able to escape across several sectors before he was even able to make a single jump. Kernel.Panic and Stukov joined him on the Artana side of the wormhole as soon as they could.
"Don't bother, gentlemen, " Smittens said as he coughed from the smoke in his cabin. "He's away, but we have some important information."
"You don't look so good," Kernel.Panic noticed. "Let's get you back to HQ. And what's this important information?"
"From their actions today, I realized that [BLAK] has no idea where LeberMac is either. Which means he'll need to be replaced, at least temporarily. Anyway, let's get this heap of smoking crap back to the dock." Smittens knew that he'd need help now in training up his military pilots, especially now that [BLAK] seemed to be active again. It was against his better judgement, but he knew the perfect person to ask. Borb the Second was the Itani version of Borb II. The second Borb was technically the same individual he'd just fought against, except for the fact that he was usually sympathetic to the Itani cause. Usually. With his connections to [BLAK], Smittens knew he could recruit Borb the Second with the promise of enough money. The community may not like it, but it was necessary to fill the vacuum. He'd make the difficult call after he got back to the station and washed the acrid stench of burning EC-88 out of his hair.
All three pilots returned through the wormhole and helped their commander limp back to the Itani Alliance headquarters. On their way back they passed a forgotten floating mass of glass shards, alcohol, and some intact bottles. The slowly freezing amber liquid in the remaining bottles refracted the starlight into tiny rainbows that glinted in the void like a beacon in the darkness. Fully half of the bottles were still intact, surprisingly.
Elsewhere in spacetime...
"No matter how big you are, there is always someone or something bigger than you out there."
The massive binary pair of red giant stars presided over an ancient stellar system in the cosmic wastelands between Sedina and Latos. In ages past, billions of years ago, this system had been dominated by a calm pair of large blue-white binaries supporting a starfaring civilization that had reached out to other nearby stars. Over the eons, the stars had exhausted their supplies of hydrogen and had started to fuse helium, fueling their huge expansion and causing the gradual destruction of the civilization that had relied on their light and warmth. Now, the remnants of their civilization sat on baked cinders of cracked planets that orbited all too closely to the twirling crimson suns. A single overengineered device had remained in a Lagrange orbit point between the two stars. This artifact from ages past had collected the energy from the stars for the use of the civilization and stored it in a pocket universe, until it was to be used. Three billion years after the demise of its creators, this device had continued to operate. Several million years ago it had reached a critical energy storage point and send out insistent beacons and warning notifications that were beyond the understanding or conceptual framework of the new inhabitants of the galaxy. Sadly, the device was no longer able to contain the pocket universe's exponentially increasing energy and had requested immediate maintenance for the last millenia. The ghosts of ages past had not been able to heed its warnings or to bleed off its energy to satisfy its requests, transmitting its final requests for maintenance in vain, the device failed.
The explosion lit up the entire galaxy in a display of visible light that created daylight situations across the inhabited systems from Ukari to Odia, hazard levels of hard radiation were thankfully contained by the advanced machine's functions to the local uninhabited area between Latos and Sedina. Three billion years of energy output from the dual suns was released in a picosecond, instantly causing a dual suernova and blasting away the layers of the mighty suns that bracketed it. The explosion created the single largest gravity sink in the galaxy, affecting orbits of planets as far away as Bractus and requiring all starships in transit at the time to recalibrate their nav systems from scratch to take into account the new gravitational influence.
Another singularity was also affected by this phenomenon. As if pulled by curiosity, the hurtling black hole with its recent prisoner was drawn towards the gargantuan black hole created by the explosion. It approached at velocities approaching lightspeed and took a slingshot vector around the newest (and largest) object in the galaxy. As it made its approach, the tiniest amount of mass was robbed by the gigantic monster singularity and an interesting thing happened. The hurtling black hole that had captured the unsuspecting Valkyrie had in turn lost a part of itself to its bigger counterpart, losing mass and hence a bit of gravitational pull and circumference. The zone of its event horizon pulled back by the slightest of amounts as it careened in its arcing path. Time began to slowly move forward again inside the wrecked Valkyrie, and the prisoner came to terms with his continued existence.
The orbital velocity required to keep the remnants of the crushed Valkyrie in a stable orbit straddling the event horizon was now ever so slightly less than the velocity required to escape from the oblivion of the singularity. Time began again after its stasis and the craft began to spiral out from the singularity. The prisoner felt the tiniest of sparks within his mind as that last remaining thought stopped pulling away from him, and he realized that he had his consciousness back. It was only a matter of time before he was freed now, and even though he was unable to physically move, there was a positive sign. A faintness in front of him, something that was less dark than the vacuum, dark gray, or was it becoming red? No, it was becoming brilliant white, and resolving into a point...
He realized it was a star.
