Hostile Encounter



  HOSTILE ENCOUNTER

  by Mac Ewing

  copyright 2014 Mac Ewing

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  Since the dawn of time, mankind has stared up into the heavens, wide-eyed in wonder. For millennia, we worshiped what we did not understand, and even as we began to comprehend the far reaches of outer space, we still looked on in amazement, our minds excited with thoughts of what might lie out there.

  There finally came a day when mankind stretched out its hand and took hold of, first the moon, and in the decades that followed, the solar system that we had for so long called home. From there, we began going further and further still into vastness of our galaxy. Out there, on the frontier, colonies rose and quickly fell, but our determination could not be crushed, our dreams never snuffed out.

  Five-hundred years of scientific and technological advancement would amaze those first astronauts, but today, in 2579 SEY, space travel has become a part of day to day life. Through advancements in stellaurium engines, we are constructing smaller and smaller ships and the reality of personal transplanetary vehicles is not far off.

  As for me, Josheff Ja'honsem, interplanetary travel is a source of income. With so many planets now populated, and so many new commodities being developed, it is necessary for these goods to be shipped between worlds. As a member of the Interplanetary Shipping Union, or ISU, my job is just that: bringing goods from point A to point B. The pay was good, but it was tiring and repetitive, and certainly not considered very prestigious. Pilots usually traveled alone, often for weeks or even months on end, with little or no interaction with the rest of mankind. It tended to make many of my fellow ISU members highly eccentric. Those that maintained there sanity were often still lumped in with the others. Use of the radiaNet during turboflight was dangerous. A ship's computer was constantly receiving and sending out updates to the Galactic Traffic Monitoring hub, making small adjustments to the flight pattern to avoid colliding with any asteroids or other ships. Accessing any social or entertainment netplaces would risk interfering with the main computer's link to the GTMhub, which could prove fatal should there be any oncoming ships. This factor only further contributed to the isolation of the job, and completely cutting pilots off from the rest of the world. Those as deafening and absolute as the solotude was, I had managed to combat against it thus far.

  To keep myself from going insane with boredom, I obtained a massive collection of Earth literature. Tales of mystery, suspense and drama kept my mind active and my spirit high. I was especially interested in the old “science fiction” stories, and even greater was my interest in stories written during the telecom age. Writers of the period always seemed so certain that far beyond the Earth, or even as close as Mars, aliens lived and thrived. Now that we had spread ourselves out across our galaxy, and even began moving towards new ones, the possibility of making contact with sentient life didn't seem so likely. Contemporary literature and holofilms never used science fiction anymore. We are far more interested in the historical events of Earth.

  Presently, I had just gone through the storage bay in the back of my freighter and returned to the pilot seat. I could feel the ship hum slightly about me, an effect given by the artificial gravity field. I sat down in the pilot's chair and reached into a drawer beside me, pulling out my reading tablet. I cycled through menus until I found the one I wanted. After a few minutes of reading, the computer beside me chirped a few times and the ship adjusted its course by the smallest increment. I looked up to the front window and waited. It was several long moments before another ship came rushing past me, our relative speed being so great that I didn't even have time to identify whether or not it was a fellow Union member. Should I have blinked, I would have missed the whole thing. I returned to my reading. I had been flying this course for nearly 1360 Solhours, and my food and air supplied were dwindling. Thankfully, I was nearly to my destination, the planet Teroil, which was awaiting a delivery of manufacturing parts. I was once more interrupted by my computer, which provoked me to a small grumble. My annoyance quickly changed to concern, for this time it was not a small chirp confirming a course adjustment. It was a warning. Perturbed, I activated the control panel in front of me. The proximity scanners were picking up something heading towards me at nearly twice my own speed. Data readouts indicated it was a ship of unknown variety, manned by at least one life-force.

  What really sent me into a panic - along with no small amount of confusion - was that the ship behind me wasn't registering with the GTMhub, and thus my computer was not going to adjust my course automatically. In a rush, I unlocked the controls grabbed hold of the flight yolk, hoping to dodge in time. Even as I did so, I recognized it would be a fruitless effort. The oncoming vessel proved to be too fast. Before I could take any further action, my ship lurched and shuddered, and the computer now began flashing a siren. My ship had been rammed from behind and a screen to my right indicated that one of my thrusters had been badly damaged. I adjusted the output of the others to try and compensate, but now my attacker was right above me.

  I quickly activated my emergency broadcast. “GTM control, this is Josheff Ja'honsem, pilot of ISU freighter 3341. I am broadcasting my location now. I am under attack. I repeat! I am under - ”

  My ship lurched again, this time knocking me from my seat. I grabbed the mic from my transmitter again, but an indicator light to my right told me that the antenna on top of my ship had been destroyed. I attempted to use the computer to find out where the other ship was, but my sensory array had also been compromised. I was now flying blind with only three operating thrusters, and I had no idea where my attacker had vanished to.

  There was a moment of near silence, the siren above the door in the back of the cockpit and the dimmed engines emanating the only noise. I switched the alarm off, listening. The ship's control console couldn't detect anything, and nothing could be seen through the front view window except the blackness of space.

  A sound.

  So startled was I that I clutched at my chest. It had sounded like a hydraulic arm moving. It had come from above, and it was preceded by several small clanking noises. It was at that point that I realized my attackers were in fact on top of me. Had they latched onto my ship? I was spurred into action when I heard a faint, steady hissing sound. It came not from above me, but from further back in my own ship. I opened a storage container that was beside the pilot's seat, and I pulled out a pistol I had kept there. It was cheaply made, not to mention an outdated model. I couldn't afford anything better.

  I slowly walked forward, careful as to not scuff my steel-toed boots against the ground. I stopped suddenly when I heard a large crash of metal.

  I waited a moment longer, listening. I could hear nothing, so I continued further into the ship, reaching the access door to the storage area, which was a separate part of the ship, filled and then attached at docking stations. My hand hovered over panel that controlled the various aspects of the two parts' connection.

  'They've cut into my ship, so locking the door won't help me. I could open the airlock in the back, but I can't risk losing all of my cargo...' I thought to myself, doing my best to remain calm and rational.

  Taking a deep breath, I set the door's mechanism to manual and took hold of the handle, twisting it counter clockwise. Except for a small pop and a bar
ely audible hiss, the door opened silently.

  The storage area was about six meters wide, and about eleven meters deep. It was dimly lit and packed with stacks of boxes, all arranged to make narrow, uneven aisles. I held my blaster tight, my arm sweeping from one side of the room to the other. I had no way of knowing if the intruder was aware of my presence in the room.

  Cautiously, I took a single step forward, careful to not make a sound. A small noise came from elsewhere in the room, but I couldn't guess where. It came again, a sound not unlike something crawling. I took another careful step forward. The fact that the intruder had not yet revealed itself lent support to the possibility of the enemy knowing I was in the room.

  I began another step when, in an aisle no more than four meters ahead of me, a shadow rushed by. In a panic, my finger gripped the trigger on my pistol and I fired a beam shot, missing completely. A small stream of smoke curled up from the box I had struck, and just as fast as it had happened, the room was still once more. There was no doubting that the