Black Velvet

"I...I don't know," she mumbled through her helmet, but it was too late to turn back now.

"Do you trust me?" he asked, flipping up her visor and looking up into her worried eyes.

"Yes..."

"It'll be alright," he insisted, and Zuki nodded. He knelt and fished inside the mesh netting beneath her seat for the container that held the bit. It was Borealan-sized like the chair, designed to stop her from biting her tongue off during the jump. "Bite down on this," he said, and she opened her mouth as he placed it inside. He worried for a moment that her teeth or her jaw size might be too different from those of the Equatorials for the bit to do its job, but it seemed to fit.

Before taking a seat, he walked over to the intercom and informed the pilot that they were ready, hastily fastening his harness and slotting his own bit into his mouth. He shook his head and rolled his shoulders as he prepared himself for the jump. He didn't close the manacles, he had done enough jumps that the effects had begun to diminish to the point that he tended not to flail around. It got a little easier every time. Some of the more seasoned captains and pilots could even stand during a jump, so he had been told.

"Here we go," he said, feeling the ship begin to turn as it oriented itself towards its destination. The jump drive began to charge, the hair on Jules' arms standing on end, Zuki's fur rising like she was standing next to a giant plasma globe. He wanted to hold her hand to reassure her, but she would likely crush his bones to dust.

The Courser released the energy that it had built up, tearing a rift in space and time, Jules' consciousness ceasing as his body was dragged along with it into a dimension that was beyond his capacity to experience.

***

Jules awoke as if from a dream, his head pounding. He opened his eyes and tried to get his bearings, but his vision was blurry, his muscles twitching as the sharp pain bounced between his temples. His extremities tingled like he had slept on them wrong, and when he moved his fingers, all he felt was pins and needles.

Where was he? He couldn't remember, but wherever he was, he must be recovering from one hell of a hangover. As his vision began to clear, the room around him came back into focus, and he blinked as the light from a ceiling lamp sent a stab of pain shooting into his brain.

Wait, it was coming back to him now, his awareness clawing its way to the forefront of his mind. He was on the Courser, they had just completed a jump. He spat the bit out of his mouth, the molded plastic bouncing on the deck, then he took a moment to collect himself before unclasping his harness and standing on shaky legs.

"Easier every time, my ass," he muttered to himself as he stumbled over to where Zuki was sat. She was slumped in her chair, her visor closed over her face, the only movement coming from the slow rise and fall of her chest and the twitching of her fingers.

He leaned closer, flipping up the opaque visor. Her eyes were closed, and he examined the bandages beneath her leather vest. Should he sate his curiosity, open her vest while she was still out, and sneak a look at what those bandages were concealing? He glanced up at her to make sure that she was still asleep, then reached a hand down towards her leather garment.

No. He shouldn't be doing this. She had told him that she trusted him, and whatever she was concealing was none of his business until she decided to open up about it. As he withdrew his hand, Zuki's eyelids fluttered, a sliver of her green irises catching the light as she slowly came too. She mumbled in her own language, Jules unable to understand her, looking around as her confusion morphed into alarm. She tried to move, then found that the manacles restrained her, baring her teeth as she fought against her bonds. She hissed and spat, her claws raking at the armrests, but the Borealan seats were designed to withstand this.

"Zuki," Jules said, his voice soft and reassuring. "Zuki, it's Jules, calm down. You're on the Courser, remember?"

He watched her slowly switch from a kind of animal fear and confusion to a state of awareness, recognition in her eyes as she peered back at him.

"Jules...I didn't like that."

He laughed sympathetically, reaching over and patting her on the shoulder.

"Just stay in your seat for a minute or two until the dizziness wears off, don't try to stand yet. You'll start to feel better soon, I promise."

"All of my muscles hurt," she groaned.

"Something about superlight doesn't agree with living nervous systems. Wherever we go when we jump...we're not supposed to be there. There are no long-term effects, at least that we know of, but it sure does suck."

He reached down and opened the manacles, Zuki rubbing her temples beneath the helmet with her padded fingers as she slowly recovered.