Chapter 3: Realizations
The dark amber liquid sloshed languidly within the heavy bottles, formed from thick, real glass. Pickled over the millennia in its liquid grave, the pale gusano worm floated and bounced around the interior as if it were still alive. There was a loud clink as the last bottle was stacked neatly next to its brothers in the hold of the Centurion Mk. II. The cargo hold held 11 cu's, and it was now almost completely full of tequila bottles in a precise geometric stacking arrangement, maximizing space.
Feeling very smug and pleased with himself for his little "appropriation", Borb/Shinas closed the cargo hatch door slowly, carefully, making sure that the bottles would not interfere with the latching and sealing mechanism. He touched the control panel and the door latched, air hissed out under pressure and the hatch made a smooth seal with the rest of the ship. The docking bay of Coranis Watch echoed with the hiss from the sealed compartment.
Tuned into the proceedings still through his Serco implants, he heard Smittens call for the end of the [IA] council meeting. He was about to relax in the knowledge of a job well done when there were several odd clicking sounds transmitted through the microphone, alternating with some kind of ground loop interference humming. He froze in place next to his ship and strained to listen through the device for any clue as to what had happened. Smittens was whispering, but to who? He was able to make out a few words, "... bay 3... discreet.. situation..."
Frak. He looked at the big number "3" painted on the wall of the docking bay that he was in and realized he'd overstayed his welcome. No time to lose. With a single bound he heaved himself into the cockpit of the Cent and keyed his mic.
"[IA] Stardock this is Shinas, requesting immediate departure clearance."
"Negative Shinas, on-deck combat patrol has launch priority. Hold position until cleared. Confirm," the stationmaster stated plainly.
Borb's mind raced as he explored his options. He couldn't stay where he was - even a cursory inspection of his ship would reveal the control and latching mechanism for the Corvus surveillance device. He could destroy his ship but that would make it obvious who the infiltrator was. He was out of options.
Sigh. He was going to have to shoot his way out of it again.
"[IA] Stardock, this is Shinas. Open bay 3 doors. Now."
The stationmaster was hopping mad when he got back on the comm frequency, "Damnit boy, you sit there until you are cleared, understand?"
"Oh, I... Understand." Borb/Shinas flipped the saftey off on his ship's gauss cannon and calmly fired two bursts from the weapon into the docking bay door, blasting a Centurion-sized hole in it and decompressing the chamber. Packing material and wood from the tequila crates smashed through the opening along with a myriad assortment of tools and paperwork, vanishing into the vacuum of space.
"Guess I'm cleared for departure now, eh pal?" Borb growled into the stationmaster's ear and boosted out of the dock, spinning his ship around 180 degrees and planning to end the life of that annoying stationmaster. However, before he could fire he was distracted by the motion of an airlock door opening from the station to the docking bay...
Smittens met up with Stukov and Kernel.Panic outside of docking bay 3, already suited up for combat operations.
"What's going on?" Stukov asked. "I didn't get an alert notice."
"We're just going for a little run around the station, boys, " Smittens said, "just a quick orbit. You both ready?"
Kernel.Panic nodded. Stukov looked first at k.p and then at Smittens. "Ready as I'll ever be."
"Good." Smittens said, "Now lets get moving." All three pilots donned their protective gear, cycled the airlock to the docking bay and stepped out onto the hangar deck.
It exploded around them and they caught sight of Shinas' Centurion boosting through a ragged hole in the docking bay doors. Kernel.Panic and Stukov were blown across the bay by the concussion towards their IDF Valkyries and were scrambling to avoid the same fate as the tequila crates. Smittens had been jolted in the opposite direction, he picked himself up and gathered his bearings, noticing the ship floating just outside the dock, weapons hot. All three immediately grabbed onto something solid while everything that wasn't tied down was expelled into space. They noticed Shinas' ship spinning around to face the dock, weapons powered.
Smittens looked up into the eyes of Shinas, a scant 100 meters away in the pilot's seat of the Centurion. Realizing too late that Shinas had been a spy all along, he watched as Shinas slowly peeled off his face, revealing the handsome mug of Borb II, grinning madly. The gauss cannon wound up and Borb fired two more shots as Smittens prepared to meet his maker.
The two shots instead impacted on Smittens' MSC Ragnarok, destroying the entire left side of the ship and fusing the FTL drive to the sublight engines. Apparently Smittens wasn't going anywhere, now. Borb whipped the ship over the surface of the station to the surveillance device, uploaded the data and then blasted the device for good measure. He then poured on the speed and warped out of Divinia in the general direction of Jallik.
The stationmaster gathered his wits, hit the emergency force field activation and the hurricane of escaping air ceased. From their Valkyries, Stukov and Kernel.Panic called out to their Commander.
"Holy Helio, Smittens are you OK? Smittens?"
"I'm FINE!" Smittens seethed. "What are you waiting for? After him!"
"Who, Shinas? What the hell does he think he's doing?" Stukov exclaimed.
"We've been had, boys." Smittens said, matter-of-factly, "Shinas is Borb II. Now... PURSUE!"
