chapter 200

That feeling of danger grew inside of me with every passing second. We were all sitting in the command centre, each one ready in case FH needed to pull from us. Last checks were currently going on, with everything else showing green.

Bob had been especially diligent while I was at the auction. They all stopped absorbing skills, as we would have plenty of time to do that later. We were going to be going on a long trip, and technically we should be able to do it with our current supplies, thanks to Bob. A supply stop or two would still be useful.

“Captain, we have received permission to undock. We can go at any moment,” FH informed us through the loudspeaker. I even noticed she likes to use them from time to time instead of talking through our bond.

“Then let’s get out of here. You registered the quickest path out of here, right? I want to get away from here as soon as possible. We can figure out our heading afterward.”

“Yes, Captain. Estimated time to FTL: 2 hours 32 minutes.”

For a moment, my brain was having a hard time figuring out how that would be possible, then it hit me. “The acceleration gates, right? I almost forgot about them.”

Klaxons started right afterward as the huge hangar doors above us started to open. The screens above that showed us the view of the doors now showed us space.

Currently, a lot of the stars in the blackness were gone, as there was too much light around this station, similar to how cities were back on Earth. It was disappointing how civilization seemed to wash out the beauty of space.

Our engines rumbled to life, and as soon as the station’s gravity cut off, we lifted out. As we got free, the entire ship felt like it stretched, like a predator getting ready after its slumber.

There was a moment of us simply free-floating before our own gravity generators kicked in. We then started moving forward, following our flight path. We needed to follow the speed limit as we were close to the station, but the further we got, the faster we could accelerate.

After about 20 minutes, warning alarms sounded. These weren’t the ‘oh no, we’re all going to die’ alarms, more like warnings that a lot of sensors were currently sweeping our ship.

“Captain, a lot of different ships are trying to scan us, and are doing so quite aggressively.”

“Are they doing enough for it to be illegal?”

“They certainly are. Should we report?”

I was about to say yes, because fuck them, when my 6th sense flared. “Is there anything in the law to indicate that if we were to accuse them, that we couldn’t leave?”

There was silence for a few seconds before FH answered back. “I have found it. There is indeed something like that, actually a few instances where it appears. Best course of action is that I continue to try to block them to the best of my capabilities without actively doing anything against them, and we simply leave.”

“We’ll do that then. They shouldn’t be able to get much past our defences. Just in case, no funny business, don’t use your innate ability unless it’s truly necessary.”

“Acknowledged, Captain.”

As time went by, we all found this constant scanning useful. It allowed us to refine our defensive protocols. We also found that shield generators could be used to block some types of incoming scans. It made the nearly two hours of flying go by in an instant.

We were still flying quite slowly, most of the time simply coasting, when we finally were about to hit that acceleration gate. There were two types of these gates: acceleration and deceleration, with the most common being deceleration.

Although common perhaps gives the wrong sense of scale, as these gates are exceedingly rare, no matter what kind. Not only are they extremely expensive to build, but for them to work, they need a constant supply of mana, which can be quite expensive if the mana density is too low.

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As we passed through it for the first time, I felt the opposite feeling to entering a portal, getting slowed down from whatever speed you were going to a standard that was a bit different in every portal.

Speeding up or slowing down weren’t exactly the correct words, and while we were doing that, for us it felt more like braking a bit harder or accelerating a bit quicker. No way did we feel how it should have felt going from flying slow enough that it would take over a year to reach out of the solar system to all of a sudden going nearly at 7.7% of lightspeed. All of it happening in just a few brief moments.

Technically, I guess we wouldn’t have felt it at all, as we would have been dead in an instant if this gate didn’t stop normal physics from destroying us. Now we could accelerate without any restrictions, quickly pushing ourselves to our normal maximum.

It didn’t take much longer to reach FTL speed, and as soon as we did, we jumped from real space into the side dimension where distances were smaller, and we had FTL currents to move us even faster.

The inside of my chest stopped burning as my 6th sense finally relaxed. We had escaped trouble once again. Looking around, everyone seemed relieved as well. When my eyes met Bob’s, he spoke out.

“Hopefully, things will have calmed down in a couple of years. As we still have the loot we will get after they properly clear the black gate.”

He was right about that. While we did get paid for what we did, our final contribution would only be given out once they destroyed that fortress inside that portal. My 6th sense didn’t tell me anything about returning here, but it usually didn’t with something so far in the future.

“FH, pull out the map of the galaxy and let’s see the current route we want to take.”

