Chapter 5: Chapter 5; Corridors

Unlike the cargo bay door, or the door to my quarters, the door to the cockpit slid open smoothly and with only a whisper of sound. I gave Lerra a sidelong look as we stood in front of the open doorway and chidingly remarked. “This door doesn’t stick.”

Lerra’s sidelong look wasn’t as playful as mine, in fact it could be called deadly actually and I felt a pain in my chest, as she bluntly told me. “It’s used more.” She marched past me and plopped herself into the pilot seat and with the blind deft movements of long practice she got the ship ready for flight without looking at what she was doing. She hit a switch that had nothing to do with flying the ship and the intercom crackled quietly. “Arthur is everything stored and secure.”

It took Arthur a moment to answer her and when he did he sounded as if he had developed a stutter. “Se, se, se, cur…”

“Is something wrong with him?” I asked when I took the navigator’s seat.

Lerra huffed at me, she actually huffed at me. “He’s older than this ship and I’ve rebuilt him more times than the cargo bay door’s motor so yeah, he glitches every once in a while, but it’s nothing serious, mostly just his vocal processors. I’m not good with audio things.” She shrugged and that was the end of that. “Arthur reinitialize your vocal processors would ya?”

It took a moment or two for Arthur to do whatever he did, but it worked great. “Thank you ma’am,” he said his voice back to normal, “the captain and all cargo stored and secure.”

“Good,” Lerra said softly, “you know the drill so get to the engine room and watch our engine temp.”

“I’m already on my way.” Arthur told her.

“Watch our temp?” I asked sidelong.

Lerra didn’t even look at me as she continued to go through all the needed preflight checks. “We have a generation 3 tesseract engine in the old girl,” she said patting the console in front of her like it was an old pet dog or something, “it can run a bit hot at times.”

“Exactly how hot is hot?” I knew from memory that generation three tesseract engines were notorious for flooding the ships they were installed in with enough radiation to killing everyone in a matter of minutes so I was understandably worried about the threat of imminent death, or even a very slow one with my skin melting away.

“If you couldn’t survive a dip in the oceans of Hades III I’d stay out of engineering when and if we get into a fire fight.” Lerra was so straight faced that I couldn’t tell if she was making a joke but I doubted it.

“I’ll remember that.” I assured her solemnly.

“Good.” She said flipping the last of the switches that activated the engine and they hummed to life. “Opening docking bay doors.” She announced but I couldn’t tell why since the very act off opening the doors should have been enough since it sounded like a grinding elevator through a loud speaker, and then there were the alarms.

It did make me remember that I needed to set up the interface though. “Wait, give me a second to set up the interface.”

Lerra took a firm hold of the stick and throttle control and clicked the engines into ten percent of their full power. “We’re on a schedule here, waiting ain’t part of it.”

I had to rush to set up the H.N.I. on the antiquated navigation console in front of me, I had to attach the power, connect it to the internal navigation pulse array, and then let it find our location from the ships charts of the area after it updated them from Alliance navigational HQ on Terra Luna. If the Black Star had a decent communication array it would have been simple enough, two maybe three seconds tops to take care of it but with its old satellites it took more like twenty, which was about ten too many. I finally noticed that the only sound I could hear was the hum of a hard drive spinning. I looked up and turned my head this way and that trying to check my ears.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Lerra asked, “You need to use the head or something cause its back by the common area if you do.”

“It’s not that,” I assured her, “it’s just that I can’t hear anything.”

“What do you mean, you can hear me well enough.”

“It’s not that, it’s that there are no space sounds, and I know that there aren’t any sounds in space since there is no air but when I was back on an Alliance ship there was always sounds with space travel, at least in the cockpit.”

“Oh, that,” Lerra said so off handedly it actually took me by surprise, “we don’t have an audio emulator in here, it broke about a month after I joined the crew and I could never get the damn thing to work again so we all just got used to not having one, besides I think its peaceful”

“Thank all the gods,” I said with real pleasure, “I hate those damn things.”

“The way the captain went off on me when I couldn’t fix it I fell under the impression that most humans like those things.”

“Most humans might,” I admitted, “but I’m not like most humans and I hate them.”

“Good.” She said guiding us out of port, “but I need to know where the nearest entrance or corridor we can breach is.”

I pinched the edges of the holographic map of our current location on the star map, and zoomed in until I had a positive location of the Black Star and the station behind us, it took a minute or so but I found a corridor we could enter that would lead to a decent intersection not too far so that we could change direction before we got too many light years in the wrong direction. “The entrance would be easier, head to seventeen degrees thirty-four minutes and twelve seconds by negative seventy-six degrees seven seconds from our current horizon.”

Lerra zeroed out our current horizon and moved the stick until the ships course matched that directions I had indicated. “Alright, now how far do we need to go?”

I gave the map a quick check. “1.25 light seconds.”

“Good.” Lerra said flatly to me before turning her attention back to the console, and the corner of her mouth curled up in anger. “Hey Arthur is the engine turning over okay cause the readings seem a bit low.”

“It is running fine ma’am, according to my reading we can enter the corridor at will.”

Lerra looked at the console again and tapped it and her face returned to normal. “It must have been a loose connection somewhere. Preparing to expand the tesseract field.”

“If that’s all taken care of,” I said getting up from my chair, “I don’t think you’ll need me anymore.”

Lerra didn’t even look at me as she focused on the console and the stars. “No I’m okay here, besides you probably want to make the charts for the rest of the trip.”

“Yeah,” I said a bit too snippily I have to admit, I knew just how hard it was to fly a ship through space let alone into a corridor, “I can’t thought since you haven’t told me where we’re going.”

Lerra hit a switch before she looked over her shoulder at me. “We’re heading to Destiny’s Grove, New London colony to be exact.”

At that point you could have used my chine to polish the floors it was hanging so low. “Destiny’s Grove isn’t a pirate’s den, it is pirate den.”

“No shit.” She snorts at me before she focuses on the stars in front of us. “That’s why you’re being paid a hundred thousand credits for this trip.”

“I thought it was a bit much but I thought it was because of my reputation.” I admitted. “Now that you’re telling me where we’re going I realize that the twenty thousand was more a danger fee than my reputation getting ahead of me, wasn’t it?”

“Obviously.” She said with a roll of her eyes.

“Is there anything else you have neglected to tell me about this damn trip?”

“Only that you’ll have to make a route that will keep us clear of rouge asteroids while flying in or near to gray mode so we don’t attract pirates.”

“Grey mode.” I snapped in shock with my tongue rolling out of my mouth to clean the floor along with my chine.

Lerra tilled her head and smirked at me before she said. “Jenkins could do it.”

“What was he,” I gaffed, “a god or something.”

“Not really,” She said flatly, “he never even made a pass at me. I guess whiskers were more his things rather than smooth green skin and cybernetic arms.”

“You don’t make this shit easy do you?”

“What would be the fun in that?”

“I’m on a freighter full of mad men.” I sighed in resignation since the ship was already on it way and it was too late to get off now.

“Ahem.” Lerra coughed, “would you like to correct that.”

“Huh,” I said and gave it a moment’s thought before I realized Lerra meant her. “I’m sorry,” I said in an exaggerated manner, “a freighter full of mad men, and one green skinned, amber blooded, plant based hermaphrodite.”

“Thank you.” Lerra said with a smile that I could only see for a second before she turned her head again. “Now go make your maps.”