"Jump complete," the pilot said over the nearby intercom, "we're going to be coasting for about four hours while the drive charges, and then we'll be ready for the final jump to Fort Hamilton."

"We have to go again?" Zuki grumbled.

"It'll be alright," Jules replied. "When you're ready to get up, we'll go talk to the pilot and see if we can hang out in the crew quarters for a little while, get something to eat and drink. Would you like that?"

She nodded, flipping down her visor to block out the light.

***

"How do you like it?" Jules asked, watching as Zuki fished a piece of meat out of her ration packet with her hooked claws. She was digging into one of the Borealan MREs, which in theory, had everything that her enormous body required. If it tasted good was another matter entirely, but the human ones were pretty nice, so he had no reason to think otherwise. Her helmet was sitting on the table, and Jules had turned down the lighting in the room to make it more suited to her sensitive eyes.

"It's okay," she replied, reaching into one of her many pockets and upending a vial of salt into the plastic packet. She then closed it and shook it vigorously. The Araxie seemed to prefer their meat a little saltier than the Elysians, or at least Zuki did.

The crew quarters were cramped, as small as it was possible to make them while still being able to accommodate a Borealan or a Krell, as long as they hunched over when they stood up. They were sitting to either side of a small table beside one of the few portholes in the ship's hull, somewhat like a booth in a restaurant. There were two bunks crammed into the room, along with a bathroom that even a human passenger would have found cramped. It was more like a prison cell than a cabin, but it was all that they could fit on a ship of this size.

Zuki chewed on a hunk of nondescript meat as she stared out of the window, the stars beyond seeming to stand still. There was no evidence that they were moving at all, no point of reference, no sensation of acceleration.

"Where are we now?" she asked.

"Nowhere, really," Jules replied as he leaned back in the padded seat. "We're between Borealis and the station, somewhere in interstellar space. There's nothing out here, no planets or asteroids, it's completely empty save for a little gas and dust."

"Like a desert," she muttered.

"In a way, yes. You could say that it's like being between two Borealan territories."

"I thought that being outside the walls of my village was far from home," she added, chewing on another piece of grey meat. "But now, I'm further from home than any Araxie has ever been. The best hunters, the best soldiers, they have never ventured this far."

"Are you...feeling homesick?"

"No, it's just a strange feeling. I'm looking at the stars, and I don't recognize them, I can't see any of the patterns that I'm used to seeing in the night sky."

"We've actually jumped far enough that those stars will have changed position. They're all objects in three-dimensional space, so as your perspective changes, the constellations will shift along with it."

"There's an old Araxie legend," she began, "about how the Gods pulled a dark blanket over the world when night came so that the sun was blotted out. The Araxie couldn't see at night, they were blind. The first Patriarch of our people used his bow to shoot holes in the sky in defiance of the Gods, and the sunlight spilled through so that the Araxie could see in the darkness."

"Oh, like a firmament? Some ancient human cultures had similar ideas, they imagined that the sky was a roof, a solid structure like a dome."

"Of course, we Araxie are not ignorant," she quickly added. "We know that such stories are only myths and that the stars are much like our own suns. But still, I can't help but think of it when I look out there."

"I don't think it's ignorant," Jules said as he watched her stare out into space. "That story is a part of your culture, something unique to you. I want to help you protect that, be it from the Rask or the Bugs. Sometime soon, that story will be stored in research papers and data centers all over Coalition space, and it will be effectively immortal."

"A culture cannot exist without its people," she replied.

"I suppose not, but we're trying to preserve those too," he chuckled. "There might be Araxie living on other planets one day soon, spread out all around the Galaxy. If a disaster or a plague should strike, or a war or something of the sort, your people would be rendered effectively immortal too. If something came along and destroyed the whole planet, there would still be Araxie living elsewhere."

"Where might we live?" she asked curiously.

"Oh, you want examples? Off the top of my head, the Epsilon Eridani system has a habitable jungle planet that the Coalition is having a pretty hard time colonizing due to the harsh terrain. What do you think about that? A jungle that spans an entire planet?"

