Chapter One

“God damn it!” Ever since Captain William Gross had joined the Belarian Shipping Company he had tried at every junction to butt heads with his superiors. Their latest foolish idea was to send his ship ,unescorted,  to pick up a load of titanium and iron ore. His destination would be Vixes , a polluted mining world on the rim of Trader Space. It lay in the Wayward Star Cluster, the most notorious pirate haven in the known galaxy.

Gross would be nervous about the prospect of carrying anything through pirate territory with a proper escort, not to mention completely alone as he would be on this run. The only comforting thought he had was that the ore he would be carrying wasn’t valuable enough to steal, of course there was no guarantee the pirates would see things that way.

But that was what the Company demanded, and so he would do it. The BSC wasn’t in the best financial position at the moment. Recent rioting on many industrial planets had slowed manufacturing, creating a ripple effect that damaged every sector of the Trader’s economy. Some analysts feared that this could eventually cause a complete collapse of civilization or possibly civil war however, all Gross worried about was losing his life and ship to pirates in the outer rim because BSC couldn’t afford a warship to protect him.

He stepped out of the administrative building of the BSC shipyard where his vessel had been undergoing repairs. The Honorable Businessman was not the fastest nor the biggest ship in the BSC fleet and she may not have been the cleanest by any standards, but to Will she was the best vessel ever launched, with the possible exception of Admiral Kol’s flagship in the War of the Deviants’ Expulsion. She was a standard Prosperous-class freighter with no weapons and a class four phase drive.

Phase drives were ranked based mainly on charging speed, the fastest were class ten drives such as those used in the massive Akkan-class cruise ships that wealthy merchants vacationed on over paradise planets in the Core. The slowest were class one drives which occasionally brought a ship into phase space, with the proper alignment of nearby heavenly bodies. The Honorable lay comfortably in the middle.

The effect of the recent economic downturn could be seen in the number of filled berths in the shipyard, it had never been as busy as the Company’s headquarters, but it had never been this empty. Only about one in four slips were filled, and a quarter of the ships that were there would probably never leave the surface again they were so decrepit.

Gross stepped onto the bridge of the Honorable. His crew had remained mostly unchanged for well over three years. The first officer, Lieutenant Daniel Literaff, stood at his station adjacent to the captain’s chair which stood in the middle of the wide room. Pilot George Seymore was at the helm, reading some book about aliens on his console as usual. The Trade Order had expanded to thousands of planets all over the galaxy’s Northern Arm, but had never encountered anything that could be called an “alien intelligence.” Some planets had indigenous life, but none fostered anything close to a civilization. However, Seymore still read books about the possibility.

Will slipped into his chair and activated the command console. “Mr. Literaff, status report”, he said as he skimmed information about the ship’s main systems.

“All crewmen have reported in, Sir. The helium fuel tanks for the reactor are all full, and all thrusters have just been inspected, read for liftoff, Sir”, replied the officer.

“Very well, are we cleared for launch, pilot?”

As Gross entered the bridge, Seymore had hastily closed the e-book window on his display and started pressing buttons and entering commands, “yard control reports the berth is clear, all docking cables  and boarding ramps have been retracted, I’m ready to activate the reactor on your mark, sir.”

“Activate in three... two... activate.” The deck of the bridge started to vibrate as the fusion core began producing energy. A window on the captain’s display opened, showing current readouts from the reactor, they were all green. “Fire launch thrusters”, said the captain.

“Firing launch thrusters aye, sir.” The vibration changed frequency as the reactor ramped up its energy production, then it was drowned by a dull roar as thrusters on the underside of the ship fired. The vessel lifted off from the ground and began to ascend toward the stars.

The next few minutes were spent watching instrument displays and hoping nothing went wrong, the thrusters were controlled by a computer until the ship left the atmosphere. Luckily, nothing deadly happened, thruster five’s control gasket failed under stress but the computer was able to compensate. As they entered space, Will ordered the sublight engines engaged to propel them to the minimum distance away from the planet that they could safely phase jump.

Gross then connected his console microphone to the ship’s intercom for the crew’s mission briefing, “Ship, this is the captain speaking. The BSC has ordered the Honorable to pick up a load of ore from Vixes in the Wayward Star Cluster. I know that you are probably worried about pirates, but I assure you that I will not allow this ship to be taken or in any way diverted from its mission. That is all”, as he deactivated the mic, he hoped that he could fulfill his promise.

Then the pilot spoke up, “sir, we have reached minimum safe distance, permission to jump to phase space?”

“Jump on my mark, ready... mark.”

The vibration of the hull changed octave again while the phase drive charged, then the space outside the bridge stretched as the ship left the normal dimension for somewhere where she could go faster.

The Honorable dropped from phase space near Vixes, all her systems were still green as she reentered normal reality. Then something on the radar confused the computer enough that it reported the anomaly to the pilot, who in turn reported it to the captain.

“Sir, I’m picking up a strange ship on the radar.”

Will looked at his console and saw what the pilot was talking about, a small ship about the same size as the Honorable. It did not resemble any vessel he had ever seen before. “Do you have a visual?” The pilot grunted an affirmative as he sent the captain the feed from one of the hull cameras. The vessel was strangely dark, not made of any metal Will knew of. It was slightly reminiscent of a bird, but seemed more alien than that. On the bow were two openings that looked like they might be weapons. This was affirmed a moment later when the pilot said:

“Sir, unknown ship is firing on us.”