Coeus?

“[05:34]-Radiation burst detected, Location: Jupiter orbit”

-Earth, Russian Observation Radio Array

***En route to system 34.244-56-7802, Starcruiser Rai***

***Captain Njel***

“I have to repeat my objection against continuing the pursuit. We are violating the restricted sector.” The XO dares to speak yet another annoying rebuke in front of the crew, not realizing that he is undermining my authority. “Captain Njel, you realize that we are violating the senate’s orders.”

I turn my chair to face him. “And do you realize that we can't always stop our pursuit when the Drazi accelerate towards the forbidden sector.” I grab the armrest of my chair tighter and try to ignore the man's stench. He is reeking of fear.

The Drazi are an annoying species of pirates and multiply like a virus if left unchecked. They frequently attack our shipping routes along the border. But if you let them be for too long, they tend to become more aggressive. There are records of them attacking whole planets.

A long time ago the senate forbade the establishment of new colonies in the direction away from the galactic centre. Something frightened them so much that they even stopped all attempts to explore that region.

This wasn't a problem for a long time. The Drazi operated only in a small region so far. But they seem to be wandering along the galactic arm. The Empire is raiding their bases in a hundred light year radius around its borders. It's a gigantic effort to keep them away from our worlds, but it's worth the price.

The real trouble arose when they realized that we don't follow them into the forbidden sector. I don't think that they have a big base there. At least not until recently. In the last few circles they began attacking the colonies along the border to the forbidden sector. After a successful raid they retreat into the void before we can stop them.

I face the crewmen who are on the bridge. “We've followed them already a long way, stopping now would be a waste. We are just a few seconds behind them and all our calculations are saying that we'll get them in the next system. So once we have freed the universe of them we can go back home and tell the senate that we destroyed the menace.” And that their fear of the forbidden sector is absolutely unreasonable. So far every system we passed consisted only out of dead rocks.

“Their drives will run out of power in a few minutes. I recommend that everyone goes to their battle stations.” The officer at the navigation informs me of our status and I nod. He turns back to his station and gives the necessary commands.

The others also return to their tasks. Once our trans-light drive runs out of energy we'll have to try our best to catch the three fleeing ships. We wait in silent anticipation as the time passes until an alarm signals that we are arriving in the next system.

“Falling back to real space!” The navigation officer announces and the ship bucks under me. For a moment I experience the feeling of free fall and then I am pressed into my seat as the ion engines start accelerating us towards the Drazi ships.

“The system seems to be empty, though I get weak electromagnetic signals from the third planet. The Drazi are accelerating towards a planet, probably a gas giant.” The man at the sensor station starts rattling down his results as he gets them.

I tighten my grip on the armrest. “Electromagnetic signals? A civilisation?”

“If it is one, then they aren't very advanced. The energy levels are very low.” The officer replies and I relax a little.

Then he leans closer to his screen and starts mashing buttons. “There are some strange gravimetric distortions around the planet. The Drazi are heading directly towards them, probably they intend to use them in order to hide from us.”

I wince, a look on the central screen tells me that there is no chance of catching them before they arrive there. The Drazi are just a few seconds ahead of us, but that's enough to render our weapons ineffective at these speeds.

“Weapons fire! The Drazi are shooting at something, but not at us!” The officer at the sensors screams and calls a magnified picture onto the screen. Tiny explosions flash up in the darkness around the planet. “One of the Drazi ships was destroyed!”

“Turn the ship around! Decelerate!” The Drazi must have run into something unpleasant. “Set the weapons to defensive fire.”

“A second Drazi ship is gone! There was definitive laser fire, not our or the Drazi's frequency!”

Suddenly the screen lights up in pure white and all the tactical information disappears. “What happened?”

“Laser attack, low energy, but many beams! The energy shields can't take it. We are overloading!” The man at the weapon station screams.

“We can't reverse! We're too fast!” Another voice screams as the bridge dissolves into chaos.

