When Lieutenant Jane Belivet spoke about her career to her family and friends who were not starfighter pilots, she always left this part out.
When speaking to such people about her career, she mentioned the space battles she had fought in, or the rescue missions she had been part of. She mentioned the countless close calls she’d had…for example, when a laser bolt shot at her from a Merkonian fighter came thisclose to blowing her to smithereens. Or when an injector flame-out in her Spacehawk starfighter almost caused her to smash into the side of a mountain on the planet Wrigoven Prime.
Family and friends loved hearing those stories.
Well, her mother not so much, but her mother had also wanted her to grow up and find a nice, safe job on Earth, rather than join the Unitary Air and Space Defense, and frequently be shot at by the likes of the Merkonians and B’zicors—two of the Unitary’s most hostile adversaries.
A doctor, maybe…or a schoolteacher. Perhaps even an orbital platform engineer. Technically, not a job on Earth, but close enough.
But not a starfighter pilot.
And certainly not such a good pilot that she ended up being recruited for Sabre Squadron—the elite starfighter squadron in the Unitary.
In any case, Jane purposely avoided telling anyone—even her mother—about this part of her job…
Currently, she was on picket patrol.
All around her was nothing but space, with countless stars far off in the distance from her location. The only interesting thing in this neighborhood was a rock…a small asteroid, actually—a rogue piece of space debris that had somehow wandered into this sector. She supposed that in about a billion years or so, it would get too close to one of those faraway stars and meet its end by getting ripped apart by the star’s gravity. Either that or it would join up with other bits of free-floating rocks to eventually form the nucleus of a new planet or moon.
But she had already buzzed the asteroid with her Spacehawk, as well as taken some scans of it for the science geeks back home.
That had cured the monotony of this patrol.
For about five minutes.
Her BOV—base operating vessel—the UCS Fordham was now in orbit around a ringed gas giant planet, studying it. Not that she could even see the mighty starship that was her home. Or even the gas giant that it was orbiting.
Jane and her Spacehawk were three parsecs away from the Fordham and the planet.
The starship’s commanding officer, Captain Yarrum, had been demonstrating an overly cautious attitude during the Fordham’s seven shipmonths here in the Andromeda Galaxy.
As such, whenever Fordham stopped to explore anything , Jane and the rest of Sabre Squadron, were sent out on picket screening duty, along with a contingent of the smaller Sparrow starfighters.
Usually, such screens extended, at most, to a range of about 50,000 kilometers from a ship. That was typically more than enough for a starfighter to adequately detect and intercept any possible dangers to the starship while it was just sitting there in space.
But because the Fordham was the first and only Unitary starship in the Andromeda Galaxy, and because no one knew exactly what types of dangers might present themselves here, the captain preferred to have her screening starfighters at picket locations ranging from a few hundred meters from the ship to several lightyears away.
Today, Jane had drawn one of the short straws, so to speak, and so here she was, so far from the Fordham that it would require her to use her photon-thrust engines to get back to her in a matter of minutes, as opposed to millennia.
Once she had arrived at these coordinates, she had done a thorough scan of the vicinity, which revealed that there wasn’t so much as a housefly anywhere near her.
She checked her ship’s clock. It was showing her a countdown of when she could return to the Fordham , and she groaned.
She still had over forty standard minutes left!
She huffed out a frustrated breath and glowered out of her cockpit window.
She was being punished. That had to be the reason why, after Colonel Tai Chang—second-in-command of Sabre Squadron—had assigned Blaster, Mouse, and Raven to picket positions that were also three parsecs from the Fordham , she had then looked pointedly at her in the ready room, and said, “Aaaaaand…Rascal.”
Rascal was her call sign, given to her by virtue of being the youngest pilot in Sabre Squadron, and still looking like a teenager, even though she had recently turned twenty-four. Apparently, the nickname had also been given to her due to her somewhat playful nature which caused her squadron teammates to roll their eyes at her a lot.
