Sholan Alliance Ch. 01

I am having a few issues with getting some of my ideas on paper so I decided to edit and update this series. There were a number of minor editing issues that have been corrected. It is mostly spelling errors, changes in sentence structure, and corrections based on what has been writen in following chapters. The basic story has not changed and won't. If you are initially reading this you can ignore any changes but if you are re-reading this then you might notice a few differences.

I also had a volunteer editor, Captain Siren, review the first chapter in the Silver Moon series and she made some very good suggestions. With her help I am going to be revising all the chapters to remove some glaring inconsistencies. They will be posted as we smooth each chapter out.

The last thing I have to say is that there are only a few detailed sex scenes in this series as with my other stories. I find, this is a personal opinion that having a sex scene in every chapter of a story gets boring after a while. I have come across some very good stories that keep getting broken up by one sex scene after another. That makes it hard for me to follow the plot line.

Chapter 1

Billy was more than pissed when the safety check came back as a down check. He knew the hyper tubes only had a bit more in them before he would have to overhaul them but he wanted one more run. Billy had a friend who could help him with it but he was elsewhere for some other work which was not what he needed. "Great, how much will it cost to have then taken care of?" He winced at the price quoted to him.

"We are looking at about 30K credits and that is assuming they don't find any other issues at the time. Then the price would go up of course." Billy could do the work but he was walking along the edges since it would take him a minimum month to get the work done. That was if there weren't any other problems. The worst part he knew that there was a problem that they hadn't found as of yet.

"Fine do you think your bosses would mind if I dropped the Ship down to my property while I repair it?" If he could get the Ship down to the farm he knew he could do the work and save a bit. It would take more time but he could do it and he had the money, barely, from the last run. Landing was something he could do from orbit and not impact on the hyper coils. "Fine I will land my Ship and work on it. Once I get it done I will call for a safety inspection." He tried not to glare at the space guard. "Will that be okay?"

The man looked at him and sighed. He hated this. The spacers and especially the free lancers were such a pain in the ass. "Fine that works. Call when ready." He left the deck and affixed a seal indicating that the ship was not safe for the transfer of goods.

Billy snarled and called the tower and was connected to one of the controllers that he knew. "Permission to release connections with the space station and shift orbit to land on earth." God he hated this but had to admit that the Ship needed work.

"Permission to deorbit and land at your ranch. I would say don't do anything I wouldn't do but..." The controller laughed.

"Kiss my fins man." He unlocked the clamps and dropped from orbit. At least now they didn't have that tiny window to enter the atmosphere and could almost point the ship down. He used a gentle deorbit and eventually landed in the cradle on his property.

~~~

Satasha was not a happy camper. She had been in the middle of a sleep cycle when a number of alarms went off in her cabin. She couldn't complain about the fixtures in the Scout Ship since they were designed for comfort since there was usually a crew of three. Currently they were searching for the others that had attacked and destroyed one of their ships. Due to that their resources were being stretched thin.

In this case she was both captain and crew though that wasn't really saying much since the vast majority of the ship functions were automated. The bed was large and comfortable; the showers had hot jets to help dry their fur. The food was pre-processed but comparatively speaking pretty decent. If you were feeling brave you could even cook it and add spices as well.

All this went through her mind as she checked the readouts built into the ceiling above her head and freaked. Something was wrong with the navicomp and that was not good. She rolled out of bed and yelped as her head hit the edge. Satasha didn't bother pulling on her uniform since it was an internal fault and not an air leak.

By the time she hit the bridge the alarms were about to give her a headache and that was the first thing Satasha dealt with. After killing the alarms she started diagnostics and also made sure the captains log was rolling. As she was waiting for the diagnostics to finish she was working on localizing the source of the electronic emissions that she had been tracking. There had been traces of hyper jump capability but what she had picked up was rather primitive emissions.

After sending in the report she had been instructed to localize and evaluate the culture to see if they were advanced enough to open communications with. She had started picking up emissions several light years away. Actually Satasha had picked up primitive radio and video signals from even further out. The hyper signals had been much closer since they tended to fade much faster.

Thankfully the navicomp survived long enough to get a basic course set before it finally melted down. The worst part was her communications were routed through the navicomp for directional control. She had tried to send a distress signal but wasn't sure it had been successful. Satasha could try it on the wide band but it was very possible the civilization she was checking was the one that attacked them.

They didn't know much about them other than they came, attacked one of their ships and then vanished. There were obvious blaster burns, laser burns, and missile strikes. The entire crew had been killed and inspection also showed boarding and the killing of even ones who were trying to surrender. That was why they were stretched thin. There had always been more ships than crews since they kept the scout/fighters in a heavy cycle of maintenance. That was one of the reasons why she was alone on the ship.

Once they had been attacked they had moved to a much higher deployment schedule and now crews were either one or two people instead of the normal three. In her case her second had managed to break his leg the day before they were scheduled to leave. That had really sucked since she would have enjoyed the company as well as the bed play.

Command knew better than to forbid relationships on long haul scouting trips since it was rather pointless. All female Sholan's could control their fertility and monogamy was not a problem due to that. Yes they did have bonding contracts for conceiving cubs but they were normally 3 or 5 years. For the senior Sholan's most of them did a life bonding ceremony but again monogamy was not expected. What was expected was that any cubs only come from either the short term bonding or life mating ceremony.

Satasha shook her head to chase away the stray thoughts as she watched the final diagnostic screen come up and she winced. The one component that she didn't have a spare for was the one that fried. It was a solid molycirc block that required a repair depot. "Oh frigging hell. This was not what I needed." She swore a bit longer as she typed in the directions she needed to the planet. If all else failed she could stay in stealth for several months since the Mother Ship would show up. She was expected to report once a week and if she didn't they would send a ship to check on her.

