Black Velvet

"Yeah, my guys will be switching to another shuttle and riding it back down to Elysia. I assume the flyboys will be able to get you two wherever you need to go."

"It's been a pleasure, Sergeant," Jules said. He turned and offered his hand to the Marine. Simmons seemed surprised, but he took it firmly and shook it.

"When they told me that I'd be babysitting a paper pusher on a jungle expedition, I was prepared for the worst, but you're alright, Lambert. I hope you and Zuki can get the council to vote the way that you want. Best of luck to the both of you."

Zuki watched through the porthole as they entered the carrier's hangar, her eyes tracking another dropship as it exited beside them, blasting off into space and leaving a trail of chemical residue in its wake. They swayed as the ship decelerated, and then there was a rumbling sound as the landing gear deployed, the dropship bouncing gently as it set down on the deck.

It taxied deeper into the cavernous bay, joining the many vessels that were parked inside. The idle ships were being tended by crowds of people clad in the yellow overalls that identified them as engineers and flight crews, checking landing gear and using snaking pipes for refueling, carrying supplies to and fro. Zuki hadn't looked away from the window the entire time, and Jules had to pat her on the back to get her attention.

"We've arrived," he said, the Araxie turning to look down at him.

"It's so big inside...it looked smaller from a distance."

The ramp began to descend, and along with it came the sounds of machinery and conversations. The hangar was like a giant auditorium. The noises of roaring engines, power tools, and men shouting over the din were unpleasant even for a human. Zuki covered her ears again, looking miserable, blinking her eyes against the harsh light. Jules remembered that they were nocturnal creatures, the bright halogen lamps that lined the ceiling might be too much for her. She really did look like she was being overstimulated.

"Wait here for a minute, I have an idea," he said.

Jules, Yuta, and the Marines descended the ramp and bade one another farewell with a few handshakes and pats on the back. Yuta clapped her enormous, furry hand between Jules' shoulders and very nearly knocked him off his feet. It seemed that even the Ranger had warmed to him somewhat during their short time together.

"Maybe we'll see you around," Edwards said, grasping his hand and shaking it vigorously. "Borealis is a small planet, if you ever stop by the embassy in Elysia, we'll probably cross paths again."

"There should be someone coming to escort you to your next assignment," Simmons added, "stay near the ship for the time being. And good luck!"

Jules watched them as they made their way off into the hangar, weaving through the crowds of personnel and ducking under the wings of parked fighter craft, off to report to a superior or perhaps heading straight to their next shuttle. They really did look out of place amongst the prim and proper carrier crew, like they had been dropped in from another time period. He was left standing on his own beside the dropship, all there was to do now was wait. After a few minutes, he pulled out his phone and connected it to the carrier's intranet, trying to find a way to contact someone who could point him to his next destination.

"You need any help, Sir?" the dropship pilot asked, his boots clunking on the metal ramp as he made his way down to the deck. He was wearing a flight helmet with the visor down, and so Jules couldn't make out his features. Engineers were already swarming the ship, tapping on tablet computers and walking around it as they inspected the airframe, two of them hooking up a heavy fuel line beneath one of the wings.

"I'm waiting for an escort, but there's no sign of them yet."

"Just put a call through to fleetcom, and they'll get you sorted out," he advised. "My orders were only to bring you guys back up to the carrier, so I'm not sure where they want you next. If you need to get out of the hangar, there are exits at intervals along the back wall. See the yellow line on the floor over there? Stay on the near side of it, that's where the ships taxi in."

"Thanks," Jules said as the man wandered off into the bustle of activity. Everyone seemed to know where they were going besides him. He did as the pilot had advised, calling fleetcom on his phone via the carrier's network, and asking for further instructions. The voice on the other end of the line told him that there was another dropship ready to transfer him to a waiting vessel, and that his escort was on the way. He also put in a request for something that should ease Zuki's discomfort.

In the meantime, he ascended the ramp again to check on his Araxie companion. She was still covering her ears, looking up at him and pouting as he entered the bay.

"Someone is on their way, we won't be here for much longer," he said.

