Chương 9: Gated Progress

The static-tingle in Felix's mouth faded as reality settled around him. Having tasted the void between stars, his tongue was left feeling parched, his teeth aching as if he'd been gnawing on aluminum foil. He took a sip of the coffee, rolling the brew around his mouth to drive back the desert encroaching upon his palate. His eyebrows leapt upward, surprised; the cupholder, apparently, had kept the mug's contents warm while he'd been flying. I could get used to this kind of luxury…

He slid the mug back into the holder and gripped the ship's throttle and sidestick." Magpie, Gate Control. You may resume own navigation. Welcome to York and sorry about your loss. Changeover to departure approved." The ship's controls loosened in Felix's hands, the ship having been released from the autopilot system meant to guide them through the Gate. His consciousness flowed back into the Magpie, and he could clearly see the frantic space around the freighter and York gate complex.

Gigantic vessels, covered in external containers and interchangeable modules drifted lazily, seeming blissfully unaware of the lesser ships around them. Smaller, more nimble medium and light freighters darted around their larger cousins, some of whom were grouping together as if they were a school of fish gathering at a reef. It was a gathering of ships on a scale Felix could never imagine and knew, somehow, he'd likely never seen.

One such cluster of smaller freighters parted to make way for an obvious predator; a cruiser slid into view from behind the central station, an orbiting barracuda of sleek lines and sharp teeth the System was more than happy to highlight for Felix. It absolutely bristled with weapons, matched only by the numerous sensor clusters scattered across its hull like scales. A smaller group of heavy fighters drifted beside it, their vertical, fat bodies causing them to resemble a school of piranhas.

The System warned Felix each one had more than enough firepower to match the Magpie, even before they'd lost the laser to the pirate. He reflexively scratched the spot on his back and shivered. Why it had felt the need to point that out was not something he wanted to dwell on. When they'd arrived before at the Baltic Gate Complex, there hadn't been such a show of force.

Instead, the garrison was merely a pair of tired patrol corvettes, made of more sensor than gun and a pair of engines that would have rather gone to the scrapyard than push beyond the edge of the cruise lane rings surrounding the complex. Only a pair of tramp freighters drifted nearby, and if Gavin hadn't told him otherwise, Felix would have expected them to be abandoned. Baltic Control had ushered them through without any fanfare, only offering their own condolences before sending them toward the York gate.

That itself was an enormous structure, so large that even inhabiting the shell of the Magpie Felix had felt as if he were a bird flying into the vast maw of a hangar made for jumbo aircraft. Four doors, each nearly a quarter of the gate's circumference, were spaced evenly around the outer ring and open, looking like an impossibly large flower. In the center of the ring, the fabric of the universe rippled and twisted, a tunnel between stars held open by the superstructure.

A vague sense of déjà vu began to overtake Felix but before he could follow it, he was promptly thrown back into his own, softer body by Gate Control assuming guidance of the Magpie.

"York Gate Control, Magpie. Thanks for the smooth ride. Changing over to departure." Misty flipped a toggle on her console.

"Gate Departure, medium multirole Magpie, just off the gate, heading in-system to Albany." An indicator blinked to life in ahead of the Magpie and Felix, highlighting a distant, much smaller double-ring structure. He lit the engines and directed the freighter toward what appeared to be a navigation beacon.

"Magpie, Gate Departure. Ident." Felix released the throttle and paused, hand hanging in the air, half between the ship and his own body, searching his panel but failing to find what he was looking for. Where would the transponder and ident button be on here, anyway? Misty gave him a look and pressed a button on her console while keying her microphone.

"Departure, Magpie. Identing."

"Magpie, Gate Departure. Contact verified ICV 601, proceed direct cruise lane three, inbound side."

"Affirmative, cruise three, inbound." Misty leaned over to speak, but saw Felix was already on course to the waypoint.

"For all the traffic, you're doing well," she observed. The ship rolled gently as Felix shrugged, not that anyone on the crew could feel the extra movement.

"It reminds me of home, though with a lot less terrain to worry about." It was a short hop between the gate complex and the indicated cruise lane. As the Magpie burned toward the structure, their course brought them near the cruiser and attendant fighters orbiting the station. One of the piranha-like fighters, painted in shades of yellows and oranges, broke away, toward the freighter.