The screens changed, showing a top-down view of the galaxy. While the galaxy was, of course, three-dimensional, it was flat enough that the top-down map actually made sense. Everyone used the main current passing through the galaxy as the way to orient everything.

Earth was to the south of the galaxy, and when we first left Earth, we were travelling northwards towards the centre of the galaxy. Those times reminded me of how paper-thin Forward Horizon felt back then and how secure I now feel flying on Forward Horizon.

We had a long way to go in improving our ship. So that we could keep doing it without having trouble at absolutely every moment when we came into contact with civilization, we needed to make sure that humanity would survive.

All of us weren’t delusional enough to think that we alone could make a difference, but our fighting strength was nothing to scoff at, and more importantly, perhaps the knowledge we possessed would come in handy.

Right now we were kinda close to the centre of the galaxy, being roughly fifteen thousand light-years away from it towards the east. The trouble was that moving southwards wasn’t easy.

The problem was FTL currents, as most of them, especially near the main currents, moved from south to north or from the centre to the east or west, but nothing went back towards the south.

For that, you needed to travel towards the edges of the galaxy. So our current route, which was shown in red, moved us through the largest red zone in the galaxy and the one that we had been inside for so long, grinding credits and our rank.

There wasn’t one current after that that would bring us to Earth, but multiple different ones. In fact, we would be overshooting Earth by quite a lot, but then we could simply enter the main current of the galaxy and quickly make our way back. All in all, this trip would take, at best, close to a year.

If we went the slow way of not using any FTL currents, it would take us a bit more than two years to reach the same location. Even if the slow way was half the distance. Currents really were game changers.

“Any good stops along the way so we could stretch our legs?”

Immediately, some points popped up along our route. “There are some stations, but nothing truly outstanding unless you want to stop while we’re still inside the red zone?”

“...no, let’s get as far away from here as possible.”

“Then there is no point in picking now, we’ll do it when we start feeling antsy,” Bob said as he looked at the route a bit disappointedly.

“Something wrong, Bob?”

“Well, yeah, Captain. This route isn’t exactly good for business. No significant trade hubs, no significant change in price, so we could transport cargo. Basically, this is going to be an extremely unprofitable trip until we reach near Earth, where we could hopefully see some good profits.”

“We will be busy anyway. We have a lot of skills to absorb and to learn. My guess is that this trip will go by faster than any of us guesses. FH, I leave it to you.”

“Yes, Captain.”

It didn’t take us too long to drop out of FTL once again so that FH could determine our exact location, so we wouldn’t miss our destination, as this one was going to be a long jump, getting us straight across the red zone and out the other side.

All of us got busy. We all had skills to absorb and our own projects to work on. We didn’t jump into FTL immediately, as FH wanted to get the latest news, admitting she had messed up a bit by not doing this back in the station.

“You were busy gathering all the data you could from the station’s web, which was more important. Don’t worry about it, we aren’t in that much of a hurry.”

“That is not entirely true. Humanity is now being more actively pushed back. Even the corporations are being suppressed. Mercenaries are hired less often. Human factions that buy something almost always now need to buy at a premium, and whenever a human does something wrong, especially human pirate captains, it becomes sector-wide news.”

While humanity, especially near the end, wasn’t that kind towards me, it was mostly because only the idiots were left behind. I have had great friends and witnessed what greatness truly was. While there was a lot of darkness, there was enough light that I wouldn’t want to see it extinguished forever.

“So, they have started to actively weaken humanity as a whole. They’re tough bastards, they will strike back, and most who have left, as we did, will be starting to head back now, a lot stronger than they were back then. Don’t worry, we aren’t the linchpin here, just another ship showing up to do our part.”

A couple of hours later, FH spoke to me again. “I’m ready.”

“Oh, so you already know everything that’s happening in the galaxy?” Through our connection, I felt a huff directed towards me. That made me chuckle.

“Of course not. I could do this 24/7 and never even get close to knowing everything. The only problem I found was that on our current route, there are more missing ships than normal. Unfortunately, a detour would cost us many months.”

She forwarded me the information she had collected. “It’s only a couple of percent higher than normal. The chances of something happening should be quite low, and I’m not seeing many adventurer ships, so perhaps it’s just pirates preying on the weak.”

“That could be the case. Although wouldn’t you want to not tangle with pirates, just in case?”

“Right, that nickname stuff. Well, if no one is left… well, that shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“Indeed, Captain. So steady as she goes?”

That made me crack a smile. “Yes, FH, steady as she goes.”

End of Book Four.