Drifting Dark

Awkward introductions: Complete.

Awkward personal questions: In Progress.

The hall that was their supposed meeting location had turned out to be the kitchen. Or galley. Or something like that. It was a place to eat food. At least, there was a little rehydration and reheating station in the corner. The basic kind that any child could figure out how to operate.

That seemed to be the only standard piece of equipment in the entire room.

The tables and chairs scattered about the room were all mismatched styles and colours. None of them looked new. Several of them seemed to have additional lighting installed underneath them, with no obvious purpose other than to give the dirty floor a warm glow. Even the window had a faint blue glow around the edges. It felt like someone had been trying to make the place feel more homey.

She understood the feeling.

But it had not what she had been expecting. It almost made her wonder if she'd been assigned to the wrong ship.

It wasn't, unfortunately. The huge map on the wall was a big reminder. Even if the original title had been scratch out and "Saint Joan" scribbled over top.

The diagram showed a detailed overview of the long, thin ship. It was almost a rectangular prism, except for at the rear. There, the engines stuck out on either side, the engineering deck added another three levels below the ship and the shuttle bay jutted out on top. Or vice versa, depending on how you looked at it.

The middle of the ship was all made up entirely of modular storage units, popular back when ships were prefabricated planetside and assembled on-station. Each one had it's own set of maneuvering thrusters and airlocks, allowing temperature and atmospheric controls to be adjusted for each cargo section individually. On the exterior, interconnected corridors and tunnels allowed crew members to traverse the length of the ship without ever having to enter the cargo hold.

She'd gotten lost in that maze earlier. At the time, it had seemed to be the better option. The alternative had been to walk along the huge conveyors of the hold, filled with gigantic shipping containers, which could have begun moving at any moment.

Either way, it was a long trip from the cargo doors at the back to the main habitation area at the front. She hadn't been imagining the distance, which she'd now be covering on daily basis.

That wasn't what worried her.

All over the map, sections were marked off with big, red Xs. A red X was never anything good. There were a lot of them.

She'd took one look at the map when they came in, then ignored it. Staring at it wasn't going to make her feel any better. Besides, she'd already memorized the whole thing. Frustratingly, it was about the only useful piece of information about the ship that she'd found so far.

But it wasn't the only interesting thing in the room.

On the opposite wall, there was a large display mounted. It was cycling through a catalog of photographs, showing a random assortment of landscapes and other planetary surface features. Earth and Mars. Occasionally, people in the background, or foreground. Some of them were crew members. A blue lake with red sand, hills, mountains, oceans...

She kept having to tear her eyes away. It was way more interesting than the current conversation, which had somehow drifted towards recreational activities, or the other crew members lounging about. Everyone else was scattered about the dining area, which struck her as quite oversized for their current contingent.

Danny was at the far end, feet propped up on a chair, engrossed in his portable screen. He'd returned to it the instant he'd finished introducing himself, and hadn't looked up since. He hadn't even moved, as far as Cassie could tell, except to occasionally rub at the silver stud through his left ear.

Two tables over, their pilot, Shrey, and first officer, Brendan, had collectively given her about thirty seconds of their attention before returning to their card game. At least those were their primary jobs, it seemed like this was a ship where everyone had way too many jobs. Like everyone had done everything at one point.

That was small crews for you.

Almost every job, everything except engineering, the only thing she was actually interested in. No one seemed to really know how anything worked. Or managed to keep working. And they didn't care, as long as it kept working.

A typical planetborn attitude.

What she really wanted was to talk to their engineer, but he wasn't here yet. So instead of getting a better picture of this ship, and it's non-standard "modifications", she was stuck here, in an awkward conversation with two of her new crew members.

That was a nice way of putting it. Mike and Geoff had been interrogating her for the last ten minutes. That may have been an exaggeration, but that's what it felt like. Until they got distracted talking about themselves anyways. Or really anything that caught their attention.

This seemed to be one of those crews where everyone was friends.

She didn't like it.

It wasn't just because she was the outsider of the group, that wasn't why she wanted the distance. She was there to work. She just didn't need to know their life stories. They didn't need to know hers.

They didn't need to be friends for her to do her job.

But she still had to make an effort to fit in, which meant attempting to muddle her way through their questions.

