a space story. part one. maybe.

Shader woke up with a start to the flashing lights of the control panel. The cockpit was dim and quiet around him, and his feet were still resting against the accelerators near the viewer. Nothing had moved. He listened idly for a few moments and then closed his eyes again. He had been dreaming of home, of sitting on the edge of Baymont Ledge, listening to his mother, talking to him, standing behind him. Looking down into the abyss yawning under his feet, while she counseled. Told him quietly not to leave.

He heard it again and snapped his eyes open. The ship’s engine throbbed, just for an instant, and then it faded. It was a sound he hadn’t heard before, and it was ominous, like the dark spot of a ship on the tracker, someone behind them, possibly following. Shader rubbed his eyes. He didn’t know anything about the engine. Mechanics escaped him with a wide birth. He got up slowly and, glancing at the tracking screen for good measure, walked through the doorway into the back, where the smooth steel walls greeted him dully, and faint lights gleamed from the ceiling on either side.

Draft was sleeping in the slide-out bed, in the back room, with the steel door closed. So readily available if Shader needed him. The bigger man was the ship’s engineer, not quick when it came to verbal combat, or often analysis of any kind, but able to bond with almost anything that ran on wires or programming. Shader didn’t understand why Draft hadn’t heard the throbbing, felt it in his very bones, the way he was so in tune with that kind of thing. Why did it wake Shader up and not him? He reached out to knock on the door of the back room, and suddenly felt it again – the ship almost shuddered around him. He froze, and then spun around, feeling panicky.

The door behind him suddenly clanked open, and Shader jumped, cursing in Enja from old habits. Draft stood there, his eyes half open, startled as well. The two of them stared at each other.

“Did you break something?” Draft asked.

“What do you mean, did I break something? Since when have I actually jixxed the controls?”

“Well, what are you doing back here? You want me to fly?”

“You mean, you didn’t hear that? Or feel it?” Shader demanded.

“No, I got up to reece,” Draft said calmly, and marched over to the reece well in the wall. “Drank too much before I went to sleep.”

“Something’s wrong with the engine,” Shader told him. “I keep feeling it shudder, or buzz, or something.”

“Buzz? Is something shorting?”

Shader looked around him, listening hard. “I don’t know if it’s shorting or longing, but it’s doing something strange.”

Draft snorted and then walked over to a small panel in the wall near Shader. “Longing. What are you babbling about?” He banged on the panel and it slid open, revealing a mess of wires.

“Maybe it’s longing for a tune-up,” Shader said idly. He handed him a clip-light from near the ceiling.

“Sure you weren’t dreaming, eh?” Draft asked. “I would’ve felt it if something was going off in here.”

“I thought I was, the first time…”

“Well, maybe it was a re-boosting or something, because sometimes – ”

Draft made a small noise in his throat, and leapt backwards, dropping the light. Shader grabbed the wall as the ship throbbed all around them.

“What is it?” he yelled. Draft snatched up the clip-light and beamed it into the open hatch in front of him. Then he stepped forward quickly, and waved Shader over. They both peered into a recess in the wiring, and saw a pair of violet-colored eyes staring back out. Shader swore.

“A stowaway?!”

A small bright head slowly pushed its way out into view, thin limbs slithering their way out next, until the creature finally put both feet down on the floor in front of them. It was a female, elfish, with cropped, spiky white hair, young, with her clothes in rags hanging on her. They were expensive clothes, however, embroidered and fur-trimmed. She was from an ice planet, probably Ishnin. She was frowning, sharply.

Draft looked at Shader, bewildered. Shader felt his face grow hot – they had dropped onto Ishnin a few days ago, to refuel. This was some runaway politician’s daughter, looking for a free ride. And someone would come to get her.

“…What are you doing on our ship?” he growled. “What the hell is this?”

The girl studied him gravely, as if trying to understand something of far greater concern. “Icka dobeeda Ishnin? Enduvu nee, ji dindo ak.”

“Oh for god’s sake, she doesn’t even speak trade,” Draft said. “Did she say Ishnin?”

“Yeah, she’s some emperor’s daughter! Look at her!” Shader flung his hands up, furious. “We’re jixxed now, man, they’re coming after us!”

The girl was watching him carefully as he spoke, and now she rattled off a stream of accented words in the trade language. “We’re-jixxed-now-man-they’re-gumming-after-us.”

Draft and Shader were startled, and stared at her, a small bright aura in the dim light of the hull around them. She was squinting her eyes now in thought, nodding to herself.

“We’re jixxed now, man, we’re jixxed now.” She screwed up her face, remembering. “Trade,” she said quickly. “Trade-speak. Traders, trade ship.”

“You’re damn right,” Shader told her. “No passengers.”

*who knows where i'm going with this... this is a rewrite of an old half-of-a-novel i wrote in high school.