In the Black Spaces

002: Claws in the Void

The Cobra's dropspace drive thundered below decks, hurling them towards the stricken dead zone around Myrr. She'd spoken to the engineering decks, instructing them to do whatever they could to max out the drive and increase their speed, but there was no avoiding the long wait.

It was a twelve hour transit to Myrr Idol, which left Wraia with a lot of time to think. She rotated her command crew out to ensure her senior officers would be fresh on arrival, and had the gunnery crews perform a full systems check of every weapon on the ship, just in case. She remained on the bridge for another full rotation with the secondary crew until she accepted relief from Lieutenant Gallagher.

And with four hours left until they reached Myrr, she finally tried to get some sleep.

It took another hour before she managed to drift off. Doubts crept into Wraia's thoughts, the sneering words of bitter rivals at the naval academy snapping at the edges of her mind. High Commissioner Clay's daughter, playing soldier for the cameras and getting given command of a top-of-the-line ship because daddy said so.

It wasn't true. She knew it wasn't true. She'd grafted harder than anybody else in her class of recruits and earned this command, but those jibes still haunted her. What if she failed? What would become of her then? Of her father's career? Would he spend his twilight years defending his disgraced daughter?

Wraia squeezed her eyes shut and drove those thoughts away, filling her mind with tactical manoeuvres, command regulations and ship specifications instead. Slowly she calmed herself; focused. They had a job to do, and they were a long, long way from the Commissioner's Council, Sol press and the Naval Academy.

She eventually drifted off into a blank, dreamless sleep. A few hours later, the groaning shudder of the Cobra's hull contractions woke her, a tell-tale sign of switchover from the dropspace drive to their in-system atomic engines.

Covering her mouth as she yawned, Wraia swung herself out of her bunk in the command cabin, pressing her bare feet against the deck plates where they were massaged by the engine vibrations. She reached out, palming the light control on the bedside unit.

Soft ceiling disc lights glowed into life. Her commander's state room was lit up; a spacious chamber of greys, whites and blacks, with her bunk tucked into one wall, her desk at the other, and a few drawers and shelves of personal affects scattered in between.

Standing, she strode over to the internal comm speaker built into the wall just beside the heavy cabin door, and pressed the transmit button.

"Commander Clay to bridge," Wraia called. "Report?"

"Gallagher here," the XO answered a couple of seconds later. "Drive transition complete. We're inside the Myrr Idol heliopause. Sublight engines engaged and we are on course in system towards the colony."

She placed a hand on her hip, leaning against the wall as she spoke. "And what have we got?"

"It's just like the commodore said – there's some kind of interference in the system that's playing merry hell with our instrumentation. The tactical AI's having trouble even confirming where the planets are supposed to be, so Ensign Scarreth's manually plotted a course from the astrographic maps instead. The interference is blocking long range SLC comms too."

Wraia felt her nerves tightening. Even though all of this had been expected from her mission brief, it was still uncomfortable knowing that the ship was virtually flying blind.

"What about sublight comm frequencies?"

"As far as we can tell our standard comms can pierce the interference – locally at least."