~~~ Earth Orbiting Space Dock
Billy was more than pissed when the safety inspection came back as a down check for his ship. He knew the hyper tubes only had a bit more in them before they would have to be overhauled. He had wanted one more run before having to do the work. Billy had a friend who could help him with it only he was elsewhere on another job. He really didn't need this at the moment. If he had been able to do one more run his friend would have been available.
At the moment he was talking to one of the repair companies on the station, "Great, how much will it cost to have the hyper tubes taken care of?" He winced when they quoted a price to him.
"We are looking at about thirty thousand credits and that is assuming the techs don't find any other issues. Then the price would go up of course." The quote was to repair the hyper tubes. If they had to replace one or more the price would go up.
Billy could do the work but he would be walking along the edges of staying in the black. It would take him a minimum of two months to get the work done and probably longer. That was if there weren't any other problems he found doing the work. One annoying thing was he knew that there was at least one problem that the safety checks hadn't found as of yet. He sighed, "I will get back with you after I look at some options."
He called the Space Com inspectors, "Do you think your bosses would mind if I dropped the ship down to my property while I repair it?" If he could get the ship down to the farm he knew he could do the work and save a bit. It would take more time but he could do it and he had the money, barely, from the last run. Landing was something he could do from orbit and not impact on the Hyper Tubes.
The Inspector took a quick perusal of the report and nodded at Billy, "I will send an authorization to the flight controller for a de-orbit burn to your property. Do not deviate or you will face potential legal actions." He added the last simply because the free traders could be such a pain in the fins at times.
"Fine I will land my ship and work on it. Once I get it done I will call for a safety inspection." Billy tried not to glare at the Inspector for the unneeded comment, "Will that be okay?"
The man looked at Billy and sighed. He hated dealing with the free traders since they were all squirrely at times, "Fine that works. Call when ready." He sent a message to the ship. It generated a seal on the hull indicating that the ship was not safe for the transfer of goods.
Billy snarled before calling the tower and was connected to one of the controllers he knew, "Permission to release connections and shift orbit to earth." God he hated this but he had to admit the ship needed work.
"Permission to deorbit and land at your ranch. I would say don't do anything I wouldn't do but..." The controller laughed.
"Kiss my fins man." Billy was not in a good mood as he unlocked the clamps and dropped from orbit. At least now they didn't have that tiny window to enter the atmosphere and could almost point the ship down. He used a gentle de-orbit burn. It took some time before he eventually landed in the cradle on his property. Once the roof of the dock closed he extended the landing ramp and walked off the ship with a bag of clothing.
~~~ Deep Space Sholan Scout Ship
Satasha was not a happy camper. She had been in the middle of a sleep cycle when a number of alarms went off in her cabin. That brought her awake with a start since she had been deeply asleep. As she was checking the readouts her thoughts turned to the ship itself. She was the only crew onboard at the time being. Currently they were searching for the Others who had attacked and destroyed one of their heavy combat ships. Since the attack their resources were being stretched thin and especially with the scout crews.
Due to that she was both captain and crew though that wasn't really saying much since the vast majority of the ship functions were automated. The normal crew of three had plenty of crew comforts. The beds were large and comfortable, the showers had hot jets to help dry their fur. The food was pre-processed but fairly decent comparatively speaking. If you were feeling brave you could even cook it and add spices as well. They had plenty of story teller shows, books, and music to fill the down times also. Since it was only her she had more space than needed. Some days it almost felt like she rattled around in the scouter currently.
All this went through her mind as she checked the readouts built into the ceiling above her head and freaked. Something was wrong with the navicomp and that was not good. She rolled out of bed and yelped as her head hit the ceiling above her. Satasha didn't bother pulling on her heavy uniform since it was an internal fault and not an air leak. Instead she grabbed it and would pull it on in the cockpit.
