Part 24: Arrival

A sensor began to blare, arousing Jade’s attention. She sighed and put down her Sudoku puzzle, but before she could stand up, John was on his feet and moving into the cockpit. She tossed aside her puzzle and quickly followed.

“That would be the hyperspace alarm,” she said, moving towards the pilot’s chair.

“What do you think you’re doing?” John asked. Jade stopped before she could sit down, remembering the part she was playing. She was supposed to be an owner of a mutonium mine, someone who’d struck it rich. Someone like that, they don’t fly their own shuttles.

“Please, allow me,” John said, climbing into the pilot’s seat.

“We’re coming up on our destination. Put your hands on the controls so you’ll be ready when the computer drops us from hyperspace,” she reminded him. As soon as the words left her lips, she could feel the hyperspace generator powering down below them. A star field appeared in front of them, and they were back in real space.

John smiled as he looked down at the controls, holding them a bit gingerly. Jade gave him the full rundown on how to fly the ship during their hyperspace jump, which lasted nearly two days. He cautiously pulled on the yoke, aiming the shuttle towards a formation of ships surrounding a gas giant.

Jade’s jaw dropped. Large wasn’t the correct word for describing the planet she was looking at. It was immense, gargantuan, enormous. It was the largest planet she’d ever see, orders of magnitude larger than even Jupiter. She let out a low whistle.

“I know, right?” John said. He leaned forward in the chair, trying to take in the scope of it. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

“No, nothing. I didn’t even know that there were planets that big. I’ve flown to hundreds of systems, and never seen anything like that,” Jade said.

Before John could reply, the com crackled to life. “Unidentified starship, this is Kilon SPARK Command. Please transmit your authorization code or prepare to be detained.”

John smacked himself on the head. “Right! The code!” he said, scrambling to find the information that Byron had provided for them before they left the Rock. Ignoring his panic, Jade reached down to the control panel, tapped out a string of numbers, and sent it out.

“Hey, I was going to take care of that,” John protested, but Jade cut him off, pointing to their sensor readout.

“Did you notice the pair of Kilon fighters on our port and starboard?”

John twisted in his seat, looking out his windows. “Oh…” was all he could get out.

Within a few seconds, the SPARK Command was hailing again. “Terran shuttle Emerald Fortune, you have been cleared to approach. We are transmitting data for your nav computer; please follow your defense escort to the security check point.” John again stared at the controls, considering how to handle the request, when Jade rolled her eyes, sighed, and punched in the coordinates herself.

“Again, that is my job. I would have figured it out,” John said.

“Today?” she replied, a coy smile on her face.

“I’m supposed to be your assistant here, now sit back and let me assist you.”

“Ok, ok, you’re right,” she said, settling in to the seat beside him. Since she’d locked in the destination, there wasn’t much to do but wait until they arrived, and hope that everything Byron had arranged was going to pass inspection. For Jade’s part, she wouldn’t have been surprised at all if they were arrested as soon as they landed.

The final approach brought them closer to the ships they saw when they dropped out of hyperspace. There were scores of freighters and construction ships. A large orbital space dock seemed to be the center of most of the activity, with ships buzzing in and out of it like an enormous beehive.

None of those ships, though, caught Jade’s attention. There were two other details she was focused on. First of all, there did not seem to be a star in this system. She didn’t notice right away, but usually when she visited a system for the first time, her eye was drawn the star in order to orient herself. But there wasn’t one here. She even checked the sensors for a brown dwarf or dark star, but they showed the same thing; nothing.

In scanning the local system out the window for a star, the second thing grabbed her attention. As she noticed before, there were many ships here. But there was only on that caught her interest. It was longer than any ship she’d ever seen before, and narrow. It looked like a long white cylinder, with one end flared out.

The flared end looked like the back end of the ship. There were obvious sublight engines, nestled between what looked like cargo bays and hangars. She couldn’t see any indication of a hyperdrive apparatus, something odd for a ship so big. Towards the outer edges of the flare were windows, she could see the light coming from them

   Along the outer cylinder, though, she could see nothing. The ship looked perfectly smooth. No windows or sensor arrays. No weapons, no hatches, nothing. It wasn’t an exact cylinder either; it was tapered as it went back. It was the oddest vessel Jade had ever seen.

Her attention was pulled back into the shuttle as John flew it into a large hanger at the security station. Now would be the time to see if Byron had put this scheme together well. She got herself into character, going over the details in her head. She had trouble concentrating, instead being distracted by John’s less than professional landing. It took all she had to focus on her role and not shove him out of the pilots chair and take control, but soon enough, they’d landed.

Jade exhaled, not even realizing she’d been holding her breath. John looked at her and offered a weak smile. Out the front viewport, they could see a handful of Kilon security officials following a human woman to the ship. She was tall and blonde, and from her demeanor with the Kilons, obviously in charge. Jade and John exchange a glance, then moved to leave the shuttle.

When John opened the hatch, they found the woman waiting outside. “Hello, I’m Doctor Uitleg. Welcome to the SPARK.”