“Are these encrypted.”

  “Yes, but we should be able to break it if you really want to.”

  “Nah, but is there any open news about the colony I can read?”

  A number of news articles popped up, the two most official ones talked about hitting their highest productivity yet, and how prosperity for all was right around the corner.

  Several articles that seemed less official painted a decidedly darker picture.

  'Starvation rates hitting 45%'

  'No increases in pay despite record profits stated.'

  'Riots putdown by enforcers, three dead.'

  “That sounds pretty rough down there.” I said

  “It's the same for every starting colony.”

  “Even the pay disparity and riots?”

  “Someone always tries to take a bigger slice of the pie, until the oppressed rise up and kill them or the one in power chips everyone and begins thought suppression it will continue.” Hook said, bored.

  I blinked.

  “That sounds bleak.”

  “It is born out by historical precedent. The imperials have taken to the oppression aspect, C.O.G. Have done their best to give people the tools to never allow themselves to be oppressed, and the Alliance are trying to change humanity in ways so that there will never BE an oppressed.”

  “Oh, and what about the free traders.”

  “Embrace oppression wholeheartedly, diving facefirst into capitalism with no restrictions.”

  “Sounds like it would just wind up back to the megacorps of my time, even if they are illegal in the other faction territories.”

  “It would, but in your time corporations, and importantly the people who invest in and run them, would be protected by vast networks of law and order. You piss someone off enough in this day and age and they'll track you down in the black between worlds and end you, maybe ambush you at a jumppoint, or if you try to hole up on a planet, well, an orbital rail strike is real hard to dodge, and even harder to tank.”

  “Sounds very old west.”

  “Old west.... referring to the 'wild west' times of The United States Of America? I suppose. It is significantly more lawless just due to the rigors of space travel... Bounty hunters are the main dealers of justice out in the black... Outlaws roam the stars and occasionally take ownership of entire planets... the only thing the wild west didn't have is Berserkers.”

  “Those are the drone things that were here before us right?”

  “Yes. We really don't know much about them, they fight to the end and destroy most of their hardware before we can ever do deep scans of them. They've been the boogeymen ever since humanity settled here.”

  “Speaking of said boogeymen... isn't this colony particularly vulnerable?” I asked, as I looked up this colonies history of attacks.

  I was expecting to find something pretty bad, but other than a handful of pirate raids that barely damaged anything and took... foodstuffs and ammunition? There was really very little that was particularly bad that had happened to the colony.

  “It is, but... It also does not have much to warrant an attack from pirate vessels.”

  “What about those berserker's you were talking about?”

  “They tend to be attracted to high levels of high energy orbital activities. As far as we can tell they either cannot detect or do not care what happens on planets. Big fights between the imperium alliance and COG tend to result in a swarm of them descending on the conquered planet. Most planets will suffer recurring berserker attacks long after the combative fleets have departed. That's when things get bad. Once berserkers are in orbit they may open fire on the surface, release killer drone swarms to wipe out populations, or hit infrastructure with cyber attacks, but as far as we can tell that's rarely the intent. They just detect things that their programming says needs to die, so they make it dead.”

  “So... what happens to orbital infrastructure when these things attack?”

  “Complete destruction.”

  “Oh... so how does planetary communications work? I think like half of our information network relied on satellites back home.”

  “More like 90%, if my historical files are accurate. And the answer is a much more developed and hardened ground infrastructure of cables. Satellites are a good cheap method, and they allow things like GPS, but they are extremely vulnerable.”

  “Aren't ground target's easy to hit for anything in orbit?”

  “Yes and no, easy to target, yes, easy to hit, well atmosphere is tough to deal with when you are using very high velocity projectiles. You need something dense enough and resistant to ablation enough that it can make it through the atmosphere while maintaining enough velocity to damage whatever you want. Specially designed missiles can do it, but most will break up going through the atmosphere, and they can be destroyed by point defenses. Beam weapons disperse into the atmosphere, at worse causing multiple lightning strikes across the area as they charge that part of the atmosphere, but planets get struck by lightning millions of times every year so that isn't going to do much.”

