„Slowing down. Junkstorm dead ahead.“, Twitch calmly mentioned.
Two weeks had passed since their daring heist, and what repairs they could improvise on the go had all been completed. The Rusty Bolt was happily bubbling through hyperspace, the ship AI doing most of the work.
The Junkstorm. Nothing special to a human observer, just some region near the edge of the galaxy, in the same spiral arm as Earth, a few hundred light years away from humanity’s cradle. Twenty solar systems, sixteen of them with planets, five planets in four systems habitable, three of them actually inhabited. Well, three and a quarter or so, colonization of the fourth was underway.
A refuge for humans. While it looked perfectly ordinary in 3D space, in the 6th and 7th dimension, the Junkstorm was a chaotic swirl of energies and forces, making it an inhospitable place for higher-dimensional beings. It also made higher-dimensional travel, also known as hyperspace, difficult. A price that mankind had to pay in order to have their own corner in the universe.
The Rusty Bolt was heading towards planet five, Aethel. A habitable world near the edge of the Junkstorm. Avoided by humans because of the signs of past alien settlement efforts. And in a universe where humanity is a fledgling and primitive species, mankind takes great care to not accidentally step on the toes of some race that, as an old proverb whose origins had long been forgotten said, can wipe it out just to make room for a hyperspace express route.
Twitch reduced the hyperspace factor by two dimensions, avoiding the distortions of the Junkstorm, but also cutting their speed by three quarters. It would take them three more days to reach the planet, now that they were traveling barely faster than the Xylar freighter they had plundered.
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„Let’s call Bloom and look for a buyer.“, Red remarked as she emerged from the sleeping quarters of the Rusty Bolt. There were six cabins, for two shifts of three as a ship like this would have when it was not a pirate vessel. The crew had converted one cabin into an additional storage for personal gear and kept the other two for the occasional guest or passenger.
She said down at the captain’s station and flicked through the communications systems. The hyperspace transmitter switched on with a pop sound and a whiff of electrical smell in the air hinted that it, too, would benefit from some maintenance. It took a while for the system to compensate for the Junkstorm distortions, and even with error correction turned to max, at best an audio connection was what she could get. But as the Binary Bloom space station answered from the orbit of Aethel, she recognized the voice immediately.
„Faberto!“, Red exclaimed, „Captain Red Rodriguez of the Rusty Bolt.“
„Hey Red.“, the man at the comms station seven light years away answered, with a latency of about two seconds, „How is old Rusty keeping it together?“
Red smiled. Before her inner eye she could see Faberto sitting at the comms, his slight pot-belly pushing against the console, sipping his seemingly never ending lukewarm coffee. At the moment, he was a reminder of a place she and the crew had been calling home for the past decade.
„She’s doing great.“, Red answered him, „And we are bringing home a present. Let Yezzania know and tell her to call me soon. Old Rusty needs some repairs and the sooner I get this thing sold, the earlier I can pay for them.“
Two seconds later: „Will do. Anything else?“
„Nothing special. We’ll talk when I’m there.“, Red said, knowing that she had been saying that for years and never gotten around to it. Faberto didn’t seem to mind much. He was not the guy for long chats, maybe ironically given how often he was manning the comms. Then again maybe not, given that those were not there for idle talk.
„See you soon. Binary Bloom out.“