The two magnificent Itani Valkyries roared off the flight deck on an intercept course with the loaded Centurion while Smittens tried to find the next available ship to join in the chase - at this point, anything would do as long as it was ready for departure NOW. Stukov and Kernel.Panic screamed through the sparse Coranis asteroid field and punched through into empty space at 240 m/s. The two pilots were intent on catching their quarry, and both warped to the Jallik wormhole at precisely the right time, efficiently utilizing their fast charge batteries. The star patterns changed as they emerged into Divinia's gateway to the Jallik frontier system right next to the wormhole.
As their batteries recharged, they scanned the system for Borb/Shinas. He was nowhere to be found.
"Damn, he's FAST." Stukov said. "He's through the wormhole already?"
"Apparently. Let's go, C'MON!" Kernel.Panic ordered as flight lead. If Borb had information regarding what had happened to LeberMac, he needed to be captured and interrogated.
Both ships warped through to Jallik and continued their desperate search through that violet-hued system for the escaped spy.
It had probably been long enough.
Borb knew that timing was everything in chases like this, the years of cargo captures had taught him how to evade a pursuer. He poked the nose of the Centurion out from his hiding spot in the asteroids of Divinia N-13. His cargo clanked and rattled as the ship made for open space, preparing to jump to Artana Aquilus. He was sure he'd broken a few of the bottles in some of the maneuvering before, he could smell the scent of spilled alcohol wafting up from the storage bay. As soon as he made it past the asteroid field he punched the jump engines to make his escape. The universe burst into white-hot quantum uncertainty and the ship emerged at the wormhole to Artana, Borb started to relax and was about to boost towards the wormhole...
"Hello, Borb."
It was the voice of Smittens, broadcasting on the sectorwide guard channel. Borb made preparations for a 180 degree snap shot with his gauss cannon, but was stopped by the sound of Smit's voice again.
"Don't even THINK about moving. I'm right behind you, and with what I'm packing, you'd be obliterated in milliseconds. Hold position until we escort you back to [IA] Headquaters." Smittens' voice said over the comm.
Without moving his head, Borb glanced at his radar. Smittens WAS directly behind him, he had anticipated the deceptive jump and had smartly positioned himself directly behind the warp-in point, just in case Borb doubled back and tried to take the long way through Itani territory to get back to grayspace. There was no rear viewport on the Centurion, so he couldn't see what Smittens was flying, but he knew that if it was his usual MSC Ragnarok that he had no chance of escape. The slightest movement and he would be blown into his component molecules. But, he had one small chance. He hated to do it, but sometimes great sacrifices were necessary.
Muttering a silent prayer, requesting forgiveness from LeberMac (wherever he was), he punched the cargo eject button. Hundreds of tequila bottles exploded out of the rear of the Centurion with the jettisoned cargo hatch in a spray of glass shards and flash-frozen alcohol, taking Smittens completely by surprise. The cargo hatch bounced off the front of Smitten's ship with a thud and a multitude of still-intact bottles obscured his view.
Recovering from the initial shock of the unexpected move, Smittens fired off 6 glowing dull red shots from the plasma cannon, smashing through the cloud of tequila bottles, solidly impacting on Borb's Centurion as it whipped around for the snap shot with the gauss cannon, its armor suddenly reduced by half.
Borb's Centurion Mk. II spun around, expecting Smittens to be in his MSC Ragnarok, trying to get closer to nullify the effectiveness of the rockets, and was shocked at Smittens' bluff that he had just called.
Smittens was pouring plasma cannon fire down on him from his... tiny Govbus. Borb actually laughed out loud as the next couple of shots from the EC-88 hit him squarely, taking his armor down to 30%. He squeezed off two gauss blasts, knocking Smittens and his EC-88 into a roll and shearing off armor. The combatants circled each other in a dance of feints, rolls and strafes, with Smittens attempting to block Borb's escape to Artana. He was going to need help doing so; therefore he switched to the [IA] comm frequency...
"Kernel.Panic, Stukov, report to Divinia system, Artana Aquilus wormhole sector. I am engaged with Borb II, requesting assistance..." WHAM!
WHAM! The last two hits had taken the poor EC-88 down to a quarter of its armor. Smittens dove into an aggressive strafe/roll and emptied a full salvo of plasma cannon fire at Borb, hitting him once. He traded distance for time and the battle drifted ever closer to the Artana wormhole. The EC-88 was just not built for combat, but the battle continued; they traded another set of hits until both of their ships were smoking hulks and the battle has progressed to the very face of the wormhole. Each pilot was circling the other, letting their respective batteries charge for the jump into the next system when two new warp signatures appeared less then 1500 m away. The cavalry had arrived. Kernel.Panic and Stukov tore across the empty space between themselves and Borb, intent on their prey.