A pair of turrets, one dorsal and one ventral, twisted to watch him as the fighter matched their speed and the hair on his skin prickled as a beam, rendered only with the System's help, washed over the hull. [LEVEL 8 - LOCKJAW FIGHTER ON INTERCEPT– FRIELAND FACTION REPUTATION STATUS: +1] [WARNING: ENGAGING TARGET WILL RESULT IN SEVERE FRIELAND REPUTATION LOSS.] Great, I wasn't planning to try anything anyway.

"What's going on?"

"Just a routine scanning," Gavin said, not even glancing up from his own console.

"Checking our manifest matches our cargo, if we've got any illegal mods and the like. Routine when coming into places like this." Felix shivered but kept the ship steady and flying straight to the cruise lane.

"Not a fan of how that feels." This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Gavin looked up, frowning.

"You felt that?"

"Like ice water on my skin. Why aren't they checking everyone?"

"Probably that twist you made. Fancy pilots draw attention here." Gavin looked like he wanted to ask another question but shook his head and looked back to his console.

"Fly casual, got it." The piranha, satisfied with its impromptu inspection, rejoined the rest of its school much to Felix's relief. The fighters continued on, trailing the hungry barracuda on patrol.

"Magpie, Gate Departure. Lane three, cleared for entry. Contact Albany Control on the other side." Misty repeated the clearance back to the controller as Felix approached the lower half of the cruise lane structure. The lane entry and exit themselves were a pair of rings stacked one above the other— or beside, if I'm rolled over, Felix thought—with the entry ring lit in green lights and the exit lit in red.

They were only a couple times the size the Magpie, large enough to possibly admit the cruiser behind them, but definitely too small for the super-freighters he'd seen at the gate complex. He made a note to ask about that later and instead focused on maneuvering his own ship toward the designated lane. The interior edges of the ring lit up in blue-white lightning, and the Magpie slipped into the center. The ship shuddered slightly and then was propelled by the ring faster than its own engines could ever manage.

The gate complex was near the edge of the system, beyond the outermost planets and where the system primary star's gravity only exerted a small influence. Under the Magpie's power, even with the engines at maximum boost, it would take over a year to arrive at Albany. Thanks to the cruise lane, the trip would only take a day.

Felix joined the crew for dinner that evening. While he'd gotten a few opportunities to have a small snack here and there, it was the first time since the oatmeal aboard Pathfinder that he'd actually sat down to eat anything substantial. The crew, in spite of the events of the past two days, had continued with their scheduled meals; he'd missed out when he had retreated to the capsule to rest and be alone after the fight with the pirates and the emotional drain of the crew meeting.

Once he'd disconnected from Magpie after entering the cruise lane, his stomach had scolded him about his poor choices of soft cereal bars and coffee. He'd been on his way to correct this deficiency by exploring how to rehydrate one of the meals from his collection when Misty stopped him in the corridor near the cargo bay.

"If you're feeling up to it," she said, one hand lightly hovering on his arm, "we think it would be good for all of us if you joined the crew for dinner." A snapshot of his life flashed through his head—meals eaten swiftly under the wing of a plane, a protein bar on a long flight leg, a sandwich wolfed down as an alert was called. All of the moments alone, rushed, or just not that great. Felix looked down at the bag. Dehydrated beef stroganoff; dried, packaged and prepared to be consumed alone.

"That sounds kind of nice, actually," he said as he let her lead him to the crew mess. He was surprised to find the rest of the crew seated around the table, already in conversation with one another.

"Shouldn't there be someone up front?"

"Not in a cruise lane here. There're enough patrols, we don't need to worry about getting knocked out." The crew had taken the same seats as in the meeting, and Misty ushered Felix to the head of the table before taking her own to his right side and beside her husband.

Three trays were arranged in the center of the table, one with something white and pasta-like with a red sauce, a slightly smaller one with some sort of vegetable mix of long green beans and rainbow-colored carrot chunks, and a similarly sized third with what looked like some sort of crisp. The crew mess grew quiet, each member looking at him a little uncomfortably, though Kyra's expression still held some of the anger from earlier. In fact, true to her nature, she was the first to speak.

