His fatigue had caught up with him shortly after they launched and he had gone to the sleeping quarters. There were six bedrooms aboard the ship. He had inspected all of them before choosing one. The first one he entered looked like some fetish void sex dungeon. It had a spacious two person canopy bed with golden curtains, purple sheets and mirrors all over the walls. He decided against taking it. The second one also had a two person bed and had a more normal appearance. He would have taken it, if it weren’t for the fact that Ida had already claimed it for herself by placing her belongings inside it. He continued on and found the other four rooms were very similar in appearance. They were all narrow rooms with bunk beds in them. The rooms were austere for the ship’s standards, but compared to what he had been sleeping in for the past few months, it had all the luxury he could have wished for. The sleeping bag mattress was comfortable and the room was quiet. It had its own small shower cabin and a small sink. He put his sparse personal belongings in a locker next to the bottom bed and zipped himself into the sleeping bag. It wasn’t long before he was soundly asleep.

He had no idea how long he had slept when Ida had awoken him, telling him to meet her in the cockpit within fifteen minutes. They were about to make their first jump.

When he entered the cockpit and took a seat, Ida was in the finishing stages of ticking off her checklist. She did so with a voice that bordered on boredom. It was obvious she had done this many times before. ‘Distance to the nearest celestial body is over one million kilometers. Destination coordinates are set. Ships' primary systems are operational. Secondary systems are on standby. Lewen engine status?’

‘Engine has been heated to fifteen hundred degrees.’. He replied. He didn’t feel the same calmth that Ida felt. He had butterflies fluttering around in his stomach. He grasped onto the armrests of his chair with a nervous tension. He was about to make his first Lewen jump. In the next ten days, they were going to travel thirty light years worth of distance.

Ida began the countdown. ‘Igniting Lewen jump in five, four, three…

He braced himself, unsure of what to expect.

..two, one, commencing jump now.’

Nothing happened. He felt nothing. Everything was exactly like it was a few seconds ago.

‘Are we..?’

‘Yes we’re in Lewen jump now.’

‘Oh.. I thought it would be more..’

‘Noticeable?’ She finished his sentence. ‘I’m afraid this is it. We’re moving at over a thousand times the speed of light right now with space itself folding and warping around our ship, yet you feel nothing. That’s the beauty and genius of the Lewen engine.’. Her face was joyous when she said it. It even betrayed a modest smile. The result of an unguarded moment.

Voss was a bit taken aback by her smile. It was the first time he had ever seen it, and it was the first time in quite a while that she lightened up. He liked her smile. It looked genuine and was disarming. She felt at home here inside the cockpit of a void ship, piloting it through deep space. She seemed much more in her element here than she had been back on the spaceport with all its politics and power struggles. It was a shame she hadn’t shown this side of her earlier instead of that tough, scheming facade she put on. He may have actually liked her a little bit more, and resented her a little bit less.

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'So where exactly are we headed, then?'

'The eastern fringes of the empire are far away and have only been colonized in the past few hundred years. Our data on them is limited, but I've managed to deduce the five planets that were colonized first. If that sector is preparing for war, at least one of those planets should be involved.'

'So the plan is to jump to those planets, see if we run into any war fleets and then hope we make it out alive?' He would have been more expletive in his appraisal of the plan, but he held back because he knew the Fifth would be listening in on them. The last thing he wanted was to be arrested for insubordination as soon as they returned to Fosfat. If they ever returned to Fosfat that was.

'No silly, we're not jumping straight for those planets. I've used the solar maps that were available to plot courses towards other planets in those systems. Our first target is an ice dwarf at the furthest fringes of the Ecolat system. We'll drop in at about a billion kilometers distance from our target planet and hide behind the ice dwarf as we send out probes.

Her explanation gave him little faith in their mission. He'd have to rely on his own plans and get that central computer going before they arrived to what was likely to be a death trap. ‘Sounds like you got the strategy covered then. I’m going to check the engines. I’ll leave the piloting to you.’. He got up and went to make his rounds. The ship was state of the art and well maintained, but he wanted to make sure the Lewen engine was running without problems. Any failure and they’d be spat out in deep space, light years removed from the nearest inhabited planet. His round didn’t take long, the engine room, a technological marvel unlike anything he had ever seen on Fosfat, was quite small. He finished his checks in no time.

Most of his tasks on board this ship were like that, quick and easy to perform. A welcome prospect that gave him ample time to tinker the probes back to life and it gave him the opportunity to give bypassing the central computer’s security system a go

The ship was still accelerating, meaning they'd experience the luxury of gravity for the foreseeable future. He wasn't looking forward to the day he’d have to float around the ship again. Surprisingly, the ship seemed ill equipped to deal with weightlessness. The standard procedures of having everything locked away properly had all been followed, but there were few handlebars throughout the ship and the spaciousness of the rooms were quite the hindrance when trying to float through them. Any mistake could leave you floating around for minutes until you were within reach of something you could push yourself off against. It felt like poor ship design to him. Whomever had ordered this ship built, had prioritized appearance over utility.

When he turned the computer on, it spoke to him in a foreign language. The symbols that appeared on the screen in front of him were alien to him. Bother. He was going to need a translator for this. The only translator that was available to him had limited processing power. That meant that any hard codebreaking attempts would be severely throttled. This was going to need a more unorthodox approach. Fortunately he had some ideas. This was going to be a tough cookie to crack, but he refused to believe it was impossible like Ida had said. He’d get this puppy to run and spill this ship’s secrets. Most importantly of all, access to this computer meant he’d be able to take control of the ship. He was sure Ida had agreed to his wish to attempt to break into the ship’s central computer because she believed he’d never be able to crack it anyhow. She’d come to regret that decision soon enough.

He thought back to when him and his fellow recruits had been in recovery after the battery explosion that had cost Dice’s life and Hoog’s arm. He remembered Wago mockingly asking him who’d ever let him fly a void ship, back when he was reading a book on how to pilot. If only Wago had been here today. Voss could have given him his retort. ‘Me.’ He thought to himself. ‘I’m letting myself pilot.’. It had only been hours since he last saw his class, yet he already missed them. He also thought back on those who hadn't made it to the final exam, specifically Hiyo. He wondered if Hiyo was still alive and how he was doing. He remembered their voidwalking incident when Hiyo had almost suffocated. It had been gutwrenching to see Hiyo get kicked out of the program, but it had been necessary and for good reason. You needed to have the best of the best on missions like these. One man's panic could spell another man's death.

That was all the past though, and he had to make peace with the fact that he'd probably never see any of them ever again. He had to focus on the future now. The hour had come that he'd set his plans into motion. He plugged the translator into the computer's USBX drive. Words began to form underneath each symbol on the screen. The game was on.