FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Derelict: Chapter 1

"Three. Two. One." I unconsciously mumbled to myself and pulled back a stiff lever all of the way.

I watched as the streaks of light that were stars slowly compressed back into the familiar points against the black backdrop of space. That wasn't what I was concentrating on though, in front of me laid the planet Neptune with its blue smoky swirls that danced across its surface slow and gracefully like it had been doing for billions of years. I took just a second to marvel at it before concentrating back at the task at hand.

I sat at the controls of The Hydra, a small salvage ship that got its name from the vast array of arms that jutted out of it like many heads. Only if it could grow two more whenever one of them got knocked off by a micro meteor; that would save lots of time and money. There wasn't much of either of those since it took a long time to get anywhere and supplies for extensive repairs were usually on short supply or had to be taken from the valuable salvage that was meant to be sold.

The cargo stores of The Hydra were barren at the moment, freshly emptied at a shipyard by Jupiter. There was lots of salvage there, a massive naval battle had taken place a week before The Hydra arrived. The victorious ships that were there weren't too thrilled to see us since salvaging military material wasn't exactly legal. Got a good load before a small frigate buzzed the ship, forcing me to leave a rather expensive looking reactor behind. A loss yes, but the ship had already taken on enough to make the entire trip worth it.

Got enough money to split it evenly between the two other people I worked with. There was Jerry Springer, the captain and the man who often went out in a suit to get some of the more fragile bits that we sometimes came across. He was a stubborn but fair captain.

The other person was Manny Velazquez, the mechanic who somehow managed to keep the hunk of junk I was flying intact despite its hardened appearance. The outside of the ship was pockmarked with scorches and holes that had been patched over time and time again with a thousand different colored metals. Manny often didn't have much to work with, but he did just fine with what little Jerry let him take from the cargo hold to make repairs. He was exceptional at his job.

I was the pilot, spending most of my days in a chair that was nowhere near comfortable enough for the amount of time I spent in it. I flew us wherever the captain wanted to go and I was fine just doing that. I also worked the arms most of the time when Jerry was out on a spacewalk to get something. Occasionally Manny would do that, but he was often in the engine room doing maintenance.

"Time to wake the others up." I got up from my chair and popped my back by planning both of my hands on the back of the chair and pushing. The relief didn't last long as the aches quickly returned, the over-the-counter meds I had bought doing little except make me drowsy which was not good at all since piloting required absolute focus when an asteroids had a knack for coming out of nowhere more often than I would have liked. Radar could only do so much.

I walked down the low halls of the ship. It was narrow, practically impossible to walk down when someone was coming from the opposite direction, trust me I tried. You end up in a strange dance of overly ornery grunting to squeeze pass the other person. It was just better to back track to an area where you could step off to the side, but there wasn't anyone else so I was clear to walk with my head slightly bowed to prevent it from clipping one of the many hazards that ran along the overhead. Wires, piping, everything that couldn't fit behind the bulkheads were stuck up above, just waiting for someone to have a lapse in concentration.

I came to the medbay which sported a single gurney that was currently folded up against the bulkhead, some meager medical supplies and two large metal hatches. There was a small computer terminal between the two hatches which had life support readings on them, they were nominal which was good. I tapped in a warm up routine into it and left the room, making my way back up to the cockpit at the front of the ship. Everything was now automated to wake up the Jerry and Manny from cryo.

The trip from Jupiter to Neptune was a long one, in space, everything took a long time. The trip lasted two and a half months so Jerry and Manny were put into cryo for the duration while I stayed awake. Someone always had to be awake to watch over the ship in case something happened. Space was too treacherous to simple let a computer handle any emergency so it was up to me as the pilot to act as a guardian for two and a half long months. Luckily I had convinced Manny to take the dreaded watch on the way back.

Once it was time to head back, I would set up everything to let the ship fly back to Jupiter. If we were to hit something at high speed, there was nothing anyone could do. I only had to pilot when we were at a slow speed, that was when I could make a difference. Manny would then wake me up a day before we had to slow down. Until then, I set up a flight path to put the ship in a long elliptical orbit around the planet so we would eventually come across what we were here for.

"Troy!" Jerry's gruff voice, damaged from too much smoking startled me. It was coming from the speaker that was the communicator. Cryo didn't take that long to get out of since it wasn't true cryo in the sense of being frozen. It just cooled the body down at such a rate that it puts it into a comatose state that wears off when the temperature rises. The cooling process took days, the warming process only took minutes.

Flipping on the switch to turn my end on, I spoke while performing the necessary engine burns to the ship into position. "What's up boss?" I know what you're thinking, don't talk on the communicator while piloting, but Jerry would yell at me for making him wait. He hated to wait, everything had to be done in the most efficient manner, and waiting was not efficient in his book.

"We in orbit?" He asked, getting right down to business like I knew he would.

"Doing that right now." I said as I had said many times before. It was all routine now, get to a planet, wake up the others and then put us into the correct orbit. I was a well-tuned machine in that respect, each maneuver, each twist of my hands to guide the direction of the ship was all from muscle memory and nearly a decade of practice.

"Good, I'm heading up to the bridge."

"Roger that." I flipped the switch off and began the final burn that would put us in a one week orbit. We wouldn't have to wait that long though, according to the information Jerry had gotten back at Jupiter from a fellow salvager.