"Zeegee football?" Geoff guessed, snapping his fingers soundlessly.

"It's still around," Cassie answered uncertainly. "But, uh, it's not that popular."

"Really?" Geoff raised an eyebrow. "It's always on the station channels."

Even if he hadn't mispronounced the name horribly, everyone knew about zero gravity football. It was basically the only sport planetborn and spaceborn shared. In fact, micrograv sports were pretty much the only ones she was familiar with. Despite the impression she was giving, she hadn't been living under a rock her whole life.

"Well, you need antigrav generators to play planetside," Cassie explained. "People planetside just aren't very good at it."

Both men gave her skeptical looks.

"It's more of a Moon thing," Cassie added hastily.

Geoff nodded, stroking his brown goatee thoughtfully, as if this had never occurred to him.

"What about hoverboard races?" Mike suggested next.

Cassie shook her head.

"Huh." Mike's tone was almost pitiful.

"Um, I don't really pay attention to sports, at all," Cassie added after a moment.

Geoff's expression was gradually shifting from curiosity to sadness. "There's got to be something the kids planetside do for fun nowadays."

Under the table, one of Cassie's hands began picking at the busted seam of one of her many pockets. "We, um... are all really focused on school. Everyone is trying to get good grades."

Blank stares.

"You know, to get into the academies," Cassie elaborated quietly.

"Grades. I can't believe it." Geoff shook his head sadly. "Kids these days."

Mike gave him an odd look. "It's to avoid conscription."

Cassie nodded slightly, almost imperceptibly. The atmosphere had gone sour. The space was silent, save for the faint audio from Danny's entertainment device and the quick shuffling of cards, accompanied by the constant, repetitive clicking of an annoyingly loud fan.

Awkward silence: Accomplished. Three for three.

"So, what are you planning to do when we get to Phoebe Station?" Mike asked suddenly.

"Uh..." Cassie uttered weakly as her mind went blank.

She had absolutely no idea how to answer that.

Thankfully, she was saved from answering the question by Helen's arrival. The tall, squarely built woman entered with zero warning. Her head swiveled, making the streaks of silvery-grey in her black hair glint, as she took a quick head count.

Cassie subconsciously touched the tight, low bun that she'd pulled her own long black hair into that morning.

So she was the only one with long hair. She was the shortest. She was the youngest. She was the only one in uniform.

So much for blending in.

"Where's Aqeel?" Helen asked, to no one in particular.

"Down in the engine room," Brendan answered as he put down another card. Shrey scowled as he glared at the table, his lanky form hunched over it in concentration.

Helen placed a hand on her hip. "This a meeting for the whole crew."

Brendan shrugged. "Said he needed to tune the ion amplifiers or something. He's not coming." He smirked as he put down a second card, pushing it across the table smugly.

That caught Cassie's attention. Mainly because this class of ship didn't have ion amplifiers. It couldn't, not at this size. She was about to speak up, then thought better of it.

She'd embarrassed herself enough already today.

"That's that then." Helen walked over to Cassie's table. "Aqeel is our engineer, you'll meet him soon anyways." She turned a chair around, the back leaning against the metal table, and sat down, her arms resting on the top. "Let's get started."

Their pilot spoke up, finally diverting his attention from the card game. "Can we start with why we're still here? We were scheduled to leave two hours ago."

"Some cargo got delayed." Helen wasn't looking at Geoff when she said this.

Several people threw accusatory looks his way anyways.

"Hey, it wasn't my fault," Geoff said defensively. "Not this time anyways." He pointed at Danny. "The stuff wasn't on the dock, blame him."

"The docking clerk messed up, a few containers went to the wrong place," Danny explained, finally putting the device down. "It's all sorted now."

"So we'll be leaving as soon as we get clearance. Then it'll take us about a day to reach the edge of the dark zone," Helen continued. "Danny and Geoff, make sure the cargo hold depressurization goes smoothly, double check the seals along those busted sections." She waved vaguely towards the map on the wall, towards the scribbled Xs. "Shrey and Mike, take a look at those new maps from intelligence. Make sure they did their jobs right this time."

"Got it." Danny got up to leave, suspiciously eager.

"Stick around," Helen said firmly. "We're going over the procedure for dark mode."