"We could live there?"

"I don't see why not," he added with a shrug. "I'm not saying that you should relocate your whole population, the Araxie territory belongs to you, and we're going to make sure that your borders are protected. But if you sent maybe a few thousand people there to start a colony, you'd be helping out the Coalition, and you'd be starting a kind of backup territory just in case. It's not a done deal, we still have to convince the council, but I'm optimistic."

"A jungle that spans an entire planet," she wondered, dipping her long tongue into the MRE packet and licking up the sauce.

They were distracted from their conversation as the intercom crackled to life, the pilot's voice coming through again.

"Mister Lambert, if you and your companion would like to return to your seats, we'll be able to jump again shortly."

"That's our cue," Jules said apologetically, "are you ready for another jump?"

"No," she grumbled. "But if it must be done, then I have to accept it..."

"Very pragmatic," he replied.

CHAPTER 9: PINWHEEL

The Courser pierced through the fabric of reality like a needle, spraying a rainbow of colorful gasses in its wake in an expanding cloud as it emerged from superlight. It drifted for a moment, the auto-pilot system taking control while the pilot slowly came back to his senses.

Before it was the Pinwheel, a giant, spoked torus that resembled a cartwheel as it slowly rotated in orbit above a red and dusty planet. It was surrounded by ships. Giant carriers unloaded their crews as hulking battleships docked in its cavernous bays for repairs, smaller vessels swarming like flies as the station's white hull reflected the unfiltered sunlight from the system's pale star. Even the thousand-foot long carriers were dwarfed by the station, its dry docks able to accommodate several at once. It was so large that no artificial gravity field could fully cover it, which was the reason for the spinning torus that rotated around the central hub.

By the time Jules was awake again and walking around, the Courser was already using its chemical engines to burn towards the station. When Zuki came to, he helped her out of her seat. Her legs were still shaky, and she was unsteady on her feet, but he didn't want her to miss the sight.

"There are so many," she said, blinking through her headache as she watched the behemoths drift around the station. Jules wasn't in the Navy, but he couldn't help but feel a sense of pride at the sight of the vessels. Each one of those capital ships was the size of a small town, and was armed with the cutting edge of human technology. Fort Hamilton was the largest military base in Coalition space, and so there were enough ships here at any given time to make up two or three fleets. As they gawked, a massive jump freighter emerged from superlight nearby, in full view of their porthole. Like a puff of glitter, the cloud of gasses slowly dissipated in its wake as the gigantic vessel drifted, the jets of blue flame along its hull flickering as it righted itself. The freighters were civilian ships used to transport goods across interstellar distances. They were made up of a long, skeletal structure that was loaded with massive cargo containers. The cockpit and living quarters were at one end, and the engines and reactors were at the other, making it look a little like a half kilometer long cotton swab.

Zuki's feline eyes widened as she watched the colorful burst of gas, as if the ship had punched a hole through a rainbow, its main engines firing to leave a streak of flame across the sky like blue paint smeared across a black canvass.

"Oh look, there's a Phobos class battleship," Jules said as he pointed to a vessel that was undocking from one of the bays. "See how it seems to be split into two halves? The hull is built around a giant magnetic cannon, like a really big rifle. They're designed for taking out enemy capital ships and even cracking planets."

"There's so much," she muttered, overwhelmed perhaps by both the quantity and size of the ships. "What enemy warrants all of this? Will they become our enemies too if we join you?"

"Our main enemies are the Betelgeusians," he replied, "and they're the enemy of every living thing that isn't a Betelgeusian. They would attack you whether you were a part of the Coalition or not. They're giant insects, hive creatures."

"We had no idea that any of this was out here," she said, "that any of this was going on. It makes me feel...small."

"Your territory might be small, but it's no less important than a human colony planet. These are the ships that would jump in to defend Araxie in the event that someone attacked you."

He neglected to add that due to both Elysia and Rask already being members, the whole planet would need to be defended by necessity in the case of a Bug attack, as a single hive ship making landfall could very well spell doom for Borealis.

