“All available units, report to your stations.”

Jake still had no idea what was going on. The loud sirens had jolted him awake as poor Reyna became the recipient of his wayward fist. He was still putting on his uniform as he ran down the hall. He quickly pressed his hand on the biometric scanner and entered the bridge. The sirens kept blaring as he turned left and sat down at his station.

Outside, he could see the beautiful expanse of space. The brown planet they were orbiting took up much of the view. It was a desert planet, but it had large swaths of red rock that acted as the foundation for many of its cities. It was daytime on the side that was visible from the Fenton, and Jake could just make out the unnatural edges that outlined a city.

“What’s going on?” he leaned over to his right to talk to Julie.

“Pirates.” her response was curt.

Jake looked back out. The scene hadn’t changed. And yet, something felt different. He squinted. The city’s shadow was moving, albeit slowly. He realized that that was the pirate ship. It was hard to determine just how far away something was in space, but he could tell that it was small. It had some form of cloaking capabilities, which was why Jake had trouble seeing it. Even so, it wasn’t as good as the ones he had seen from Federation ships or the Alliance. He guessed that their cloaking drive was damaged or not functioning properly. Or maybe they got it on the black market.

“Get us in contact.” Captain Jacobs asked those to her left. They nodded and started to press various buttons on their console. Eventually, the circular machine in front of the Captain buzzed to life and started to glow blue. The energy shifted and buzzed as it started to gather into coherent shapes. Eventually, a figure appeared. It was humanoid, but Jake had an eerie feeling that it wasn’t human. He had seen aliens before, but there was always a distinguishing feature about them. The cloods, for instance, were green and had bigger heads than their torso. The figure’s body was shaped like a human, but it also wasn’t. To be fair, the holocom didn’t show a perfect representation of any figure. Yet Jake had trouble shaking the feeling.

“This is the UFSS Fenton, please identify yourself! Your ship’s info-box did not show up-to-date registrations nor an authorization from a recognized state. If you do not comply, you will be in violation of Council law and we will apprehend your ship and your crew.” The info-box contains data about the ship's construction date and location, function, the registration, and their allegiance. The boxes used data gathered by the Interstellar Council of Governments and were homologated by the Federation after issues came up during the Great Galactic Conflict. The Alliance and the Union later adopted them soon after. To operate a ship without it would constitute at minimum fifteen years in prison for the ship’s helmsman and ten years for the rest of the crew, so even pirate ships typically tried to at least spoof such data. But this was no typical pirate ship.

The Fenton lurched and Jake’s face hit his console. He realized that the pirates had fired upon them. It had only hit the shields, but the force of the projectile was great enough to move the ship as well. Although the Fenton is just a Ganesha-class scouting ship, it was on the larger side of the universe’s scout ships. He sat back up, rubbing his head. For the ship to have moved so much, the pirates must be carrying some heavy firepower. Surely the ship wasn’t big enough to power that.

And he was right. The ship’s cloaking device had gone offline at some point since Jake could now see the ship clearly. It had harsh edges, indicating it was likely designed by the Union. The type of FTL technology it uses works more efficiently with these edges. Federation shipbuilders avoided edges, instead harnessing the flow of spacetime in their designs. This only confused Jake even more than he already was. This part of space was about as far from the Union as you can get, and on the mining colonies the Fenton patrolled, there was very little traffic. They would be lucky to see another Federation ship each month, let alone one from the Union.

The hologram mouthed words, but no sound came out, which indicated that the ship never accepted the invitation to talk. Instead, it turned away. It was attempting to flee.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Fire up the engines! Let’s give chase!” The Captain was determined to catch the pirates. Jake turned around to face his console. It was his job to let the engine room know that they were going to fire them up. Everything can be controlled from his desk, but there are always a few mechanics that are fixing a part or monitoring the system that Jake has to let know for safety reasons. He pressed a big button on the left of his console. On his monitor, he could see the engine room flashing red and the mechanics moving off-camera. He turned to Julie and gave her a thumbs up. She nodded, and her fingers started to fly across her own console. Jake could feel the ship start to rumble with energy.