  “What about rods from god?”

  “What?”

  “Rods from god, big ole tungsten rods you drop down on a target from orbit.”

  “Those can work, but tungsten is both expensive to source and hard to machine. So yes it will work, but it is a rather expensive dumb projectile for the job. There is also, again, the issue of weather throwing off the projectile's trajectory.”

  “Even back in my time we had ways to account for that. Is a specialty missile cheaper?”

  “Accounting for the effects of weather and atmosphere on a projectile takes a lot of processing power and, and this is the important part, a lot of data points both from within and without atmosphere. Most colonies do not have the in atmosphere setups to do so, and larger colonies generally have their satellites shot out long before anyone begins a bombardment. As for missiles, not particularly, but it can carry a heavier payload.”

  “So... advantages to each.”

  “I fail to see the advantage to beam weapons keeping a lightning storm ongoing.”

  “Suppression, Aint nobody going outside while lightning is raining down like, well, rain, and with the ionized atmosphere good luck getting any communications out.”

  “...Captain I didn't think you had any military experience.”

  “I don't what I do have is a lot of sci fi and gaming experience.” I grinned, or at least I think I did, while fully synchronized I couldn't really feel my body.

  “I see.” Hook replied, skeptical.

  The time had come.

  “Enough procrastinating, I'm going to desynchronize. Get some drones in here in case I fall over and can't get up.”

  “Understood Captain Cofey.”

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  And with that, I unplugged.

  I blinked spots out of my eyes as the bridge came back into focus, my sense of balance telling em down was actually in front of me and I should be falling forward. Thankfully I kept ahold of the seat and prevented myself from faceplanting right then and there. Then all of a sudden my balance shifted and I felt like I was going to go over the side.

  “Captain Cofey? Are you alright?” Hook's voice came up over the speakers.

  “Not really. I feel like I am falling out of the chair.”

  “Any pain? Nausea?”

  “Nope, just my senses fucking with me. I'll stay like this while we burn in for awhile...”

  “Do you need to go to medical?”

  “Not unless something starts hurting.”

  I sat there in the captain's chair for some time as my senses reoriented to having a humanoid form for a body instead of a spaceship.

  Once it felt like gravity was back in it's normal direction I gingerly stood, spots appearing in my eyes and blacking out my vision and my hud as I did so.

  “Still a little wonky from desynch, but it doesent feel as bad as last time, and I'm not in pain...”

  My stomach growled at me.

  “I'm going to get something to eat, I am starving.”

  “I would assume so. I was able to keep you hydrated through several of your connection points to the ship, and I was able to maintain your blood sugar, but it has been two days since your digestive tract has had any activity.”

  I spent some time dealing with my body and the inevitable results of having sat in a chair for two days, thankfully C.O.G. Shower and toilet facilities were top notch, even if they looked like something out of a horror movie, they were extremely comfortable, and got me clean in no time.

  I returned to the bridge after having scarfed down a ration bar, which purported to be curry flavored, and actually got the flavor right, even if the texture was more sandpaper than rice. Sighing, I settled back into the captain's chair and re-engaged full synchronization.

  And then the two of us waited in the void until we reached the asteroid belt.

  As I passed through I frame-jacked myself up to the point that we were passing through in slow motion, and did a scan on all of the rocks around us.

  This asteroid field was big, some I had gathered were more collections of dust than anything else, but this had pockets of very large rocks very close together, with the clusters themselves being fairly far apart. Most everything seemed... well not 'normal' it was hard to call flying through a cluster of asteroids at blistering speeds riding a burning star normal, but nothing seemed like it was going to come back to bite me...

  Except that.

  “Hook? What am I looking at?”

