Reckless Abandon

[Stoat]

Newcastle.

So much empty space. That was why this patrol run was considered cushy. The chance of actually happening across hostiles was monumentally slim. Unless you were walking into a trap, but then you were screwed anyway. Rachel sighed deeply.

“Got a problem there Furlough?” The voice of Major Howiss crackled in Rachel’s ear.

“No sir, just ………….” Her voice trailed off.

“Stay focused! That goes for all of you. It’s the moment you switch off that everything goes to hell, remember that. We’ve got a boring job to do. Two days in our cockpits, with nothing but a tube to piss in and some pretty rotten rations. Change heading to seven four niner, repeat seven four niner. We’re heading for sector hotel six I’m afraid. We drew the short straw.”

There was a series of groans as the four Templars swung to the new course. This was a trip to the edges of the system, with little to see and less to do. The last patrol to the sector had recorded nothing. They all expected to discover the same.

*******

The hours passed slowly. Asteroids slowly gave way to hydrogen clouds, which gave way to nothingness. The view was pretty, she supposed, but twenty three hours into their patrol it no longer held the beauty it had. With the Templar on autopilot she started to doze.

She was flying through a nebula of some sort. She was in peril, of that she was certain, but little else. As the clouds of the nebula started to give way she saw something ahead, far in the distance…..



As she strained to make sense of what she was seeing a noise started to grow. Static, getting louder. A voice. Major Howiss?

“..ant Furlough!” she jerked awake, a cold sweat on her brow.

“Yessir! Sorry sir!”

“Damn it all Furlough, what was I saying before? You’ll be on report for this one. Falling asleep in your cockpit. This is not going to go down well with the brass. Now get your shit together. We have an anomaly ahead. Your job is going to be to investigate it. Get moving.”

“Yessir!” She glanced quickly at her display and swung her Templar towards the anomaly. She could see it plainly. A swirling, hazy ball. Electricity forked across it. She moved closer, before stopping, and scanned, gathering data for later analysis.



A memory suddenly sparked. She’d seen something like this before.

“Sir! I think I know what this is. It’s a wormhole, sir.”

“Well bloody done, Lieutenant. Of course it’s a bloody wormhole! What we need is to find out where it goes!”

“Sir? We need to find out where it goes, sir?”

“Yes Furlough, of course we do.”

“Roger, sir.” She took a deep breath, and kicked in her engines.

“No Furlough!” came the panicked voice of the Major. “Don’t bloody jum……..”

Too late she tried to reverse thrust. Light exploded around her. She was pressed back into her seat, and alarms screamed. She was thrown from side to side like a rag doll as the Templar bucked and rolled. Just as she thought the vessel would start to fall apart, the violence began to subside. The blinding light dimmed, and something resolved itself in front of her. She stared around, mesmerised. She was not where she had been, she knew that much. She opened the navigational computer. One word flashed across the screen. Uncharted. She swallowed. Then she saw something move. Dead ahead, emerging from behind an asteroid.



Now I'm screwed, she whispered. Fear coursed through her. These things had been seen before, and this one had seen her. She looked around desperately. She had seconds.

There! The wormhole! She kicked in her engines, knowing this was her only chance. Anywhere was better than here. As the wormhole took hold of her Templar again, a bolt of energy passed through the space where she had been.

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