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Patrolling around distant sectors were boring, until they weren’t. Adrift in the furthest reaches of charted space, far flung from any sort of backup, with only the stars for company… it made Officer Hadley tense. It made her eat her lunch in the cockpit.
It was a tiny cockpit for a tiny scout-class ship, and the screen took up a good half of the room. Hunched up in her chair, Hadley saw stars almost everywhere she looked; if she minimized the report she was working on, she could almost forget she was in a ship at all. One little movement, and she could float away into the cosmos, never to be seen again.
She gripped her chair a little tighter, and took another bite of her ration. It was salty, dry, and vaguely carrot flavoured. She forced it down with a gulp of water, then set the rest aside to check her display.
Life forms? None in range. Ships? None in range. Heat signatures? A small blip at the edge of her screen, belonging to one of the UL’s self-replicating resource miners as it scanned for new materials. Did she make sure to broadcast her license at it? Yes, she did.
Nothing was happening… nothing that she noticed, anyway.
Hadley gritted her teeth and updated her report:10:90 – no change.
No change. This was her life now.
It was hard to believe that just few months ago, she’d been in the final running for the UL-TRA Stealth Program. She was the best of the best, training on state-of-the art ships for missions of the highest importance. And she thought she was good at it, too; she could weave through asteroid fields and take out targets with extreme precision. Her instructors smiled when she came back to the hangar. Rank, Paq, Serven, Jiakata, and Htak – the other pilots – would clap her on the back before tests, tell her she was going to blow them out of the water.
People never used to tell her that. Her father told her a lot of things, but from the day she was born to the day he kicked her out onto the streets, he never told her anything approaching encouragement. He told her she’d never amount to anything; Hadley had always thought he was wrong, and here, finally, was the validation she’d always been craving, the stone cold evidence that she was right, and he didn’t matter anymore.
She thought she belonged there. She thought she had finally found her place in the world.
She thought.
That was then, but now she was here. Here, in a rickety old scout ship with one laser turret and a last-gen engine that made strange noises if it went above a crawl. She’d tried to be happy about it, she’d tried to study for the Captain’s exam, she’d tried to forget about what could have been… but in quiet moments like this, she couldn’t escape it.
Hadley was jealous. She’d felt it when they let her go, felt it when Jiakata hugged her and told her to stay in touch, and she felt it now. She was a great pilot – they wouldn’t have let her in if she wasn’t – just as good as everyone else in the program. Why did she have to get dropped while everyone else got to stay? Why did she have to leave the one place she wanted to be in, and go patrolling in the furthest reaches of the galaxy? It wasn’t fair! Why her? Why not…
No. Hadley sighed. Everyone else in the program… belonged there, and she didn’t. She had consistently lower scores in comparison to the rest of the group; of course she’d be the one to get dropped. It was she who wasn’t being fair.
She didn’t belong in UL-TRA. She wasn’t good enough; not in score, and clearly not in personality, either. Hadley couldn’t imagine any of her teammates feeling this way towards her if it was the other way around. It was over. She had to let it go.
This was her life now. It wasn’t anything special... but maybe she wasn’t anything special, either.
Hadley gulped down the last of her ration. She found it hard to swallow.
Just as she brought up her report to log another cycle of inactivity, an alert flashed on her screen: A ship was about to exit lightspeed near her location. Hadley sat up; there weren’t supposed to be any other UL ships stationed in this area, and this was such a far-flung section of the galaxy it couldn’t be a simple civilian vessel.
It completed its jump, and Hadley minimised the screen to get a good look at it. She was right – it wasn’t either of those options. It was clearly a pirate ship, a heavily damaged one that was no doubt attempting to escape UL space. It was a red spacecraft with minimal blast plating and wide windows – possibly a civilian vessel repurposed for combat. The craft was small, but it loomed over her tiny scout like the largest of UL battleships.
Hadley had been briefed on this scenario. Her ship simply wasn’t designed to apprehend criminals, so orders were not to engage but to log the fugitive and report the incident to her superiors. Unfortunately, the pirate ship had not been briefed on protocol and quickly swung around to face her, weapons drawn.
Two lasers and a plasma cannon. Hadley sucked in a breath. White flag signal. The white flag signal was her friend right now.
