Air Mike(TM)

Spending the night at the pilot's guild, Mike and River suited up early in the morning and prepared to work for a living.

"Are you sure we shouldn't go out with helmets on?"

"Nah, that would just raise suspicions even further. Besides, I'm constantly running a dazzler on my and your suit OS that'll mess up tracking and return a false identification if they're running an auto tagger."

"I didn't understand any of that."

"You don't need to, just know that there's a pretty low chance anything will pick up us or our package. But load your PDW anyway."

Chambering a round in his pistol Mike took the lead as River covered his flank, heading down a few floors they picked up Hanna and started heading towards the station hangar.

"So which one is yours?"

Looking around with disinterest it didn't take much more than Hanna's tone of voice to realise she really didn't care for ships in the slightest, she was just far more worried about getting out of low gravity as fast as possible.

"That one over there, let's get to it."

Not wanting to spend more time than necessary out in the open, River practically shoved Hanna all the way into the Wyrm and sat her down in the spare operator seat as Mike also strapped in and started the pre flight procedure as he powered on the reactor and got into contact with the flight control tower.

"Flight this is GCV-44 on your pad 21D requesting permission for taxi and take off."

[GCV-44, you're free to taxi and take off, permission granted. Just stay within the speed limit this time, flight out.]

Having already witnessed Mike and River's Wyrm come and go a few times, flight control was already very familiar with their impeccable record for avoiding accidents and speeding inside the station at the same time.

"Wait what did she mean when she said speeding?"

Getting strapped in by River, Hanna didn't miss what flight control said as she suddenly started getting nervous.

"They mean exactly that, Mike isn't really that patient, but to be honest I don't really get why we need to fly this slowly either."

After spending just a few months together with Mike, his bad habits had already started rubbing off on River, after one too many dockings at 200 m/s she had started to get desensitised to it.

Although Mike's prepentaty for high G manoeuvres in general had probably been the largest source of corruption.

"Wa-"

"Okay, let's get this show on the road! Welcome on board Air Mike™, please keep your food trays in their locked upwards position at all times, there will be no in flight entertainment other than the occational pirate hunting, keep your digits from frailing around at all times and keep screaming to a minimum. Finally, don't fucking puke inside my ship."

Lighting the afterburner the second after he cleared the final ship keeping the speed limit exiting the station, Mike finished up Hanna's quick briefing as she started screaming.

"I said keep screaming to a minimum! Nav!?"

Shouting over Hanna, Mike nevertheless managed to get an instant response from River.

"Navigation locked in, minimum separation achieved. Go for jump."

"Roger."

Pushing the throttle to the max, Mike engaged the FTL drive and jumped straight into a hyperlane. As the Wyrm no longer 'technically' moved with more than a single G of acceleration, Hanna finally stopped screaming.

"What the hell was that!?"

"That was normal, we just jumped to hyperspace."

From the look on both River's and Mike's face, Hanna quickly realised they saw no reason to light the afterburner just to jump.

"You didn't need to go so hard to jump into hyperspace."

"No I didn't, but I like getting to my destination faster, not spending 5 minutes to get up to speed. Besides, that kind of acceleration was nothing, fighting pirates you need to move at least that fast or you're going to die. In the interest of not acting suspicious we'll be doing that so be prepared for that eventuality."

For anyone with a keener eye it would be pretty unusual for a bounty hunter to hurry along seemingly without reason, so Mike and River had already planned for them to stop at least a few hours at multiple known pirate stomping grounds along the way. While that was arguably bringing Hanna in unnecessary danger, both Mike, River and the guild leader were in agreement that overall less risky than drawing any sort of focused attention.

"Whatever, I'm going to lie down."

Even if she could see the reasoning behind it, Hanna was nevertheless not that pleased with it and quickly left the cockpit to go lie down.

"ETA to the next system: 4 hours. I'll go make sure she's okay, take the first leg okay?"

"Roger."

With River leaving to make sure Hanna didn't puke somewhere in the back, Mike was left alone in the cockpit staring out at the vast expanse of lights drawing streaks past the armoured canopy. 4 hours later everyone had returned to the cockpit as Mike prepared to disengage the FTL drive, reason being the particular star system they were forced to go trough in the name of going straight towards their destination.

"Okay I'm shifting out of FTL in 5… 2… Here we go."

Instead of a red, yellow or even white star greeting the group, Mike, River and Hanna were greeted by a blinding and rapidly flashing lightstream consisting of charged particles.