Danny reluctantly sat back down. "We all know this already," he complained.

"We do have a new crew member today," Helen reminded him.

Cassie sat up straighter. The rest of the crew slumped in their seats a little.

Helen didn't wait for a response. "While we're in the dark zone, we do need to keep Ellidium consumption down to minimize our risk of exposure. However, the dark generator covers most of our energy usage." Despite her earlier statement, it was evident that this wasn't news to anyone other than Cassie. "Generally, the ship continues to operate normally. Gravity, life support, recycling, all those systems run at full capacity."

Cassie nodded, in relief. She knew firsthand what water rationing due to power restrictions was like, and had no desire to experience that again. It was a nice surprise.

Helen shot a warning look at Danny, who had been not-so-subtly inching his fingers towards his entertainment device. "The biggest difference will be that all long range communications will be cut off while we're passing through."

"Meaning we'll be disconnected from the interplanetary network," Mike clarified unbidden.

"I knew that," Cassie mumbled under her breath.

Geoff leaned back. "What she really means is that if you want to grab anything to watch off the network, do it now."

Helen ignored them. "That ban is for everyone's safety, and it includes personal transmissions." Her tone was nothing less than serious. "Most importantly, if you have any devices that have long range transmission capabilities, turn them off before then."

"Oh, I didn't bring anything like that on board," Cassie said honestly.

"Good." Helen smiled. "As long as no one does anything stupid." That comment seemed to be directed at Geoff. "Then we'll get through just fine."

Helen glanced about at her bored crew, minus Cassie, who was listening attentively. "That's it. You've all got your jobs."

Everyone started to get up as Cassie abruptly half-raised her hand.

Helen raised an amused eyebrow. "What it is, Cassie?"

Cassie noticed everyone was staring at her and quickly lowered her hand. "Um... but won't the enemy scout ships see us? Even with an energy cloak, those engines are huge. Can the cloak really hide them?"

Helen almost looked impressed at her question. "That's correct, the engines consume too much Ellidium to be concealed by the dark generator," she confirmed. "Once we reach the edge of the zone, we'll turn off them off."

Cassie took a second to process that, ignoring the metallic scrapping of the furniture around her.

So this is how it was done, literally launching the ship into the extremely dangerous war zone with no engines and no controls. One fraction of a fraction of a degree off and they could find themselves flying out of the solar system. The idea was terrifying.

"So we'll be unable to change course?" Cassie asked uneasily.

"Our thrusters are classic propellant, oxidant based, so we can use those for course correction," Shrey answered, picking up the last of the cards.

"We can turn the engines on once we reach the other side," Helen added. "We just have to get across without anyone spotting us."

"...and what happens if they spot us?" Cassie asked nervously.

That made everyone stop moving.

Helen's face softened. "As long as we follow the plan, it's extremely unlikely that any ship will spot us."

"...but if they do?" Cassie pressed.

Geoff smiled. "We run like hell, that's what."

The tension popped like a bubble. Laughs and snickers filled the room as people began moving again. The joke had made everyone smile, even Danny.

Everyone except Cassie, who just sat there looking very puzzled.

"We're a cargo ship, not exactly built for speed," Shrey explained. "Or fancy evasive maneuvers."

"We try to avoid other ships as much as possible, but our best defense out there..." Mike gestured vaguely at the window, which was showing nothing except the expansive blackness of deep space. "...is stealth."

Cassie's confused expression didn't fade. That couldn't be all they had. No escorts? No defense? No escape route? This was the most dangerous area in the entire solar system. She just couldn't believe that they didn't have some kind of backup plan.

There was no way they were that stupid.

"Weapons?" Cassie suggested hopefully, optimistically.

"Nope," Shrey replied flatly.

Cassie couldn't tell if he was serious. She twisted around to look at him, and still couldn't tell. "Not even for asteroid deflection?"

Geoff scoffed. "That's what the hull's there for."

Cassie's expression shifted as she began to grasp their situation, their reliance on this single piece of equipment.

If that cloak failed...

Helen cleared her throat. "This vessel is a little older than what you're used to, but it'll get us there. Just like it has dozens of times before."

It was clear to Cassie that the statement was supposed to be reassuring, that it was supposed to make her feel better.

It didn't.