I exhale slowly as I realize that I've led us to our doom. There is no thought in my mind as I flip a cover on my armrest away. Then I push the panic button which launches all the ship's message drones. If we die here, then the empire will at least know what happened.

A second later the ship's shields break.

***En route out of the System***

***Gideon***

I place two cups of coffee on the table and muster the woman who introduced herself as Cyla Estene.

Her eyes are transfixed on the news report which is projected onto the living room's free wall.

Cyla has a slender face with green eyes and long black hair which is bound to a pony tail. I would call her beautiful if it wasn't for her eccentric choice to use silver lipstick and eye make-up. She looks like she was on a man-hunt when Sanguin practically abducted her from Oibras Station.

According to her story she was the station's commander and owner up until its demise. I looked up her career to find out with whom I'll be sharing my ship.

She started her career with buying up tritium supplies from Jupiter. Then she managed her own small company while trading tritium for fusion reactors. While doing so she took an education as a pilot, which helped her in understanding the needs of the market.

Once she established her company on Oibras, she slowly took over the station until the entire thing practically belonged to her. I highly doubt that she did all this legally since her career path is simply too steep. It's highly likely that she used her position to manipulate the market prices once she was able to.

But I don't judge her since she wasn't caught. All her references make her seem very competent. My grandfather always said that everything is allowed as long as you aren't caught. The not getting caught part is the important piece of this advice. Getting caught only shows that you are too stupid to cheat.

My eyes wander down her nice figure and I lean back, taking a sip from my coffee. “Having your company crushed from one moment to the next must suck.”

***En route out of the System***

***Cyla***

I try to ignore Gideon's cold and measuring gaze. He isn't even trying to hide it, which speaks volumes in regards to his character. After my forced relocation to his cockpit I landed in a very unfortunate place. I even had to use healing magic to get him back to his feet. It's exhausting if you don't have an aptitude for it.

His dark eyes and the short hair in combination with an average body are my type. I don't like those over-trained types who paid a sizeable part of their income to a doctor in order to change their looks to the current beauty idea. Though his cold and expressionless face destroys any ideas of approaching him.

It feels like he is regarding me as an unwanted pet that was pushed onto him.

Of course I researched him over the net, but I came up with very little. He is a blank slate. The only facts I found out are that he passed all the tests for becoming a pilot with flying flags. Then he got an official employment at StarDrive, though some sources indicate that he already had previous ties to the company.

Then he created his own company with money that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Gideon Corp is officially a subcontractor of StarDrive for testing new technologies and ships.

Accidentally I am currently also on the company's only ship, which is registered as a freighter. There is no hint from where he got all the money.

So either he has ties to the government or StarDrive. Those are the two most likely candidates who could have wiped his records clean. Most likely it's the latter since he is obviously tied to them.

Suddenly Gideon leans back and sets his eyes on me. “Having your company crushed from one moment to the next must suck.”

I almost choke on my coffee. “That's what you are thinking about? Almost two hundred thousand are dead! A hundred thousand are not accounted for!”

My hands clench into fists and I start shaking as I start thinking about all my friends who probably died during the attack.

He shrugs, looking down at his coffee. “It's surprising that the losses were so small. If you take the size of the station into account I would have estimated at least twice that number.”

I massage my forehead and try to contemplate my situation. Apparently I am caught with a serious case of a techno-mage on this ship. I am also a little dense in some aspects, but at least I am able to care about people. I've to keep my emotions under control. It doesn't help to lash out at him for his lack of sympathy.

“So let's try to go through this step by step. Apparently we have to deal with each other, so what's your problem. I can see that you don't like my presence.” I ask.

He raises his eyes and looks deep into my eyes. “Living space.”

I furrow my forehead. “Living space? This ship is huge if Sanguin told me the truth. What's the problem?”

Gideon stands up and gestures for me to follow. The living room looks spacious enough. Behind the next door is a small kitchen, nothing special there. Taking me up the stairway leads us to a bathroom and a bedroom with a single, big bed.

