Past the Redline

Throttle Thirty-Eight

“Ahvie isn’t sure if this is a good idea,” Ahvie said. She had a lot of reservations about Diana and her plan. In fact, calling it a plan made Ahvie wonder how Diana’s species managed to live to maturity, if its ability to think ahead was like Diana’s.

“Yeah, I know,” Diana said.

The little alien looked up to Diana, blinking in momentary confusion. “Then why are you doing it?” Her new friend’s actions were often strange, but this felt different.

“Mostly because giving her a chance can’t hurt much. And besides, it’ll spice things up a little. You know ChaOS will have full control the entire time, right? I mean, this isn’t some deep Machiavellian plan or anything. I’m gonna give her a top-of-the-line fighter and see if she can’t help. If she betrays us, then that sucks, and if she doesn’t, then we’ll have made a friend.”

Ahvie was silent for a while before speaking up. What was a Machiavellian? “You’re a lot more trusting than Ahvie is.”

Diana snorted. “Really? I don’t think so. You trusted me, didn’t you? A misplaced alien from the other end of the galaxy, with nothing to prove that she was worth that trust and a heap of reasons not to.”

“Ahvie had no choice,” Ahvie said, entirely honest. “But Ahvie doesn’t regret it.”

Diana paused next to the airlock into the last cargo hold where they would be meeting with Zil Rossi again. “I’m going to hug you now,” she announced.

Ahvie was used to the reaction already. She raised her arms and Diana squeezed her tight for a moment before letting go. Mirian cubs often gathered together for warmth and companionship. If they were tired, they’d pile onto each other, fur touching fur, and nuzzle into a warm cocoon.

Diana lacked the soft fur, and she was a bit big and boney, but Ahvie appreciated the contact all the same. It wasn’t too strange for birthing species to have rituals of contact, but humans seemed to do it even as adults as a sign of affection.

“Okay,” Diana said after giving Ahvie one last squeeze—she was so strong! “Let’s go impress the fox lady.”

“What’s a fox?” Ahvie asked as she floated after Diana.

The cargo hold looked entirely different now that Diana and ChaOS had taken over. The walls were covered in intricate machinery, with folding arms and welding devices and other machines that she couldn’t identify the use of. There were lots of lights though, blinking and beeping and catching her attention from the corner of her eyes. It was very much unlike anything Ahvie had ever seen, and to some degree it disturbed her.

Her ship had been taken over by these growing machines, like a violent fungus crawling over everything. The original ship was lost in the constant modifications, or at least, the holds had been. Diana respectfully kept her nanomachines out of the Slow and Steady’s main compartments. Diana said that they could improve the ship, but Ahvie wasn’t quite ready for that.

Zil Rossi stood next to one of ChaOS’s machine bodies, the ktacha looking like she was working hard to make herself presentable: chest puffed, fur ruffled, and a distinct scent of superiority in the air around her like a cloying perfume.

Diana was oblivious to all of it. She hadn’t grown up in a world where some species were superior, by dint of evolution or because their society was part of the greater whole.

“Heya,” Diana said. “Glad you made it. ChaOS wasn’t too rude?”

“They were perfectly polite,” Zil Rossi said with a glance back to the AI-inhabited machine. “You said you had something to show me? A fighter craft?”

“Yes,” Diana said. She clapped her hands. What did that mean? She did it when she was excited, but Ahvie couldn’t translate the meaning of that yet. “Come along, my mammalian pals, and let me show you the… actually, we haven’t named it yet. I’m thinking the Foxtail. It’s evocative.”

Zil Rossi stared at Ahvie, and Ahvie shrugged the way Diana did sometimes when she didn’t want to answer a question.

They trailed after Diana, who moved into another section of the once-hold. “This ship is impressive,” Zil Rossi said as she looked around. “I don’t recognize much of this, but it all looks new. Is this a factory ship?”

“It is!” Diana said.

“But fitted into the hold of a rusty old cargo hauler,” Zil Rossi said. “No one will know that it is here. Is it even tagged as a factory ship?”

“Technically, it’s a factory cargo-hold,” Diana said. “Not a ship. Though I guess we could turn it into one.” The next room was wider and more open, with smooth walls that reflected the light just a little, and multiple spotlights trained down to the centre of the room where a vessel sat.