Borb knew when he was outmatched - 3 on 1 when he was at 8% armor was a losing proposition. He depressed the wormhole activation before the two Valkyries could make themselves useful and slipped away into Artana Aquilus. Smittens attempted to follow, but with the combination of the slow government battery's recharge and the damage to his FTL drive, Borb was able to escape across several sectors before he was even able to make a single jump. Kernel.Panic and Stukov joined him on the Artana side of the wormhole as soon as they could.
"Don't bother, gentlemen, " Smittens said as he coughed from the smoke in his cabin. "He's away, but we have some important information."
"You don't look so good," Kernel.Panic noticed. "Let's get you back to HQ. And what's this important information?"
"From their actions today, I realized that [BLAK] has no idea where LeberMac is either. Which means he'll need to be replaced, at least temporarily. Anyway, let's get this heap of smoking crap back to the dock." Smittens knew that he'd need help now in training up his military pilots, especially now that [BLAK] seemed to be active again. It was against his better judgement, but he knew the perfect person to ask. Borb the Second was the Itani version of Borb II. The second Borb was technically the same individual he'd just fought against, except for the fact that he was usually sympathetic to the Itani cause. Usually. With his connections to [BLAK], Smittens knew he could recruit Borb the Second with the promise of enough money. The community may not like it, but it was necessary to fill the vacuum. He'd make the difficult call after he got back to the station and washed the acrid stench of burning EC-88 out of his hair.
All three pilots returned through the wormhole and helped their commander limp back to the Itani Alliance headquarters. On their way back they passed a forgotten floating mass of glass shards, alcohol, and some intact bottles. The slowly freezing amber liquid in the remaining bottles refracted the starlight into tiny rainbows that glinted in the void like a beacon in the darkness. Fully half of the bottles were still intact, surprisingly.
Elsewhere in spacetime...
"No matter how big you are, there is always someone or something bigger than you out there."
The massive binary pair of red giant stars presided over an ancient stellar system in the cosmic wastelands between Sedina and Latos. In ages past, billions of years ago, this system had been dominated by a calm pair of large blue-white binaries supporting a starfaring civilization that had reached out to other nearby stars. Over the eons, the stars had exhausted their supplies of hydrogen and had started to fuse helium, fueling their huge expansion and causing the gradual destruction of the civilization that had relied on their light and warmth. Now, the remnants of their civilization sat on baked cinders of cracked planets that orbited all too closely to the twirling crimson suns. A single overengineered device had remained in a Lagrange orbit point between the two stars. This artifact from ages past had collected the energy from the stars for the use of the civilization and stored it in a pocket universe, until it was to be used. Three billion years after the demise of its creators, this device had continued to operate. Several million years ago it had reached a critical energy storage point and send out insistent beacons and warning notifications that were beyond the understanding or conceptual framework of the new inhabitants of the galaxy. Sadly, the device was no longer able to contain the pocket universe's exponentially increasing energy and had requested immediate maintenance for the last millenia. The ghosts of ages past had not been able to heed its warnings or to bleed off its energy to satisfy its requests, transmitting its final requests for maintenance in vain, the device failed.
The explosion lit up the entire galaxy in a display of visible light that created daylight situations across the inhabited systems from Ukari to Odia, hazard levels of hard radiation were thankfully contained by the advanced machine's functions to the local uninhabited area between Latos and Sedina. Three billion years of energy output from the dual suns was released in a picosecond, instantly causing a dual suernova and blasting away the layers of the mighty suns that bracketed it. The explosion created the single largest gravity sink in the galaxy, affecting orbits of planets as far away as Bractus and requiring all starships in transit at the time to recalibrate their nav systems from scratch to take into account the new gravitational influence.
Another singularity was also affected by this phenomenon. As if pulled by curiosity, the hurtling black hole with its recent prisoner was drawn towards the gargantuan black hole created by the explosion. It approached at velocities approaching lightspeed and took a slingshot vector around the newest (and largest) object in the galaxy. As it made its approach, the tiniest amount of mass was robbed by the gigantic monster singularity and an interesting thing happened. The hurtling black hole that had captured the unsuspecting Valkyrie had in turn lost a part of itself to its bigger counterpart, losing mass and hence a bit of gravitational pull and circumference. The zone of its event horizon pulled back by the slightest of amounts as it careened in its arcing path. Time began to slowly move forward again inside the wrecked Valkyrie, and the prisoner came to terms with his continued existence.
The orbital velocity required to keep the remnants of the crushed Valkyrie in a stable orbit straddling the event horizon was now ever so slightly less than the velocity required to escape from the oblivion of the singularity. Time began again after its stasis and the craft began to spiral out from the singularity. The prisoner felt the tiniest of sparks within his mind as that last remaining thought stopped pulling away from him, and he realized that he had his consciousness back. It was only a matter of time before he was freed now, and even though he was unable to physically move, there was a positive sign. A faintness in front of him, something that was less dark than the vacuum, dark gray, or was it becoming red? No, it was becoming brilliant white, and resolving into a point...
He realized it was a star.
