There was so much pain, but pain meant that I was alive. Still, shouldn't I be feeling nearly no pain because of some of the cybernetics that should filter that out? What I tried to do was just breathe slowly in and out, trying to get enough strength to actually open my eyes.
“Lola, are we still flying?” I finally managed to get out when I felt some strength returning.
“Master, you're awake. That's good. I was afraid you wouldn’t wake up.”
“You should have more faith in me, but I believe right now that would be perhaps preferable to what I’m feeling. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“Please don’t joke like that.”
“Then don’t call me Master.”
“Fine. Do you think you can stay awake? We are running on fumes. If you can stay awake long enough, we can go to another refuelling station and get enough fuel to reach the Trade Centre.”
Finally, I managed to get my eyes open, but somehow even seeing hurt, which didn’t make sense because they were cybernetic. But at least this made me feel a bit more human, so I guess that’s a good thing.
“Lola, display our status.”
“Acknowledged.”
We were quite screwed. The running on fumes comment was pretty accurate. We had perhaps 17 hours left, but the radiation would, wait. We were clean of radiation.
“Lola, what happened to the radiation?”
“I used the nano machines you made to clean the outside of the ship of radiation so we could dock—to do so inside the ship.”
“Good initiative. But how’s the radiation shield? What’s its status?”
“There isn't any radiation in this sub-dimension, but it doesn’t look too good. I think we could use some nanomachines to supplement the broken parts of the shield long enough to refuel. But, well, we don’t have too many of those types of nanomachines—unless we borrow some from the power core. Which I actually did. But even then...”
Yeah, that was a problem. And another problem was those pirates. They know that we haven’t dropped out of FTL, because we would have immediately updated on the quantum net that the station was an ambush.
They would most likely not want that information getting out, and they had enough smaller ships that would have definitely made their way from fueling station to fueling station to try to find me—and this time, they would go for the kill.
“Wait, how long has it been?”
“We entered FTL almost nine hours ago.”
“Lola, display the information you have on the battle.”
“Acknowledged.”
She had the stats for the missiles, at least as far as we could infer from what they had accomplished. Their warheads were extremely low-yield. Enough to damage a weak part of the ship, like the engines.
If we had even the standard armor that other spaceships were using, the missiles wouldn’t have done basically any damage. But they would have certainly destroyed any engine housing, which would have prevented a ship from entering FTL.
They would have most likely sent more missiles if they knew I had side engines that worked. And of course, they would have lowered the yield of the warheads even more, because the ones they had would have easily killed this ship entirely if they hit the engines—but they wouldn’t have known that.
It’s a scary thought that they were not trying to destroy my ship—only damage it enough that they could capture it, which would of course bring in a lot more money than trying to salvage it for basic materials after it was blown up.
So, what to do?
“Lola, don’t head to a refueling station. If I am correct, there are some things called solar system emergency refueling services. There should be one that's connected to the Trade Centre. They would have proper defenses, and from what I’ve understood, the Trade Centre is heavily against piracy.”
“Acknowledged. And yes, from the information I’ve gathered, many star systems offer that service around here. And yes, the Trade Center is heavily against piracy. It’s responsible for nearly 80% of the missions to hunt down pirates in this sector and quite a few surrounding ones. And they always give good rewards.”
“I looked through the information. There is one that we should be able to reach. It’s on the correct path to the Trade Centre as well—only adds an extra day to our overall travel.”
“Make it so.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Acknowledged.”
She was flying the ship herself because I was not healthy enough for the fine control needed to get us near the correct location when we exited FTL.
The restraints were removed so I could move around more freely, and from the looks of it, as I stripped to take a shower, my entire backside was a large bruise.
“Remi, what are you doing?” Lola asked me, which was curious.
“Going to take a shower. Why?”
“Please don’t move from that seat. You are not strong enough to handle the 2.3 G from the wrong direction, and in this direction of gravity, can you even shower?”
“Oh, right.” I had totally forgotten about that.
“Thanks for reminding me. I think the pain is clouding my judgment. Do you still think entering the solar system for an emergency refuel is a good idea?”
“That idea is extremely good, as inside the solar system the radiation would be a lot lower, so not a problem we need to deal with. We also wouldn't need to spend any time decelerating—although it’s going to cost quite a lot.”
“Yeah. Remind me, what was the number?”
“In that solar system, it's 20,000 mana credits plus fuel cost for the amount of fuel we would want to buy.”
“Well, that’s going to suck. Am I allowed to sleep?”
“If I have permission to wake you up with an electric shock, yes.”
“Yes, please do that. Everything’s so heavy.”
Eleven hours later
“Fuck!” I was jolted awake.
“Sorry, but we’re about to reach our destination and I needed to wake you up.”
“Thanks, I think.” I need to remember not to get this hurt again, because waking up because of an electric shock was not nice.
Everything still hurt, but it was getting better, so after moving a bit in the chair, I took control. It was obvious that I was still a bit out of it, but I pushed through the pain and the haziness and followed the set course exactly, reducing the thrust that started to destabilize our stay in this side dimension.
When the timer reached zero, we were back in normal space on the dot.
The screen lit up. Space around us was starting to populate the screens. It took only seconds for Lola to verify where we were and that we were in the correct location. It took longer to get any other details, but we soon detected a space station not too far from us. Our communication computer was already working, trying to make contact.
It seemed that near the space station were two large ships, and they were obviously military. Their design, however, was quite interesting. Outside of it kinda looked like vines twisted together.
We were close enough to the space station to get a visual connection, even if the delay was a few seconds. So when they contacted us and a person appeared on the screen—seemingly made out of vines twisted together—the design of the ship started to make more sense.
