Throttle Twenty-Five

The jump ended the same way the last few did: a lurch, a shiver that passed through the ship, and all the screens in Ahvie’s bridge flicking on with scenes of the vast emptiness of space just outside.

Diana leaned back into her seat, eyes casually drifting over to the right screen. She was getting used to the ship already and knew where to look already. “Looks like a smooth landing,” she said.

“Ahvie told you, the end of a jump isn’t called a landing. There’s no land, and we’re not stopping or anything, it doesn’t make sense to call it that.”

“Yeah, but it’s the end of a flight.”

“But we were in flight before the jump too,” Ahvie said.

It wasn’t their first argument over the nonsensical nature of human idioms and expressions. It didn’t help that Diana suspected that her translation gear was occasionally more literal than it needed to be. Fortunately, Ahvie was patient and would ask Diana if things weren’t clear. That had been the source of a lot of their discussions over the last couple of days.

They had done more than talk about their respective languages. Ahvie had a small collection of games and movies. She claimed that they were all decades old, and entirely out of date or unpopular with anyone but die-hard fans of classics, but that didn’t bother Diana.

If anything, the fact that these were the movies and games that Ahvie had grabbed even if they were older meant that they were the ones that popularity had curated and that stood out as the best against the test of time.

Diana had brought her own stuff to the table: a century or so’s worth of movies, games, and music for Ahvie to poke at. They took turns showing each other their favourites during the longer jumps.

Ahvie’s sense of humour flew far above Diana’s head, the little alien finding the strangest scene amusing and failing to laugh at what Diana remembered as perfectly good jokes. Ahvie’s own movies and games shed a bit of light on her culture as well. There were a lot of very focused games, nearly always with characters who were of council races, and almost always with few in-game options. They were more like interactive movies where the good guys always won.

At least the alien music was more interesting. Lots of weird beeps and boops and some pieces that were genuinely beautiful. Others were hauntingly bizarre, but interesting all the same.

Diana imagined that a lot of humanity would go nuts just exploring the entertainment available in the Federation.

Ahvie hated pop and rock music and any music with a lot of lyrics. She did like the more classical pieces, especially when Diana showed her a video of an orchestra playing a symphony all together.

The trip had been fun, but it was now coming to an end, at least for a little while.

The Tyrant Cracker race’s meet-up point was a little system out in the fringes of Federation space. Technically, from the three dimensional maps Diana had looked at, it was within their controlled space, but with no habitable planets, the system was pretty much vacant.

There were two gas giants, as well as a very small planet that orbited between the two and whose shape was strangely mangled from passing too close to its neighbours. The system had two large clouds of asteroids circling around its red dwarf. Some of the clumps might eventually gather up enough to become something noteworthy, but for the moment they were just a hazard to space travel.

One of the larger rocks in the inner ring had been converted into a massive relay station. Or, more precisely, a single large station with three smaller stations keeping close to it, all three of them equipped with relatively small jump rings.

“I’m not picking up much traffic,” Diana said.

Ahvie hummed. “That should be normal. Ahvie doesn’t expect that many ships to show up to this place. There’s nothing here.”

“Except for that one big station,” Diana pointed out. “Which is supposed to hold all that wonderful competition.”

“There’s still a few rotations until the race starts, it’s possible that a lot of them won’t appear until then. Ahvie doesn’t see why a prepared competitor would show up so early.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“To scope out the other competition,” Diana said. “You can learn a lot from a handshake and a quick word. But you’re probably right. The well-prepped ones will have spies in place already and they’ll only show up later. Do you think they’ll do pre-race inspections?”

“I don’t believe they will, mistress,” ChaOS’s voice said over the bridge intercom. “The competition’s debrief suggests that there are literally no restrictions on the vehicles used during the event. Anything is allowed. Though I suspect that the return part of the trip would be made difficult if any competitor shows up with weapons and equipment that are outright forbidden in Federation space.”

“We’ll keep note of that,” Diana said.

They idly sped towards the station, Ahvie only getting a ping maybe an hour into the flight from a buoy that noticed their approach.

It wasn’t until they were halfway to the station that ChaOS spoke up. “Mistress, I’ve picked up a fleet of vessels nearby. Low energy signatures for their size.”

“Oh?” Diana said. She sat up. “Where’d you see them?”

“The vessels are using an asteroid as partial cover, a larger rock approximately half the size of Earth’s moon. I’m bringing up the passive visuals now.”

Diana closed her eyes and let the images filter into her mind’s eye.

ChaOS wasn’t wrong; it was a fleet, though not a massive one. Diana counted thirteen ships, all spread out in a rough hemisphere around the huge rock. Her AI friend was kind enough to add size estimates next to the vessels. They were a little blurry still, owing to the distance, but she could make out some details.

Of the thirteen ships, one stood out from the rest. It was a sleek, flat design, with a grey hull that had a few lumps along it. A ring-like cutout stood out around the front of the vessel. Four fins stuck out near the rear, each with what Diana assumed with thrusters within them pointing horizontally and vertically. The rear bulged out around a large engine, and at the very front, the flattened face of the vessel had more forwards facing thrusters partially covered by the sleek hull.

“Those lumps are weapons, I’d bet,” she said. The ship had a dozen egg-like protrusions on its hull.

“I presumed as much as well. Locations where armaments can be deployed from. The ship’s profile makes scanning it somewhat difficult. Though a lot of compromises were made to the design that make it less efficient in terms of passive stealth.”

“Mhmm,” Diana said.

“What did you find?” Ahvie asked.

“Can you show her?” Diana asked.

She zoomed back from the biggest ship. The vessel was three times as long as the Slow and Steady, and half again as wide. The other ships were about the same size as the cargo ship. They had similar profiles, though all of them had big rings around their middles held in place on long stalks, and they didn’t make as much of an effort to hide their weaponry.

“Very fishy designs,” Diana muttered.

“Those are Federation warships,” Ahvie said. “The large one is a light cruiser. The smaller ones are destroyers and patrol frigates.”

“Huh,” Diana said. “You know what they’re doing out here?”

“Maybe they’re just on a patrol?” Ahvie tried.

Diana frowned and blinked out of her aug’s vision. “They’re not patrolling very hard if all they’re doing is sitting there. Think it might mean trouble for us?”

“Ahvie hopes not.”

“I guess we’ll have to see once they decide to do something. ChaOS, prep the Star Skimmer for fun, just in case, nothing that’ll be noticed.”

“Warming up the guns, mistress.”

Ahvie spun towards her. “You want to fight?”

“You know, I don’t actually like fighting. But when it comes to it, I’d rather any sort of fight be in my favour. If they want one, I’ll give them a good one. But mostly this is just making sure that if it comes to it, we won’t be caught entirely flat-footed.”

They continued on a nice, gentle course towards the station, ChaOS periodically giving her updates about the warships. None of them moved at all though; they just sat there, only the faintest of hums coming from them as they scanned the system from their spot.

Diana couldn’t help but have a bad feeling about it.

***