Connection Unknown: Chapter 4 Part 4 of 4 (Patreon)

Luke’s vision cleared as his suit lowered to standing and opened up.

He stepped out, pulling on his coveralls and his boots. Even on the short walk, everyone wore their coveralls everywhere. Caution and paranoia was a spacer’s best friend.

Marissa was fixing up a coffee in the dining area, sealing her mug.

“Having fun? Saw you running around and shooting in there.” Marissa smiled. She had their father’s tanned complexion and their mother’s delicate features, her hair pulled back into a spacer’s braid.

“Pew pew.” Luke pointed a finger pistol at her.

She rolled her eyes and sipped her coffee.

“You on night shift?”

“Aren’t I always?”

“You picked it.”

“I prefer this time zone.” She shrugged. “My friends are all on at that same time.”

“How is Manual Piloting and Interstellar Navigation going?” Luke asked.

“Got to check the bridge quick, been away for more than five minutes,” Marissa said.

“I’ll come with.”

“It’s good. Lots of math, more than I thought—figuring out your position, acceleration and deceleration point. Then the rules, depending on if you’re in Coalition space, or Federation space, or Corporate. Sol system is the worst, so much traffic and so many rules.”

The bridge door opened. The bridge was technically pointed out the side of the Dahlia, instead of facing the direction they were going, but the magic of cameras and screens made it seem as though they were in the forward shield instead of in the rear of the ship just above the engines.

There were two piloting seats. Most just called them “buckets.” Each had hand placements with finger balls like the kind found in space or net suits. You could control the whole ship from your fingertips when at high-g acceleration. In front was a large touch screen relaying information from across the ship.

There were four other seats with their own screens: two engineering, one communications, and one sensors. The stations were all interlinked, capable of handling any of the others.

“Guess they’ve had more time for people to do things wrong, so they had to put on more warnings to not screw it up.”

Marissa snorted. “You’ve got that right.”

Marissa sat in a piloting seats. The screens that surrounded the front of the chair lit up with engineering readouts, scan information, and communication lines.

Although their ship sensors were trapped by the speed of light, the hypernet spread across most human systems. There were only two or three systems that didn’t wish to have it. The hypernet collated information from all the ships and sensor buoys across human space, and spread it to all the others through the hypernet, traveling faster-than-light, or FTL.

Marissa turned to face Luke, who took the sensor seat at the forward right. The stations were set out two in the rear, spreading out to the forward two, with the pilot stations in the middle.

“Doing a module on cubic meters volume, relative mass, and acceleration profiles,” Marissa continued.

“What’s that mean?”

Marissa smirked and drank her coffee. “How much, how large—”

“—how far, and what’s it worth?” Luke chimed in with her, grinning at their mother’s mantra.

“So you failing horribly?” Luke beamed at the expression that promised she would have thrown her mug if it hadn’t been precious caffeination.

“I’m doing rather well. Seems that being a freighter’s daughter has rubbed off on me.” She raised her eyebrow.

“You still want to work on one of those pleasure transports?”

“They’re good pay. You do six months on one ship, and you can rest for another six. And there are boys, lots and lots of boys.” She waggled her eyebrows.

“I expect a new boyfriend every time you come home!” Luke declared.

Marissa snorted. “Imagine Dad’s face?”

“I’d rather not. He’d blow a gasket—or the reactor. Make sure you get him when he’s handling something that won’t destroy us.”

“Like his prize cabbage?”

“Yeah, that might be safest, though Mom would kill him for tearing apart our greens.”

They settled into shaking their heads and smiling.

“About time to fly the freight.” Marissa patted her armrest.

“You started looking at ships?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, only three months left. I got some recommendations from my teachers, got interviews next month and then we’ll see.” Marissa shrugged.

“You think you’ll come back to the Dahlia?”

“Yeah, of course. This is home. Sure, we’ll still meet up and we can always meet on the net. I’m one message away.”

“I know, but like pilot her?”

“She’s a nice ship, but I don’t know…moving freight all the time? It’s interesting when we’re in port, but moving around, there’s not much to do. With the cruiser, we can see the purple moons of Icho, the binary stars of Centauri. The floating cities of the Lemington Jovians. We go from one port to another, onload, offload, and then days and weeks of crossing systems. Three days to see the station or the area around the port. Not enough time to see any more. Sure, we have the net to see people and meet others, but I want to see real people, interact with them day in and out. I love you all, but I don’t want to see everyone with the same last name.”

“I get you.” Luke nodded.

“Have you…?” she ventured.

“Nope. I have ideas of what I want to do, nothing that Dad or Mom would approve of. Otherwise, I don’t know. I can’t find anything else that has that pull, you know?”

“You’ll know when you find it.”

“Yeah, though finding it is the problem. Anyway, just been playing a new game. They’ve got dropships and fighters in them, real-world physics, all based around this massive megastructure factory. It’s pretty cool. You have to pay for gear though.”

“Pay for gear? Like credits?”

“Yeah, but they’re really realistic.”

“Anything that costs me credits ain’t my game. Got enough bills with school.”

“Aren’t you making your cut?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, but school is expensive and there are a lot of people who want to pilot ships. I’m in a best credited schools, so…” Marissa waved her thumb up. “Creds.”

“Gotta love being an adult.”

“Tell me about it. You still talking to that girl Jynx?”

“Yeah.”

“You ask her out yet?”

“No. Like, some stuff came up and I didn’t want to.” Luke rubbed the back of his head.

“You didn’t know how to ask out a girl you’ve been friends with for a long time? Didn’t her dad die recently?” Marissa sipped her coffee.

Luke looked at her and she raised an eyebrow.

“Come on, there’s hardly any gossip on this ship.”

“Well, yeah, and like, she’s been odd since then. You know, we game and stuff, and I’ve thought about asking her once or twice, but she leaves when we have any free time. We have fun together, but…”

“You think she’s shutting you out—she might be trying to tell you that she’s not interested in anything but friendship.”

Luke grunted.

“Well, either you tell her, or you don’t, and you stop thinking about her maybe being your girlfriend.” She shrugged.

“You make it seem as easy as replacing a light strip.”

“Well, it’s like replacing the nozzles on a thruster. It sounds hard and you’re scared it’ll blow up in your face, but you need to get it done and when you do it, you realize it is as easy as turn off, push, twist, pull, then reverse. Just as easy as changing a light strip. Why is everything an engineering analogy with this family?”

Luke waved at the ship. “We don’t have much more material to work with.”

“Fair. But yeah, that’s all I got for you.” Marissa flicked through a screen.

Luke stood and sighed and headed for the hatch. “Sounds so easy.”

“Easier than you think!”

“Night, and thanks,” Luke said from the hatch.

“No problem. Let me know when it blows up in your face because you forgot to turn it off!”

“Will do.” Luke smiled to himself and headed to his room and sweet, sweet sleep.