The next couple of days made me glad that I had accepted that Airah hadn’t acted in malice and done my best to shelve her past actions, looking at the future. Otherwise, one of us might have murdered the other, simply due to the proximity that was forced upon us. Our frigate, which I had learned was called Tyton, was sitting on a small asteroid, tumbling through a boring system in which multiple spaceships still might search for us and there was, quite frankly, nothing to do. We had food, we had some literature and exercise-equipment and each of us had their cabin in which we regularly retreated, which saved us from going hopping mad. Normally, if you were actually moving through space, there was always something to do, a watch to stand, calculations to be done, something, anything. Not on the rock we were sitting on.
Finally, after eight days of pretending to be a rock, we decided that it was unlikely our pursuers were still there. We would have been able to remain stationary even longer but at the end of the day, there seemed to be little point. We had spotted one jump-flare leaving the system but roughly half of the system was permanently obscured from us by the rock we were sitting on. In addition, if they just happened to be on the opposite side of the star, we wouldn’t have seen it, even if we had been turned in that direction. I thought that was unlikely, simply due to the distances involved, but it wasn’t impossible.
Once again, we were sitting together after breakfast, with me drinking some of the tea I had discovered and Airah having another mug of coffee. It had turned into a sort of ritual, we had decided that we didn’t want to leave the ship unattended, just in case something happened, so we had slept in shifts, but timed our meals in such a way that we had them together. It added a feeling of normalcy to a very abnormal situation.
“So, where were we going now?” I asked Airah, who seemed to know a great deal more about life as an independent spacer.
In return, she only sighed. “That depends. I promised that we’d take care of you and your plans first but, so far, you haven’t told me your plans.” she explained. When I didn’t react, she started to elaborate.
“In my opinion, you have three general options, at least I can see three. We can get you a false identity, complete with some certification as a pilot, head to a different corner of the Federation and set you up with one of the companies that do some legal work, peripherally related to the Void Guard. That can be arranged, we have pull with them and you could still fly, even if only some cumbersome whale of a freighter. But it would be flying.” she said, taking a sip of coffee.
“Another option would be that we head towards the unclaimed regions, in particular towards one of the bases of the Void Guard. Both of us would have to go through quite a few interviews and testing, due to the way I had to flee the Academy. That’d mean a few days of unpleasantness after which you’d be assigned to one of the pilot-positions, most likely a fighter.
“And finally, there’s the option that we stick together. I think the last few days have shown that we can tolerate some of the worst conditions when it comes to spaceflight, being stuck on a tiny ship with another person without murdering the other. Believe it or not, when it comes to exploration, that is a vital crew-skill, one so rare that the exploration-service uses at least destroyers, sometimes even cruisers. Sure, they can gather more data in a system and stay out with more security but if you are only thinking about efficiency, they aren’t as good as a frigate.” she paused herself, as if gathering her thoughts.
“We wouldn’t have to head into the deep dark to explore, it would only be one of the potential options. Another would be to work as a data-courier or something along those lines. We’d be equal partners in a private venture, working for ourselves, under our own banner.” she quickly added, sounding quite hopeful.
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I had to admit, the last idea blew me away. Unless she planned some chicanery, which I doubted, she’d bring the Tyton into the partnership, while I’d only bring myself. While I wanted to believe the best in my friend, it almost seemed too generous an offer, too good to be true. But what if it wasn’t? Over the last few days, Airah had told me a little more about herself, still not telling me any important details about the Void Guard or her family but her upbringing. I was quite sure that I had been her first close friend and was reasonably certain that at least one of her parents had been a high officer of the Void Guard, setting her apart. I had a feeling that she wanted to stay independent, to step out of a shadow cast over her from birth. Maybe that had been part of her decision to go to Starfleet Academy in the first place.
When I didn’t react for a minute, she added the fourth option, that I could get false papers, some money and a trip to a Federation-Planet of my choice, allowing me to seek my own fortune. I wouldn’t be able to fly but I’d be fully separated from the Void Guard, Airah and all that mess.
“No, I want to fly. I’m just thinking about the options. How about this, no matter which I’ll chose in the end, we’ll have to get me a false identity, don’t we? Even if we head to the Void Guard, having one might be useful in the long run, right? I don’t know what is necessary to get a good false identity, but I somehow doubt that we can whip something up without help, especially not if we want it to stand up to basic scrutiny.” I suggested, knowing that I was stalling for time.
Airah nodded in response, but I could see that she was a little disappointed. “You are right, we’ll need help to create a new identity. Let’s set a course, I know where we need to go.” she said, draining her cup of coffee and heading towards the cockpit.
As usual, I took the pilot seat, while Airah sat on the navigator’s seat, tapping away at the computer while I placed the headgear on my head, letting me link with the computer. As soon as I was logged in, I could follow what she was doing and look up our destination. It would take us quite a while to get there, even if we made best speed. a distance of sixty light-years meant that we were looking at ten days of continuous hyperspace-travel. Realistically, we’d need at least twice times as long, simply due to the way navigation worked, with us jumping from one system to the next so the jump-error wouldn’t strand us somewhere between the stars.
“Okay, I see where we need to go. Let’s get this show on the road.” I told Airah, as I slowly brought the Tyton back to life. The first order of business was to get out of the system’s gravity well so we’d be able to jump into hyperspace, hopefully without attracting attention. The easiest way to do that would be to separate from the asteroid we had landed on and continue to act as if we were just another asteroid, an interloper to the asteroid-family we had driften with for the last ten days, now slowly moving away from it. I’d have to carefully look at the course to make it seem believable without taking years to get out of the well, but I thought it was possible.
Separating from the asteroid was simple, even if part of me wanted to look around to make sure we wouldn’t hit another asteroid. It was purely a psychological idea, one that came from the false depiction of asteroid-belts in the media, but it was one that stuck with me. Even in an incredibly dirty system with millions of asteroids larger than one kilometer and, hundreds of millions smaller asteroids, the average distance between asteroids was big enough to fit planets through the gaps. Sure, in an asteroid-family like the one we had parked in, the distance was smaller by an order of magnitude or two, which still left enough room to parallel park. Barely.
“That’ll take a while.” I admitted, looking at my calculations. Sure, it wouldn’t take us a years to leave the gravity well, only another five days, but I was reasonably certain that we’d just look like another rock, no more special than all the other rocks. If they wanted to start looking at each and every rock, they’d run out of personal due to desertion and suicide before they’d ever find us. Some tasks were just impossible.