By the time she hit the bridge the alarms were about to give her a headache and that was the first thing Satasha dealt with. After killing the alarms, she started reviewing the diagnostics to see what else might need to be done. She also verified the captain's log was rolling to document what was going on. While waiting for the additional diagnostics to finish she worked on localizing a source of electronic emissions. She had been tracking them for several weeks. There had been traces of hyper jump capability though what she had picked up was rather primitive.
After sending in the report on the emissions she had been instructed to localize them. Once localized, evaluate the culture to see if they were the Others. If not see if they were advanced enough to open communications with. She had started picking up video emissions a number of light years away. Satasha had picked up primitive radio signals from even further out. The hyper signals had been much closer since they tended to fade much faster.
Thankfully the navicomp survived long enough to get a basic course set before it finally melted down. The worst part was her communications were routed through the navicomp. It was used for directional control of the communication links. She had tried to send a distress signal but wasn't sure it had been successful. She wouldn't know since once the navicomp went down so did her communications. Unless it was broadband she couldn't receive anything. Satasha could try it on the broadband but it was possible the civilization she was checking was the one that attacked them. She didn't want to chance alerting them if that was the case. If it was the case she would have to activate the self-destruct.
They didn't know much about the enemy other than they came, attacked one of their ships and then vanished. There were obvious blaster burns, laser burns, and missile strikes. The entire crew had been killed and inspection also showed boarding and the killing of ones who were trying to surrender. That was the reason they were stretched thin, the Others had killed for no obvious reason.
There had always been more small ships than crews since they kept the scout/fighters in a heavy cycle of maintenance. That was one of the reasons why she was alone on the ship. With the heavy automation only one person was really needed. They had three to take care of the mental health of the crew members.
Once they had been attacked they had moved to a much higher deployment schedule and now crews were either one or two people instead of the normal three. In her case her second had managed to break his leg the day before they were scheduled to leave. It had been close enough to the departure they didn't have another crew member available. That had really sucked since she would have enjoyed the company as well as the bed play.
Command knew better than to forbid relationships on long haul scouting trips since it was rather pointless. All female Sholans could control their fertility and monogamy was not a problem due to that. Sholans did have bonding contracts for conceiving cubs but they were normally 3 or 5 years. Getting pregnant outside of either a bonding or life mate carried heavy social consequences. For the senior Sholans most of them did a life bonding ceremony but again monogamy was not expected. The only expectation was that any cubs only come from either the bond-mate or life mate.
Satasha shook her head to chase away the stray thoughts as she watched the final diagnostic screen come up. She winced since the component that she didn't have a spare for was the one component which fried. It was a solid molycirc block that required a repair depot. "Oh by Zandru's hell. This was not what I needed." She swore a bit longer as she typed in the directions she needed to the planetary system. If all else failed she could stay in stealth for several months since the Mother Ship would send someone to find her. She was expected to report once a week. If she didn't they try and contact her before sending a ship to check on her.
~~~ Earth Billy's Farm
Billy was not a happy camper though he managed to mostly keep it from his friends. Removing the tubes which were the problem was a major pain in the ass. Currently he had several sets of pulley's set up to support them while he unbolted the tubes. Unbolting alone was several days of work as there seemed to be about a million bolts that had to be undone. Not to mention all the lovely circuitry that needed to be disconnected as well. On top of that he had to remove a number of engine components.
He growled at the current bolt since it was being stubborn and didn't want to come lose. Suddenly it broke free, "Damn it you fucking thing!" He swore as he racked his knuckles against another pipe. Thankfully the gloves he was wearing saved him from major injury.
"Having a bit of a problem Billy? Why don't you come out and get something to eat? Sounds like something you could use." Jenna called in through the engineering hatch. On the small ships like this there was usually a large side panel for access to the engineering spaces. It could be removed to facilitate repairs and replacements of engine components. That had been one of the first things he had removed.