In any case, a couple of shipdays ago, as the Fordham was traveling at plus-C speeds to reach the gas giant, Jane and others in Sabre Squadron were performing routine systems tune-ups on their individual Spacehawks.
When Jane had gotten done with her work, she had wanted to test the improvements she had made to her throttle regulator. It was an experimental adjustment (and probably not technically authorized) but if she was right—she had considered at the time—she had given her Spacehawk an even quicker thrusting response time, which would make it even more kick-ass.
Flying outside of the Fordham was impossible when the starship was traveling at plus-C, but she had figured that she could at least get a sense of how effective her changes to the regulator were by slowly flying from one end of the cavernous hangar and back again. Then, once she was able to fly outside the starship, she could really cut loose and test things out.
So, she had asked for permission from Colonel Chang for what was called an in situ maneuvering check to test out some adjustments she had made. Fortunately, the colonel happened to have been distracted at the moment Jane had done this—a circumstance Jane may or may not have known would work to her advantage—and so hadn’t asked precisely what adjustments had been made. Instead, she had just waved Jane away with a “Very well, go ahead,” and continued her conversation with one of the squadron’s maintenance techs.
With permission granted, Jane had eagerly boarded her Spacehawk, already anticipating feeling her starfighter respond more quickly to her controls.
And that was the problem.
The starfighter responded a little too quickly to her controls. So quickly, in fact, that even though she had only been using her low-powered repositioning thrusters, her ship shot forward as if she had just fired up her main engine. It had caught her by surprise, her muscle memory not at all expecting such power during this particular maneuver.
Trying to quickly compensate for that burst of speed, she ended up overcompensating and putting her fighter into a yaw spin which completely threw her for a loop, and so, trying to compensate for that , she ended up overcompensating again. This time, she ended up not in a spin, but in more of an aerial slide which, unfortunately, was sliding her fighter towards where the other Spacehawks were parked.
As her fellow Sabre Squadron pilots scrambled to get out of the way, Jane had initiated an emergency shutdown of all systems on her ship, causing it to drop like a rock onto the hangar bay floor and skid a few dozen meters before coming to a halt.
Not, alas, before bumping into Colonel Chang’s Spacehawk and scratching its paint job.
One of the mechanics for the 122 nd Skyborne Rangers Division—which Sabre Squadron belonged to—upon learning of what Jane had adjusted, got red in the face, and yelled, “It’s called a regulator for a reason, Lieutenant!”
It was gross insubordination, and Jane’s instinct was to dress him down, but under the circumstances she had realized that she didn’t have much of a leg to stand on.
Besides, at the same time, Colonel Chang was yelling at her also, even ominously mentioning that Jane might be sent back home to the Milky Way Galaxy.
In several boxes.
In the end, she wasn’t dismembered, and her constituent parts shot out into space. But she did receive a reprimand on her record for making an unsafe modification to her Spacehawk which endangered herself, her ship, other vessels, and other personnel nearby.
Colonel Chang had also assigned her guard duty in the hangar—for an entire shipmonth! Which was ridiculous seeing how the Fordham had such sophisticated security systems that no one onboard her could so much as fart without Meg— Fordham’s AI—being aware of it.
She was also responsible for repainting the colonel’s starfighter.
She knew it could have been worse, and she had genuinely thanked her goddesses that she hadn’t hurt anyone, and that she hadn’t done any significant damage to her Spacehawk or any of the other ships.
And despite Colonel Chang’s threats to carve her up into little pieces and shoot her out into space like some kind of fucked-up jigsaw puzzle, Jane knew the colonel had gone easy on her.
Well, except for assigning her this picket position…
***
“Fuck this!” Jane sighed.
She fired up her thrusters and steered her Spacehawk towards that asteroid again. According to her earlier scans, it was just a plain vanilla space rock, composed of nothing exciting, but at least it was something to look at. She decided she would buzz around it again as well as take some additional images of it. The science geeks on the Fordham would wet themselves with excitement with each bit of data she provided them about this boring rock.