She tried opening communications with the pirate, but they remained stubbornly offline. The pirate kept advancing on them, weapons charging, and the nearest backup she could call for was twenty minutes away. She called for them anyway, but some immediate action needed to be taken here. She fired up the engines and gripped the weapons control.
Hadley fired her one, single laser turret, and watched it fizzle against the ship’s shield. The next second the lasers fired twice each, and she pulled up. The engines squealed and the shots sailed past uncomfortably close to her window. Oh, this engine sucked.
The plasma cannon locked on, and Hadley swooped down and under the ship. Debris pelted against her hull, and the pirate ship began to turn, trying to get her out of its blind spot. She turned with it, but its engines were faster. Just as it started to line up another shot she banked left and fired her turret.
It dissolved in the shield again. Hadley knew it was going to do that, but she felt better at least pretending to fight back. There wasn’t much she could do otherwise.
The pirate ship advanced quickly on her, and when Hadley pulled up again it followed her. Her engines squealed from the effort. Another round of laser shots came flying at her, and this time she was too close to dodge. One missed. Another missed. One knocked out her shield, and the next came crashing into the cockpit. It burned a glowing hole straight through the centre of her roof, and her screen lit up with warnings as air began to rush out of the opening.
Hadley cursed as she reached down and grabbed a can of sealant foam. She shook it, aimed up and sprayed the hell out of the roof. White foam hit the sides of the hole, expanded, and solidified into a grey mass. She felt lightheaded all of a sudden – oxygen levels were very, very low. She pulled down a breathing mask from the overhead with one hand and turned to face the pirate ship with the other. No doubt another salvo of lasers were coming any second; she needed to be ready.
Breathe. Breathe. She was going to make it through this.
The ship was not where Hadley thought it was. She located it a moment later, and to her surprise she found the weapons were no longer charging. The engines were offline. Then she noticed something just behind the cockpit, a silvery box that had definitely not been there before.
She frowned; it had a different registration to the rest of the ship, too. She scanned it, and then she realised it was the resource miner that had been patrolling the sector.
The resource miner.
Hadley‘s eyes widened – this was bad. They told you a hundred times in flight school: if you see a miner in the area, broadcast your registration at it. Even if you’re breaking the law, even if you’re somewhere you’re not supposed to be, the miners need to identify you as a ship. Because if they don’t identify you as a ship-
Hadley watched the miner drill into the pirate vessel and tear off a strip of hull like flesh from a body.
-they assume you’re a particularly resource-rich asteroid, and begin to scrap you and use the resources on board to replicate themselves. All of the resources on board.
A notification came up on Hadley’s screen. The pirates were now broadcasting a white flag signal, and backup was still seventeen minutes out. It was up to her.
With a deep sigh, she steered towards their cockpit, which the resource miner was moving away from. Debris flew past her window as the miner crushed glass and steel into a cube and deposited it inside itself before crawling to another section. Hadley could see what remained of a hallway in the gash it left behind.
Once she was close enough, she left the controls and moved to the back of the ship. Quickly, she donned a space skin, secured her helmet and squeezed into the airlock.
She listened to her own breathing as it vented out the air. A little fast – steady, steady.
Then the airlock opened, and Hadley stepped off into open space. She gripped her propulsion system and jetted over to the pirate ship, where she landed in the exposed walkway right next to the cockpit. The door system was still online, and password locked.
Hadley knocked. She could hear nothing in the emptiness of space, but it clearly made a noise because a second later the doors slid open and let her inside. A man was standing in the middle of the cockpit, frantically pressing buttons as alerts screamed at him. He looked up when she came in.
“I-it’s you!” The man said, dashing up to her. “What did you do? What is that thing?”
Hadley caught his arm. “I didn’t do anything. You attacked me.”
“But the thing attacking us-“
“Is a resource miner. I didn’t order it to attack you; it’s scrapping your ship because you didn’t broadcast your registration at it.”
“Can you shut it off?”
“No. I’m getting you out of here. Is there anyone else on the ship?”
“What?” The man suddenly rounded on her. “I’m not leaving! You go, you go; I’ll find a way to shut it down, but I’m not going back to the UL!”
Hadley raised an eyebrow. “Uh, no. You’re coming with me.”
“No, I’m not!”
“Okay, one, there’s literally no way you’re shutting that miner down. Two, yes you are, because you’re under arrest."