"If'n it's your fried chicken and greens for that alone I might almost marry you." They had known each other since grade school and it was a standing joke since she didn't swing his way. He finished removing the current bolt and put it in a marked holder so he would know where it came from. Once done he crawled off the engine he stretched. The damn thing was massive and didn't leave much room for people. He climbed out of the hatch and hopped out the side of the ship.
Jenna laughed at him as they walked to the house, "I think my wife might object to my changing sides, besides she makes better cookies than you do." Jenna was a bit on the large side but had a certain southern charm to her, "I figured you hadn't been eating right since you started tearing your old barge apart." When they reached the house he had fallen on the food like he hadn't eaten in days.
"Hell Hun, I haven't had a good meal for a while. Don't forget I ain't never got around to cooking much other than canned things and chili." That wasn't even mentioning the fact that he would be working eighteen hours a day if he wasn't so worried about being tired and screwing something up. As it was he still was doing twelve to fourteen hours a day. So far he had been working for just under a month and was almost ready to pull the last set of tubes. He had about a week of work before he could get that set out, "Now if my youngn's hadn't gone back to school I would be eating better."
Sally had left two weeks ago to return to the college she was attending. When she left he had lost his assistant which had really sucked. In a way he was glad she wasn't going into the same field he was in since most of the jobs were space based. Thankfully she leaned more towards the social science. What was a hoot was she was doing a double doc in zeno-biology and in zeno-paleontology.
"I think we are going to drag your ass out to the bar on Friday and make sure you take a day off. Maybe pick up a girl, get a bit of action, and pour you into bed." To the best of her knowledge he had been working pretty much non-stop since he had been grounded. Granted in space it would have been easier since you could turn gravity off. In micro gravity or null G it was much easier to move parts and equipment around. Drawback was it cost money. "You know you would have been mostly done if you had dry docked her."
Billy took a sip of his root beer and snorted, "It will take more than you two gals to drag my ass out of here." Every day was costing him money and that really upset him since he had finally made it in the black after having to do another repair, "I know but I just got in the black and that would have pushed me in the red. At least here I don't have to worry about docking fees." He ran the cold bottle across his forehead and sighed, "A month and a half or maybe two and I should have the old bitch fixed."
"Hey, talk nicely about the old bitch. You did name her after my wife." Jenna laughed when she said that. Through most of school he had a crush on Sandi and even once they were out of school. Billy had married his senior class sweetheart but everyone knew that he had still cared for Sandi.
"Yah, before you snatched her from under my nose." He waved his bottle at her. "At least you could have warned me you had your eye on her." That had taken some time to come to terms with but eventually he had. They had a rough patch but now Jenna was a good friend. Jenna and Sandi hooking up had been shortly before he had lost his wife during childbirth. It was shortly after Sandi had come out to her parents as being a lesbian. Her mother hadn't had a problem but her father had. He had flipped and disowned her.
~~~ Near Earth Solar System Sholan Scout Ship
Satasha had been slowly approaching the solar system she had detected the hyper waves coming from. She didn't want to do too large a jump via warp since she was being forced to do some of the math by hand. Satasha was decent at the hyper calculations and some she could do via the computers but some simply had to be done by hand. Each and every time she did one of the micro jumps she would sweat that she had screwed up. Finally, she was close enough to use her n-space engines and coast into the solar system. Between each jump she had coasted for a few days to catch up on the local transmissions.
This allowed the computer systems to catch up on languages and changes in culture. It was true that much of what she was getting was from the video and audio was going to be shaded. She knew that anything that was a story and even to an extent news was going to be done to meet certain standards. The pauses also allowed her to verify the jumps hadn't been picked up.
She was currently in the Oort cloud and was coasting in system. It had taken her just over a month to make it this far. Part of it had been the manual computations since they did take time but it was also scanning the EM frequencies. While she had been coasting the computers were doing their job as well and by now Satasha had a pretty decent working dictionary for a number of the languages.
