Interstellar Reporter Danica Star (eBook)
280 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-7197-4 (ISBN)
Chapter 1:
Tell Me You Got That Shot
Danica tapped away, trying to squeeze some truth out of a bunch of ones and zeroes, but it was not absolute truth she was looking for. She sought the inner maxim that stirred inside a given demographic in a particular range of income, authenticity that could ease the sale of the story.
Her manicured fingers, her augmented ageless dermis, her perfect hair, all prepared for the eventual request to go live.
She flipped the controls like a conductor, footage zooming by, barely giving her long enough to look at it. But it worked that way.
The scene flickered in and out of focus as she toggled through a dizzying array of playback options: three-dimensional; centralized VR; holographic… then stopped.
Her bored expression changed to one of vision.
She restarted the footage.
The hologram displayed a child, an updraft lifting her hair, her dress tattered and burned, soot on her cheeks, her eyes focused beyond the visible. The devastation created a backdrop no less dramatic. A flag, tattered, scorched, draped over a crashed ship, a death shroud.
The flag depicted a prominent four-pronged spear pointed at three stars. The light of dusk created a natural fade-out while a gentle breeze caressed the scene.
Danica wondered about the flag, a rally point for the righteous.
Her eyes focused beyond the holographic display, a thousand ideas diverging in all directions. She shook it off and again gazed at the footage.
This wasn’t a pirate raid. Couldn’t be. There was real power behind it, Danica thought. Walter, so much talent wrapped in an idiot.
She looked around and tried to figure out where she was, taking in the tangle of wires and electronics that made up her editing station. Recognizing the back of a ship—her ship, her news van—she raised an eyebrow, losing track of where she was and why she never drove.
She rewound the footage. Again, the young girl, dirty white dress, bloody, dazed, walking through the scene of devastation. The flag fluttered on the ship. A light flashed on a nearby monitor. She reached out and tapped the screen.
The footage of the little girl kept rolling.
The screen popped with static like a channel transmission way out of range. Danica took in a deep breath and let it out as if centering herself for a yoga pose.
“And what do you want?”
***
Walter took a long deep breath and looked around. He loved this cockpit. From here, he had a full view, thrust out into the void. Look straight up and you observed stars. Left, right, between your feet, only stars. He noticed an odd glare; the local star was aft. The ship’s vector pointed toward a jump point forming their escape from the madness and danger. Walter smirked at his half fishbowl. What is he? A fish, in a spaceship? A space-bowl? Fish-space? He grinned.
“What the hell are you doing up there?” He jumped.
Walter still didn’t like the idea of leaving the cockpit, but there was nothing out there.
He disengaged the drive and guessed at a safe trajectory, assuring himself there wasn’t a ship, rock, or planet within a million kilometers.
Navigating the Vega star system was as safe as it got.
Walter pulled the configuration lever and the ship quickly transformed, its cockpit rotating from a vertical alignment to horizontal, allowing access to the rear cargo bay.
He looked to his right as the second seat from below glided into place next to him. As the rotation completed, the rear access door came into view. He floated out of the pilot’s seat, opened the hatch and pulled his way through.
“I think we should go back.” Walter put his fist on the bulkhead and bit his lip. “We could take on maybe a dozen survivors.”
“And get shot down in that mess?”
He glanced at the footage.
“Danica, that won’t work,” Walter said.
“I like the framing.”
“Framing? I shot raw multidimensional footage, with all subjects in the proper orientation, and you cut it down to two dimensions.”
Walter threw up his arms and twisted uncontrollably in the microgravity.
“Shut up, Walter. I need you to open up a feed to the network. I want to upload this before we miss the news,” Danica replied.
“We’ll make the news?” He grabbed a handhold to right himself.
“Yes, make the sector news and if possible, all the way to Earth.”
“Dani, this is a long form; there is no way the network will pick it up and why would Earth care?” Walter said just as a faint beep caught Danica’s attention.
