Shira barked out the closest thing to a laugh when her men told her that half the batteries were missing from the crate.
"You are a rogue, aren't you captain."
Captain Rover Dranz lay in a heap, manacled to a pillar and not in any condition to think straight after two of the pirates had kicked him around for making them clean the floor of his puke and piss. He took a few seconds even to register that Shira One-Arm was talking to him.
"Uhhhnn." was all he could manage even then. Shira impatient as ever and feeling cheated, shot him in the head. She marched to the Moonshine and ordered her men to search the ship for hidden compartments. She sat in the cockpit and asked one henchman to get the Navigator- Nila.
Nila was on a trip; high and ecstatic, very happy but barely conscious. The men dumped a bottle of cold water on her head and made her kneel before Shira and slapped her mildly and methodically till she actually recognized Shira.
"I gave him up.."
Shira spoke clearly and slowly. "How many fusion batteries were you hauling?"
"One case."
"Full case. Twelve?"
"Ahmmm."
Shira dragged her to the open crate. "There are six in here. Did Rover hide the rest."
Nila giggled and replied. "It's the rat."
It took a few minutes more to find out that there was a third person onboard; a young tech named Maaz. The pirates started the search for Maaz nearly an hour after he had slipped from the ship.
Maaz had in this time gained access to the Jovian ship and disabled the sequencer by pulling out a lead. The idea of flying a Jovian prototype had been forming in his teenage mind right from the time he filched the batteries; now he was really thinking about it. He looked for the cockpit and switched on the ships computer. Almost trembling with excitement, as he sat down in the pilot's seat. Again he was happy to find that someone had already hacked into the computer wiping out the AI and all the passcodes. It was a clean set-up with only the basic functions online, like the ship had just left the assembly floor.
First thing that came up, after the ship powered up was a warning- "Batteries at 1%. Reserve power at 22%. Power down to Emergency Protocol in 20 minutes." Maaz rushed to the engine bay and punched the air in jubilation when he found out that he was lugging the very batteries which he required to power the ship. Ten minutes later he was back in the cockpit having replaced six of the old fusion batteries out of the eight there. The display now read
"Power at 76%. All systems stable."
Maaz checked the specs- many of the things were familiar. But using the computer would not be enough; he could not fly the ship without an AI and could not go very far without a Navigator. One step at a time. He told himself. He had the Moonshine's AI, Tank on disk, this he could upload and then see about things later. The upload was going to take fifteen minutes and Maaz did a typically Maaz thing- he started to read up on Navigating basics.
For more than a century it was known that thousands of Worm holes existed across known space. The problem was navigating through these tunnels of "time and space". Once a craft entered a "tunnel" it was virtually cut off from normal space; without any sense of direction. Moreover most of these tunnels were interlinked to others, so barring a few stand alone Worm Holes there were mutliple exit points . It could, and had happened many times that a ship was driven hundreds of light years away from the Earth's solar system with no way back.
Navigating was a new field and still developing; but the basics were fairly well accepted by the scientific community. Every star had a resonance- light, magnetic pulses and waves, heat and UV radiation, gravitational pulses and waves. The difference between the Resonant Signature Waves (RSW) of stars was very very difficult to pinpoint, but not impossible, at least theoretically uptill some insane genius called Arma Quilin put forward the idea about using one of the universe's best and most complex electrical and magnetically sensitive receivers- human brain cells. There were many "accidents" along the way as rivals- The Jovian Enclave and The Earth Cooperative conducted tests at break-neck speed and involving the best minds to come up with a usable navigation tool. Navigators are human beings who have electrical and magnetic sensitivity much above average along with a brain functioning smoothly. An Amplifier wafer is attached close to the auditory cortex of the potential Navigator and if all goes well he/she can after a brief period of training recognize the different RSWs, know where they were and how far and direct the ship towards it, like a homing pigeon. Soon a a database of RSWs were uploaded onto the Amplifier before hand to ease the learning process
Maaz was surprised when he played out the RSW samples- they were digitized images accompanied by a flat beat, with no tangible difference except a few flashes and less than half a second of change in tempo, all for the benefit of all the Unabled humans. Maaz knew these rhythms; they were the heart beats of the stars Sol -Our sun, Cora, Nim and Ti-1. The ping from the Primary Console brought him back to the present- AI Tank had been successfully uploaded and was now integrating with the system. Maaz started to make a checklist of things to do, once Tank was operational.
"Welcome to your new ship Maaz" The mellow female voice spoke.
"Tank! This is a great improvement over your scratchy voice."
"This ship is a Class 6 Prototype Maaz. There are 20 voice patterns available."
"You chose good. Tank, secure all the hatches."
"All hatches sealed."
"What's our status for a long run."
"Thrust Power will last for 50,000MM (Million Miles) if we recharge the solar panels for a six hours every day and five to six hyperspace jumps comfortably. Life support will last for 200 days. Food and water supplies are stocked for more than 300 days if its you alone. Laser weapons are fully charged. Cloaking system and shields will last 200 hours at 75% and 120 hours at 100%."
"We have lasers....can we blast our way out."
"This side of the cavern will collapse and we will sustain some damage. The weakest part near us is on the far-side of Moonshine."
"That will keep us away from some of the defence lasers near the gates."
Maaz thought for a moment. Captain was dead and Nila had turned traitor.
"Ok. Tank. First arm the narrow beam facing the Moonshine and then power up the engines for flight."
The pirates were spread out around the dock searching for Maaz when the whine of the Jovian ship powering up filled the dock. One of the men cursed out loud while many of them gazed stupidly at the ship. But Shira sent men to power up her ship docked at the other end of the cavern and shouted.
"Get the heavy guns and the Pulsers. Shoot it down Gaddammit."
LINK TO PART-1 = @sarez/part-1-of-the-techist-a-spacer-story