The pirates haven’t moved since turning around. Or, at least to Jake, it seemed like they hadn’t. Their engines were glowing a faint blue, but the ship was getting bigger.

“Prepare the tractor beam!” The Captain’s voice boomed. The beam would drag the pirate ship as close to the Fenton as it can, until manual docking can occur. Currently, the pirates were out of range, but it didn’t seem like they would be for long.

“Wait, their engines are showing signs of an FTL jump!” Someone to Jake’s right yelled. He pulled up the ship scanner on his console. He saw that a fair amount of energy was concentrated in the engines, far more than what the Fenton was currently using. For such a small ship, there was only one meaning.

And just like that, the pirates were gone, leaving behind the planet and the stars in Jake’s view. He didn’t have much time to stare.

“Where did they go? We have to follow them,” Captain Jacobs said. “Start the jump process.”

Jake tapped his fingers on his console. A diagram of a ship popped up on his monitor. Thankfully, the schematics of every type of ship flown by a sapient species were at his fingertips. The data had to be sent to the Interstellar Council of Federations to be registered and allowed for use outside of the planet they were constructed in. Each government, and subsequently their militaries, had access to this data. Based on the amount of energy they measured and the type of engine the pirates used, he was able to estimate where they jumped to.

“Twenty clicks stellar north, towards neutral space!” He shouted to let the captain and his fellow engineers know. A flurry of tapping followed, and he suddenly felt the ship rumble. They were getting ready to follow the pirates and apprehend them.

“Prepare to jump!” The captain’s words echoed throughout the bridge. Partly because she was standing a few feet from Jake, and mostly because her voice was echoed in the intercom. The FTL jump requires everyone to be strapped into something, whether it’s a chair or one of the restraints that line the hallways. Beds had an automatic restraint system that can be operated by the captain from the bridge should anyone be sleeping or otherwise unconscious. Jake put on his seatbelt and gripped his console.

“Jump!”

It was only a couple seconds, but it felt much longer to Jake. His body was pressed into his seat so hard it felt like he would become one with the chair. The planet and the stars outside the floor-to-ceiling windows lost their clarity. The browns and yellows and reds turned to white, and mixed together to become one. A fuzzy bright light took up a majority of the spacescape, and for a split second, he thought that he was going to meet his maker. That thought went away as the light was snuffed out, consumed by The Nothingness. Finally, the lights came back as the Fenton exited hyperspace. A new set of stars projected themselves, as did the pirate ship.

The blue figure manifested itself again on the holocom as the two ships were in range for contact again. Just like last time, it seemed to be ignoring the captain.

“Again, this is the UFSS Fenton! I am asking you to surrender, or we will forcibly apprehend your ship,” Captain Jacobs said. The hologram did not move or respond.

Instead, the blue figure fizzled out. A split second later, the pirate ship disappeared out of view. They jumped again.

“Dammit, they jumped again!” The captain was livid. “Follow them!”

Thankfully, Julie already had their location figured out, saving Jake from doing more work. She relayed the information to the rest of the bridge, and they prepared to go into hyperspace again.

“Wait, stop!” Jake jumped. A voice was booming from Jake’s desk speaker. He turned down the volume, but continued to listen. Captain Jacobs was also listening.

“The engines are too hot! We can’t make another jump,” the voice said. It was one of the mechanics in the engine room.

“What do you mean?” Jacobs asked.

“We’re still trying to figure it out, but if we make another jump, it’ll almost surely damage the engines to the point where we might get stuck in space.”

“Argh, stupid Draxit mechanics! I should’ve just gone to Federation mechanics to fix the ship when I had the chance.” The captain smacked her head. “Fine, the pirates will have to come later. Right now, I have an incident report to make. The ship needs repairs.”