Chapter 02 Expedition to Mudd

“I don’t love this idea,” Astrid said, brushing from her face the one white wisp of what was otherwise long brown hair. She tinkered with a busted handheld display as we sat together at the table in my ship’s lounge. “Riding the Drifts is scary enough when you have navigational data. The passage to Mudd is uncharted.”

“What, you’ve never been on an uncharted expedition?” I asked.

“Not one this distant,” she said. “Mudd is closer to Sepulcher. Why don’t we head there first since we already have nav data. Then we can find the way to Mudd—or maybe even find the nav data available for purchase on Sepulcher.”

“Nah,” I said browsing through various star maps. “Too long. Too much money. I just got these credits and I’m not looking to spend them on something I can figure out myself.”

“Why do you have to be so stereotypically stubborn,” she said. “Asking for directions doesn’t make you weak.”

“The truth is, even though it’s a bit more work, we’ll still get there faster if we go from here,” I said. “And the sooner we can get that device and get it back to Mina, the sooner she can start helping those kids.”

“Dammit, I guess I don’t have a good argument against that,” she said. “It could be dangerous, though.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But remember, the way is not necessarily uncharted altogether. It’s just uncharted to us. Chances are, plenty of people have traversed this passage. We’ll just need to be careful and see if we can make the same stops they did.”

Starfall, the reliable starship granted to me by the Sacred Messengers, was equipped with an Eidolon drive capable of faster-than-light travel. With the Eidolon drive, we could travel through what spacers called the Drifts. We’d run through the Drifts for a few hours before stopping to re-energize. On a long trip we’d come out of the Drifts at a waypoint. You needed a large gravitational object to lock onto—an anchorage. You’d ride the Drifts for a while, pop out at an anchorage, re-energize for several hours, then repeat the process until you got to your destination.

“We don’t know what we’ll find out there,” she said. “Pirates, smugglers, raiders… ghosts.”

“Now don’t tell me you believe in the Drift ghosts,” I said.

“You never know,” she said. The display in her hand bleeped on and she tucked it away in her pack, quite happy with her work. “Weird shit happens when you screw with Einstein. I say be prepared for anything.”

Astrid stood and collected her things. “When do we leave?”

“No time like the present,” I said.

Blaring alarms jarred me out of a quite pleasant dream involving a couple of hot cyborg twins. I’d dozed off at the cockpit… again. To be fair, Eidolon travel was quite boring. When things were going well, not much interaction was needed from the human, as the navigational computer was taking care of business.

But things weren’t going well.

“Are you seeing these readouts?” I said. “They are all over the place. What does it mean?”

“It means our anchorage is… moving,” Astrid said over comms.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I copy that,” I said. “For some reason I thought you said that our anchorage—you know, the relatively stable thing we lock onto so that we don’t pop out of the Drifts in the middle of butt ass nowhere—is MOVING!”

“Affirmative,” Astrid said in a tone that was much less freaked out than it should be.

“Oh okay, so just another Tuesday then yes? No big deal, just moving anchorages,” I said.

“I did say this was a bad idea,” she said, annoyingly.

“It’s gotta be a problem with the instrumentation,” I said. “Starfall is probably due for a tune-up. Anchorages don’t move.”

“Everything moves,” she said. “But yeah, I know what you mean. I’m going to try something.”

“Try something like what?” I said. I picked up on a nervous hesitation that didn’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies. The last thing you wanted to do when you were flying faster than light was to try something.

“I’m going to hard restart the nav system,” she said. “We’ll be coasting blind for about a minute. As soon as the nav boots up it should immediately re-lock onto our anchorage. We might be a bit off-course, and the we’ll take a little damage. But if we don’t, we’re in danger of missing our waypoint.”

It didn’t take an empath to know she was scared. Not that I was reading her. I promised Astrid that I’d never use my ability on her. But I was also confident that she knew what she was doing. Her impressive tech skills were why the Sacred Messengers paired her with me in the first place.

“Do it,” I said.

We made it to the first waypoint of our journey. We took a small beating but were in one piece. The anchorage was a gas giant with a violent banded atmosphere. It featured mesmerizing teal and orange bands. It orbited a listless white dwarf star. We stayed around long enough to re-energize the Eidolon drive then continued on our way.

We slipped out of the drifts at our next anchorage. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what we thought. Our nav systems indicated a large gravitational object. It seemed like a rocky planet. But as soon as we slipped out of the Drifts and got a visual, we realized that it was a huge asteroid that was broken into chunks. There was a ton of debris flying around. More alarms. I immediately took manual control.

“Let’s skip reenergizing the Eidolon drive and put everything we have into our shields,” I said. “This is going to get bumpy.” A barrage of rocky material swarmed around us. I zipped around a few rocky objects out of reflex and looked for a path out of there.

My training and practice in flight paid off. I found a relatively safe pocket to nestle into in orbit around the large fractured asteroid.

“How are things looking?” I radioed to Astrid at her engineering station.

“A lot better than they could be,” she said. “It seems our nav system got fooled by this one. But we haven’t taken any damage. And I think we’re in a stable enough orbit to relax the shields and reenergize the Eidolon drive.”

“That was a close one,” I said.

“You know,” Astrid said over comms after a few minutes of silence. “It really is something.”

“What is?” I asked.

“All of it I guess,” she said. “This huge asteroid, for example. Just look at it. It probably originated in some kind of cataclysmic collision between planets. There might even be microbial life on it still. And that gas giant from earlier. What if we were the first people to discover it? I mean, we don’t know what other paths people have taken to get to Mudd. Who’s to say anyone’s ever stopped at that star system? We didn’t even bother to name it.”

“I imagine it has a name but let’s pretend it doesn’t,” I said. “What would you name it?”