"Why is there so much noise?" she complained.

"Don't worry, they're bringing something that should help."

The escort finally arrived, a man wearing a blue UNN uniform, and holding another tablet in his hand. Judging by his complexion and his dark, curly hair, he was likely a Martian. He was struggling to get his other arm around a large, black helmet.

"Mister Lambert? I was sent to escort you to your next shuttle," he said. His Indian accent confirmed that he was probably from Mangala or one of the other Martian habitats. It was somewhat rare to see Martians outside of their shipyards and domed cities, but this was a Martian carrier, after all.

"Ah, excellent. You brought the helmet," Jules said as he jogged down the ramp and took it from him. He returned to Zuki's side, tapping at the controls on the side of the helmet for a moment, changing the settings as the man watched curiously. "Move your hands," Jules said, Zuki obliging as he placed it onto her head and closed the visor. Immediately, her demeanor changed. She stopped slouching, sitting up straight and alert, turning her head as she looked around the bay. He couldn't see her expression, but he could tell that his plan had worked.

"It's not noisy anymore, and everything is darker!" she exclaimed. Her voice was somewhat muffled by the full-faced visor. "The light doesn't hurt my eyes!"

"I turned down the volume on the microphones and tinted the visor. You should feel like you're back in an Araxie jungle as long as you wear this. Well, at least in terms of the volume level, and the brightness. This a combat helmet designed for Borealan auxiliaries, like the ones your people recovered from the Rask."

Now that she was essentially wearing earplugs and sunglasses, her earlier curiosity and energy returned, her long tail waving back and forth excitedly as she followed him down the ramp and into the hangar.

"This must be your...uh, companion," their guide said as he craned his neck to look up at the alien. She seemed even more out of place here than the Marines, with her covering of black fur and her tribal garb. "This way, please."

"I'm surprised that we're being transferred to another ship," Jules said as he walked beside the man, keeping one eye on Zuki to make sure that she didn't wander off. "I was expecting to be traveling on another carrier."

"No, Sir. When the Captain heard that we had a UN diplomat onboard, she chartered a Courser to take you straight back to the station."

"A Courser?" Jules asked, his eyes widening. "That's great news! That'll cut our travel time down from weeks to hours!"

It could take weeks or even months for the massive carriers to cross the gulfs of space. They used their jump drives to leapfrog into a higher dimension, or perhaps a completely separate universe, where the laws of time and physics operated very differently. It was impossible to exceed ninety-nine percent light speed in conventional space, but in superlight, that limitation could be circumvented. It was possible to be massless, for time to run in peculiar and illogical streams, or for the distances between two points of space to be closer together. A ship could travel at impossible speeds, following the swells and currents of time in order to reach a destination far sooner than would otherwise be possible. It would then be ejected back into realspace a number of light-years away, where it would coast as its array of nuclear reactors charged the drive ready for another jump.

Many of the ships in the fleet were not equipped to keep up, either being too small to house the number of nuclear reactors required, or otherwise being unable to generate enough energy to match pace. The carrier didn't simply house fighter craft, it also dragged the rest of the fleet along in its superlight wake, pulling them with it during its journey.

A Courser was the most optimal ratio between mass, carrying capacity, and power consumption that the Navy could build. They were small vessels compared to the massive jump carriers and cruisers, but they were designed to be as fast as possible, built to ferry important personnel and critical information over great distances where slower methods just wouldn't suffice.

"What's that!?" Zuki yelled over the din of the hangar, pointing to a lumbering creature nearby. It was around sixteen feet long from its elongated snout to its oar-like tail, covered in armored scutes and hard scales in shades of spinach green that tapered into a lighter beige on its underbelly. Its many-toed feet slapped on the deck, its tail dragging behind it as it marched along. It was carrying a large container of some kind in its arms, the weight of which was probably more than even a Borealan could have lifted. It looked for all intents and purposes like a hunched, bipedal alligator, and the only clothing it wore was a yellow poncho that hung across its broad shoulders to identify it as a flight engineer.

"That's a Krell, one of our allies in the Coalition," Jules explained as he turned and made her lower her arm. "Please don't point at them, it's rude."

