In A Starship's Wake

Chapter 6: Parting Shots

Once they were satisfied there was nobody else on the ship who shouldn't be, Tyrone began to think about dinner. To be honest, Tyrone had already been thinking about dinner, and had started the oven preheating while he was checking the kitchen. He and Joseph had been planning to throw in a frozen lasagna, a staple food on their ship.

Allison's addition to their crew hadn't changed that; it would just mean less leftovers. They had a habit of making enough food to feed a family despite there being only two of them. It was partly to be in the habit when they had families, and partly to have leftovers so that they didn't have to cook as much. Which was actually rather silly, since they had lots of down time traveling in FTL anyway.

Just as the three gathered in the kitchen, an alert sounded through the ship. Joseph sighed, Allison looked around for the source of the noise with a confused look, and Tyrone rolled his eyes. He set down the tray he'd just unwrapped and let go of the oven door he'd been about to open.

"What's that?" Allison asked.

"Someone's hailing us." Joseph started toward the cockpit.

"Probably another ship." Tyrone turned off the oven and followed Joseph. "Based on how annoyingly persistent they've been so far, it's probably one connected to the Temoran Kindred."

Allison trailed them to the front of the ship, where Joseph was already checking sensor equipment. Tyrone eased himself into the pilot's chair and strapped in, waiting for Joseph's report and letting the hail keep ringing. They'd waited five minutes already, and they could keep waiting until Tyrone had a better idea what was going on.

"Two fighters followed us from Temoran." Joseph studied the screen before him intently for several minutes. "Our recognition software found a match, but the model is something local I've never heard of. They're in range of our cameras, I'll put them up for you."

One of Tyrone's screens displayed a picture of two ovoid-shaped fighters, about a mile apart, flying toward them. They were only just in range of the cameras, so the images were fuzzy and he couldn't make out much. Because of their angle of travel relative to the system's sun, the left side of each was in shadow.

Tyrone did some quick math, judging their position in their flight path against how much more thrust the engines could produce. "We're about twenty minutes from our jump point if I max out our acceleration. Could we outrun them?"

"Probably not. Based on the technical data we have for the fighters, they aren't using everything they have either. There's no point in wasting the fuel if we have to fight them anyway. They'll be in firing range in less than ten minutes."

"Maybe sooner if they modified their weaponry." Tyrone unlocked the autopilot, but didn't make any course corrections yet. "How long until we can hit them? I still don't want to do any crazy flying. If we send those trees rocketing around this trip could go from very profitable to very expensive in a hurry."

"We wouldn't want that." Joseph was silent for a moment while he consulted their targeting computer. "We'll be able to hit them accurately about fifteen seconds before they get inside their listed range."

"That should be a nice little surprise for them. Answering the hail." Tyrone tapped the 'accept' button on the communications screen.

The man the screen displayed at the other end of the line was wearing a flight suit that obscured much of his face, but Tyrone could still see he was angry. His mouth was partway open as he snarled at the camera. The answer to the hail had caught him in mid-rant. Their new adversaries were not, it seemed, the most balanced people. Tyrone smiled blandly as the man composed himself.