Page 26 of Across The Stars
“I’ll go,” I said.
“Well, shit,” I heard someone say. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Quinn stand from her seat and step forward, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “I’ve got nothing to do. I’ll go.”
“Uh, yeah,” Omar said, rolling his shoulders like he was squaring up for a fight. “I’m down.”
A few more people stepped up, but who cared about them? I had encouraged my little group to volunteer and now we were going on a cargo ship. I was eager to get off the Nexus and see some real work get done. With valerians. Plus, I had to assume it was the same cargo exchange that Sam had talked about and that just meant more time for us to catch up and ogle at space from a different perspective. I, for one, was thrilled.
Ok, I was a little terrified. The cargo ship was big and moved much smoother than the passenger ship, so no one was buckled in and we all just sort of stood around as the ship pulled out of the docking bay. The only things secured were the cargo crates. Everyone else had to fend for themselves and hang on to something if things got rocky. Luckily, they didn’t. And since the little scare we all had the day we docked at the Nexus, three military vessels were sent to protect the freighter in case of a threat.
That didn’t exactly put my mind at ease, but no one else was freaking out, so I held it together.
I wasn’t sure where Sam was. She probably got on the ship somewhere else whereas I entered from the cargo ramp after helping load everything up. I wasn’t sure what exactly was in the boxes. They all had numbers and letters on them that I didn’t understand.
“Here we go,” Quinn said with a sigh, bracing herself on a large crate covered in white shrink-wrap.
I didn’t say anything. I was more excited to be moving off the Nexus albeit a little upset there were no digital windows to view the stars as we pulled out.
“Don’t worry about it,” Quinn said, eyeing me. “I know you want to see space, but trust me, it all looks the same unless you find a solar system.”
“Have you gone to another system?” I asked. “I mean, since you’re training to pilot.”
“Not yet,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m learning about them, though, because once I get a ship, I want to be the first to touch down wherever we’re assigned to go. Planets. Moons. Space stations. I don’t give a fuck. Just put me there.”
I wanted the same, but I didn’t voice that. I feared that talking about piloting would make people ask questions that I couldn’t answer. So, I kept my mouth shut.
“Entering FTL,” a computerized voice announced to the whole ship.
I reached out, grabbing hold of a support beam as the ship’s engines purred under my feet. From the back cargo bay, I could feel everything. I listened to the systems charge up. The pitch got higher as it prepared for the jump. Then, we were off.
FTL didn’t feel like much from inside a ship with regulated pressure, but it felt like enough to excite me. I felt a kind of pop in the floor as the engines propelled us and then we were just riding the stream. From what Penny explained before we started loading up the ship, the exchange point was almost halfway to Sylos and while that distance would take years in most cases, there was a wormhole anomaly two hours into the trip that would warp us to the halfway point in a blink. Well, not an anomaly. The valerian’s built it when they started trading with the Nexus. They had many of them. Pictures and diagrams on my Buddy looked like giant rings lined up in a row and when you came out the other side, you were somewhere else. Like a magic space highway.
There was a small station controlled by the valerians at the halfway point that was used as a storage facility and that’s where we were dropping the cargo. Humans didn’t have clearance to go any further.
It all seemed complicated to me. I wondered why exchanges didn’t take place at the Nexus where there was more security, but according to Penny, most valerians didn’t want to get too close to our space city and they needed the man power—err… alien power—to load and unload vessels. I could understand that. Humans were new to the space game. Valerians were right to be cautious. Although, I was curious about them and kindof wished they weren’t so reclusive. Especially thinking back on that weird encounter I had with one when I arrived on the Nexus.
Shaking the thoughts out of my head, I made my way to a metal seat near the wall and sat down, waiting. It was going to be a while, so I made myself comfortable.
“Innifer!” a voice said.
Snapping my head up, I saw Sam coming down a metal staircase into the cargo bay. She was smiling at first and then that smile turned flat and she was wobbling, grasping the railing for support. I stood, alert to her condition, but she managed to right herself and make her way toward me. She seemed a little green in the face, but she made it.
“Hey,” she said, her hand on her stomach. “I snuck down here to find you.”
“You ok?” I asked.
“FTL,” she said, her cheeks inflating with a silent burp like she was going to hurl. “I didn’t want to show it in front of the doc, so I came to hide behind you. We’re all supposed to have trained for this, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.” I directed her to one of the seats next to me and we both sat down. “So? What’s this cargo you’re here to oversee?”
“I don’t know. Crate 89-C and 87-C. Sensitive contents, Tollie said.”
“And you don’t know what it is?”
“Nope.” Her face went pale and she pressed her lips together. “Wow, I shouldn’t have eaten this morning.”
I wanted to laugh. I really wanted to, but I didn’t. For Sam’s sake, I held it in, but the look on her face was priceless. She was being adventurous coming to space with me, but that didn’t mean she was exactly cut out for it. Me? Years of spinning on apole had turned my stomach to stone. A little journey at FTL was nothing.
13: Vahko
