The Meeting

Jayn walked down the white and red hallway leading up to the bridge. When she reached the wide hydraulic door, one of the two security Androids asked her for identification.

Her response was almost instant. "I have an appointment with the Captain. My name is Jayn Zeke."

The Android paused for a moment, then said, "Of course. Enjoy your visit, Jayn." The door slid open, almost silently. Everyone on deck glanced at it for a split second, then continued working.

The Captain of the Trigo-183 emerged from an opening in the wall to the left of the door. "Jayn! Good to have you back on deck! Now, what is it you wanted to see me about?" He motioned for her to enter the room with him.

Both of them sat down. "So, what did you want to see me about, anyway?" He grabbed a cup of tea.

"Yesterday I got a call from a long-time friend. To make a long story short, I need about a month of vacation time, and a small ship to get me to Mars." Jayn was careful of her words and made sure he would let her leave the ship for so long.

The Captain stared off into space for a bit. "I do believe that I owe you something, don't I? I'll tell you what. We don't have very much FTL fuel on board, we're orbiting this star permanently. But I can give you enough to get you between Luhman 16 and Ophoid 28. There should be a space station there where you can refuel. How many credits do you have?"

Jayn thought for a moment. "I have about 15,000. Will that be enough?"

"Yes, that should be plenty." He reached to his side and pressed a button on the table. A medium-sized holodisplay was projected into the open air in front of him. The Captain grabbed the starmap display and started to plot a course. When he was done, he pressed another button and the holodisplay duplicated itself.

There were now two holograms, one smaller than the other, but both contained the same information. Jayn took the smaller one, syncing it with her VisTron. The Captain then focused his holodisplay on a map of the ship. He set a route to the nearest HPN station and then to one labeled: 21-J.

"Here. you should take this route to that hangar. On rack 4, the third craft should be a hopper. I'm assuming you're going to be flying alone?"

"Yes, but I may pick up another passenger along the way."

"Ah, OK. That means you have to use the hopper on rack 2, the fourth one from the back."

Jayn nodded. "Understood." She stood up with The Captain and they shook hands. "I'll be back in about 30 standard daylengths." She then turned and left the room.

-----

The starcraft Trigo-183 had never been painted, except for the red symbol plastered onto both sides. Jayn peered outside the port window, a final look before she engaged the FTL-Drive.

She turned away to the console in the front of the ship. She pressed a large button labeled "FTL" and plotted a course to the space station stationed between Luhman 16 and Ophoid 28. As she pressed the confirm button, she took another glance at the spaceship she had called home for four years now. Reality became distorted as the FTL-Drives fired up and launched the ship across the galaxy.

The sound of the FTL-Drives was like no other, a not-quite-soft yet not-quite-loud low hum emanated from them as they ripped holes in space. The noise was constant, yet it didn't even sound like it was there at all. It almost seemed as if the noise wasn't even coming from the Drives, but rather your own imagination.

The Drives in the hopper Jayn was traveling in was capable of accelerating the craft to about 5000 times the speed of light, meaning she could reach her first stop in a few hours. So, in the meantime, Jayn simply looked around. There wasn't much to see, considering there were only two rooms, the cockpit, and the living area.

Jayn spent more time looking around than most people would have, considering she looked inside everything she could. After she was done opening everything that wouldn't kill her, she put everything she found interesting or useful onto the table. She had found several MRE's, half that were made for carbon-based life, and the other half for silicone-based life like the Ivycs.

Among the other things she found were a fire extinguisher, a crowbar, a tool kit, a set of games, and food disposal kits. As soon as she put everything in a place where she could easily get to them, a loud beep could be heard. Jayn moved to the cockpit and looked at the console.

There was a countdown to when the FTL-Drives would disengage and drop the hopper out of the non-space it had been hurtling through for 4 and a half hours. It was approaching one minute, so Jayn sat down and watched the timer count down. When the countdown reached 20 seconds, a button appeared that allowed the craft to exit non-space early, along with information on how far away it would put the spacecraft from its intended destination.

Jayn pressed the button one second before the automatic disengage, putting her only 1000 in-space units away from the space station she would refuel at. Compared to the nearly 12 billion she had traveled thus far, 1000 didn't seem so bad.