One level higher we enter a big storage room, filled with foodstuffs up to the ceiling.

I bend over the cartons and start reading. “Pizza, lasagne, spaghetti, cheese noodles...” Even after several minutes of searching I fail to find anything remotely healthy.

With a sour expression on my face I turn back to Gideon. He waited for me at the entrance. “Do you have salad?”

He shakes his head.

“Vegetables, fruits anything with vitamins?” I ask, feeling despair rising up inside me.

“I don't like those.” Gideon focuses his gaze on the floor, thinking hard. Then he turns to the left and opens a compartment right next to the entrance. He leaves a handprint on the cover by doing so and I realize that it's covered by a layer of dust. It seems like he didn't touch the hatch since he started his trip.

After some rummaging he unearthes a big box with the label 'Medical Supply' on it. Inside it are several boxes with pills.

He turns his attention back towards me, expecting a reply.

I roll my eyes. “Okay. I just hope that the supplies which Sanguin teleported to this ship contain something edible. What's next on the list?”

Gideon leads me back to the cockpit where he finally decides to switch on the lights. I already gathered that he isn't a man of many words.

“That's all? What's with the rest of the ship?” I ask, shocked. Where will I sleep? Is this leviathan really planned with only one pilot in mind? Which maniac designed this vessel? “Who designed this ship?”

“Me.” Gideon bends down and picks up two worn plush toys. They look like they were extensively used and repaired many, many times. “That's all. The rest is completely automated.” He places them on the pedestal next to the pilot chair.

Then he runs his fingers through his hair, looking around the cockpit. “We need to find a way to install a second acceleration chair. Otherwise you'll be crushed during our next battle.”

I force my eyes away from the plush toys. Other grown men would be embarrassed about having something like this around, but Gideon seems to be completely oblivious of me seeing them. “Hah?” Crushed?

“And you need a spacesuit.” He gestures at the chair. “Here, sit down. Familiarize yourself with the ship, but don't touch the controls. We are currently pursuing the enemy ship while the ship's manufacturing line is producing parts for the needed changes. I'll take my suit and go outside to supervise the work. We also need a bigger airlock to get the assembly sprites into the command module.”

I don't need only a spacesuit. I need clothes and other daily niceties. I need my own room!

Gideon leaves the cockpit and I wobble to the chair, then I drop myself into it.

A moment later I activate my ability and connect myself to the ship. It automatically recognizes me as co-pilot and grants me the necessary rights after creating an account. Apparently Gideon already made the required changes while we were talking.

I dive into the systems in order to study them. The more I explore the ship's design, the more I realize that this ship isn't a freighter. It's a dedicated warship!

Upon trying to find out what Gideon intended to do with such a weapon I run into a firewall which is flagged as personal data. All I get is the flight plan of the ship's short life. It's very plain except for a random trip to an uninhabited sector close to the 'Greek' node.

This person with the name Gideon Alvar is a single big mystery to me. Upon calling up the star chart I find three red dots leaving the system. One is the escaped enemy ship and the other two are the probes which were fired by the fourth ship. They are fleeing in different directions, but it looks like one of our ships will be able to catch one of the drones.

The other drone and the enemy ship will leave the gravity well of Sol before we can catch them. The ship which we are hunting down is accelerating towards Rigil Kentaurus, also known as Alpha Centauri. It's a binary star system.

The escaping drone is accelerating towards Altair.

According to Sanguin's intelligence briefing the alien race has a warp-drive which allows them faster than light travel. They also have a means of generating unbelievable amounts of energy, which turns their ships into juggernauts with almost unbeatable shields and really powerful lasers.

I experienced that first hand. If my station's lasers had focused any other ship it would've been atomized in an instant, but the alien ships lasted for seconds.

On the other hand the aliens are using ion engines to propel their ships and lack the means to manipulate gravity in a meaningful way. That makes them incapable of reaching the same accelerations as our ships.