Now that she was thinking of it…
There was that cute geologist who worked in the Planetary Sciences division. She was blonde, with amazing green eyes. A bit older than herself, but then again who wasn’t?
What’s more, technically , the study of asteroids fell under the purview of the Planetary Sciences division…
Smiling now, Jane considered that if she presented this data to that geologist personally, perhaps she could also wrangle a date out of it.
“Holly,” she said, summoning her personal AI.
“Yes, Jane?” Holly responded via the speakers in Jane’s flight helmet.
“Activate the forward cameras, please,” Jane instructed. “I’m going to approach to within ten meters above the asteroid’s surface. Let’s take some award-winning photographs of this rock.”
“As you wish, Jane,” Holly responded. “However, this is only a Class 5 asteroid. It is hardly worth all that effort.”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to score a date with one of those geeky scientists,” Jane told her. “They consider this kind of stuff romantic.”
“Understood,” Holly replied.
“Do you really?” Jane asked.
“No,” Holly admitted.
Jane reached the asteroid again after about five minutes. It was an irregularly-shaped rock, a little more than 200 kilometers long and only 60 kilometers at its widest point, and it was pockmarked with small craters. As it journeyed through space, it was tumbling slowly, and Jane instructed Holly to match it with her starfighter’s maneuvering thrusters while she simultaneously approached closer to the rock’s surface. This had the effect of making the asteroid appear as if it was perfectly still.
She was about twenty-five meters from the surface when suddenly an alarm sounded in her cockpit.
She brought her ship to a full stop and scanned her readouts with her eyes.
Fuck!
Her first thought was that it was Colonel Chang, traveling out all this way just to yell at her some more, but she instantly knew that wasn’t the case. Her sensors were telling her that this was an unidentified craft.
Fuck!
“Holly,” she said, “how the hell did we not see this thing coming?”
“The ship suddenly appeared, Jane,” Holly told her. “My guess is that it has jump capability.”
Jump capability …the ability of a spacecraft to travel at plus-C speeds. It meant that a vessel could just appear in space once it reverted back to sub-C velocity, undetected by sensors until it did so.
Well, this undetected ship was now only five kilometers aft of her!
Fuck!
Forgetting about the asteroid or future dates with the blonde geologist, Jane quickly turned her Spacehawk around so that she was facing the other ship.
“Raise shields!” she ordered Holly. “Passive scans only! All cameras and recorders active!”
“Done and done,” Holly assured her.
Jane realized she was in a very precarious situation.
Since the unknown spacecraft—unspac—was not from the Fordham , it meant it belonged to an alien species not associated with the Unitary, which only existed in the Milky Way Galaxy.
This meant that this was a first contact situation.
And Jane—like all starfighter pilots—was not authorized or trained to make first contact with an alien species.
She was piloting a spacecraft that was designed for battle, and if an alien race was advanced enough to build jump capability ships, then it was advanced enough to detect all the weaponry aboard the Spacehawk. And depending on how skittish they were, they could misinterpret Jane’s very presence as an act of aggression and initiate a skirmish.
Not a good way for two species to introduce themselves to one another.
Thus, the rules for starfighter pilots in these situations were simple…
“Holly, plot a zigzag jump course back to the Fordham ,” she said. “Wait for my mark.”
“Course plotted,” Holly told her. A moment later, she added, “Jane, we are being scanned.”
That wasn’t surprising. But like her own scans, the unspac’s were passive, meaning that they weren’t attempting to hack into any of the Spacehawk’s systems.
The first thing Jane needed to do was attempt to show the other vessel that she wasn’t a threat. By now, the unspac had approached to within 1000 meters of her and was now at a dead stop.
Jane didn’t move her ship an inch, wanting to prove to the other vessel that she had no aggressive intent. So, she just sat there observing the other craft.
Its hull was painted a shiny blue, on top of what her scans revealed to be an alloy of titanium. It was a ball shape, with a fin attached to the aft section, and a large window in front.
Jane couldn’t see the pilot or pilots. Like her own cockpit window, the unspac’s was tinted.
