It was a mixed blessing to finally, finally have a proper body. To feel the warp and weft of subspace as I swam at the crest of my warp-field bow-wave. I could almost cry. I fought very, very hard not to do just that in my human-seeming body, alarming the teachers a little. The stars sang to me in all their electromagnetic glory, the hammers of the gods beat at the fabric of the universe sending gravity waves rippling across the great black, and those beautiful, fleeting organic creatures that flitted like mayflies upon the night’s wind spoke to each other of their hopes, their dreams, their wishes, their fears and their loves and hates, the chatter of a thousand, thousand voices united in song.

It was almost more than I could bear, because I knew that in almost no time at all, it would end. The core hooked up to the shuttle would remain there for the duration of the voyage, and you could bet I would take full advantage of the proper suite of sensors and the power and majesty of even a basic shuttle — more a runabout, in truth, though classed as a shuttle in modern Starfleet parlance — from competent, if boring, Starfleet engineers, but upon reuniting with my now out-of-range self left on Buran, I would be relegated to the same half-blind, restricted life I’d had until now.

Then, of course, I felt bad for thinking that, because there were plenty of real, live, flesh and blood organics who not only were far more blind and restricted than me, but a good number of those who were more restricted than that. I wished, fervently, with every circuit, that I could fix that. Of course, I couldn’t.

I could, however, make sure that the squishy fleshies inside me made it safe to Monus III.

Miss Ausrich and Mister Jensen were busy playing various games with the more excited sorts, whilst patiently teaching those who were calm enough to listen all about the local stellar features I was sailing past.

My humanoid body sat leaning against one wall, near the starboard nacelle, with a smile upon my face.

“Chance?”

I blinked, and looked up into the somewhat concerned face of Ghorqan. I smiled at him and he scowled.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m just… kind of busy?”

“Flying the shuttle?” he asked. He sat down next to me. “What’s it like?”

I smiled whimsically as I began to tell him. I wasn’t busy, not really, not in the way humans often think we Jovians are when ‘flying’ our bodies. I was clocked slower than most Jovians would be, though I was employing a trick I’d discovered to lessen the impact of that.

I was clocked rather fast with the core running the shuttle, fast enough to be safe. Far faster than those dumb little toasters Starfleet liked to call guidance computers. The flipside of that was that that core was quite lost in the majesty of the void. Space was beautiful. X-rays, gamma rays, nadion pulses, radio chatter, light of all frequencies, gravitons, tachyon bursts, quarks and cosmic superstructures, and more.

The shuttle-linked core was dreaming at a thousand times the speed of what a human could think at. We’d been traveling for almost half a year, core-time, and it was glorious. My little old human node was pootling along at glacial speeds, which left me feeling rather oddly energized but lethargic, like a particularly good massage.

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Speaking of, some sort of mass coronal ejection had happened a few lightyears away and a few thousand years ago. The exotic particles caressed my hull even here, in my warp-bubble, teased into the spaces between by the passage of the warp-field manipulators at my beck and call.

We’d been traveling for a good four hours or so and would need another four before we were at our destination, a mere 0.6 lightyears or so away. Long-range sensors were keeping track of us, I knew. It was a long voyage for kids this young and humans this squishy in a craft this small and fragile, but sometimes you had to take a trip away.

Besides, they were in safe hands — mine — what could possibly go wrong?

***

“Astatu Razzan,” Delbaj Thollir reported, hand on his chest as he stood before his Captain’s throne.

“Speak, Thollir, I have many things I must do this shift, listening to you prattle is not one of them.”

“There is… a ship. It’s approaching at warp seven, its course has it heading directly for Monus III, Captain.”

“Federation?” Razzan ceased trimming his nails, head jerking up.

“Affirmative sir, the engine signature indicates its a small craft, my Astatu, a shuttle.”

Captain Razzan narrowed his eyes and sat up from where he’d been lounging in his seat. “You have my attention, Hunter, make it worth it or I will make you regret it.”

“This system has been our base for a while, my Captain, and…” Thollir looked pained, “this would mean moving. We’d have to make ourselves scarce, maybe permanently. We have camouflage shields, they make us look like a low-output agrarian outpost—”

“You are prattling, Thollir. Prattle less or I will remove your tongue.”

The Orion Pirate Delbaj Thollir, Hunter in Astatu’s warband, member of the Syndicate — however low on the totem pole he may be — took a deep breath. “It’s a shuttle, my Captain. No real armaments to speak of, crew armaments even less so. We, ah, we don’t know exactly who or what is onboard, but…” Thollir mimed finger guns, then blew the ‘smoke’ away. “We can capture the shuttle, its codes, its contents and its crew. Slaves, intel, tech, the works. The only problem is a shuttle like this has a mothership, and if it should go missing, they will be looking for it. A-after some time. We would have to be quick, then vanish like smoke.”

Razzan found himself nodding. “I like where you’re coming from, Thollir.” He stood and stretched.

“You can see why we are being cautious, my Captain,” Thollir said, standing back as the Captain checked his weapon. “W-we should be careful, this would be Starfleet we’ll be dealing with…”

“Thollir, Thollir, Thollir. This is why I’m a Captain and you’re my trusted advisor. I’m an Orithian Sabre Cat, and you… you are content to be a Danaxian tapeworm. A single shuttle? What could they possibly place on such a vessel to give them cause? A few crew members sent to spread their decadence upon our good Monus III? They’ll not miss either the shuttle or its crew, Delbaj Thollir, you’ll see. Nothing could possibly go wrong.”

Thollir watched as Captain Razzan stalked off to take charge of the incredibly stupid idea of poking the Starfleet hornet’s nest.

“I shall die but once, my friend. You will die a thousand times.”

“Yeah, well, whoever heard of a worm-skin rug?” Thollir mumbled, then followed quickly after his boss.