August 15, 4433
Chapter 4: Returns
Slowly, slowly the feeling of consciousness returned to LeberMac. He felt like eons had passed in his prison of solitude, but he knew that the strength of his spacetime prison was ebbing with every second. Through his canopy he could see the area of utter blackness that had very nearly been his undoing, it took up perhaps a quarter of the sky as he spiralled out from it at a tenth-lightspeed. Soon he would break fully free of the singularities' reach...
But, what then? His ship was barely powered, unable to signal or move on its own. Creating thoughts was still a struggle, but with each moment they became easier.
Broma-Ba Slick took his customary deep breath as he emerged from the wormhole at the controls of his moth. He loved being out from behind his desk on these trade runs in Itani space, especially if he could miss critical staff meetings by doing do, and even more especially now that it was a little safer out here, what with [BLAK] gone and Borb blowing himself up and everything. Other pirates were still around, but a whole bunch of them were hunting some other idiot who had dared to taunt them. Ahh well, good for business and all. Bad for friendships.
Lost in thought, Broma confirmed that the sector was clear and let the Behemoth drift for a while. Strangely, yes he HAD thought of some of those opponents as friends, or at least worthy adversaries. He reached under his seat and pulled out the very last bottle of LeberMac's tequila in the universe. There was about a shot or so left. he unscrewed the cap and raised the bottle into the air, toasting old friends and great times...
As if a ghost had returned his toast by clinking his glass, a <clink> echoed throughout the cabin.
Broma looked around the cabin and then down at the bottle. He raised it again, tentatively... <clink>
Broma screamed and ran down the hall to the Behemoth's rudimentary science station, locking the hatch to the command center behind him. Even more bewildered than usual, Broma drained the last of the tequila and was about to run the bottle through the ship's electron scanner when he heard it again... <clink>
He looked up from the electron scanner and heard more, the sounds seemed to be emanating from the ship's hull. <clink, clink> Realization dawned on him, and he rushed to the nearest porthole to take a look outside his ship.
His behemoth was floating through a tiny nebula of liquid, glass and bottles. <clink, clink> One of the bottles drifted close enough to the porthole for him to see what it was. Odd, it looked familiar. He looked at the bottle in his hand, made a stunning connection and hoisted his empty bottle up to the porthole to compare it with the one outside. They were... the same! He was floating through a goldmine of tequila! Perhaps the last of the old earth Tequila in existence! He made a snap decision - he had to jettison a bit of his plasteel in order to capture this treasure. He made his way back to the command center and depressurized the hold, opening the hatch like a giant maw on the behemoth, scooping up every last floating bottle possible. When done, he closed the cargo hold hatch, repressurized the hold and warped to an empty sector. He couldn't wait to see what he had brought in.
When Broma had made his way down to the hold, it reeked like... well like what he remembered of LeberMac's Valkyrie cockipt. Melting alcohol and bits of glass, mostly, but there were at least 50 bottles of flash-frozen tequila down there. He donned some gloves, grabbed them and put them in the science station's freezer to ironically warm them up slowly. Hunh. Wonder what these were doing out there...
"Ah well." Broma muttered to himself. Those tequila bottles were more valuable than the entire hold of plasteel several times over. Once he got back to Sedina he'd sell most of it and then keep the remaining 10 bottles or so on hand to run through the AutoVats back at Sedina V Hold. Something that those pirates had cooked up recently, the AutoVats could synthesize (more or less) any illegal alcohol, and owners of the machines were making a killing on Serco Roid Rammers and Tunguska Xith Sappers. This find would certainly be worth synthesizing, perhaps he could get royalties? Hrmm, quite a return on investment that would be. He left the Artana Aquilus wormhole and started making his way back to UIT space through the blue-green skies of Divinia.
August 22, 4433
After what seemed like several days of constant mental effort, LeberMac had programmed the remnants of the Valkyrie to sustain him inside his flight suit in deep hibernation, there was no energy for a distress signal. He sealed the airtight suit carefully, especially around his shattered left side, and keyed the switch that would activate his stasis. Repair nanites would do the work of repairing his injuries, and the ship would have enough battery power left for... a week? a month? It was unknown. A different kind of loss of consciousness rolled over him, the need for sleep. He didn't know if he was closing his eyes for the last time, but damn he was tired. Out of his hands now, anyway...
Broma-Ba Slick congratulated himself for making it through Azek without being hailed by [TGFT] HQ. He really didn't want any specific questions regarding his unscheduled pickup in Divinia, mainly because he wasn't very good at answering specific questions from angry people who didn't get all their plasteel. He could easily make this delivery to Sedina, find a buyer for the tequila which was STILL in his science station sample freezer, and get back before he was declared overdue. Broma sailed the huge transport ship through Latos towards the Sedina wormhole. He hated this part. Recent changes with that dual supernova had made jumping sectors as tedious as jumping through wormholes, and once you used a wormhole now, you weren't jumping back immediately. The gravitational disruption made trading just a little more dangerous, since escape was much harder now.
