The three week trip passed slowly

Pastor rarely left his room and when he did it was, thankfully, short lived. Luc was doing her best to not pry into the suitcase he was loath to abandon for any period and ensured the others resisted the temptation as well.

As they reached the Fold point, Luc called Pastor.

“We’re about to Fold so get ready.” She didn’t feel the need to coddle him and explain what was happening, she doubted it would be needed anyway. Puritan or not, he was obviously well versed in space faring.

“Thank you, Captain,” he responded over the intercom. Ever since the first day he hadn’t spoken more than a few words at once. He seemed to only exist as a ghost, and if Luc was being honest, he was starting to look like it too. She had reminded him on several occasions there was a gym and it would help him put on muscle mass, but he didn’t seem to take notice.

“Ready Sky?” Luc asked looking to her as she nodded.

“Calculations are done, nothing near us and all systems are ready.” She gave the thumbs up.

Only Doc and Spanner weren’t on OPS. “Let’s go.” Luc said over the inter-ship comm. Each crew member confirmed they were in a gel-lounge.

They had been travelling through space for a very long time now and had Folded successfully more times than any of them cared to count. They all still took a deep breath and tensed slightly. Folding space worked a treat until it didn’t and just because it had always worked so far didn’t mean it would keep doing so.

The Fold took less than a second and for everything inside the ship there was no observable evidence they had just travelled several light years. The reason they had to head up to the empty was so the massive gravitational fluctuation caused by the ship folding space wouldn’t throw the entire solar system out of its gravitational patterns. An inner system Fold had only been done once and it had resulted in accidentally pushing a moon into a geo-stationary orbit of its planet. Since then, every ship made the trip to the empty, into the Oort Cloud, before Folding.

Everyone on OPS looked at Sky expectantly, waiting for her to tell them they had either arrived or been flung out into the void and were lost. The ten necessary seconds to find out were always the slowest. By the ninth second, they were starting to plan how to get back out of the void.

“All good, we are sitting two weeks and four days at one third G away from the edge of the Omi station.” Sky happily chirped and everyone breathed.

“When are we Folding?” Pastor’s words cut the relieved breaths short.

Luc couldn’t resist to play. “Are you strapped in?” She asked as the OPS deck began to giggle.

“Yes.” The response started a new round of giggling.

“Have you Folded before?” Luc asked.

“Twice but I was asleep for it.”

“Well get ready.” Luc felt slightly justified in this innocent ribbing.

“I am.”

“Hold tight.”

“I’m in a gel-lounge.”

“Here we go.”

“When are we Folding?”

“A few seconds ago.” The OPS deck erupted into laughter; Luc joined in. The silence from the comms only increased the laughter.

“Thank you, Captain.” His response was indifferent, and considering how uptight he had been previously this was, unsettling. Luc’s mind drifted to his appearance and how ghost-like he was becoming.

“And we are the weird ones.” Sharp quietly muttered as he climbed out of his gel-lounge to walk around OPS.

“Course plotted to Omi Station Captain.” Sky broke the silence and Luc looked to her, nodding, glad for the interruption.

“Let’s go.” Luc said feeling the thrust push her softly into her gel-lounge.

“Um Captain?” Monk called her over in the tone she knew was not a good one. Luc stood and hurried over to him. He duplicated his screen on a monitor to his right to show her what he was looking at.

It was a tiny black speck. Nothing that was any different from the rest of the void, except that this speck moved. A star winked out then reappeared. “It could be an asteroid,” Monk said. Luc knew it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have called her if it was. They watched the next star in the speck’s trajectory waiting for it to wink out and prove the speck was innocuous. It didn’t, the trajectory had changed. “Damn.”

Luc wasted no time in hauling herself back to her gel-lounge. She sounded the alarm. “Unknown ship approaching. They’re running dark so get ready for a fight. Pastor get into your bed and seal it now.” As she spoke the covering of her lounge slid up, sealing her inside. It began to fill with gel and Luc felt the controls at her fingertips. The screen in front of her activated as she tapped out orders. She sealed each level, surrendered fire control to Sharp only to see he had entered a redundant gel-lounge, having him change was meaningless so she made no comment and adjusted the fire control to his new gel-lounge. She then checked the others’ lounges: all of them showed green, everyone one was sealed in and ready for whatever came.

Luc brought up a private link to Spanner. “Get Pastor in his room and sealed up.” Spanner didn’t respond for a long second as his gel-lounge turned red on her screen.