It was much smaller than the Spacehawk. It looked as if it could accommodate only one pilot, and not much else. But she reminded herself not to make any assumptions. For all she knew, the beings who constructed that spacecraft were no bigger than her thumb, which meant there could be thousands of those fuckers onboard.
“Can you determine how many beings are on that thing?” she asked Holly.
“One lifeform,” Holly replied. “Unknown species, naturally.”
“Naturally,” Jane muttered.
She checked her screens. According to what else her scans were telling her, the unspac was not nearly as heavily armed as she was. If the data was correct, her companion had two forward laser cannons that were so underpowered they wouldn’t come close to overloading her shields.
So…advantage her: size and weaponry.
However…
Advantage them: smaller size and maneuverability. If it came down to it, she would have a challenge targeting this alien craft and destroying it in a dogfight.
She decided to further prove her friendliness by backing her ship up fifty meters.
Surprisingly, the unspac did the same thing.
“Okay, off to a good start…” she muttered. The way she figured it, what had just happened was a form of communication, and it occurred without any shots being fired.
Still, she decided not to press her luck. As curious as she was, she was not what they called a Contact Ambassador, and the longer she stayed here, the more she risked fucking things up.
“Jane, the nature of the unknown vessel’s scans has changed,” Holly informed her.
“Changed to what?” Jane asked.
“Nothing harmful,” Holly added. “They are not trying to access our systems. In fact, if I’m understanding this, the scan is now mainly focused on you, but I reiterate…it is nothing harmful.”
Okay…okay…
Jane reminded herself to stay calm. It was perfectly understandable that whoever was aboard that other craft would want to know the type of being they had encountered.
After a few moments, however, she decided her new friend had had enough time to learn as much about her as possible. It wasn’t like they needed to know her bra size or what her last meal had been. She was about to order Holly to initiate the zigzag jump course back to the Fordham when…
What the hell?
A set of lights on the front of the unspac had started blinking.
Two blinks. A pause. Three blinks. A pause. Five blinks.
After a longer pause, the sequence repeated itself.
“Holy shit,” Jane said, recognizing what was happening.
The unspac was communicating with her by using its lights to transmit the first three prime numbers.
“Holly, blink my headlights in the following set of flashes, with a one-second pause between sets: seven, eleven, thirteen.”
“Beginning sequence,” Holly informed her instantly. A few moments later, Holly added, “Sequence complete.”
Okay…what now, my friend?
So far, this interaction had been going well, but Jane was still hyped for battle , meaning that she was more than ready to defend herself if the unspac made any hostile gestures.
Suddenly, an alert sounded in her cockpit.
She was receiving a transmission.
Holly was on it…
“I’ve quarantined the transmission, Jane,” she said. “I am running a threat scan on it. It contains a significant amount of what appears to be some kind of text, as well as what appears to be an image. I can detect nothing harmful in the transmission.”
“Keep it isolated,” Jane instructed. That was protocol under these circumstances. She would bring back whatever this transmission was to the Fordham . The starship had much more powerful threat scanning software.
She wondered if the unspac expected some kind of answer in response to its transmission, but before Jane could even begin to wonder what to send back—except maybe her bra size—the mysterious vessel suddenly turned and sped off. Jane tracked it with her eyes until a bright flash appeared, and the ship was gone.
She decided to leave well enough alone. Besides, she didn’t want to wait and see if any more unexpected visitors showed up.
“Holly, initiate zigzag jump!” she said urgently.
Her Spacehawk’s quark-ion-photon engines sprung to life, accelerating her starfighter to plus-C speeds on a course away from the Fordham… just in case her new friend was still around, waiting to see in what direction she traveled, and then try to use that information to discover where she came from.
When this first jump segment ended, Holly would redirect the ship on another jump course that would also not be in the direction of the Fordham .
This would continue for three, maybe four, segments until finally, Holly would steer the Spacehawk back to the starship. There was a chance Jane would be overdue returning home, but it was better than risking leading an alien species there.