Last time:
“What was that?” Hercules asked, causing Hetty to jerk from her reverie once more.
“Space junk, I think.” Val shifted the view screens from a close-up of the traffic flow around Sigma to their more immediate area. “A little big to be from a ship. You think Sigma is missing a chunk?”
Hetty leaned forward in unison with Herc and Val to stare at the odd-shaped object. Something like girders and a beat-up saucer made up the majority of the structure.
“Send a video capture and inquire of Sigma, Val.”
“It seems like it’s just floating around,” Hercules commented as they waited for the response from Sigma Ops.
“Sigma says it’s unknown.”
“That means we can shoot it!” Hercules replied. “Come on Val. Prove to me that you were paying attention when I ran through the weapons com with you last week.”
Val wiggled down into his chair and tightened his harness. “I knew how to run a weapons com just fine without your tutoring, Pilot.”
“So prove it and nail that piece of space junk!”
Val’s mischievous grin was back as he powered up the weapons com. “With the Captain’s permission?”
“Sure. Have fun, boys. Just be sure to inform Sigma of your intentions before you start blasting away at stuff in their quadrant.”
Val and Hercules’ easy camaraderie depressed Hetty’s mood a little more. Maybe she should reconsider the complete re-crew. Maybe she should take a job station-side herself until Hercules and Zella were ready to ship out again. Or she could go check on Estelle and the chickens. Val and Herc shared a laugh as Val finished finessing the firing sequence.
Forthright shook as the shot rebounded off the space junk and flew back, grazing the side of the ship.
“What in the seven hells?” Hetty shrieked as the ship’s power flickered.
A breathless Zella rejoined them and shrieked. “It’s a Voyager!”
“What is that thing made of? We didn’t even dent it.” Hetty tapped into Val’s com scans.
“Steel and stuff, if this scan is right.”
“Steel? Who uses steel in an interstellar craft?”
“It’s not an interstellar craft,” Zella wailed. “It’s a Voyager. We’re cursed. Just seeing one is enough to spread the curse, but now it’s angry with us.” Her eyes locked on the display where the strange object hovered, seemingly unaffected by Val’s potshot.
“Calm down, Zella. You’ve always been a sensible woman, despite your predilection for antique religious philosophy. It’s a hunk of space junk, not a boogeyman.”
Hetty didn’t like the creeping unease that was seizing control of her nervous system and, by the looks of them, her other crew as well. Damned superstitions would get them all killed if they weren’t careful. They could spook themselves into doing something stupid.
“Just what is a Voyager, Zel?” Val asked.
“They were sent forth by the old prophets of Earth to spread the holy words to all the corners of the universe. Nobody knows how many they number, or how they got corrupted. Now, to even see one is to be cursed.”
“Cursed by who?”
Hetty cleared her throat and rolled her eyes meaningfully at Val. He turned his attention back to the com. They would soon need all their concentration focused on their second docking attempt with the dodgy port thruster’s unreliable help.
“Nobody knows.” Zella shrugged and drooped a little more.
“Go strap in, Zella. We’re headed back to Sigma now. With luck, this try will be a smooth ride to a nice payday.”
Hetty gave her a much more cheerful wave than she felt was warranted, but somebody had to keep the crew’s spirits up. Curses. Prophets. Bah. This job couldn’t get done soon enough.
“Right. Let’s do this. We’ve got some salad to serve and my kid to get born.” Hercules fired the thrusters to send the ship on a gentle glide back to Sigma station.
The proximity alarm sounded about a half second before the collision. Forthright shuddered as 735 kilograms of ancient tech buttressed by steel collided with her beleaguered portside thruster.
“Ten arc seconds off course. Fifteen. Twenty-seven,” Val chanted.
“We’re venting atmo or something,” Hercules said. “We’re being vectored off course and the computer can’t run the corrections fast enough.”
“Abort. Val, tell Sigma we’re going to loop around for another try. Tell them that it’s an emergency.”
Hetty unbuckled and scrambled for the hatch in the plating that led to the compartments in the belly of the ship that allowed access for repairs. It was not a safe place to enter when the ship was in service, especially since it wasn’t as well shielded as the crew compartments. Hetty figured a leak was more important than a little extra radiation.
Except there was no leak. Several fraught moments of wriggling through spaces between hot tubing and cold hull revealed no explanation for their odd trajectory. Topside, all she could say was that the leak was fixed, since it was crazy talk to suggest that it never existed.
Forthright was back to normal operation, or at least as normal as she could get with a now completely inoperable portside thruster. As they lined up for their third and hopefully final attempt to dock with Sigma Station, Hetty could hear Zella praying in the tiny ship’s commons.
Hercules’s concentration was entirely on his controls as they eased toward their designated spot on Sigma’s docking hub. Their approach was perfect this time.
“Forthright, this is Sigma Traffic Ops. We have an emergency dock coming in hot behind you. Do not deviate from your current trajectory.”
“That’s a warship!” Val shouted. “The Excelsior! What a beauty.”
On the view cams, a gargantuan shape glided over and past them. The Voyager floated along in its wake until the backwash from a thruster doing a course correction sent it spinning off to new parts unknown. Forthright bobbled a bit.
“Steady on, Herc.” Nobody so much as breathe heavy, Hetty prayed to herself. A casual brush with Excelsior could end Forthright and everyone on it.
Hetty found it possible to breathe again when the docking clamps started their reassuring thumps against the hull.
Later, when she gave her report to Sigma Station Authority, they told her that there was no such thing as a Voyager. That she had reported no such object. Val Alerian, her former coms op, also disavowed having made any report. So did Hercules Drakos and Zella Constantine. Admiral Thornton recommended some time off flying and offered a long-term berth at a discount rate.
As she downed her fifth martini at the station bar, Zella slid onto the seat next to her.
“Hey. You’re looking less full. How’s Herc Junior?”
“She’s under the bili lights, but doing well. Look, Hetty. I’m really sorry. They made us lie. Nobody can know the truth.” Zella looked down into the empty martini glass. “Val enlisted and shipped out on Excelsior. I understand if you don’t want Herc and me to ship out with you again. We’d like to, though, once Herc Junior is old enough.”
Hetty patted her on the shoulder. “Sure, kid. I’ll see you guys in a few years. And thanks.”
Zella gave her a quizzical glance. “I had to tell you the truth. Herc and I respect you. Best captain ever!”
“The future job offer is because you told me the truth. The thanks are for your praying that Voyager thing’s bad juju away.”
Zella’s face cleared. “So are you a believer now?”
“Not exactly. But maybe I’m no longer a scoffer. Can’t afford to be. Not anymore. Buy you a beer? It’s supposed to be good for breastmilk.”
“We’ll drink to things that didn’t happen,” Herc said as he joined them.
Things that didn’t happen. Hetty would add the Voyager to her ever-growing list.
~*~
Epilogue: Three weeks later, the Excelsior was reported missing with all hands lost after a collision with an unknown object.