The Krell proceeded on its way, Zuki watching in awe as it vanished behind a dropship.

"If we could pick up the pace?" their escort suggested, waving them forward.

The hangar was large enough that it took them a few minutes to walk from one end to the other, and this was only one of the two bays, there was another of equal size on the adjacent side of the ship. Zuki's head was on a swivel. Everywhere they went, there was something new to gawk at, and Jules ended up having to hold her furry hand to keep her oriented. When they finally arrived at the waiting dropship, she was more eager than ever to mount the ramp, strapping herself into one of the seats with no prompting from Jules as she awaited the next adventure. That helmet had done wonders, and he wondered how long she would be allowed to keep it. As Simmons had said, they were expensive pieces of tech.

"This dropship will take you over to the Courser," their escort said, "Captain Varma sends her regards."

Jules sat down beside Zuki and strapped into his seat, the pilot's voice coming in over the intercom with a hiss of static.

"We're queued for takeoff, it's going to be a couple of minutes. Please secure your harnesses and remain seated until we're docked."

Zuki looked down at Jules, practically bouncing in her seat, and he reached up to raise her visor so that he could see her face. Her green eyes were bright, her round, dark pupils slowly shrinking as they adjusted to the light.

"How are you liking the Coalition so far?" he asked, "is it living up to your expectations?"

"Everything is so big!" she exclaimed, turning to peer out of one of the nearby portholes. "Is it all made out of metal?"

"The ships? Yes, for the most part. There are also polymers and plastics, other advanced materials, but they're mostly made out of metal."

"I can't imagine building something so big," she muttered.

"Well, we don't have thousands of blacksmiths hammering carriers together by hand," he chuckled.

"I know. The Patriarch says that the Coalition makes machines that build other machines."

"That's right," he said, surprised that she had understood a concept that must be quite abstract for someone with her background. Her language skills were very good, and she had quickly learned how to use the tablet computer, too. She was much more astute than anyone gave her credit for.

The dropship lurched as it began to taxi, Jules joining Zuki as they watched through the nearby window, the vessel moving towards the shimmering force field that took up the entire left wall. The blackness of open space was visible just beyond the translucent barrier, tinted slightly blue, the energy shifting and moving almost imperceptibly like the surface of a pond. There was another dropship in front of them in the queue, which angled its nose towards the field of twinkling stars before coming to a stop, a slanted panel rising from the deck behind it. It was blasted black with scorch marks, designed to absorb or deflect the backwash from the engines so that they didn't fry the ships and personnel that were directly behind it in the surprisingly busy bay. Its main engines spooled, spewing blue flame like a blowtorch as the craft rapidly accelerated and shot out into space. Their own dropship was next up, rolling along the deck on its wheeled landing gear and getting into position.

"Prepare for launch," the pilot said, "you may feel some acceleration."

The troop bay began to rumble as the engines ramped up, the deck shaking beneath their feet, and Zuki reached up to close her visor again as Jules gripped the armrests on his crash couch with white knuckles. No matter how many times he flew in spaceships, he never got used to the physics of it. The way that his inner ear warned him that he was being accelerated, flipped upside down, and thrown around with G-forces that threatened to turn his insides to pulp.

He was pressed into his seat, the hangar whipping past so quickly that he scarcely had time to notice. He blinked, and then the whitewashed walls and the harsh lighting of the carrier's interior had been replaced with the inky darkness of the void. There was a clunk as the landing gear retracted, and then it was smooth sailing, their breakneck speed unnoticeable once the initial acceleration was over and done with.

The dropship turned once it was at a safe distance from the carrier, Jules watching the goliath of a ship shrink to the size of a toy as they burned away from it. The fleet was in close formation, but that still put them kilometers apart. He turned his head, trying to see in front of the dropship, and was able to catch a glimpse of the Courser through the cockpit canopy as they neared it.

The ship was shaped like a knitting needle, pointed and streamlined, the engines and the nuclear reactor that powered its drive housed far at the back of the sleek hull where they would pose less of a danger to the occupants should anything go awry. Although being described as small, it was still far larger than their dropship, almost like the Washington monument had been flipped on its side and equipped with afterburners.