Supposedly there was a derelict station out here that the other salvager was forced to pass up due to a full cargo hold. I don't know how Jerry managed to get a salvager to give up the location, but I wasn't going to complain. Derelict stations were hard to come by since they were often missed by someone when they went offline and quickly cleaned up, but there were a few out there. Stations were nearly pure profit since they usually contained supplies and could be easily taken apart due to the methods used to construct them.

They were often large segments that would pop together into a large multilayers spoke with wheels. It was little effort to get the pieces to come apart and then cut those up into small enough sections to fit inside the cargo hold that took up over three quarters of the area of the ship. The only price was time. Like I said, everything takes time in space.

I heard heavy footsteps behind me. I could tell it was Jerry due to the uneven footfalls. He had a limp from an old injury that had nearly ripped his leg right off. He didn't like to talk about it and I never bothered asking.

"If everything goes according to plan." I stated as he took the seat next to me in the copilot seat. He was wearing a loose pair of shorts with no shirt, he hadn't bothered to change out of the clothes he had worn when I cryo. There was also a blue hint to his skin and lips which was a common side effect from spending so long in a cold environment. "We'll see the derelict station tomorrow." He shivered, goosebumps forming across his body.

He was built like a bull, nothing but muscle even though he had never stepped foot on a planet. From what I had collected over the years, he was born on an orbital station over Mars. His parents were salvagers as well and he quickly followed in their footsteps. He never showed interest in going down to a planet when he "could see all of it from space already." That was his excuse.

I myself was born on Luna. My parents were white collared workers, middle class. I spent the first twenty years of my life waking up to the sight of Earth. I had been down to the planet a couple times when my parents had to travel for business. I never saw any of the countryside which I had always wanted to do, but I had to admit the blue sky was pretty. Luna wasn't terraformed, we lived in giant snow globes and the sky was always one color, black. I had tried to use that argument, that he hadn't seen everything, but all it did was get him to paint the top of me room blue. Jerry didn't often joke around, but when he did, he made sure to make his point clear.

"Explain to me why you can't just mosey the ship right over to the station." He rubbed his hands up and down his tanned arms to get the blood flowing more.

"It's cheaper this way." I explained. "Fuel costs money so I let gravity do all of the work." It wasn't the fastest way, but it was efficient which would appeal to him. I wouldn't care if he ordered me to just go gung-ho and get us to the station right now, we were going to make money either way. I wasn't too picky about how much I made, I never spent much money anyways. There was never an opportunity to buy much since most stations that we stopped at catered to servicing ships more than people.

"Very well." He said after some thoughts. There were no ships in the area. People rarely went farther than Saturn due to the extreme distance so there was a very miniscule chance of running into anyone even near a planet as well-known as Neptune. "How was the flight?" He asked me now that the technical stuff was out of the way. I was a member of his crew and being alone on a ship for two and a half months was not fun.

"Boring as hell." I let go of the controls that I had been holding the entire time since we were now in orbit and rubbed my eyebrows. "Glad that Manny agreed to stay awake on the way back." I truly was. I had bought some books and had gone through them all in only two weeks. The rest of the trip was spent exercising. Even that got boring since I could only stand to run laps around the ship for so many times.

"Hopefully after this we'll be able to afford more powerful engines."

"Or a more powerful ship." I offered jokingly. I knew that he would never get rid of The Hydra. It was his baby in a way. It was his first ship after leaving his parents to go out on his own. I thought it was an ugly piece of shit, which it was.

"You want to be on another ship, then fine. You can join up for the Navy." It was an ultimatum, one that had been offered on many occasions. There was no contract binding me to stay on the ship. I could leave whenever I wanted to if I found that my dislike for dull grey and grimy was no longer to my liking.

"Yeah right." I snorted. Living under the thumb of some officer who was probably going to be half my age did not sit well with me. Jerry respected me since I had proven myself capable and I wasn't about to give that up. I looked around the cockpit real quick, noticing the lack of the third crew member.

"He's in the engine room like usual, probably running some diagnostics or something. He'll be around soon enough." Jerry said before I could ask myself. "Go get some rest." He patted me on the back. "You deserve some."

I smiled and got up. The station wasn't going anywhere and the planet was doing all of the work at the moment, plus I needed to rest as well.

I left Jerry up in the cockpit where he was doing some diagnostics of his own, making sure I didn't scratch his beloved ship while he was out. I went to the small room that was my own and laid down on the small cot that had several blankets neatly folded on it. I gazed up at the blue overhead. The paint was chipping and the grey metal underneath was showing through. It kind of looked like storm clouds. It had never rained when I was on Earth, it was always sunny. I heard that stormy weather was a bad omen, but that was superstitious especially when I could simply apply a new coat of paint to cover up the grey to make it bright and blue again.

My eye lids grew heavy now that I had stopped moving. It was a great relief to talk to someone again. I had done the long shift before, plenty of times, but the end was always the best part simply because it was difficult to be secluded for so long. I hope Manny is up to the task. I could have him paint the entire ship blue. Jerry would blow a gasket, but it would be good fun and would give Manny something to do. But first, the derelict station. I was excited to see what it had in store for us.