~~~

Billy was not a happy camper though he managed to keep it from his friends. Removing the tubes that were the problem was a major pain in the ass. Currently he had several sets of pullies set up to support them while he unbolted them. That alone was a several day process as there seemed to be about a million bolts that had to be undone. Not to mention all the lovely circuitry that needed to be disconnected as well.

He growled at the current bolt since it was being stubborn and didn't want to come lose. Suddenly it broke free. "Damn it!" He swore as he racked his knuckles against another pipe when the bolt broke free suddenly.

"Having a bit of a problem Billy? Why don't you come out and get something to eat. Sounds like something you could use." Jenna called in through the side opening. On the small Ships like this there was usually a large side panel. It could be removed to facilitate repairs and replacements of major engine components. That had been one of the first things he had removed.

"If'n it's your fried chicken and greens for that I might almost marry you." They had known each other since grade school and it was a standing joke since she didn't swing that way. He finished removing the bolt and put it in a marked holder so he would know where it came from. Once done he crawled out and hopped out the side of the Ship.

Jenna laughed at him as they walked to the house. "I think my girlfriend might object to my changing sides besides she makes better cookies than you do." Jenna was a bit on the large side but had a certain southern charm to her. "I figured you hadn't been eating right since you started tearing your old barge apart." He had fallen on the food like he hadn't eaten in days.

"Hell hun I haven't had a good meal for a while. Don't forget I ain't never got around to cooking much other than canned things and chili." That wasn't even mentioning the fact that he would be working 18 hours a day if he wasn't so worried about being tired and screwing something up. As it was he still was doing 12 hours a day. So far he had been working for just under a month and was almost ready to pull the last set of tubes. He had about a week of work before he could pull them. "Now if my young'n hadn't gone back to school I would be eating better."

Sally had left two weeks ago to the college she was going to. When she left he had lost his assistant which really sucked. In a way he was glad she wasn't going into the same field he was in since she leaned more towards the social science. What was sort of a hoot was she was majoring in zenobiology with a minor in zenopalentology.

I think we are going to drag your ass out to the bar on Friday and make sure you take a day off. Maybe pick up a girl, get a bit of action, and pour you into bed." To the best of her knowledge he had been working pretty much non-stop since he had been grounded. Granted in space it would have been easier since you could turn gravity off and move things easier. Drawback was it cost money. "You know you would have been mostly done if you had dry docked her."

Billy took a sip of his root beer and snorted. "It will take more than you two gals to drag my ass out of here." Every day was costing him money and that really upset him since he had finally made it in the black after having to do another repair. "I know but I just got in the black and that would have pushed me in the red. At least here I don't have to worry about docking fees." He ran the cold bottle across his forehead and sighed. "A month and a half or maybe two and I should have the old bitch fixed."

"Hey, talk nicely about the old bitch. You did name her after my girlfriend." Jenna laughed when she said that. Through most of school he had a crush on Sandi and even once they were out of school. Billy had married his senior class sweetheart but everyone knew that he had still cared for Sandi.

