Down the rabbit hole.

Our transit pod arrived at the spaceport without incident and we put our suitcases on a trolley and made our way to the departure hall. The giant departure hall looked empty with all but a few gates long ago fenced out.

Once before the gate slowdown, the spaceport would have been a hive of activity with people travelling to the hundreds of star systems which were part of the federation. Now however few wanted to spend the many decades it would take to travel to even the nearest star system on one of the few freighters that travelled slowly through hyperspace.

“Have you ever travelled into space before?” Alice asked me.

“No never,” I replied.

Before we made our way to the check-in kiosk to check in our luggage, I checked my bracelet had the fake ID that Alice had given me activated. Once we arrived there was no queue, and everything went smoothly. Next, we would have to get through security. This was easy compared to when I broke into the data centre and we were soon past security and all that was left was to wait for our flight to the orbit station.

I’d expected this to be a lot harder but as far as anyone in authority knew nothing had happened yet. As far as they knew my boss had to tend to some sort of problem at the data centre and the security system had done its job in making sure that no data had been transported out. Little did they know that a secure server of Alice’s was waiting for the right time to give them a very bad day.

While we were waiting to board our shuttle, Alice turned round and said to me. “I’m stupid I nearly forgot something important.”

“What, what's wrong?” I said worried.

“Mag boots. They are essential if you’re going to be a passenger on a freighter. Sometimes they have to switch the gravity off.” She said marching me to the space equipment shop. Soon our gate came up on the screen and we boarded the shuttle, me stomping onto the ship with my new mag boots on. These will take a little getting used to I thought. I had a window seat and watched out the window as the spaceship shot out of the planet’s atmosphere. The planet was so beautiful from the air and part of me would miss it. Eventually, the sky turned black and was replaced by stars and the roar of the ship’s engines grew quiet.

I was looking at my datapad when the news came up on all the news feeds. For the press, this was the story of the century a couple of hours later I saw the news that my old boss had also been arrested under suspicion of leaking official secrets. Part of me felt sorry for him, but soon they would look through the surveillance camera records, and suspicion would turn to me. I was glad I’d be long gone by the time that happened.

---

When we finally made it to the orbit station we disembarked and transferred via a shuttle to the freighter that would be our home till we arrived at our destination. I started to relax as we arrived at our quarters on the freighter.

“We did it! It will be almost impossible to catch us now and in a few months’ time we will be through the jump gate.” Said Alice.

“Wait? What? I don’t understand.” I replied astonished.

“Well, you know those saviours of mine. Just before the gate slowdown a group of queer women fled from a government like ours to a planet on a system known as Steven’s Folly. They ended up stranded for a while until they figured out how to travel at full speed through hyperspace.”

“They have been quietly building up trade routes and keeping a low profile.”

“So that’s where we are going?”

“Yep. You’re like it there. It’s where I discovered myself, I don’t know what I’d have done without them.”

Later that day we heard a knock on the door followed by a woman say, “The captain wants to talk to you two.” Don’t worry Alice said, “I think she mostly wants to talk with me, I doubt you’re in trouble.”

I followed her to the captain’s quarters, and she asked me to wait outside while the captain spoke to Alice alone. It was then that I heard lots of shouting. “You endangered the mission…” I overheard the captain say followed by “You put us all in danger…”. After a while, it went quiet, and I was summoned to see the captain.

“I’m Captain Silver.” Said Captain Silver.

“Sophie,” I replied.

“You know you’ve both caused me a lot of trouble and put my crew in danger?”

“I kind of guessed that and I’m sorry.”

“Well, what’s done is done. Just stay out of trouble on my ship, okay?”

“We will I promise,” said Alice.

“Ok, go then before I change my mind and throw you in the brig.” She said to Alice.

--- A week later after the elections

I had a big smile as I looked at my datapad, the scandal brought to the public had caused the government to collapse. Things wouldn’t get better immediately for LGBT people on my planet, but it was a start.

“I know the captain doesn’t approve of what we did, but I think we did good,” I said holding Alice.

“Yea, we did didn’t we.” She said holding me closer and at that moment we kissed.

The End, for now!