Systems Of Valor - Chapter 9 Unexpected

The trip through the solar system was uneventful and super boring, Amy kept on nagging me while I was working making it impossible to think. She kept trying to tell me how to do my job like; “don’t touch that wire.” Or mumblings of me not being careful. But finally, We dropped out into UHF controlled space.

“Captain, we have arrived. I’ve already called ahead to request docking, they should respond by the time we reach the planet.”

“All right, do I have to pay? Or its that covered too?”

“No, it’s free.” I sat down in the Captain’s chair and took control of the ship, I eased into the system and approached our destination.

“Captain we have an incoming message.” It must be the station hailing us about our permissions to dock.

“Put it on the main screen.” I straightened up in my chair, trying to look like I’ve lived in this time my whole life, instead of a kid from California with daddy issues. After I had started fixing up the ship, Amy pointed me in the direction of a shower I could use, as well as an old navy blue jumpsuit. Amy said it belonged to the ships old science officer, Which sent a shiver down my spine, thinking about all the people that had died aboard this vessel. I made one last movement on my chair when I heard a gruff-low tone sound of a man clearing his throat. I looked up at the screen and faced the owner of the voice.

On the screen was a man in his forties wearing a deep ocean green jumpsuit, staring impatiently, waiting for me to speak. “Ship number?” he said gruffly.

“Ah yes my ship number… give me a moment, its been a while since the last time I had to do this.” I made a gesture of going through some papers I had placed on the armrest, after going through several pages, I finally got to the page I needed. The page had information Amy had told me to tell him. “My ship number is 565-17-5210, my ship class is Corvette and the manufacturer is the Astral Phoenix.”

The man on the other side of the screen looked relieved and started punching away on something I couldn’t see. When he finished his face flashed with a bright red light, the man looked startled for a second, then tried to look calm, but he looked a lot happier than he did a couple seconds ago. He smiled, “Permission Granted.”

The screen went black as the man closed the comm, “That guy was really weird, like horse walks into a bar kind of weird.”

“I agree, I’m just amazed at the fact the man still has his job unless uniforms have changed. He was wearing green instead of wearing white like he’s supposed to.”

“Huh… that is kind of weird, but the uniforms have probably changed due to the war. Anyhow, I’m bringing us in.” I grabbed the flight controls and started to bring us towards the space station, just as I was about halfway there, the lights in the Bridge went red and an alarm started blaring.

“Captain, the Station is firing at us! I’ve raised shields to maximum but it isn’t going to be pretty when those rockets hit us!” Hearing her I was in shock, after all, I was just fifteen years old. “Captain! We need to leave. NOW!” Hearing her I finally fell out of my stupor and swung the ship around. “914 meters and closing fast.”

“How much time until impact.” I was in a state of pure fear, I didn’t want to die yet. there are so many things I want to do and see.

“15 seconds, 14…13…12…11…10…” Her counting brought an inhuman fear raging out of my gut. I made the only decision I could even think of.

“Amy, initiate a warp jump”

“But I would need to calcula…”

“Don’t calculate just do it!” I soon heard the sounds of the warp drive spinning up, but to my dismay, Amy continued counting.

“6…5…4…3…2…” I closed my eyes waiting for impact… nothing happened after a few seconds and I opened my eyes.

What faced me was a giant asteroid, and I was barreling right towards it. I quickly swung the controls to the right and pushed the thrusters to maximum, the ship swung on an arc and just barely missed the giant mass. After that I brought the ship to a full stop, I looked around out the window to see miles of asteroids in almost every direction. Seeing nothing I fell back in my seat and heaved a sigh of relief.

“Congratulations Captain, on being the 17th person in UHF history to survive a random warp jump.” Amy’s words did not comfort me, and I just sat there breathing. Once I had collected myself, I asked Amy about the chances of surviving a random jump. “According to UHF scientists, they believe the chances are around a 9.7 percent chance of surviving, not because they didn’t think they’d survive it, but because they could never possibly ever find their way back.”

I frowned, ” So… you’re saying we’re lost?” I looked out the window at the infinite blackness of space and its twinkling stars.

“Indeed.”