The video had taken longer since there were many different formats and each time she stopped there seemed to be new ones for the computer to figure out. Between watching some of the old shows and working on learning the new language she was starting to get a feel for the world, or part of it. Some of it did concern her since there appeared to be still a number of regional conflicts. Also the world was not unified, or not totally. There currently appeared to be three major political powers as well as a number of small countries that had a detente going.
The culture was too young to be brought into the Alliance. Since they had hyper jump capability they would be closely monitored to ensure they weren't a danger. Once they advanced enough then they might be brought in as junior members for a number of years until proven they showed they could be trusted. That thought made her laugh since nobody really trusted the Chermerians and they were members. Time would tell about this world.
Now that Satasha was in the system proper she might as well do her job and scout as best possible. The stealth on her ship should be more than enough to keep anyone from finding her unless she wanted to. After Satasha had identified the third planet as the source of many of the jump signatures she aimed her ship towards it. There were other locations but they were obviously transient points and not main sources of the jump signatures. Even as she was slowly moving in-system a number of habitats became obvious as well. What all they were, she wasn't sure as of yet but this system was both highly populous and relatively high tech.
After sitting there for a few weeks she engaged her n-space engines and slowly accelerated until she had reached .2 C and then turned the engines off. That was the fastest the shields on her scout ship would conceal at close quarters. There were enough ships in system that being detected was a major concern.
Once the Mother Ship or fighters showed she would be able to send out an omni-directional signal that they would pick up. Either that or if they sent a scout ship or even one of the heavy shuttles she would be able to signal it and get picked up. If they couldn't tow the scout ship it would be sent into the sun for destruction. Based on Satasha's observations her civilization was significantly more advanced than the human's.
If any one country got their hands on the technology it would give them an advantage that couldn't be overcome. The stealth alone would be worth capturing. Satasha would even take a pill to keep from being captured and interrogated if needed. She didn't like the idea but they were trained to. It was especially true if the Others caught them. So far this system didn't match any of the readings of the hyper tails from the attack on the ship. She was oddly pleased to know that.
For the next week or two she drifted in system scanning everything she could. It was all passive scanning though she was getting a great deal of information on the level of the technology. What she really needed was access to some of their computers to really get a good history of their world and cultures.
Eventually she approached the third planet and was going to orbit far from it. It was to keep her from being noticed yet give her access to all their communications. Once she had the orbit programmed Satasha headed back to the galley and contemplated her choices. Since there was only her onboard Satasha had enough rations for at least a year so she decided to treat herself to one of the good ones.
In this case Satasha was going to actually cook it and not have the pouch autoheat. That way Satasha could flavor it the way she wanted as well as cook it to the consistency she liked. As she was cooking Satasha was lightly whistling since she had something to do now. Eventually the cooking was done but in the middle of eating it the alarm went off again.
"By the bones of Vartra what now?" Technically you weren't allowed to bring food to the bridge but she was hungry and wasn't going to waste her cooking. As she was eating she started the diagnostics again and leaned back to finish eating. Satasha's tail was lashing and her ears were laid back against her head in irritation at the new issue.
When the diagnostics finished she groaned since whatever had jacked up her navicomp had now hit her n-space drive and shields molycirc. She was going to need to drop speed and land the damn ship before anything else happened.
Satasha reprogrammed the damn computer to slow the ship down as she adjusted the path to the third planet. She had to land somewhere that she could survive until someone showed up. As she was doing the programming Satasha was snarling in Human for something different. The worst part was that she was going to have to babysit the damn computer to ensure that nothing else went wrong.
By the time she reached the planet Satasha had been up for well over fifty hours and felt like hell. The shields were still holding thank Vartra though the engines were still having issues. If she could find somewhere to land it she might be able to fix the engines. The navicomp she couldn't do much about unless she could get some access to local tech. If that worked then with some star charts, then she might be able to get back to the mother ship.