“Yes Ma’am.” Spanner said. His response was professional and was followed shortly by “sealed with O2 showing green.” He didn’t return to his previous gel-lounge, no doubt entering the equipment store gel-lounge instead. If they were boarded, he would be in the perfect spot to be armed and ready. Sure enough one of the gel-lounges turned green.

“PDCs are showing green Luc.” Sharp said, his voice had lost the jovial tones she was used to. “Railgun still needs to warm up.” Luc brought up the system check on her screen and saw the green dots indicating PDCs popping into existence and missile bays opening.

Luc looked back at the unknown ship. Those on board didn’t seem to notice that they had been made. Or it was just an asteroid that had hit something, and Luc was about to massively overreact.

“Where is it?” Sky asked waiting for confirmation so she could point the ship and the railgun mounted on their spine at it.

Luc checked her screen and saw the scanner sweep in progress. “Got it.” A blip appeared on the screen and she sent the data through. She felt the ship shift to roughly point at it.

“Either it’s got very good stealth tech or it’s the most impressive asteroid I’ve ever seen. Want me to point the advanced scanners at them?” Monk had just finished the active scan and Luc could see the rough outline it had produced. Stealth tech was an understatement, the outline kept jumping around like the computer was trying to create something out of nothing.

She didn’t want to do anything antagonising, “Not yet wait for–”

“I’ve got an active drive, it just started slowing down.” Sharp interrupted. The scan suddenly crystalised into a ship, Luc couldn’t see any obvious signs of stealth tech on its hull.

“Scan and hail them.” Luc said, mentally preparing herself for what would hopefully be a slightly awkward completely innocent explanation.

“Old style frigate, I figure they’re Voiders.” Monk said after a short pause. The advanced scanner matched the outline of the ship with every other known ship variant. They’d know for sure if it was Voiders soon. The problem with doing that was the other ship definitely knew they were being checked and it was not a polite thing to do.

Voiders, hopefully not the pirate kind. Luc thought as she looked over the computer-made battle plans. It didn’t really mean anything to her, Sky and Sharp were better on the fly than the computer was, but looking over the plans gave her something to do.

“Unknown craft, this is ASI ship Nova, respond.” Luc began the ritual chanting; begging the other side to not be killers.

“500,000 K and closing.” Sharp was calm, at 500,000 k the only meaningful weapons were railguns and the mysterious ship was pointing the wrong way to use theirs, if they even had one.

Luc looked over the visual scan of the other ship. There wasn’t a whole lot of detail. At least five Point Defence Cannons, small lumps breaking up the surface, all older than the Nova’s by at least two generations. Nothing to suggest a railgun but that didn’t mean they couldn’t swing around and cut them in half with a lucky shot if they had one.

“450,000 K.” Sharp’s voice was starting to bleed adrenaline.

“No reply.” Sky said. “Only one ship?” She mused quietly.

Luc realised it too. Voiders never worked alone, there were always at least four ships. Luc looked at the scanners and saw Monk was ahead of them, already sweeping the area.

“Nova down PDCs, halt movement.” The voice from the other ship came through crackling and spotty.

“Are they seriously going to take us on?” Sharp asked as the railgun finished warming up. “Railgun ready, just point us at them.” Luc did not want this to end in a fight, mostly just in case there were any other Voiders out there.

“This is ASI Nova. We have a railgun pointed at you. Identify.” Luc said calmly.

“Prometheus da Black Fleet. Down weapons.” The response cut right through everyone. The Black Fleet was the largest Voider faction, they also had a larger fleet than ASI could ever create.

“Could be a bluff, I can’t find any other ships within a week of us.” Monk said.

“We only saw that one because we were very lucky.” Luc pointed out as the Voider ship sped closer. Again she still couldn’t see any stealth tech, how had it hidden from them.

“If it’s them and we kill them... ASI can’t win a war.” Sky reasoned, Luc knew she was right. If that ship was a part of the Black Fleet destroying it could start a war, on the other hand if they destroyed the Nova, ASI wouldn’t go to war over it.

Everyone in OPS stopped tapping at screens. They were trying to think of a way out of this. While they were thinking the Prometheus drew closer. “Nova, down weapons.” The Nova’s crew was still frozen, unable to think of a logical solution. The Prometheus flipped, pointing its nose at the Nova, and their railgun.

“Railgun!” Sharp shouted snapping the crew out of the mental fog.

“Get us closer.” Luc shouted at Sky, the proximity effectively defeated the railgun, can’t aim a gun that needs the entire ship to point at the target if the movement would put a dozen G on the crew. Unfortunately that worked both ways, and Pastor was going to be an issue. “PDCs?”

