By Calum Morton
Calm
fell over the Blazing Arcturian as she settled into the ethereal paths of Jump
Space and all aboard her relaxed.
“Seb?
Seb!?” yelled Markus, “Where is that blasted bucket of bolts?” He spoke to the
still air of the ships’ flight deck.
“Over
here, sir.” a grating voice, like a lead pipe on a washboard reached Markus’
ears. “In the cargo hold making everything secure, sir,” the voice continued.
The voice belonged to S.E.B, Markus’ Security and Engineering Bot purchased on
Pleoras nearly seven years ago. Seb’s casing was a bronze colour. He had a
humanoid head and torso with two arms, at the base of his torso were a pair of
miniature caterpillar tracks which proved an excellent means of locomotion.
“Get
down to the engine room; Devin might need some help.” Markus said to the bot as
he casually stepped into the cargo hold, his voice echoing across its cavernous
volume. He liked Seb - good bot, been useful to him many times over the years.
“We’re safely into Jump Space and aren’t due out at Tau Beta for another few
hours so I’m gonna take a nap up on the flight deck.” Markus concluded patting
the bot on the back of his torso casing before swaggering back out of the hold.
“Aye
captain, I shall render Master Devin what assistance I can,” he chirped, before
trundling off to the engine room. Those tracks really did come in handy
sometimes; Seb wasn’t too bad for a bit of heavy lifting either. I really ought
to give him a run down just to make sure that second hand circuit board is
still running, maybe when we get to Tau Beta.
Seb
trundled into the engine room and allowed his photo-receptors to focus on the
immobile form of Devin. Seb’s logic circuits fired up as he calculated the
likely causes of Devin’s condition. Jump Space shock seemed likely. Seb rolled
up to Devin and shook him with one of his manipulator arms. Devin stirred and
sat up, reaching for his flask of Saurin Brandy. That ought to settle his
nerves, thought Seb.
“Ah!
Oh, Seb, it’s just you…you gave me quite a start!” The small Agravian rose to
his feet as he conversed with the mechanoid.
“The
captain sent me to assist you; did we sustain any damage during that last run?”
The grating voice of the robot asked, though as Seb had no mouth the sound
seemed to project from his chest.
“Yeah
Seb, I had to do a re-route, we’ll probably need to clean out the radiation
filters again and might even need to do a shake down just to make sure we don’t
get a blow-through next time we hit atmosphere,” replied Devin as he turned to
his tool kit and picked up his favourite spanner. Better get to work, he
though, it was going to be a long journey.
Back
on the bridge, Markus Silassus settled into the pilot’s chair and began to
doze, somehow, through years of flying; he managed to fall asleep with one eye
on the instruments panel. Nothing got past Markus Silassus.
But this ship
wasn’t going past him. It followed just far enough back in the Arcturian’s
exhaust wake that it was shrouded from all sensor probing. The Confederacy
Light Interceptor Taurus kept a steady speed and followed the Arcturian on into
the black and blue of the almost ethereal Jump Space.
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