Once Satasha had reached the planet she considered taking a break but she had been nursing the engines for long enough that she didn't trust them. If she had more sleep she might have considered a parking maneuver but her mind was running on automatic. She scanned the planet and found what looked like a good location and entered manual drive mode.
Satasha programmed it in and nudged the scout down towards the location she had chosen. It was remote and she hadn't picked up any power signatures. There weren't any houses, buildings, or signs of habitation at the site she selected.
~~~ Earth Billy's Farm
Billy was right in the middle of the final tube disconnect when the power at his house went out, "Oh what the fucking hell now?" His first reaction was he knew he had paid the bill, "Damn it all to hell I don't need this." Thankfully he had a wrist light and made his way out of the Ship and to his house. Billy called the power company and found that some idiot had hit a power transmitter and took out all the power for a good thirty miles or more. The power company expected it to be back up in four to five hours.
"Seriously I don't frigging need this shit now." He was starting to get worked up when Jenna called, "Dude, you are going out since you don't have any power. We are going to be there in a few minutes since you have nothing to do." She laughed at his groan.
Billy had to admit that he couldn't do anything at the moment and sighed, "Fine, I need some time off anyways. Ya'll are going to drive me back." He could sneak out but he knew the girls and they would find him, "I will be outside and waiting." It wasn't too long before his friends showed up and he hopped in the hover car and leaned back and relaxed. Little did he know that when he came home it was going to totally change his life.
~~~ Earth's Atmosphere Sholan Scout Ship
Satasha was definitely on the sluggish side when she aimed the ship down towards the landing location. As she was coming down her drive started having more troubles and some of the words she used shouldn't be used in main stream society. Satasha rolled her eyes and then swore even more when her drive actually quit. That got even more swear words and some of them were even in English just too add more variety.
When she crash landed it was relatively slow speed and it only knocked her out. Thank Vartra she was in her suit and it medicated her to take care of the head injury but she was going to be out for a while. Because of the issues the damn ship had she had decided to start wearing the combat uniform. It had far more capabilities than the regular version.
~~~ Earth Billy's Farm
Jenna and Sandi dropped Billy off and waved at him as he left, "Night and we had fun Billy. Sleep well." They pulled away and he waved back as they were leaving.
To be honest he was feeling pretty good though he was still feeling down about his ship. At least the power was back on. Though he wasn't going to do anything he stumbled towards the docking area where his ship was. It did look like an oversized barn but he didn't really care. As he was walking to the barn he was more than surprised to see a new scar on his land. He had to stare before he slowly realized something was wrong.
Billy staggered towards the rent in the dirt and was more than surprised when he hit something and landed on his ass, "Wa'sh the hell di'sh dey put in my drink?" He stood up using whatever he had run into without thinking, "Fu'sh this goin bed." He staggered to his house and crawled into bed and passed out.
~~~
Satasha eventually woke up and leaned back in the command chair with a groan, "Computer full diagnostics on all systems." Thank god it understood voice commands or she might be in trouble since her hands were shaking too badly to type, "Computer detail the extent of any and all injuries I have."
It rattled off a number of injuries of which the worst was her head since she had a nice gash across above one eye ridge. That would explain why she couldn't see out of that eye. She had a number of bruises and minor abrasions as well as some bruised ribs, "Computer I am going to medical to have the wounds fixed and then to the command suite to clean up. Contact me when diagnostics are done. See what is needed to get power back on and off emergency power."
The lack of normal power was one thing she had noticed immediately upon waking because the emergency lights were on. When she stood Satasha staggered and realized just how tired she was. Making it to medical was a bit of a chore since the ship was at a slight angle; well either that or she was at a slight angle as she staggered. Once there she lay down in the autodoc and closed her eyes while it did its thing. The last of the stim doses had worn off and she passed out while being worked on.