He coasted to the Latos side of the wormhole to Sedina. He wound up the warp engines and made sure his swarms were armed and his mines were ready. He was ready. Deep breath, and...
WHAM! A serious impact on the fore starboard, hull breach! Alarms went off all over Broma's control panel, lights blinked and warning buzzers all clamored for his attention. He wished for the instruction manual (which he had used as a desk-leveling device back in his office), but he got the general gist of what the alarms meant: bad things. He was about to head for the lifepod, anticipating the next hit... but it never came.
Proximity sensors showed a metallic mass tumbling away from his Behemoth. Wow - whatever that was had to be what had hit him. Sensor readings made it out to be almost pure metal object, probably a nice 'roid. Well, worth picking up anyway. He set the ship for an automatic retrieval and went belowdecks to don the pressure suit and seal the hull breach.
About an hour later, which would have been minutes if Broma had read the hull-knitter's instruction manual, he had finished the repair job and decided to check out the asteroid in his hull. As he took off his presure suit, he heard banging and bellowing coming from his cargo hold. Wha? He'd been boarded! He looked around for the nearest available weapon, then remembered the bottles in the science freezer. He grabbed one for use as a weapon and made his way slowly down to the cargo deck. He spotted the cargo and was surprised to discover that it was a ship. The pounding was coming from inside it. A distorted, ugly mess of a ship, beat to hell and melted by radiation. The banging and hollering continued. Broma carefully made his way down the ramp and broke open the spiderwebbed canopy with his boot, raising the bottle high in the most aggressive posture he could muster.
LeberMac fell out.
Broma stammered, unable to reasonably express his surprise and shock. "Wha... howda... whatchi.... HUH?"
LeberMac opened one eye, the lights of the cargo bay hold stung, but he noticed that he had been rescued by Broma-Ba Slick, and that Broma had tequila.
"What, Broma, were you expecting me?"
*****
Days passed after the successful "rescue", the hospital stay, and the radiation poisioning therapy. LeberMac had made his way down to Sedina V Hold to oversee his current project while he recovered. He had given Broma all the salvage rights to the tequila, and he had agreed to split the royalties of the AutoVat synth-tequila with him. The surviving tequila bottles had been studied, distilled, analyzed and been put thru every kind of test imaginable. Now, the Corvus engineers had messaged him to come down for the final tasting. He arrived at the bar and the chief AutoVat scientist handed him a small cup, poured from a bottle taken from the machine.
LeberMac looked strangely at the Corvus brewing specialist and pointed to the bottle, waving the cup away. He took a long, hard pull from the bottle. It was harsher than the real thing, with a less pleasant aftertaste, but the flavor (and more importantly the alcohol content) were the same. Aaaahhhhhh. He sat down at the bar and turned around to face the other starfarers in the bar, some of which he knew well, and some of which he had never met. He poured several tequila shots for the patrons and began, "So...."
"What'd I miss?"
<the end>
Chapter 4: Returns
Slowly, slowly the feeling of consciousness returned to LeberMac. He felt like eons had passed in his prison of solitude, but he knew that the strength of his spacetime prison was ebbing with every second. Through his canopy he could see the area of utter blackness that had very nearly been his undoing, it took up perhaps a quarter of the sky as he spiralled out from it at a tenth-lightspeed. Soon he would break fully free of the singularities' reach...
But, what then? His ship was barely powered, unable to signal or move on its own. Creating thoughts was still a struggle, but with each moment they became easier.
Broma-Ba Slick took his customary deep breath as he emerged from the wormhole at the controls of his moth. He loved being out from behind his desk on these trade runs in Itani space, especially if he could miss critical staff meetings by doing do, and even more especially now that it was a little safer out here, what with [BLAK] gone and Borb blowing himself up and everything. Other pirates were still around, but a whole bunch of them were hunting some other idiot who had dared to taunt them. Ahh well, good for business and all. Bad for friendships.
Lost in thought, Broma confirmed that the sector was clear and let the Behemoth drift for a while. Strangely, yes he HAD thought of some of those opponents as friends, or at least worthy adversaries. He reached under his seat and pulled out the very last bottle of LeberMac's tequila in the universe. There was about a shot or so left. he unscrewed the cap and raised the bottle into the air, toasting old friends and great times...
As if a ghost had returned his toast by clinking his glass, a <clink> echoed throughout the cabin.
Broma looked around the cabin and then down at the bottle. He raised it again, tentatively... <clink>
Broma screamed and ran down the hall to the Behemoth's rudimentary science station, locking the hatch to the command center behind him. Even more bewildered than usual, Broma drained the last of the tequila and was about to run the bottle through the ship's electron scanner when he heard it again... <clink>
He looked up from the electron scanner and heard more, the sounds seemed to be emanating from the ship's hull. <clink, clink> Realization dawned on him, and he rushed to the nearest porthole to take a look outside his ship.