“Ready to fire.” Sharp answered and Luc saw the green dots appear on her ship diagram.

“Nova power ... and ... leave.” The Prometheus’s transmissions were getting worse.

“I don’t know why that’s happening.” Sky said, tapping out a concerto trying to fix the coms.

“We have better PDCs than you and more advanced missiles, you cannot survive this fight.” Luc wasn’t sure if she was bluffing at this point. Firing might be more dangerous.

The Prometheus finally stopped moving. At 200,000 K away from each other the two ships pointed weapons at each other waiting for the moment they would start firing.

“Nova ... passenger ...” The communication fizzled out and there was nothing but dead silence.

The Nova didn’t move, no one spoke, the Prometheus mirrored them. They both floated in space, pointing very big guns at one another. The silence stretched, when it became unbearable Luc spoke. “Prometheus?”

“No response, no anything.” Sky’s worrying statement was not helpful.

“Prometheus?” Luc asked again as Monk sent her the active scanner information. The Prometheus had powered down all systems, their PDCs packed away, their missile bays closing, and their railgun powered down. “Hello?”

“What just happened?” Sharp asked. Luc could hear the entire deck’s confusion in his voice.

“Captain what’s going on?” Spanner’s voice **** Luc to look at the data and away from the suddenly dead ship.

“They’re powered down.” Luc thought of the Prometheus’s incomplete demand. “Bring Pastor to OPS.” She didn’t know what was going on but maybe he did. The Prometheus seemed to want him after all.

The interminable wait for Spanner to escort Pastor to OPS felt like it could be Luc’s last. That any second the Prometheus would power up and slag them. When she saw the security cam footage of Spanner half carrying Pastor up the ladder in the zero G, she felt certain this was the right call.

As Pastor’s head popped up from the hole in the deck Luc retracted her lounge, the top sliding down to the floor and the gel receding with it. “Pastor, care to say something?” Luc asked as Spanner appeared behind Pastor looking more than a little eager to further manhandle him.

“I don’t know what you mean Captain.” Pastor responded. Luc had thought he sounded ghost-like previously now he sounded dead. His already thin frame skeletal, his skin stretched, pale as bone, his eyes hollow and milky made him look more like a corpse than a Puritan.

Luc shoved his appearance to the back of her mind, there were larger issues. “The Voider ship asked for our passenger. That’s you. Why?” So far as Luc knew he wasn’t a VIP, an unusual pick up and drop-off but not a VIP. If he was a VIP, it wouldn’t have been her ship carrying him around. Not unless there was more going on her than she knew.

“They’re most likely pirates and assumed you were a colony ship,” The man's suggestion was a good one. It may have answered the question in Luc’s mind. The Voider ship clearly wasn’t in good enough shape to actually challenge an ASI ship and it was by itself. And they did think they were pirates to start with. Though how could the Nova be a colony ship?

“Why did they ask for a passenger rather than just demand surrender?” Luc felt like this was a loose grab at saving face, a way for her to justify dragging Pastor up to OPS. Why did she feel like that all of sudden?

“You should destroy them.” The Puritan’s words chilled her to the core. There was a command there, something that would not be denied. She felt her fingers being to tap out the fire command to Sharp. She saw a message appear on her comms screen, a message from the Prometheus.

Peace.

She locked up her arm before she sent the destroy command. She felt it resist so she locked it more, she didn’t stop until she felt her forearm fracture under the strength of her own fighting muscles, and still it wanted to send the command.

“Do it copy!” The thin man’s voice broke. Luc felt her arm stop and her eyes snapped on him.

“We... Are... Not... Copies!” Luc shouted as she stood up from her lounge.

At the same time a railgun slug sliced through the Nova’s outer and inner deck. There was no second shot, the Prometheus must have been trying to get a lucky and kill them in one. It made sense, they could never take the Nova in a straight fight.

The klaxons exploded sound into everyone ears snapping the rest of the OPS deck from the thin man’s commands. Spanner tackled him to the ground, ripped a sleeve off the Puritan’s uniform and shoved it into his mouth.

“Cap?” Spanner pleaded.

Luc was frozen in zero G letting her body float as her mind tried to understand what she was looking at. Sitting in the redundant gel-lounge was what was left of Sharp. The rail slug had punched through the ceiling and hit him in the chest, removing most of his torso, his head and arms held inside by the gel. A perfect trail of blood and gel spiralled from his ruined chest and through the new hole in the floor. The air began to rush out as everyone not in a gel-lounge found one, rather than **** on vacuum.