"Woah there, that's a pulsar alright. Rotation of that star corpse is what? 100 times a second?"

"114.55612 times a second to be exact, we synchronise all the atomic clocks to it twice a day at the lab… Although I've looked at it through telescopes countless times, seeing it up close like this sure is profound."

"Yeah, I know what you mean."

Mike still remembered the first time he found a pulsar in Interstellar online, not really that knowledgeable about space he thought the rapidly flashing star was a sign that his graphics card was dying, that heart attack inducing possibility was only cleared once he read up on what exactly a neutron star was and was quickly replaced with a somewhat profound feeling not unlike what Hanna was feeling.

"The shields are absorbing quite a bit of those charged particles, so if you two need to stare at the flashing light for a while longer we should switch up the shield refresh rate. The excess noise is also affecting our scopes, while we're not blind it isn't that great for them either."

As the only one inside the Wyrm not in awe of the pulsar, River warned of the effect the excessive strength of its magnetic field and highly charged particles were having on the Wyrm's shields and sensors.

"Right-o I'm already dealing with that, we're going to bleed the waste heat and recharge the FTL drive in the shadow of that planet over there, ETA 3 minutes."

A difference between Interstellar Online and the world Mike was currently inhabiting was how long it took to travel. While jumping to a different system was nothing more than a fancy loading screen in Interstellar Online, it this world it took hours to cruise in hyperlanes and after leaving those lanes it wasn't smart to immediately jump to another system without bleeding off the excess waste heat generated from running the FTL drive for hours on end.

"Is that really necessary?"

"Yeah, excess waste heat will make us easier to detect and track, this is the best way to avoid getting sucker punched right out of a jump."

Reaching the system's only planet, a metal rich lump of rock stripped of all atmosphere when its star went supernova a few million years ago and started emitting a shitton of charged particles.

"There we go, punching out now."

Manoeuvring into lagrange point 2 behind the shadow of the planet, Mike punched out of supercruise and sent out a sensor pulse before he extended the Wyrm's external radiators.

Trying to appease Hanna, Mike only got a few words in before River cut him off.

"This should only take a few-"

"We have a sensor contact."

"- Roger, Interrogating target now, give me an ID the moment we make contact please."

Instantly swiching focus, Mike kept the external radiators out as he extended the Wyrm's hardpoints and brought out its weapons as he got underway towards the unidentified contact.

"Strap in please, we need to be ready for anything."

Seeing Hanna tensing up in the corner of his eye, Mike had no time to reassure her before he knew what was going on, but just happening on another ship inside a rarely travelled system after jumping out of hyperspace at a random point in space was highly suspect.

"Contact is running pretty cold and not emitting any kind of signals, it seems dead."

With River updated Mike on her refined sensor data he breathed a sigh of relief and calmed down slightly before informing Hanna.

"A cold contact is unlikely to be a ship, likewise a lack of signals means it is not spying on us either… Let's see what we have here."

Closing to within a few kilometres as he sucked in the Wyrm's weapons again, Mike switched on the Wyrm's 'headlights' to take a closer look at what they had stumbled on.

"That's some kind of wreck, not sure what model of ship exactly…. Mike?"

Not recognizing the large oblong ship from memory, it took a few seconds for River to realise that Mike had frozen up.

"... Yeah, right. I don't know what kind it is either, let's look for life rafts and blackboxes, we're obligated to report to the pilot's guild when we come across a corpse out of the way like this… Your ship River. Bottom up and depressurise to prepare for unexpected surprises, I'll go take a closer look."

"... Sure."

From the way Mike was acting and the fact that he didn't want to use drones to scout out the wreck and insisted on going himself, River figured that there were multiple things he wasn't saying, although that was most likely not because he didn't thrust River, it had likely more to do with their passenger.

"Be careful out there."

"I will, brb."

Getting out of the pilot seat, Mike put on his helmet and headed to the airlock through the main compartment as River took over the helm.

"Helmet on, I'll be depressurising the ship so we're ready to fight in case we need to."

"R-right."

Getting Hanna to put on her helmet, River put on her own as she lowered the shields to make sure Mike could exit the Wyrm for his unplanned EVA.

(What the hell are you doing Mike? Sure I'll cover for you but you better explain this to me soon…)

Inside the airlock, Mike strapped a manoeuvre kit to his vacuum suit and grabbed his rifle as he waited for the airlock to cycle. The second it did, Mike leapt out into deep space without care and activated the thrusters on his kit.