His behemoth was floating through a tiny nebula of liquid, glass and bottles. <clink, clink> One of the bottles drifted close enough to the porthole for him to see what it was. Odd, it looked familiar. He looked at the bottle in his hand, made a stunning connection and hoisted his empty bottle up to the porthole to compare it with the one outside. They were... the same! He was floating through a goldmine of tequila! Perhaps the last of the old earth Tequila in existence! He made a snap decision - he had to jettison a bit of his plasteel in order to capture this treasure. He made his way back to the command center and depressurized the hold, opening the hatch like a giant maw on the behemoth, scooping up every last floating bottle possible. When done, he closed the cargo hold hatch, repressurized the hold and warped to an empty sector. He couldn't wait to see what he had brought in.
When Broma had made his way down to the hold, it reeked like... well like what he remembered of LeberMac's Valkyrie cockipt. Melting alcohol and bits of glass, mostly, but there were at least 50 bottles of flash-frozen tequila down there. He donned some gloves, grabbed them and put them in the science station's freezer to ironically warm them up slowly. Hunh. Wonder what these were doing out there...
"Ah well." Broma muttered to himself. Those tequila bottles were more valuable than the entire hold of plasteel several times over. Once he got back to Sedina he'd sell most of it and then keep the remaining 10 bottles or so on hand to run through the AutoVats back at Sedina V Hold. Something that those pirates had cooked up recently, the AutoVats could synthesize (more or less) any illegal alcohol, and owners of the machines were making a killing on Serco Roid Rammers and Tunguska Xith Sappers. This find would certainly be worth synthesizing, perhaps he could get royalties? Hrmm, quite a return on investment that would be. He left the Artana Aquilus wormhole and started making his way back to UIT space through the blue-green skies of Divinia.
August 22, 4433
After what seemed like several days of constant mental effort, LeberMac had programmed the remnants of the Valkyrie to sustain him inside his flight suit in deep hibernation, there was no energy for a distress signal. He sealed the airtight suit carefully, especially around his shattered left side, and keyed the switch that would activate his stasis. Repair nanites would do the work of repairing his injuries, and the ship would have enough battery power left for... a week? a month? It was unknown. A different kind of loss of consciousness rolled over him, the need for sleep. He didn't know if he was closing his eyes for the last time, but damn he was tired. Out of his hands now, anyway...
Broma-Ba Slick congratulated himself for making it through Azek without being hailed by [TGFT] HQ. He really didn't want any specific questions regarding his unscheduled pickup in Divinia, mainly because he wasn't very good at answering specific questions from angry people who didn't get all their plasteel. He could easily make this delivery to Sedina, find a buyer for the tequila which was STILL in his science station sample freezer, and get back before he was declared overdue. Broma sailed the huge transport ship through Latos towards the Sedina wormhole. He hated this part. Recent changes with that dual supernova had made jumping sectors as tedious as jumping through wormholes, and once you used a wormhole now, you weren't jumping back immediately. The gravitational disruption made trading just a little more dangerous, since escape was much harder now.
He coasted to the Latos side of the wormhole to Sedina. He wound up the warp engines and made sure his swarms were armed and his mines were ready. He was ready. Deep breath, and...
WHAM! A serious impact on the fore starboard, hull breach! Alarms went off all over Broma's control panel, lights blinked and warning buzzers all clamored for his attention. He wished for the instruction manual (which he had used as a desk-leveling device back in his office), but he got the general gist of what the alarms meant: bad things. He was about to head for the lifepod, anticipating the next hit... but it never came.
Proximity sensors showed a metallic mass tumbling away from his Behemoth. Wow - whatever that was had to be what had hit him. Sensor readings made it out to be almost pure metal object, probably a nice 'roid. Well, worth picking up anyway. He set the ship for an automatic retrieval and went belowdecks to don the pressure suit and seal the hull breach.
About an hour later, which would have been minutes if Broma had read the hull-knitter's instruction manual, he had finished the repair job and decided to check out the asteroid in his hull. As he took off his presure suit, he heard banging and bellowing coming from his cargo hold. Wha? He'd been boarded! He looked around for the nearest available weapon, then remembered the bottles in the science freezer. He grabbed one for use as a weapon and made his way slowly down to the cargo deck. He spotted the cargo and was surprised to discover that it was a ship. The pounding was coming from inside it. A distorted, ugly mess of a ship, beat to hell and melted by radiation. The banging and hollering continued. Broma carefully made his way down the ramp and broke open the spiderwebbed canopy with his boot, raising the bottle high in the most aggressive posture he could muster.
LeberMac fell out.
Broma stammered, unable to reasonably express his surprise and shock. "Wha... howda... whatchi.... HUH?"
LeberMac opened one eye, the lights of the cargo bay hold stung, but he noticed that he had been rescued by Broma-Ba Slick, and that Broma had tequila.
