Jason Halstead - New Beginnings

Close to thirty hours later Eric’s disembodied voice came across the ship’s speakers. “We’ve made the last connections. Some calibration may be necessary since we’re running in tandem, but we’ll deal with that when it’s needed. Energizing the array in three…two… one…”

Kira slipped in streams of commands into her station. Text scrolled across her screen, then blinked out for half a second. When it returned it was sectioned off into windows, one containing her text stream while two others had graphical displays. Kira hissed triumphantly, then continued to instruct the computer to bring the new sensor arrays on line. Within moments the main display came back to life, rendering a simulated image rather than the direct optical feed of the space outside of the Rented Mule.

Captain Sharp threw his fist in the air and let loose a woop. “Keep your hands to yourself!” Eric warned over the speakers. Sharp and Kira both laughed, remembering the last time Kira did something Sharp was pleased with.

“ All right, so where are we?” The Captain asked.

Kira focused on her display as she worked the controls and tried to zero in on their location. She frowned, not making sense of what her system told her. “I’m not sure. We’re traveling just under half the speed of light.”

“ What!”

“. 45 of C,” Kira confirmed. “A lot of this doesn’t make sense. I can’t even figure out our course or where we came from. Something must have happened during the fi-“

“ What’s wrong?” Sharp demanded as Kira fell silent.

She held up a finger on her free hand, which only served Sharp to hop out of his chair and come and lean over her shoulder. She glanced up at him, conveying her annoyance with her pinched eyebrows. “The Mule doesn’t have any inertial compensators.”

Sharp snorted. “It’s a damned old transport, we’re lucky it’s got engines!”

“ Yeah, well without those and with inertial suppression on the inside of the ship, we’ve got no idea when our course is altered without active sensors. The first battle, with all of those impacts from the raider, must have skewed our heading — probably our pitch as well if not the other axis as well.”

“ So what, we’re lost in space?”

Kira sighed. “No- well, yes, but only until I have time to figure things out. We’re going faster than we thought. We didn’t expect to hit anything over. 15 C. I bet nobody bothered checking either, because of that, but now that I’m looking at it… yes, see, our fuel reserves for the pushers are at ten percent. We were supposed to make the run to the mining station and back and still have forty percent left!”

Sharp swore and turned to stomp back to his seat.

“ Captain,” Eric said over the speakers, “it doesn’t really matter how much fuel we have for the pushers. We’ve only got one that I can squeak anything out of and it would take close to sixty years to slow down, turn around, or do anything else.”

“ What happened?” Sharp spouted. “Why the extra speed? Why the extra fuel?”

“ Does it matter?”

Kira turned to look at Tarn. He held up his hands, showing that her glare was similar to the Captain’s. “Hey, don’t be looking at me like that. It don’t matter what happened — it happened. Now we got to figure out what we’re going to do about it. More time we waste not doing that, the more fucked we are.”

Kira felt her eyes narrow as she eyed him suspiciously. He was right, but why draw attention away from figuring out what happened if not to hide something? She turned back to her station, suddenly taken with an idea prompted by Tarn’s suggestion.

“ Got it!” Kira cried out a minute later. “I couldn’t pinpoint us because I wasn’t using the right dimensions!”

“ Dimensions? We hit a natural jump station or a wormhole or something?” Sharp asked bitterly.

Kira shook her head. “No, sorry, I meant x, y, z, and time. I hadn’t factored in that we might not be in the time we think we should be.”

“ I’m waiting for this to make sense and I have to say, I’m not in the mood for being played with.”

“ Yes Captain, no games, Sir. When the sensors were hit it sent all sorts of feedback into our system that messed with the ship’s core computers. Our four week sleep was closer to 12 months.”

Sharp groaned and slumped in his chair after a long moment of staring at Kira with an open mouth. Tarn was quicker to react, blurting out, “Them pirates followed us for a year?”

Kira shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. I think they were probably somebody else though.”

“ Who would be this far out?” Sharp perked up.

“ No idea, Sir, but more importantly we missed the asteroid belt by about eleven months. It’s damn near a light year away from us, but we didn’t just shoot past it, we also were pitched up about five degrees. Although the recent fight skewed us some more.”

“ So where are we headed?”

“ Out there…Sir.” Kira said. “Deep space. Deeper, we’re already outside the rim.”

The silence on the bridge was agonizing until, after a pregnant pause, Captain Sharp exhaled softly. “How are our maneuvering reserves?”

Kira called up another display on the main screen. “Seventy percent, Sir.” She turned to look at him, not sure what else she could or should do. He nodded as he looked at it, then stood up slowly. “Do we have broadcast ability?”

“ Yes Captain,” Eric said over the speakers. Kira noted his voice sounded subdued, then again she supposed not a one of them sounded the best. Their situation had passed desperate a while ago, now even bleak was an optimistic description. “Radio signal or direct transmission.”

“ I’ll be in my room,” Sharp announced abruptly. He paused, looking at both Kira and Tarn alternately. “If either of you have anything you want to say to anyone left behind, I suggest you figure them out now.”

Sharp left the two of them with that somber thought. Kira looked at Tarn and found her vision skewed by unshed tears. She blinked them away and took a deep breath that had potential to turn into a sob. She kept it controlled and offered the ex-Marine a faint smile. “Ex-Marine?”

He nodded. “Discharged for a little misunderstanding with some terrorists that took over a space station.”

Kira felt the muscles in her back stiffen even as the new memories flooded through her mind. “Blue Vistas space station?” He nodded. “You used a particle accelerator cannon to blow a hole through the hull! You killed nearly two hundred people, most of them civilians!”

Tarn shrugged. “Got the job done.”

“ You’re a cold blooded son of a bitch!” She hissed.

Tarn chuckled. The chuckle turned deeper as it went on, until he was laughing at her. Kira glared at him, ready to rise out of her seat and shut him up forcefully. She refrained either from a sense of curiosity or futility. They were all doomed, she figured, why not get her questions answered instead of just putting her foot through his teeth.

“ Wasn’t no warm and fuzzy girl that put down seven pirates,” He finally said. “Don’t know what you done girl, but I reckon you and I got something in common. And I’m not talking about lusting for that engineer’s horse-dick neither!”

“ I lost a friend on Blue Vistas. A civilian that got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and you spaced her.” Kira stared at him, feeling a sense of calm that scared her. It came from deep within her and, she suspected, it was a leftover from Emily. The friend she mentioned, she was a friend of Emily’s. Or at least as close to a friend as her alter-ego had ever had. Kira had never known her or known of her, but now she could see her faintly freckled pale face with a startling clarity. Her name had been Angela, but Emily had called her Angel. Especially when Kira’s hand went to her mouth to hide her gasp. Tarn frowned. “What? You was looking like you was about to shoot me now this?”