Outsider

[Laowai]

As the ship cruised its way across the Omega 47 system, she tried to familiarise herself with its computer systems. Familiarise... or re-familiarise herself because as she tinkered with them she found herself delving into memories that she knew were not her own. Her husband's memories, his knowledge of the ship, his knowledge of what it did.
The memories came slowly however, it was like reaching for something that was barely a shadow in a room full of mist and fog.
Locating the navigation system she tracked though it to find the Omega 41 jump hole. It seemed easy enough, she selected it and the computer beeped helpfully letting her know it was heading on that course, it was then that a voice crackled though her comm system, startling her: “Unidentified Corsair vessel, this is the Battleship Fes, you are not registering a current IFF code, identify yourself”.
She looked around the cockpit confused, Battleship? She tried to recall that particular memory and it wormed its way into her mind... Battleship Fes, Osiris Class battleship on permanent station guarding the Omega 41 jump hole, Crew compliment......

She stopped herself, no need to let the memories run over her... she just needed to give them some kind of satisfactory response. She fumbled around trying to locate the comm system and found the switch marked “transmit local”... She needed to come up with something and fast otherwise she knew they would send out some ships to investigate.
Flipping the channel to "open" she answered “Battleship Fes, This is Corsair operative transmit Zhang13alpha - my IFF was knocked out by a near miss with some Hessians back there... sorry, im getting it seen to as soon as im back on Crete.....”
She waited and her Titan sped on, she had answered once more almost on a reflex and it took her aback how the words just seem to come to her, like her mind and her body were acting on some kind of subconscious level, seemingly better than it did when she thought about it just as it had on Tangier. She also knew that she had just given them the classified operative code that belonged to Ben's sister Isabel, and that when the controller on the Fes ran it through the system it would show her status as on assignment to an Elder of the Council and she would not be hindered. She also knew, that she could be in a lot of trouble were that fact ever discovered.

“ID confirmed Pilot” came the voice of the Fes's comm operator again “Good hunting, Fes out.”

Sighing in relief she sat back in the chair as the ship sped its way closer to the jump hole. Gazing out the canopy she marvelled at the system that she had lived in her entire life but had never actually seen. Such beauty had always been there and she wondered if on some level the Corsairs on Tangier weren't depriving themselves of something by isolating themselves the way they had. She reached up and framed the sun in between her fingers, as she had done so often laying in the grass and looking up from the surface of Tangier. Up this close, it couldn't fit in the frame she had made, its massive orange bulk spilled out from the sides of her fingers and above and below her hand. A smile crossed her face as she took in the awesome sight before her, its glow bathing everything in the cockpit in a majestic orange, her hands almost... glowing. She stared at her fingers and her hand, looking like it had always remembered it to look, she moved it slowly around, flexing her fingers and opening and closing a fist. Then, something stopped her and a crease formed on her brow.
Something had moved.. in, under the flesh of her hand.
Was it a trick of the light? She moved it again and saw to her horror, lines forming from the tips of her fingers, forming themselves into intricate patterns that seemed to move autonomously under her skin, lines crossing lines, intertwining and separating, vanishing and then reappearing lower down her arm, crossing her forearm and then dancing back to her hand again, growing, moving, seemingly intending to cover her arm and then continue further up her body until.....
She screamed, the sound piercing the silence of the cockpit and she shook her arm madly, “my god my god” she muttered in terror, shaking her arm as if she had just seen some hideous kind of bug alighting upon it and she was trying to desperately shake it off.
She held her arm up to her gaze again and this time the lines had vanished. Yet she felt herself trembling, a human reaction of fear in what she was still realising was anything but a human body.
She cradled her arm against herself and tried to calm down. Yet she suddenly felt incredibly small and in over her head, no one could give her any answers on this, no one knew what she was and she had no one to ask.
She needed to find her husband.
Her thoughts were disturbed by the computers voice chiming up “approaching jump hole”. She looked up and saw it, a swirling mass of lights dancing in circular patterns, lines of light orbiting a cloud of multi coloured gases around something in its centre which was at once both there and not there... she noticed transfixed by the lights she was seeing, how similar they looked to the lines on her arms....
She gasped and covered her face with her hands, terror striking her once more as the ship buffeted slightly and the computerised voice spoke once more “Docking”. She closed her eyes and heard a roar and felt the tremors rocking the ship from all sides, “no nononono” she muttered to herself, trying to bury herself into the chair as far as she could, the roaring continued and she cried out as a wave of raw fear washed over her “NOOOOOOOO STOP IT!!!!”.
So it did, the sound stopped.... and she glanced up. The ship was sitting still in space, different space. In the distance she could see thousands of floating asteroids hanging still and silent, with their smaller cousins tumbling about, bumping into each other.
“Omega 41 system, danger, radiation damage detected”

“That was a wormhole” the memory voice in her head whispered to her once more, yet she could barely control her fear and her shaking. She took deep, slow breaths – she had made it this far, she knew she had only a short journey ahead of her before she would jump once more to the Omicron Gamma system.
Suddenly, a warning sensor to her right emitted an urgent beeping sound and she sat up to try and figure out what it meant. A light on one of the tactical sensors was blinking, its warning light labelled “Proximity” and at that moment a shadow passed across her vision and Corsair Praetorian bomber passed over her ship, circling around and turning to face her.
“Pilot identify yourself” a voice crackled over her comm system. It was a Corsair ship, she knew that much from the sight of it, and yet.. who? She fumbled around once more with the scanners, while simultaneously transmitting on a local frequency... “Umm. ..one moment, im.... not sure how this thing works....”
The Scanner blinked again and a code scrolled itself across the screen “OPG registered praetorian bomber class vessel”.

---

http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/3289/...047770.png