It emitted some sort of noise... and then a moment later it was translated by the universal translator, making it seem like actual speech.
“Greetings, you indicated that you do not have any accounts with the Haver Alliance, but that you are willing to pay in trade. Also indicated that it would be gold you’re willing to trade, but we would be willing to give you a 10% discount if you have platinum instead of gold to trade?”
Lola immediately displayed our stockpiles, and we did have platinum—quite a lot of it—and if it gave us even a bit of a discount, why not.
“Yes, I can do that. So how much is 1.5 tons of hydrogen going to cost me?”
“1265 mana credits for the hydrogen, and 19,000 for the service. That is with the discount, which would make it 1.62 kilogrammes.”
I’m starting to like this universal translator more and more. Not only could it translate any language it had a key to, but it could also do unit conversions, if the required information was there in the key. And it could even give, if you had an AR connection, body language and facial expression meanings.
It was even showing me that this creature seemed quite excited by all of this.
“I will be transferring the platinum with a drone. So will I need an open airlock to deposit that in.”
“That makes things easier. Payment up front, as always. A ship is already accelerating to bring you your fuel. We will be sending the data to your onboard computer. Have a sunny day.”
“And goodbye to you.”
The screen cut off after that. Were these interactions getting more and more ordinary, like seeing aliens and interacting with them was something I had always done.
We were moving quite fast, so it wouldn't take too long before the communication delay would have gotten even worse. Only a few seconds later, we had the correct data needed to plot a course. Fortunately, we didn’t need to basically do anything on our end, but it would take about 48 hours before the other ship would get close enough to us to actually refill our tanks.
We were in zero gravity once again, which actually helped so much. First, a bathroom break, and then I wanted some food.
When I reached the hydroponics, I looked upon a scene of destruction.
“Lola, is any of the algae still alive?”
“I do not know.”
Fortunately, we still had some food that was stored in safe cold containers that had their own radiation protections just in case, and it was a good precaution as it turns out.
Afterward, I spent a couple of hours cleaning out the hydroponics tanks with some of the drones meant for this job.
It was still food, even if most of the algae was dead. But amongst the large groups of dead algae, I found some that were alive. It would take a lot longer to get to a stable population that would allow us to get food again, but it would eventually happen—unless something goes wrong again.
We were not using our sensors as strongly as we could, as that would be quite rude, but Lola did manage to map a lot of the solar system. We had also traveled outside the current, with Lola reporting minimal turbulence during that.
What I also did was look at my medical report, and honestly, I’m surprised I’m still alive. The nano machines really did a lot of the heavy lifting, keeping me from being poisoned by the damage my body sustained.
I should be nearly at 100% in about a week, which was extremely good. What I also did was just lay and even sleep in the bed, and I did have straps for the occasion that we were inside zero gravity.
The time went by surprisingly fast, with most of it spent sleeping. I did print out the platinum currency needed. It was a shame to give up so much, but we had no other good option for now.
Lola had also observed what was happening with the station we managed to escape from, and apparently the quantum net was in a shitstorm, with more and more reports coming of ships that have not reached their destinations after supposedly refueling and leaving that space station.
That was a bit unfortunate because it meant that trap was an extremely good one, and those pirates were not going to like me for messing up their profitable venture. Also, the Haver Prime Trade Center seemed to have put up quite a big bounty for the destruction of that pirate group, even though there already were quite a few bounties from different sectors for their destruction.
I looked at the number in a bit of disbelief. The reward for killing them was 24 billion mana credits, and apparently it wasn't actually that large of a bounty for such a target. I wonder why it was so low.
“Are you receiving me?”
“Yes, loud and clear,” I answered back to the voice communication coming from the ship that was now approaching us.
“Good. What side do you want me on?”
“It doesn't matter, both sides are good. I’ll send you the details.”
“Hmm, it would be easier if you moved into this position,” the plant person said and then sent the information on which position my ship should be in. It was easy enough to change it so we would be at an angle, which would make fuel transfer quicker because he wouldn't have to manoeuvre so much.
“Is this good?”
“It is. The transfer and me making it into the correct position will take about 30 minutes.”
“Thank you,” I said to it.
“No problem, but for the night—how are you still flying? It looks like you took a railgun grapeshot. Pretty sure some of your armor is only a few millimeters thick at some points. And then there’s the damage on the bottom. You were the one that escaped from that refuel trap, were you not?”
“Yeah, it was a close thing. Got lucky and missed the landing zone quite a bit. It was what saved me.”
“Yeah, distance is king when trying to escape. Anyways, I won’t bother you more. Thanks for talking. We don't get much work, but this job pays well.”
“Yeah, no problem. And you aren’t bothering me. Also, it’s nice to talk without a delay.”
“You’re right about that. It’s quite annoying. Anyway, I’m on final approach now and will start transferring fuel as soon as you send the platinum over.”
It took the same drone only moments to transfer the platinum over but when it got back, I felt it was a bit sad that its time in space was over so fast.
“Trade verified and damn this is pure. I will pump a bit extra for that.”
“Thanks,” I answer back in standard.
I felt the connection of the fuel hose, and then I could see our fuel levels rising. It was actually quite nice to talk to someone else, and from the looks of it, these people seemed pretty nice.
When the tanks were full, I said my goodbyes, and when we knew we were far enough away from each other, I accelerated.
This time, I didn’t push acceleration hard, only keeping us at 5G acceleration, which meant it took us about 40 minutes to get back to the correct speed and enter FTL.
It was going to be a two-day journey to the Trade Center, but we would only be going about 114 light-years because we now had no current to help us.
