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⚒️ From fathomless depths

by Joel Glover

The ship handled like a boat with no rudder in choppy waters.

Gerald kicked at the pedals beneath his feet angrily, trying to coax a little responsiveness from them.

He was a fighter pilot, for fuck’s sake.

He understood the need for haptic response, manual redundancy. But here he was, flying a spaceship that still used leaky hydraulics and manual controls.

This is what the trainer meant, of course.

“I find,” she had drawled, “that submarine pilots are best prepared for taking on a role in commercial interstellar shipping... of all you military types they seem best suited to it.”

He bristled at that, at her arrogant sneer, at the way she looked down at him with her distinctly unprofessional neon pink hair and facial tattoos.

He had done a poor job of keeping it to himself, apparently.

“Oh, the man from,” she checked the paperwork ostentatiously, whilst the rest of the class of inductees shuffled uncomfortably in hard, industrial plastic seating, “an air force which last fought a war in the pre-nuclear era, a war which—by the way—it lost, thinks he knows better than me... well, we shall see.”

If some of his other berths had possessed elegance, this tramp freighter had none at all. It was a truck—but in space—wallowing through the void with little urgency. Hardly better than a bus or a canal barge.

Of course, beggars can't be choosers and he wasn’t even a beggar. 

The captain of The Hood bought his indenture from OBL station for half its face value, then promptly added a service fee to it.

It would have been haram, he was informed, to charge interest to him, kufr though he was.

Then they waddled off into interdicted space; the whole crew desperate for a lucky strike and a quick cash infusion.

Even the indentured received a share.

There were rumours, he had heard, of an asteroid belt rich in thulium, which was trading above one-and-a-half par.

It was quite possible that those rumours had been spread by pirates, interdicted space being what it was and all.

To defend itself, the ship had precisely no weapons more robust than strong language, and engines which would likely die if the word “flee” were uttered on board.

There were, at least, asteroids in the promised area.

The crew were out taking samples. Gerald assumed it would be a moderately scientific process, but he had soon come to realise the whole endeavour would be done with the slapdash inefficiency of the rest of the proceedings aboard The Hood. Rock was hammered until a lump came loose, at which point it was thrown in the general direction of the ship, caught, and smelted. Ejecta poured forth in a slurry, some caking the surface of the shuttles and adding a patina of filth to their already grimy appearance.

Since the pilot Gerald was not asked to be involved in the mining… 

—he stood watch.

Alone.

Even the most rigid military bearings wane when alone and under occupied for more than twenty hours ;so when the warning lights began to ripple across his screen it took him a moment to realise what was happening.

There was a button.

Captain Asif had expressed the likelihood of incurring his displeasure should the button ever be pressed unnecessarily.

Gerald pressed the button.

The Hood jolted from an interior with cool white lighting to one doused in red. The helmets of crewmates off-board would be ringing with warnings and alarms, if the helmets were in sufficiently good repair to receive the signals being broadcast from Gerald’s chair.

“What the fuck are you doing, kufr dog?”

Captain Asif had begrudged paying for Gerald’s indenture—even at its cheap price—and had not shown he knew his name in the six months the pilot had been aboard.

Gerald pointed at the spray of yellow on the sensorium. The green arrows for velocity. The red tags for danger.

Before the Captain could begin to respond, text began to flow across the heads-up units on the bridge.

This is Interdicted Space.

You are trespassing.

“Send the response, you fool.”

Gerald was mildly reassured that there was a pre-arranged response. It suggested that there could be a peaceful resolution to the situation.

He did not, however, know where the pre-arranged response was.

Captain Asif cuffed the back of his head and flicked a toggle. Binaric bursts and encoded engrams shot out into the void.

There was silence. Further along the ship shuttles docked and men rushed to their safety harnesses.

Gerald watched as the ship emerged. The scale of it was menacing. Its sleek black surface made him think of throwing stones at the lake, long ago with his brother. 

This was a perfect stone for skimming, if you were a titan.

Stars disappeared behind it by the dozen.

Slowly, it began to flicker with malign illumination, a ripple of shattered green and blue lights ran across its surface. 

There was nothing human to its design, but it was somehow recognisable. 

An ambush predator from fathomless depths, ready to consume its prey.

It was, in its way, beautiful.

But horrifying.

Words reappeared on the screens of The Hood.

This is Interdicted Space.

You are trespassing.

In our space there is only one punishment.

A beam shot out from one of the stone’s baleful eyes, straight as a plumb line and bright as sheet-lightning at midnight.

The Hood’s hull crackled as it burst, the atmosphere within rushed to be free.

Gerald envied it, in his last, quiet moments.