Next I skip through the first contact records which were made available by Sanguin. The first missions found no signs of other intelligent races in a thirty light-years radius around Sol. Then a deep space mission returned with intelligence from a sixty light-years distant star towards the galactic centre.

They encountered a colonized star system, but weren't able to do more than confirming that the people there were obviously in some kind of civil war. Ships of similar design were fighting each other.

After the aliens tried to engage the exploration ship, the ship escaped by a hair's breadth, using our superior drives.

After their return to Sol the elders decided that we aren't ready to contact a war-like civilisation. Since Sol's resources still weren't used efficiently the elders decided that spreading our forces to colonize different star systems isn't wise. They buried the knowledge about long range teleportation and encouraged the technological and industrial build-up of our colonies.

They hoped that we would stay undiscovered for a few more years and intended to release the knowledge about long range teleportation as soon as our military and industrial might grew too strong for a single system.

Since we are now obviously discovered, the elders already started to build a dedicated war-fleet with this ship as a model, though their design has differences.

Ships are being sent out in all directions to cover a sphere of thirty light years around Sol. They carry the necessary blueprints to build observation platforms and industrial nodes. For that purpose they are refitted with automated manufacturing lines and IMs, which are a recent invention and make this plan even possible.

With astonishment I realize something important about the Coeus. It should have come to my attention when Gideon leisurely mentioned the changes he wants to make to the ship.

The ship has two separate manufacturing lines and an army of IMs crawling through its insides. There is a patent on this technology and the fees to have even one manufacturing line with IMs are astronomical!

The elders did this to avoid having our economy crushed over night. They released a plan to slowly turn our society's last workers away from their jobs as the IMs are taking over. Otherwise we would've been standing there with scores of unemployed people.

Before my station was blown to pieces I was working hard on scratching the money together for a single assembly line and Gideon has two in this ship!

My thoughts are interrupted as I notice Gideon's return. It has been a while. To my own shock I realize that two hours have gone by.

I disconnect from the ship and stand up to face Gideon. He is holding a spacesuit? No, it's more like a dirty princess dress! There is a deep transparent v-cut in the front, which goes down to the navel.

Taking the suit from him, I notice that the spine section is also transparent, running to the butt! “What's this?”

“Your suit.” Gideon answers with a flat expression. “I took the design from a game called Warframe, like my own suit. Don't worry, the chair measured your sizes when you sat down. It'll fit perfectly.”

“A game!? Warframe? What are you talking about?” I am beginning to get a really bad feeling about being locked up in a small, confined space with this guy! “There is no way I'll wear this!”

“You don't like it? I thought you were the type. With all that lipstick and the make-up.” He looks down at the suit. “We can always change the parts which you don't like.”

I reach for my mouth and wipe the lipstick off. Then I curse, remembering that I was searching for a partner before everything went to hell. “I was in the Coincidence during the attack.” I mutter.

Gideon's eyes narrow. “That's why you looked so familiar. You are one of the women who tried to talk to me when I accidentally walked into that brothel.”

Something in my head clicks and I remember that particular night. I and some friends tried in turn to pick up a sad and gloomy guy. It was just a matter of who would manage to pick him up. “No. It's. You. It's not a brothel!” I call out, feeling my face turning red.

I have to change the subject. “This has to be changed! Especially the part revealing the butt!”

For the first time since I met Gideon, he shows another expression than utter disinterest. But the emotion vanishes as soon as he displayed it. Was it disappointment?

“And one other thing! What's about the assembly lines in your ship!? How are you paying for them? Are they illegal?” I ask.

“Why should I need to pay for something that belongs to me?” He sighs. “Put it on for the time being and come with me. I'll show you how you can use an assembly line to make a new one. Design it yourself if you like.”

He turns and leaves while my brain keeps making somersaults. I've never had a real brain short-out before. Either this idiot broke a ton of laws and will pay debts until the end of his life once someone finds out.

Or he is fucking, filthy, insanely rich?

.