(Okay, if this is what I think it is then we're in much deeper shit than I first thought…)

Opening up a radio channel back to the Wyrm and a separate secure one only to River that he talked through first.

"I'm pretty sure this is one of those xeno's we don't want to fuck with, keep Hanna in the dark about this."

Switching to the open channel without waiting for River's response, Mike acted as he had just established radio contact.

"Wyrm how do you read?"

[We're reading you just fine Mike, where do you want me?]

From River's response, it was clear to Mike she had received and understood his earlier message, but Hanna still seemed to be in the dark.

"Pull back a few clicks, if I bump into a fusion warhead I don't want you getting caught up in it."

[Roger.]

[Wait, what do you mean roger!? How can you just be fine with these sorts of risks?]

Cutting off the ensuing argument by closing the comm channel, Mike focused on the ship he was closing in on.

(Right, the main drive and reactor are outright missing, given these ships are sort of like skyscrapers, the life rafts should be somewhere around the middle along with the combat information centre.)

With what was left of the wreck already larger than an Orca or even an Endurance class destroyer, Mike classified the wreck as one of the smaller vessels belonging to a specific one of the extragalactic civilizations that mankind cooperated within Interstellar Online. Reaching the hull section, Mike turned on his helmet light and the electromagnets in his soles. Attempting to stick on the hull with the magnets, Mike felt really stupid for a second when he realised he was touching a carbon composite plastic and not some sort of metal that was magnetic.

(Right…)

"I'm heading inside the wreck now, if I'm radio silent for more than 15 minutes come rescue me."

[Right, if you're silent for more than 10 minutes I'll leave you for dead.]

"Don't be mean now, I know you can't live without me anymore River."

[Don't make me shoot you with a railgun Mike, it is a waste of ammunition.]

Entering the wreck as he continued to banter with River, Mike found the inside to be a mess which had been torn apart by pale, milk coloured crystals.

"Shit…"

[What's that Mike?]

"Looks like cluster munition went off in here, be happy you don't get to see this shit."

[Right…]

Having reached the combat information centre / bridge, Mike found no survivors, just corpses in various states of dismemberment as it looked like someone had tossed them into a blender along with a bunch of crystal fragments.

(... How come they didn't scuttle? Because the reactor was ripped out early in the fight?)

"There are no survivors in the CIC, no one in the life rafts, nor any intact databanks in here… A large ship like this must have a larger mainframe to organise engagements, I'll see if I can pull any data off of such a device but it's likely to be in a shielded section so I'll go dark on comms."

[Vilko, your 15 minutes starts now.]

Immediately after River responded, Mike reopened the closed channel directly to her.

"I'm heading up to see if there's any life rafts, without being able to scuttle, at least some should have tried to escape instead."

[Okay.]

Moving through the destroyed combat information centre and towards the crew quarters, Mike found a series of what looked like coffins, those were the so called life rafts, or emergency cryogenic suspension pods, a holdover from near light speed travel where it took years to move from one star to another, these rafts could be launched from a ship to keep a person safe in stasis for years on end and resuscitate them once rescued.

(Well, time to find out if anybody is still home…)

With Mike going dark, River and Hanna had nothing left to do at the moment so Hanna eventually broke the silence with a question that had been bothering her for a while.

"What sort of relationship do you and Mike have?"

"Excuse me?"

Not really thinking it was appropriate of Hanna to ask such a question, River took offence to the remark but Hanna continued anyway.

"I'm sorry, it's just that you two seem close, but you're obviously not lovers so I was wondering if you were siblings or something like that."

Realising she had somewhat misread Hanna's question, River breathed a small sigh before she answered.

"We're not related, it is just that we've been through a lot together."

"Ah, sort of like a colleague?"

Having seen the sort of 'work marriages' in her own lab before, Hanna somewhat falsely equated the kind of relationship Mike and River had to something like that.

"Yeah, but instead of pushing paper and covering our mistakes in front of an angry boss we've gotten shot at and forced to work together or die."

Right as Hanna was about to comment on the whole 'getting shot at' part of River's explanation, Mike reestablished communications.

[Hey, I've finished.]

"Good, I was just about to leave you behind. Find anything interesting?"

[... Yeah, I'm bringing over an intact mainframe, I figure the model can sell for quite a bit.]

(Well shit, first contact with one extragalactic species per month ought to be enough…)