His panicked expression suddenly turned dark. He took a step towards her. “Oh, you think you can arrest me? Little lady, I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’m on the run from the whole damn fleet! They can’t catch me, so what makes some prissy little scout pilot think she can-“
Hadley jabbed him in the chest, and watched his eyes bulge as his Emergency Cabin Decompression Implants got to work pumping out his lungs. He let out a strangled gasp, and she took the chance to handcuff him before he could recover from the unpleasant experience.
“Alright, sir. You’ve said enough. Now, where is your space skin?”
The man tried to speak. After a moment of frustrated silence, he motioned with his hands. Hadley saw he was pointing towards the door… no, no, he was flipping her off. And he was smiling so smugly about it too. Hadley sighed.
“Congratulations. Against all the odds, you’ve managed to destroy the very last scrap of sympathy I’ve got for you.” She walked over to the controls and unlocked the door. “I’m sure you’ll be feeling very clever on the spacewalk over to- wait.”
Something had caught her eye on the control panel. She leaned in closer.
“It says there’s another heat signature on this ship! There’s another person on board! Down in the hold… who is this?”
The man flashed Hadley his most innocent smile. She was unimpressed.
“You have a prisoner on board, don’t you? Are you kidding me? Who the hell- ughhh, nevermind.” She checked the miner; it was only a few feet away from breaching the hold. “There’s no time. You- no, I can’t leave you in the helm. You’re coming with me!”
Hadley grabbed him by the back of his shirt and marched him over to the door. She kept a tight grip on him as it opened, flinging the two of them into outer space.
The man flailed wildly. Hadley gritted her teeth and pulsed them towards her ship. Come on, come on…
She glanced back at the miner. It was over the hold. There wasn’t enough time!
They made it to the scout. Hadley came in fast and almost bounced off the airlock doors, but she grabbed them quickly, and held on.
The airlock was venting. Precious seconds spent in the silence of space, with nothing to distract her from counting them down.
And then they opened. Hadley shoved the man inside – what to do with him, what to do with him? He looked unconscious, but she quickly shackled him to a handle and rushed back into the airlock. It was venting again. Stars, she couldn’t take it!
Hadley stared through the window. She watched the seconds count down, count down to zero.
She watched the miner drill down and rip away a great chunk of metal. She watched debris fly out as the air was sucked out of the hold, and something else, too. Something pale – it hurtled her window in a blur.
The airlock vented. Heart thumping in her chest, she chased after the blur.
Her knuckles were white as she gripped her propulsion system. Her thumb pushed the button down as far as it could go. And still she willed herself to go faster; thoughts bubbled in her head – she should’ve taken the ship. She should’ve left the man in the helm. She shouldn’t have taken so long arguing with him…
Hadley gritted her teeth. Concentrate. Somebody’s life was on the line.
The speck in the distance turned into a figure twirling over and over in space. Hadley reached out – she could just so nearly touch them…
Her hand wrapped around a limp foot. Got them! Hadley pulled them in closer, and started moving back to the ship.
She took a good look at them. The prisoner looked like a young man, heavily bruised on the face – two black eyes, and a broken nose. His clothing was ripped, and one front tooth was missing.
More worryingly, he was unconscious and his lips were turning blue. He wouldn’t last much longer out in the vacuum of space. The ship was in sight – hopefully he’d last long enough. She pressed his chest to activate his ECDI – hopefully the implant would hold him over until she could get him some air.
She grappled for the airlock again, and waited an agonizingly long time for it to vent. The man’s hands were swelling up from exposure, turning blue. Hadley cringed and clenched her own. Space exposure, what an awful way to go - she hoped that would never happen to her.
Then the airlock finished venting, and she rushed him inside. Okay! Okay, check his vitals.
She tore off a glove and pressed a finger to his neck. He was… alive.
Thank god. She laid him out on the floor of the scout ship, and made her way over to the cockpit. Backup was a few minutes out, she had the criminal, and the prisoner… she needed to monitor him, but he was alive. She was alive. Everyone was alive. And she... she did that.
That… that turned out better than expected. Hadley sat back in her chair, just taking it in. Just breathing.
In… out.
…
…Hol-ly shit.
…
…She should call Jiakata. For a coffee or something. A coffee…
She watched the man let out a moan and pull at his restraints. After a moment, he went silent.
…Yeah, a coffee sounded good right about now.