The Quarry

[Rage Menelas]

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode]“Ryan... do not wrestle with the ship,” the master starflyer instructed, “approach it as if it was rather a part of your body. Do you wrestle with your legs to get them to walk?”

“No, but...”

“...just think what you want it to do then Saar'floe will do the rest. There is no need to fight her.”

Ryan sighed. Yeah, yeah... it sounded easy but this grabbing a-hold to the console and just thinking about what the ship should do was completely foreign to his Terran mind. There was no analogous process on Earth for him to cross-reference it to. Fishing had been easy, nothing to it, but this was something else.

“Wait,” Charlie suddenly demanded, “give me the controls.” Then he slid into the spot that Ryan had vacated and began analyzing the sensor grid with sharp interest.

“What's up, boss...?”

“A ship formation... see here, there is a mass of radiation signatures tracking in from across the far side of the system...” He jabbed his finger at a small screen on the console. It had five alien ideograms lit up over the top of it. He fiddled with something on the console then announced, “...point of origin near the vortex to the Kerra'arrene System, an area the Szearfetti have been known to operate in regularly.”

They were two days out from Pella'agre, had paused periodically in their leisurely journey across the system for Ryan's flight lessons. Up ahead was a small asteroid field concentrated in the area of the vortex toward which they were heading.

“Let us play it safe. Let us hide in the asteroid field and watch what they do. We can shut down the ship's engines and drift into it. That way we will in no way give away our position. I have a bad feeling about these ships.” Charlie did as he had said he would, shut down the engines and coasted into the asteroid field. Then they waited and watched...