“We’re going to go live here,” Danica said. Walter watched her staring at a small flat screen to her left. She shook her head and closed the footage.
“I’ve seen the footage too, Dani, I don’t think this is live material. Pirates, dead and missing refugees, that won’t sell. We need to get some combat footage.” The words died in his throat.
“That’s not your problem, and who said this had anything to do with pirates?” Danica half listened to Walter while a holographic map of the solar system sprang to life.
Walter muttered about how the Star System emergency broadcast said it was pirates while he pulled himself over to the transmitter and fired it up. A humming motor told him the antenna had was extending, connection logs streaming by on the screen.
He found the final authorization, then a warning.
‘System Emergency Data given top priority, all other traffic will be limited.’
“We have a problem.”
Walter noticed Danica pushing something out of sight. She turned back to him, still not listening. She had that look. A shiver ran down Walter’s legs, as if about to fall.
“Dani, the EBS is shutting down local transmission. We’ll need to get to a jump point to send data.” He leaned his head into her sight line. “We can’t transmit; we have to get out of here.”
He felt a lump in his throat.
“You’re right,” she answered.
He flinched, turned to see her blank distant stare.
“Okay,” he said hesitantly. “Great.”
“EBS doesn’t shut down traffic for pirates. You are right, we don’t have it. We need a hook.” She looked back at the small screen, and he could see text formatted almost exactly like an EBS transmission. “Get in the pilot seat.”
She reached into the mess of wires behind her and flicked a switch.
Walter, about to say something, watched the blank holographic display change to a navigational chart. It zoomed out several times as Danica clicked and adjusted the controls. A red spot appeared in the three-dimensional image.
“What is that?”
“The inevitable has come to pass; we don’t have it.” She turned to him. “Walter, get in the pilot seat.”
He stared; he knew that voice. The cold calm of a woman about to get them into danger.
Walter put his foot against the bulkhead, kicked off toward the front and pulled himself back into the cockpit. He flipped on the navigation, strapping in and spotting a new waypoint on his display. He froze.
“Warp us there as fast as you can,” Danica’s voice squawked over his headset.
“Okay, okay,” he said and powered up the quantum drive, rubbing his shaking hands together. The back-hatch snapped shut as the cockpit rotated to a vertical layout.
The HUD flickered on. He lined the ship up to the virtual lines showing the direction of travel and engaged the quantum drive.
A point of light appeared just a few meters in front of the ship. Like fireworks, streams of light flowed from the spot, and the ship’s very existence began to squeeze into the singularity.
Then everything snapped back, the turbulence stopped, and he watched the stream of quantum particles slide past. He exhaled.
“We’ll be there in under ten minutes.” He leaned to see distant planets moving by. Quantum travel distracted Walter, making him feel as if he was flying through water.
“Make sure the camera drones are ready,” she said.
“They all check out, all green and ready to record,” Walter explained.
“Good. Now start recording.”
“Now?” Walter rolled his eyes.
“Yes Jellyfish, now, and as soon as we’re out of warp, get back here and establish an uplink.”
“But I already told you—”
“Do what I say, and we might live through this.”
Walter stared blankly ahead.
He let out a deep breath and pulled up the cameras on the display.
“Wait, live through what?” he said to himself.
The ship exited warp and Walter yawed the ship so hard he felt strained by the G-forces. He’d dodged something, then pulled hard on the control stick again.
That was too close!
He throttled down, but the flotsam seemed to be moving in all directions as if they’d just arrived inside a gigantic explosion. A shower of small metallic objects clattered on the hull.
“I can’t fly through this!” Walter said, putting up a hand to shield his head.
“Don’t be so dramatic and follow this beacon,” Danica’s voice cracked over the comm.
He glanced down at the dash.
The display showed a flicker aft. He turned the ship toward the signal and after a few minutes of flying around bits of metal and ship parts, the fighter loomed into...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 19.12.2022 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction |
| ISBN-10 | 1-6678-7197-8 / 1667871978 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-6678-7197-4 / 9781667871974 |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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