Tales from the Drift: Old Lessons, Hard Futures

Chapter 14 - Debts Are for Collecting

VESSEL: Sovereign of the Stars // LOCATION: THE DRIFT // TIME: UNKNOWN

The cutter dropped away from the Sovereign's port side. Floating in its shadow, the deep dark of the drift threatened to swallow the much smaller vessel. Hurkel ignited the engine and the craft leapt forward into the blinking bright of distant stars.

The navigator waved for Romain to loosen the sails. Arrayed on a rotational axis parallel to the hull, he needed to position the three sails to gather as much energy as possible. A brief glance at the sensors, and Romain rotated the rigging array accordingly. Then with a simple lever throw he opened the cutter's sails. Unfurling, they snapped into place and buzzed as they slipped through a pocket of cosmic radiation. Their pearlescent shimmer was one of the most beautiful things in the whole galaxy to Romain's eyes.

The cutter bounded ahead of the current.

Hurkel sat at the stern, his organic hand immersed in the interactive light projected above the tiller. He steered the cutter away from the Sovereign, which was running slow to harvest energy from the cloud formation.

Designed for speed and maneuverability, the cutter was slim and as lightly armed as it was armored. It took a maximum crew of four, with just enough excess space for two passengers, but a crew of two was all that it often required.

One of three such craft, the cutters were used for scouting and protecting the longboats, of which there were two, during boarding actions. Granger, and not a small number of the crew, at times referred to the cutters as whiskers - feeling out and finding the hazards in the dark.

Armed with two bow chasers, their barrels extending from within prow's hull, they could be synced for dual firing or set to alternate from the tiller controls. Located amidships and built into the rotational rigging array for the sails so that its firing line was never impeded, was a swivel gun. If only one person was crewing the cutter, a rare possibility, it could be synced to match targets with the chasers.

When serving with the Master-At-Arms and then again with the Master Gunner, Romain had trained on the cutter. He was quite familiar with its armaments and controls, and both masters had even taken him out for target practice on multiple occasions.

This, however, was the first time that he had been sent out scouting with Hurkel. Allowed to tag along on other runs, he'd only ever been present as an observer before, with the crew pointing things out to him, explaining how this or that worked, or sharing the what and the why of their various tasks. During such excursions he hadn't done much but watch the stars and ogle the nebulae.

So, this time was sure to be different. An excursion with the ship's navigator had to be, but so far Hurkel had given no other order beyond minding the sails. Romain did his best to relax, attempting patience by letting his vision blur.

When he could no longer distinguish the Sovereign from the other motes of light peppering the black, and the constant humming and buzzing of the engine and the sails were naught but the steady gnawing of tedium, he got up to examine the navigation console just aft of the rigging array controls.

The small, etheric sphere glowed, displaying the cutter's position relative to the Sovereign's. They'd gone out much farther from the ship than he'd ever been before. In fact, they were close to exceeding the recommended operational range of the cutter by a full fifth. That couldn't be right. He checked Hurkel's face for confirmation.

The navigator continued to work the tiller in silence, a small smirk playing across his painted features, but betraying nothing else. Without iris or pupil, it was difficult to discern where his white eyes were focused. Romain considered trying to match the gaze, but the drift was empty of anything but stars.