If it wasn't for the computer waking her up she probably would have kept sleeping the clock around. The autodoc had stapled the wound and cleaned the fur around her eye so she could see again which was nice. It had also medicated her for the pain and to help heal the various wounds, "Power will be restored in just over an hour. Emergency power will last for approximately 50 minutes with the shields on full."
She didn't like that idea what so ever. The biggest drain with the stealth was the visual component, "Um, if we decrease the visual aspect by 20% how long will they last?" The computer processed that, "Borderline. Should last for sufficient time to return power if no additional problems are identified in the power system."
Damn it was hard to think. "Um, start with 20% decrease and as needed lower until 50%. Maintain all EM shielding for as long as possible." Knowing she was extremely tired Satasha carefully walked to her cabin and stripped the suit off and tossed it in the cleaner. Once power was back on the uniform would be cleansed and returned to her closet. She stepped into the shower and gloried in the feel of the water against her fur and skin.
"By the Green Goddess that feels good." As much as she wanted to stand there for the next hour she had work to do so she quickly scrubbed her fur until clean. Since she had been in the command center for so long not to mention some of the meds there was a mass of fur that ran down the drain. Once clean she felt one hell of a lot better and almost awake.
"Time for some food and then to look around where I am at." With the food she just grabbed one of the packs and had it autoheat and inhaled it along with a cup of cshar. Satasha knew that she was going to have to lie down and get at least a good ten hours of sleep soon or her body would shut down on her. If it did that she would collapse wherever she was. Before that Satasha was going to look around and find out where she was. With the loss of the engines towards the end, Vartra only knew where she had landed.
~~~
Billy woke and groaned at the sun shining in the room and cursed his friends, "Why the hell did they let me drink so much? I think I am going to classify them as frenemies." It was a long standing joke of theirs. He staggered to the bathroom and looked in the mirror and found his eyes were bloodshot and he definitely needed a shower. At least one thing he didn't have to worry about was tossing his cookies since that had never been a problem for him.
Billy took a quick shower and staggered down to the kitchen and tossed some leftover chili into the microwave. He had made it the other day. Now that was one dish he did a killer job on though the next day it wasn't good to be around him. The next important thing was coffee and lots of it, "Jenna I really hate you with a passion." He muttered as he watched the pot brewing.
It was finally done and Billy poured a cup and tossed an ice cube or two in to cool it down and then proceeded to slurp the entire cup down. Now that he had his initial surge of caffeine he poured a second cup and pulled the chili out of the microwave and fixed it to how he liked it and settled down to eat. Considering how he was feeling Billy wasn't going to get much done today but he could do some of the needed paperwork.
After eating and drinking his third cup of coffee he put the dishes in the sink and stepped out on the porch and frowned. He had completely forgotten about the gouge in his land that he had seen the night before. Before anything else he needed to figure out what might have caused it. If it was an idiot neighbor, he would bill them. As he was standing on the porch he really had to frown at the gouge.
It almost seemed to be shimmering and suddenly a faint outline could be seen and it definitely wasn't something he had ever seen. What little he could see of it whatever it was had a long sleek profile and almost made him think of a crouching predator of some sort.
~~~
Once clean, Satasha pulled on another ship suit and made sure she had everything she would need just in case. After verifying she had her stunner, medi-kit, tool kit, and a few other items she headed towards the exit. Satasha popped the top hatch and stood up and looked around and damn near dropped a load. She had managed to crash near some sort of habitation, "Oh frigging hell." She muttered.
At this point she simply didn't know what to do. She didn't have enough emergency power to fully power the stealth. She couldn't pull power from anywhere else since she had pretty much shut anything drawing power down. As she looked around she turned and froze since there was an alien standing there. She assumed it was from this planet since it looked like some of the pictures from the videos she had watched.
Not really sure what to do since she was a Scout and not a first contact member she did the only thing she could think of. Based on a show she had been watching she held one hand up and made a V with her fingers, "Um, may you live long and prosper?"