Dean Dean finds himself adrift in deep space after an unfortunate collision on the fold space highway. A chance discovery of an unusual artifact brings him to the attention of the feared Dedan Empire.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
[Wake up, Hot Shot.]
The words rang in his head. Delivered with the no-nonsense tone of a woman who had been living there too long, they cut through the dull fog of his semiconscious mind. Still, he hoped they were a dream and he ignored them, attempting to slip deeper into the comforting blanket of sleep.
[Wake up!]
Grath Danum's eyes snapped open to an unfamiliar scene. Instead of the sharp angles and carbon fibre sheen of a spaceport, or the bluish tint surrounding the sphere of an inhabited planetoid, there was nothing but the speckled black of a deep space star field visible on the cockpit viewscreen.
"Where are we?" he asked, before attempting a crude self-diagnostic. He ached like hell but otherwise didn't feel too bad. The Vorpal-3's cockpit was cramped and didn't allow much space for stretching, but he'd head below to the lounge once he'd conferred with 'the boss'.
[Stellar orientation suggests the outer reaches of the Bundar Empire. Near the galactic rim. We're about two light-weeks from the nearest system.]
"Phate! We're almost two quadrants from where we should be."
[There's more.]
"Go on, tell me the good news."
[The system is dark. It appears to be filled with abandoned mining colonies. The radiation readings for the star are anomalously low.]
"Great! How long until..."
[There's still more.]
Grath leaned back in the pilot's chair, closed his eyes, and expelled a long breath toward the ceiling before responding. "Go on."
[The ship's chronometers are a month behind galactic standard time.]
Of course. Why wouldn't things keep getting worst? "You've found a sync beacon, then?"
[Would I have said anything if I hadn't?]
"Fair point. So we've slipped back in time. I suppose that explains the extreme spatial displacement."
The universe had a way of not allowing one to violate its natural laws. If they were displaced in time, they would have to be displaced in space far enough that they couldn't interact with their past selves.
Well, there was no sense crying over soiled Rydian Whisky.
A perusal of the cockpit dashboard revealed that most of the ship's systems were still in low power mode and Grath began powering them back up. "You've run a ship diagnostic?"
[Of course. The Fold engines are irreparable. The sublight nacelles were damaged, but there's enough stellar dust in the area around us that the nannites were able to effect self-repair while you were healing.]
"So we're stuck at sub-light!" He clenched his carbon alloy fist in impotent rage, afraid that if he smashed it down on the console he'd break something else. When he finally calmed down again, he asked, "Just how long was I offline?"