The Courser followed a route that steered it clear of the other vessels, only the pilot knowing exactly where they were going. Jules and Zuki watched as the station continued to grow in size, and before long, it had filled their entire field of view with its curved, white hull. It was far less smooth up close. There were all kinds of antennae and radar dishes along the rotating torus, the indents of airlocks, and other miscellaneous pieces of machinery pockmarking its surface. There were no windows on the habitat itself, only on the inner hub that served as the control center.

The ship veered towards one of the yawning hangars, larger even than those of the jump carriers, the same flickering force field holding in the atmosphere. The vessel matched velocity with the rotation, the intercom crackling.

"Please return to your seats while we land," the pilot advised, "we'll be docking with the station shortly."

Jules gestured to the nearby seats, and they sat down, close enough to the window that they could still see out of it. After waiting a couple of minutes for final clearance, the vessel drifted forwards, the pilot making minute corrections as he threaded the needle-like ship into the gaping opening. The closer they got, the larger it seemed. This was not one of the drydocks used to accommodate the largest classes of ship, but it was still enormous, it would not have been too difficult to maneuver a frigate into one of these bays.

They passed through the shimmering, blue barrier, and then Jules felt a reverberation through the deck as the landing gear deployed. The Courser bounced as it touched down, and then the main engines powered off, the hum that he had grown so accustomed to hearing over the last few hours going silent.

"We've landed," the pilot said. "Welcome to Fort Hamilton, Mister Lambert. Please watch your step on your way down the ramp, and proceed directly to the back wall behind the yellow line."

"Thank you," Jules replied over the intercom, releasing the button and waving for Zuki to join him. "We're finally here! Are you ready? Don't forget your helmet."

She retrieved the helmet from where she had set it down on the chair beside her, standing and slotting it over her head.

"I'm ready!" she announced excitedly.

"Follow me closely, and don't wander off. This station is really big, and there are lots of people here. It could be very easy for you to get lost."

She nodded, sticking close as he walked towards the door from which they had entered the craft. It opened automatically, and beyond was the same umbilical that had anchored their dropship to the Courser when they had first boarded it. This time, it was angled down at a shallow inclination that led to the deck of the hangar. Zuki ducked in behind him as he made his way down, his boots clanking on the metal, and then he emerged into a wide-open space. It was like being inside some kind of massive underground cave, except made from shining metal and white plastic, a veritable technological cathedral. The ceiling must have been a hundred feet above them, and the distance from the force field on their left to the back wall on their right was at least five or six hundred feet.

There were catwalks all along the walls, men in yellow jumpsuits walking back and forth along them, and embedded in the high ceiling were bright lamps spaced at intervals that lit the whole space in a pale glow. As Zuki emerged from the umbilical, Jules turned to take in the scenery, noting the enormous clumps of machinery near the force field that served to raise and lower the blast shields. They could close to seal off the bay from space, like a garage door built for a giant. The stars wheeled past beyond its ever-shifting bounds, so wide and open that looking at it for too long gave him vertigo. The bays were built into the top and bottom of the donut-shaped habitat, as being built into the sides would have simply flung their contents into space due to the inertia.

Other ships were sitting idle on the deck, mostly small dropships and one Warden patrol vessel that seemed to be undergoing a refit. There were engineers everywhere, carrying objects and crates, or just walking to their next destination. There was already a group of engineers approaching the Courser from the direction of the back wall, paying no attention to its occupants, fixating on the elongated hull of the ship.

Jules appraised it too, it was so strange to have seen it floating in space, and now to see it sitting on the deck on a set of appropriately large landing gear. They were thick and sturdy, supported by huge hydraulic pistons and adorned with hanging cables, multiple rows of wheels that were as tall as a man with thick tires making contact with the ground.

Zuki was even more impressed, spinning slowly on the spot as she craned her neck to look up at the ceiling, Jules taking her hand and guiding her towards the back of the hangar. They reached the yellow line that was drawn on the deck, dodging past the occasional engineer or a Navy pilot clad in blue as they made their way towards one of the exits into the torus.