“Hmm,” she pondered for a moment, and for the first time I noticed her dreamer side. “Stratus, because of all those bands. I don’t know; not very epic sounding.”

It was easy to get worn down in the Outlands—running around vast distances to lightly settled areas. But you had to hang on to that little spark of curiosity and optimism. If you didn’t, then what was left? Survival for the sake of it wasn’t enough. Astrid had been working with me for several months now and work she did. She was focused and efficient. Only now was she starting to open up and give me a glimpse into the spark and wonder that kept her going. That thing that we all had to have a little bit of to keep going.

The journey had been perilous up to this point. I wondered if we were blazing a new trail from Farpoint to Mudd. But this waypoint proved us wrong.

This anchorage was a rocky planet in the habitable zone of a mainline star. And there was company. Not a settlement per se, but there was a small orbital outpost.

“I’m seeing two crafts approaching quickly,” I said, nervously tracking two dots on radar. “These look fast. Probably dangerous. Start reenergizing that Eidolon drive, Astrid. I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

“I’m already ahead of you, Link,” she said, using my callsign. “But you know it’s gonna be a few hours til we can go FTL.”

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath. No sooner than I got the words out the mystery welcoming party raised us on comms.

“Welcome to Eos,” a scruffy, slurred voice said. “We’re here to keep you safe as you travel on your way. Where ya headed then?”

“Just passing through,” I said. Didn’t want to give these asshats any more information than necessary.

I switched to internal comms, “Astrid, put some power into shields and hang tight.”

“I don’t think Starfall can outrun these skiffs,” Astrid said.

“I know, but I smell a dogfight coming,” I said.

“I don’t think Starfall can outfight these skiffs,” she said.

Yeah probably not, I thought.

“Well feel free to rest yur weary bones here until you are reenergized,” the raspy drunk said over comms. “All we ask for is a little remuneration in exchange for our protection.”

“Protection from what?” I asked.

“Oh, ya know, the usual suspects,” he said. “These parts are rife with pirates and other ne’er-do-wells.”

“Is that what you are?” I said. “Pirates?”

“You insult me,” the man laughed. “No, nothing of the sort. Pirates.” He continued chuckling. “We’re the Sundered Servants. We’re a humble band of misfits who protect this area from danger. That’s all. Just a little outpost fur travelers to lay their weary heads as it were.”

“You ever have travelers refuse your offer?” I asked.

“Shields are up,” Astrid said on internal comms. “I had to pause reenergizing the Eidolon drive, though.”

“Yessir, every now and then there is a traveler brave enough to hang out at this outpost without our protection,” the man said. His previously jovial voice turned solemn and sinister. “They don’t usually live to tell about it.”

“And how much does this apparently very effective protection usually run,” I said.

“Oh, not much,” he said, switching effortlessly back into his happy go lucky demeanor. “A paltry… 2,000 credits.” He spoke the amount with an upturn in intonation as if he was asking a question rather than stating a fact.

I looked at my handheld. That was about half of the credits I had earned for my valuable datadrop at Farpoint. But it was something I could afford. And it would be less than it would cost me to repair the Starfall after a dogfight, assuming we even made it out alive.

“Well, I’m not one to take unnecessary risks,” I said. “And you gentlemen seem nice enough. 2,000 credits and then we will be on our way in a few hours. Deal?”

“A very wise man indeed,” he said, quite pleased with himself. “I will be awaiting your transfer and on behalf of the Sundered Servants, have a pleasant stay at Eos.”

I initiated the transfer, though it pained me to watch my balance dwindle. Astrid seemed relieved.

“Get that Eidolon drive reenergized,” I said. “I want to get out of here before they have a change of heart.”

“Link,” a voice said. “Link! Link, do you copy?”

I found myself laying down—no, I was laying… up? Through bleary eyes I could see above me on the ceiling the captain’s chair—my chair, sitting empty in the cockpit. Lights from various displays flashed. I’m laying on the ceiling, my fuzzy mind finally deduced.

That’s when the pain hit. A slow-at-first, wave of it radiated from the back of my head around to the front. I must have fallen.

“Link! Answer me, dammit,” the voice said. Astrid.

“Astrid,” I rasped. “What’s happening? Are you okay?”

“No, my foot,” she grunted. “It’s stuck. Maybe broken. We’re in some kind of antigravity Drift passage. It’s screwing with the ship’s artificial gravity system.”

The Starfall, like other Ornithor-class starships, had an artificial gravity system, maintaining the floor as down—usually.

“Shit, let me see if I can get to you,” I said.

I clambered out of the cockpit toward the engineering bay from which Astrid monitored and tuned our operations. Indeed she was trapped. A storage chest had fallen up as well and landed on her ankle. I managed to pull it off of her.

“Ah!” she yelped, and immediately clutched her ankle.

“Is it broken?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It may just be a bad sprain. I think if I get it wrapped up it’ll be okay. What do we do now? This interference could stop at any moment and we’re gonna fall again.”

“No we’re not,” I said. “We’re going old school. Zero G.”

It took some doing to reach the controls, us being on the ceiling, but I was able to completely turn off the artificial gravity system. With that, we were weightless.

“As soon as the computer detects that we’re out of this weird spot, we can turn it back on,” I said.

An hour or so later we reached the next waypoint. It was a smaller gaseous planet orbiting far out from a red giant star.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, marveling at the pale blue planet and its rust-colored speckles. “What are those?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Some sort of cloud. Maybe even a life form of some kind.”

We relaxed, taking in the view as our Eidolon drive reenergized.

Next stop: Mudd.

We popped out of the Drifts fully expecting to see Mudd, a deep space station home to thousands of people. But instead we saw…

Nothing.