"What did you do to my ship," she asked, letting her fork drop against her plate, leaning on the table toward him. The lasagna-like mixture of layered pasta and sauce muffled the plink of the metal against the plastic, but it still seemed to echo as the rest of the crew watched.

"Excuse me?" Felix remained standing behind the chair. She pointed a finger at him.

"You changed something. I checked the diagnostics before we hit the gate earlier. I saw it. What did you do?" Felix's brow creased as he thought. What I did? I didn't do anything before the gate, just talked to the Taggarts and picked som—oh…

"Do you mean the upgrade? I spent an ability point on an extra hardpoint for Magpie."

"An extra hardpoint?" She frowned, her anger softening, and she dropped the accusatory hand back to the abandoned fork.

"Heigel never picked ship upgrades…" She began to play with the food on her plate, muttering to herself.

"Should I maybe go after all?" Felix asked, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. Doc shook his head and waved at Felix to sit.

"No, no," he said as he loaded a serving of the pasta mix and vegetables onto a plate, which he passed to Felix.

"Heigel didn't tend to spend many ability points on the ship. He kept to more personal upgrades." Felix accepted the plate and sat, dropping the package of freeze-dried food under his seat.

"Well, I'm sorry, Kyra. I know I'm temporary anyway, so it wasn't fair for me to mess with your ship like that, at least not without asking everyone first." He leaned forward and took a bite—the sauce was tomato with a bit of something textured like cheese and ground meat mixed in, and the pasta wasn't too mushy or tough. The flavors were muted, but it didn't taste like a mix of metal or cardboard. It was a simple, unapologetically mass-produced frozen lasagna. The table stayed quiet, then Gavin cleared his throat.

"You're allowed to do that; you've accepted the role of captain, after all." He sent Kyra a very sharp look, which she refused to meet, instead focusing on moving around a particularly interesting chunk of vegetable.

"I think that'll be fine," she finally said. Conversation resumed, tentative and fragile, with the occasional glance at Felix, who determined the best thing he could do is just eat and listen. After a few bites, he paused to let his stomach settle. The dish was rich, despite the factory origin, and his stomach had switched from staging a protest to questioning its desires. He sat in the argument, taking a cautious sip of water while he allowed his body to figure out what it wanted to do.

Everyone's eyes were on him again, and he looked up, realizing he'd missed something.

"Excuse me?"

"I asked if you're feeling alright," Doc said.

"Your body is still adjusting, and I don't think I've seen you stop to eat, yet." Felix took another slow bite.

"It's just taking a little bit. I may have overdone it on the coffee."

"Not possible." Kyra's frown remained, but there was at least a small tug at the corner of her mouth.

"He's already had more in a day than I can stand in a week," Bates said.

"I think the two of you both have something wrong with you." Felix allowed himself to laugh.

"It's a bit tart, but I'm getting used to it. What do you prefer?" Bates flexed one massive arm.

"I stick to all-natural energy. You get more when you lift." He raised his nose, looking around the table and wearing a grin. Wiping her mouth with a cloth napkin, Misty shook her head at her brother.

"Some of us don't have time to spend hours in the cargo bay dragging crates across the floor."

"Just sayin', it'll make you feel better."

"Anyway," Gavin interrupted, "are you feeling up to landing tomorrow? We need to know now, or else we'll have to get a slip at the Tower. Those run a bit pricier, and we won't make as much off what we do have in the hold."

"I've never landed something like this before, but the way Magpie and I seem to get along, I think she'll give me a hand." Felix pushed the plate back, mostly empty. The green bean and carrot-analog mixture was somehow a little on the oily side but still better than the packet he'd been planning on reconstituting.

"Speaking of finances, is that something I need to worry about right now, or is it handled until a replacement is aboard?" Again, everyone seemed to look away, Gavin the only one willing to address him directly.

"We can touch on that tomorrow, if necessary. Once we're on the ground and everything's settled. There's a fair bit to go through." He pointed at the third, untouched container of crisp.

"First, though, we have a bit of dessert to welcome you properly, Felix."