"What, Broma, were you expecting me?"
*****
Days passed after the successful "rescue", the hospital stay, and the radiation poisioning therapy. LeberMac had made his way down to Sedina V Hold to oversee his current project while he recovered. He had given Broma all the salvage rights to the tequila, and he had agreed to split the royalties of the AutoVat synth-tequila with him. The surviving tequila bottles had been studied, distilled, analyzed and been put thru every kind of test imaginable. Now, the Corvus engineers had messaged him to come down for the final tasting. He arrived at the bar and the chief AutoVat scientist handed him a small cup, poured from a bottle taken from the machine.
LeberMac looked strangely at the Corvus brewing specialist and pointed to the bottle, waving the cup away. He took a long, hard pull from the bottle. It was harsher than the real thing, with a less pleasant aftertaste, but the flavor (and more importantly the alcohol content) were the same. Aaaahhhhhh. He sat down at the bar and turned around to face the other starfarers in the bar, some of which he knew well, and some of which he had never met. He poured several tequila shots for the patrons and began, "So...."
"What'd I miss?"
<the end>
Welcome back. :D
wow...
nicely done Leber...
Welcome back.
nicely done Leber...
Welcome back.
*clap*
August 25, 4433
Smittens checked out one of the numerous shops in Sedina D14. He sighed deeply as his eyes rested on the bottles of Synth-tequilla. So, it was true. He strode off to his room, and opened a cupboard that smelled quite aweful. Plugging his nose with one hand, Smittens took his only bottle of actual tequilla out and set it down, next taking out a large tub of bubbling liquid labeled "Smitt's Synth Tequilla." He had been planning on making billions with it, but now that Corvus had beaten him to it...Smittens picked up his bottle of tequilla and drained it. He ripped the label off the tub and with a greedy tear in his eye, poored the mixture down the sink, leaving large burn marks on the smooth white stone.
August 25, 4433
Smittens checked out one of the numerous shops in Sedina D14. He sighed deeply as his eyes rested on the bottles of Synth-tequilla. So, it was true. He strode off to his room, and opened a cupboard that smelled quite aweful. Plugging his nose with one hand, Smittens took his only bottle of actual tequilla out and set it down, next taking out a large tub of bubbling liquid labeled "Smitt's Synth Tequilla." He had been planning on making billions with it, but now that Corvus had beaten him to it...Smittens picked up his bottle of tequilla and drained it. He ripped the label off the tub and with a greedy tear in his eye, poored the mixture down the sink, leaving large burn marks on the smooth white stone.
LeberMac wandered in as his new LT Smittens poured the vile liquid down the drain...
"Don't worry, man, there's enough Tequila royalties to go around. If there's one thing those Corvus brewmasters know how to do, it's grease the wheels. I made sure that they knew (in no uncertain terms) which side their bread was buttered on."
Smittens despondently watched the last of his attempt at synth-tequila eat through the bottom of the sink and start working on the floor plating.
"Oooh. Strong, though..." LeberMac mused, leaning over the sink to look at the damage, "Next time use less sulfuric acid, more grain alcohol."
Smittens was still upset, but the mention of being cut in on the royalties seemed to brighten his day a bit.
"C'mon," LeberMac said as he led smittens out the door, "Let's go blow up some Arklan Guardians, that always seemed to cheer you up..."
"Don't worry, man, there's enough Tequila royalties to go around. If there's one thing those Corvus brewmasters know how to do, it's grease the wheels. I made sure that they knew (in no uncertain terms) which side their bread was buttered on."
Smittens despondently watched the last of his attempt at synth-tequila eat through the bottom of the sink and start working on the floor plating.
"Oooh. Strong, though..." LeberMac mused, leaning over the sink to look at the damage, "Next time use less sulfuric acid, more grain alcohol."
Smittens was still upset, but the mention of being cut in on the royalties seemed to brighten his day a bit.
"C'mon," LeberMac said as he led smittens out the door, "Let's go blow up some Arklan Guardians, that always seemed to cheer you up..."
"Can I use an MSC? Huh? Can I? Can I?"
LeberMac adopted a fatherly tone and said to his new superior officer, "Yes, yes you can. Now let's go get some ice cream."
Strike that, now that I outrank Smittens...
Smittens! Whereeees my coffee?! (Oh and get my slippers, too, Mr. Assistant...)
Smittens! Whereeees my coffee?! (Oh and get my slippers, too, Mr. Assistant...)
"Here you go sir. I got you a new flavor...lemon..."
LeberMac grimaced.
"Smittens.. why does my coffee taste like urine?"
Mentally, LeberMac cued the /guild vote council smittens NO command, and changed his smile to a smirk as he waited for Smittens to leave, then dumped the coffee.
"Smittens.. why does my coffee taste like urine?"
Mentally, LeberMac cued the /guild vote council smittens NO command, and changed his smile to a smirk as he waited for Smittens to leave, then dumped the coffee.