“Oh,” Zil Rossi said.

Ahvie could sympathise. She had seen the ship before, the Foxtail (What was a fox? Why wasn’t Diana telling her?) and it was impressive even unarmed and half-built.

The ship was long and thin, made of a reflective material that shone like polished steel. Its forward section was shaped like a wedge, two halves cut horizontally to reveal a gleaming array of weapons tucked between armoured plates. The back of the ship swept down into a bristling array of jagged plates. They reminded Ahvie of the folded petals of a flower.

“This is it,” Diana said. “We haven’t let her go through her paces yet, so actual numbers will be hard to guess at, but it should be about as fast as most modern Federation navy fighters, and a whole lot more nimble.”

“Impressive,” Zil Rossi said. “And beautiful. Why is it shaped this way? Like a water droplet in low-gravity.”

“Because it looks good,” Diana said. “This puppy is loaded up with enough firepower to take out a ship with thirty times its tonnage too!”

“What is it carrying?” Zil Rossi asked. “I’ve trained with most onboard weaponry.”

Diana grinned. “First up are the two rotary guns, forward-facing, and a single twenty-millimetre railgun, with enough kick to scare just about anything shy of battleship plating.”

“Decent weapons,” Zil Rossy said.

“Yup.” She snapped her fingers, and the ship’s hull unfolded in a few places, small arrays coming out of the holes. “Four high-power laser arrays, with enough cooling to fire non-stop for nearly half an hour. You’ll melt anything coming at you. Then there’s the missile loadout.”

“Missiles?” Zil Rossi asked.

“Yup. You think the tail’s just for show?” Diana walked over to a smooth wall on the side of the room and it broke apart, revealing a long mechanical arm that deposited a device into her waiting arms that was nearly as long as Ahvie was tall. The tip of it was jagged and shiny.

Ahvie glanced at the ship’s tail-section, bristling with similarly pointy bits of metal. There were hundreds.

“This baby is a short-range variable warhead missile. It can deploy a centrifuge net, can fire off two micro-missiles with explosive payloads, has a bunker-buster head for those pesky cruisers and their pesky bulkhead armours, and has enough power in its warhead to make the enemy wonder when and how they ran into the nearest sun.”

“That… where did you acquire all of that?” Zil Rossi asked.

“Acquire? Uh, here and there,” Diana said. She grinned, “Technically, these missiles are just civilian-grade equipment.”

“How?” Zil Rossi asked.

“Asteroid busters, net charges for debris pick-up, anti-missile decoys. Oh! I forgot to mention those. Uh, self-defence micro-missiles. Basically, everything you see here is commercial, civilian-grade equipment, all packed in nice and tight in one deadly package.”

“That can’t be legal,” Zil Rossi said.

“Is the Tyrant Cracker a legal race?” Diana asked.

The ktacha hesitated. “I suppose it isn’t, technically.”

Diana showed off her teeth. “Well, there you have it,” she said as if that was some incontrovertible proof.

Ahvie continued to look at the ship. It was sleek and pretty and dangerous. In a way, its entire design was as Diana was: entirely alien. It didn’t belong in a way that had the fur across her entire body standing on end.

“Want to give it a spin?” Diana asked.

At Zil Rossi’s confused look, she gestured to the ship.

“We have a sim set up. It’s not entirely realistic, but it will give you a good idea of what flying the ship will be like. You’ll have to deal with simulated g-forces and a few other unfortunate issues, but hey, experience behind the wheel is important.”

“I… yes, why not,” Zil Rossi said. “Let me see if this thing is as capable as it is bizarre.”

Diana grinned again, likely unaware of how unnerving it was to see her teeth that way. “Let me show you how to get in. The cockpit’s deep inside, where it’ll be safest. You probably don’t have too much to worry about—this thing is packing some pretty decent shielding—but then again, we might be up against ships designed for war, you know?”

Ahvie looked at the two as they fiddled about above the Foxtail.

As strange as this little ship was, it was still entirely within the capabilities of a good team of engineers to come up with. Strange, yes, but not impossible.

Ahvie worried a lot more about the ship that Diana herself would be piloting.