The pilot maneuvered the dropship alongside it, but this time, there was no hangar to land in. The troop bay ramp remained closed, and instead, an umbilical walkway extended from the near side of the Courser. It looked like a metal frame wrapped in flexible material. The pilot lined up with it, and then there was a loud thud as it locked, the two vessels now mated.

"You can leave your seats now," the pilot said as the intercom crackled, "please proceed down the umbilical."

Jules unclipped his harness and stood, Zuki following after him as he made his way towards the front of the troop bay, nearer to the dividing door that separated it from the cockpit. To their right was another small door, which opened automatically as they approached it. There was a rush of stale air, its scent different enough that even Jules could tell it apart with his dull, human nose. Before them was the umbilical, an extensible, metal frame that resembled the load-bearing jib of a crane. It led towards a second door that was perhaps fifty feet away. The white material that protected them from the vacuum beyond seemed flimsy and thin, like a plastic tarp had been haphazardly draped over it. As Jules set foot on the metal walkway that ran along the bottom, the entire structure emitted a worrying creak. This was the spacefaring equivalent of a precarious rope bridge hanging across a ravine.

"It's perfectly safe," he said, with a little less conviction than he had intended. Zuki took his word for it, ducking inside and following him as he made his way towards the other end. The journey was mercifully short, and the pair soon found themselves standing on the deck of the Courser.

This ship was not a luxury cruise liner, that much was obvious at a glance. The grey hull material was exposed in many places, pipes and electrical cables snaking across the walls and ceiling, the deck made up of textured sheet metal. The lights were dim, casting dark shadows, the musty air conveying the scents of oil and fuel. It was very industrial, the Courser was a precision machine engineered to perform its intended role as efficiently as possible with little concern for comfort.

There were cargo bays and crew quarters of limited size, but with any luck, he and Zuki wouldn't be needing to explore them. The journey to Fort Hamilton, or the Pinwheel as it was colloquially known, shouldn't take more than a matter of hours in a vessel of this class.

A voice came in over the ship's intercom, the pilot of the vessel greeting them.

"Welcome, Mister Lambert. I've received orders to take you to Fort Hamilton. If you and your companion would like to take a seat and strap in, we can get underway shortly. There are bits beneath your seats."

Ah, bits...he had almost forgotten about the discomforts of superlight travel. He spied an intercom mounted on the wall, its white color standing out against the grey metal, and pressed the red button that would let him speak to the pilot.

"Thank you, we're just getting seated. I have a first-timer with me, so let me make sure she's ready and seated before we jump."

"Of course, Sir. Let me know when you're ready."

As the door sealed shut behind them with a hermetic hiss, he guided Zuki over to one of the seats that lined the walls, not dissimilar from those used on the dropship. Despite how much larger the Courser was, there wasn't dramatically more room, with jutting pipes and machinery occupying much of the extra space. She sat down, and he fastened the harness about her chest, then he began to close a pair of manacles over her wrists that were bolted to the armrests of the chair.

"What are those for?" she asked, a hint of concern creeping into her voice.

"We're about to undergo a superlight jump," Jules explained, making sure that the fit was snug enough to prevent her from moving around. "It's going to be...unpleasant."

"Unpleasant?" she asked, "why?"

"The ship is going to be moving to another place very quickly, it's going to be...how do I put this in a way that you can understand? Hell, I don't understand it, but the ship is going to disappear and then reappear in a different location. You're probably going to experience some muscle cramps, spasms, loss of consciousness. You might black out for a short while, it might make you nauseous or give you a migraine. I won't lie, it sucks, but it will be over quickly. These straps are to prevent you from hurting yourself or anyone else. Do you understand?"

"W-will it hurt?" she asked, her voice wavering.

"It might hurt, but not for long. I don't want to scare you, but it will go a little smoother if you know what to expect. I've done this before, so has the pilot and everyone on that carrier. Simmons, Edwards, Velez, they've all done it too. It's perfectly safe."