Luc buried her feelings and returned to her gel-lounge. She saw from the corner of her eye Spanner shove the Puritan in an empty lounge and place himself in another. The ship was already sealed but every room hit was a vacuum. She sent a warning to Doc and released fire control to Spanner as he assumed Sharp’s role. Less than a second later the Nova fired its railgun at the Prometheus with enough missiles to slag the thing following.

The Prometheus didn’t even activate its PDCs. One second, they were there, the next they were gone. Luc turned her attention to the scanners, momentarily blinded by the explosions. She counted the five seconds until the system cleared, avoiding looking at Sharp’s body and the slowly floating blood and gel.

She checked the damaged areas of the ship. The rail slug had punched through but thankfully missed everything vital. It had however, hit Pastor’s cabin, leaving a perfect circle dead centre of his gel-bed. Luc activated the emergency suit built into her gel-lounge and felt the gel move as the helmet folded down from the top and seal around her head. She watched the monitors as everyone else did the same, all while scanning the monitors for any hint of another ship.

When none immediately appeared Luc turned her attention to the hole in the ship’s hull. They were lucky it was a railgun slug not a PDC or missile. A good thing about railgun slugs is that they move so fast they don’t tear, they melt, there was a perfect circle with curled metal glowing a dull red from the heat generated by the massive amount of friction.

Monk was already out of his gel-lounge. Helmet on, sealant in one hand, hull brace in another. He was finished sealing the hull breach and was working on the floor breach as Luc finished reading the scan data.

“Airtight Luc.” Monk’s voice was clear and efficient. Luc tapped out some orders and OPS filled with air. She looked at Monk who was on his way towards the exit wound to get the rest of the ship airtight. She looked at Pastor’s gel-lounge and checked his vitals, trying to get as much information as possible. He was calm, heart rate perfectly normal, no sweat, no heightened O2 intake.

The vitals were wrong however. He was far too calm for what he was meant to be, there was something else going on here. He had the sort of calm that was professional, military, his vitals were the same or better than the rest of the crew. Luc didn’t know what was happening, she couldn’t even remember getting the job to escort Pastor so something must be– she was distracted for a moment by a headache that passed quickly and was replaced by an unshakeable knowledge that this was Pastor’s fault.

She didn’t understand. ASI had never done anything like this before, at least in her fifty years of knowledge. So why do it now? Her mind picked out the suitcase. It wasn’t with Pastor and considering how obsessed he had been with it; the answer lay there. She sent a message to Doc to bring it and a lot of sedatives up.

As the seconds ticked by until Doc showed up Luc began to feel the battle calm receding. The dreaded, horrific reality of Sharp’s **** was trying to slice into it. She could feel reality tear at the corners of her mind when Doc sent a message that he was on his way.

She walked over to Pastor's gel-lounge. She looked at his too calm face, the makeshift gag still in place. She took a step past him to check on Spanner. Spanner looked at her and she saw his stony expression. She nodded and went back to Pastor.

“I’m going to open the lounge and take out your gag,” He blinked at her but didn’t move. “If you don’t answer every question I have, I am going to throw you into the void.” She knew he believed her. It may have been a Voider railgun that killed Sharp, but Pastor was responsible.

She opened a link to Doc to check his progress when his head appeared from the floor. His eyes shot to Sharp’s body, from this angle he couldn’t see the hole, only the blood. His looked at Luc and she shook her head. He blinked a few times, climbed up and walked over forcing his eyes to keep away from Sharp’s corpse. He offered the suitcase and she took it, then he looked at Sharp.

Luc couldn’t resist following his eyes and saw the ruined gel-lounge and body inside. She snapped back to Pastor with renewed anger. She looked at the suitcase and saw no way to open it. She didn’t want to waste time trying so she opened up Pastor’s gel-lounge. He didn’t even flinch, he blinked calmly. She reached out and took his gag out. He didn’t react.

“What’s in the suitcase and who are you?” Spanner was out of his gel-lounge and was lurking menacingly behind her.

“Engage black mind.” The second Pastor spoke Luc felt herself freeze. When he finished, she felt as if she was falling down a corridor, her vision going black around the edges. She thought he was still speaking but couldn’t make out the words. She couldn’t make out anything, she was floating in blackness.

Pastor looked over the rest of the crew all frozen like Luc, “Well shit. The fuck just happened?”