"Yah, before you snatched her from under my nose." He waved his bottle at her. "At least you could have warned me you had your eye on her." That had taken some time to come to terms with but eventually he had and they were best of friends now. It had been shortly after he had lost his wife during childbirth.

~~~

Satasha had been slowly approaching the planet she had detected the hyper waves from. She didn't want to do too large a jump via warp since she was being forced to do most of the math by hand. Satasha was decent at the hyper calculations and some she could do via the computers but some had to be done by hand. Each and every time she did one of the micro jumps she would sweat that she had screwed up. Finally she was close enough to use her n-space engines and coast in. Between each jump she had coasted for a few days to catch up on the transmissions and to ensure that her jumps hadn't been picked up.

She was currently in the Oort cloud and was coasting in system. It had taken her just over a month to make it this far. Part of it had been the manual computations since they did take time but it was also scanning the EM frequencies. While she had been coasting the computers were doing their job as well and by now Satasha had a pretty decent working dictionary for their language.

The video had taken longer since there were several different formats and each time she stopped it seemed to be a new one for the computer to figure out. Between watching some of the old shows and working on learning the new language she was starting to get a feel for the world, or part of it. Some of it did concern her since there appeared to be still some regional conflicts. Also the world was not unified, or not totally. There currently appeared to be three major political powers as well as a number of small countries that had a sort of detente going.

The culture was too young to be brought into the alliance but since they had hyper jump capability they would be closely monitored to ensure they weren't of a danger to the alliance. Once they advanced enough then they might be brought in as junior members for a number of years till proven they could be trusted.

Now that Satasha was in the system proper she might as well do her job and scout as best possible. The stealth on her ship should be more than enough to keep anyone from finding her unless she wanted to. After Satasha had identified the third planet as the source of many of the jump signatures she aimed her ship towards it. There were other locations but they were obviously transient points and not main sources of the jump signatures.

After sitting there for a few weeks she engaged her n-space engines and slowly accelerated till she had reached .2 C and then turned the engines off. That was the fastest the shields on her scout ship would conceal at close quarters. There were enough ships in system that being detected was a major concern.

Once the Mother Ship showed she would be able to send out an omni-directional signal that they would pick up. Either that or if they sent a scout ship or even one of the heavy shuttles she would be able to signal it and get picked up. If they couldn't tow the Ship it would be sent into the sun for destruction. Based on Satasha's observations her civilization was a good hundred and fifty or more years in advance than the human's.

If any one country got their hands on the technology it would give them an advantage that couldn't be overcome. The stealth alone would be worth capturing. Satasha would even take a pill to keep from being captured and interrogated if needed. She didn't like the idea but they were trained to.

For the next week or two she drifted in system scanning everything she could. It was all passive scanning but she was getting a great deal of information on the level of the technology. What she really needed was access to some of their computers to really get a good history of their world and cultures.

Once she had an orbit programmed Satasha headed back to the galley and contemplated her choices. Since there was only her onboard she had enough rations for at least a good year so she decided to treat herself to one of the good ones.

In this case Satasha was going to actually cook it and not have the pouch autoheat. That way Satasha could flavor it the way she wanted as well as cook it to the consistency she liked. As she was cooking Satasha was lightly whistling since she had something to do now. Eventually the cooking was done but in the middle of eating it the alarm went off again.

"Oh frigging hell what now?" Technically you weren't allowed to bring food to the bridge but she was hungry and not going to waste her cooking. As she was eating she started the diagnostics again and leaned back and finished eating. Satasha's tail was lashing and her ears were laid back against her head in irritation at the new issue.

When the diagnostics finished she groaned since whatever had jacked up her navicomp had now hit her n-space drive and shields. She was going to need to drop speed and land the damn ship before anything else happened.

Satasha reprogrammed the damn computer to slow the ship down as she headed for the third planet. She had to land somewhere that she could survive till someone showed up. As she was doing the programming Satasha was snarling in Sholan. The worst part was that she was going to have to babysit the damn computer to ensure that nothing else went wrong.

By the time she reached the planet Satasha had been up for well over 50 hours and felt like hell. The shields were still holding thank Vartra though the engines were still having issues. If she could find somewhere to land it she might be able to fix the engines. The navicomp she couldn't do much about unless she could get some access to local tech. If that worked then with some star charts then she might be able to get back to the ship.

Once Satasha had reached earth she considered taking a break but she had been nursing them for long enough that she didn't trust them. If she had more sleep she might have considered a parking maneuver but her mind was sort of out of it. She scanned the planet and found what looked like a good location and entered manual drive mode.

Satasha programmed it in and nudged the scout down towards the location she had chosen. It was remote and she hadn't picked up any power signatures.

~~~

Billy was right in the middle of the final tube disconnect when the power at his house went out. "Oh what the fucking hell now?" His first reaction was that he knew he had paid the bill. "Damn it all to hell I don't need this." Thankfully he had a wrist light and made his way out of the Ship and to his house. Billy called the power company and found that some idiot had hit a power transmitter and took out all the power for a good thirty miles or more. The power company expected it to be back up in four to five hours.

"Oh bloody fucking hell." He was starting to get worked up when Jenna called. "Dude, you are going out since you don't have any power. We are going to be there in just a few minutes since you have nothing to do." She laughed at his groan.

Billy had to admit that he didn't have anything to do and sighed. "Fine, I need some time off anyways. You are going to drive me back." He could sneak out but he knew the girls and they would find him. "I will be outside and waiting." It wasn't too long before his friends showed up and he hopped in the hover craft and leaned back and relaxed. Little did he know that when he came home it was going to totally change his life.

~~~

Satasha was definitely on the sluggish side when she aimed the ship down towards the landing location. As she was coming down her drive started having more troubles and some of the words she used shouldn't be used in main stream society. Satasha rolled her eyes and then swore even more when her drive actually quit. That got even more swear words and some of them were even in English just too add a bit of variety.

Thankfully when she landed it was relatively slow speed and it only knocked her out. Thank Vartra she was in her suit and it medicated her to take care of the head injury but she was going to be out for a while.

~~~

Jenna and Kelli dropped Billy off and waved at him as he left. "Night and we had fun Billy. Sleep well." They pulled away and he waved back as they were leaving.