  “Wh-wh-what?” Hook asked, his voice stuttering as his procesors struggled to keep up. I had found that his communication when I as frame-jacked up high was less smooth than when I was experiencing time normally, and as an aside started a note to install more ram or another CPU for it to use.

  I highlighted the wreckage I had seen. One of the asteroids, thankfully some distance away, had a lot of wreckage clustered around it, much of it still attached to the surface. I highlighted all of the non-natural bits.

  “This.”

  “I am surprised you spotted that, my sensors couldn't differentiate that from the background at all. It appears to be an abandoned base, judging by residual scans... abandoned in the last few days, at most a week.”

  “Do you think the survivors are what hit us at the ark?”

  “Possible. Probable even.”

  “I'm going to check the data burst we got from the planet, maybe there is something about it in there.”

  And there was, a week ago an imperial squadron had rolled through and annihilated several pirate bases in the belt, sent a very condescending message to the colony about progressing quickly enough to be worthy of their protection, and left.

  “Huh, didn't expect an imperial squadron this far out... or anyone really. Are we close to imperial space?”

  “Marginally closer to imperial space than COG space, We are pretty far out there. There are currently eight jumps to the imperial capital, New Tokyo, and nine jumps to Prime.”

  “And jumps are generally 2 days long?”

  “A day to three days... though there have been some as short as six hours”

  “So we are cutting it very close...”

  “Yes.”

  “And there is not FTL messaging once we get IN C.O.G. Space to let Prime know before we get there that we have the stacks for Joe and Hook right?”

  “No, but once we get to C.O.G. Space we may be able to transmit messages to individuals at other jump points about our cargo. C.O.G. Members will generally share that data to the systems they visit.”

  “So theoretically once we hit C.O.G. Space we can just transmit, and it will theoretically spread through COG space at the speed of light, and if every C.O.G. Vessel transits we can assume, or hope, for a one day delay... how many jumps from Prime will we be when we get into prime space.”

  “five from the shortest route, but more like 6 to 7 unless there happens to be someone going from the most outer planet straight to Prime.”

  “So, assuming light speed transmission, hopefully it will only take 7 days once we get to C.O.G. space to get the message to the capital... which means we have... 21 days to make it to COG space. If there are nine jumps and we take 3 days for each jump... that's 27 days... we aren't going to make it.”

  “Don't forget the time between transit points, that brings it to thirty six days... At the outside.”

  “ and twenty seven if each transit is 2 days... eighteen if each transit is a single day or less...”

  “It's still possible Captain Cofey.”

  “If we can figure out how to force transits to take only a single day... sure.”

  “We may get lucky.”

  “I guess we just have to hope.”

  A thought lingered in my head, but I dismissed it for now.

  We made it the rest of the way to the jump point without issues, burning hard the whole way.

  When we were a few minutes out from transit Hook piped up. “I will begin preparing to put you to sleep for the transit.”

  “Belay that. I'm going to stay awake.”

  “But Captain, without a doctor on hand to determine what is happening to your vitals, or to make a recommendation,

  it may still be safer for you to be unconcious during the trip.”

  “I think I'm seeing what most people can't in the transit... I want to see if I can use that to shorten our time IN transit.”

  “That is highly improbable Captain Cofey, no one before has managed to reliably shorten transit times.”

  “Probably because they either were not linked into their vessel like I am, or they were put to sleep as soon as someone detected their brain doing weird things.”

  “...That is possible, any software program designed to assist their captain would do what I did, and put them to sleep for the duration of the transit.”

  “Exactly. What I saw was scary but... if I can put up with it, maybe I'll discover something.”

  “Very well captain, I will continue to monitor your vitals.... please don't kill yourself trying to get to prime in time. As much as I want Captain-Hook to have her full memories restored to her, both she and Captain Joe went to great lengths to revive you and find the ark, to have you expire before returning, losing both, would be a tragedy.”

  I let out a breathe, or thought I did at least.

  “Let's do this, initiate transit.”