The spaceship’s drives hummed as the power increased. Sat in the command-chair on the bridge, Captain Rascal bounced gently up and down — he had the gravity on the bridge kept at a quarter of one-G especially for this — waiting for the moment that Yemoi, the navigation officer, would announce that they were ready to enter hyperspace. His eyes glittered with excitement and his fingers, slightly short and stubby for a baseline human, gripped the arms of the command-chair as though to stop him from bouncing away from it. Which, given that Captain Rascal was short and light and built like a jockey, was entirely possible in the reduced gravity of the bridge.
The bridge doors opened on the left side and Rascal looked casually over to see who was arriving.
“Vizile! Get over here you old reprobate!”
Vizile, the First Officer, forced a smile onto his long, thin face. His skin was ruddy, a consequence of being born on one of the four Fire Worlds, and his hair was jet black and he looked, to Rascal at least, like a picture of a demon from old mythologies.
“Captain,” said Vizile in a level tone that completely belied his actual mood. “I think we should consider—“
“Engines at full power,” said Yemoi, speaking over him. Vizile raised a red hand as though to try and stop her speaking, but she continued, “Entry into hyperspace is now possible.”
“Don’t do that yet!” yelled Vizile. Rascal grinned at him.
“Mark!” he yelled, equally as loudly, and Yemoi pressed some buttons on the desk in front of her. Vizile’s face spasmed as he tried to both grimace and stop himself grimacing at the same time. It looked like the effort hurt.
“What’s the matter, Viz?” asked Rascal. The transition into hyperspace was smooth; from the perspective of the bridge the only thing that changed was that the viewing screen greyed out. Whatever was out there now was impossible to see as hyperspace contained no photons. Energy exchange was mediated through some other means that was still being intensively studied.
“I think we might have left someone behind,” said Vizile. His voice was tightly controlled and he was trying hard not to sound angry but he sounded like someone had stepped heavily on his foot and he was trying not to scream. “I have been unable to find Merance.”
“We did leave her behind,” said Rascal. Now that they had entered hyperspace and there was nothing to anticipate he had slowed his bounce and was sitting almost normally in the command-chair. “Her shuttle didn’t reach us before we departed.”
Vizile rubbed a hand over his face. His skin paled with the the pressure, only gradually reddening again as he hand was lifted. “She was en route?” he asked.
“Maybe? I dunno,” said Rascal. “Is there a test for that?”
“I mean,” said Vizile, “she was travelling to us when we left?”
“Oh,” said Rascal. “Why didn’t you say so then? Yes, she would have been about three minutes away. But she was late, and you have to have rules, don’t you, Viz?”
Vizile drew a long breath. He had, as he acutely remembered, sat down with the captain a few days ago to discuss having rules and obeying them, particularly with regard to using the ship’s instruments (such as the Butcher) in ways that potentially (or definitely, in the case of the Butcher) harmed the planetary life around them. It had not been an easy, or pleasant, conversation, and he had been walking figuratively on eggshells ever since waiting to see if Rascal was plotting revenge.
“I think, Sir,” he said after a pause, “that we did discuss that rules can be treated as guidelines at certain points, and that making a point and breaking a rule can both be problematic.”
“Did we?” Rascal grinned again and despite himself Vizile smiled back. The Captain’s mood was oddly infectious.
“Yes, Sir,” he said. He rarely called Rascal ‘Sir’ and was hoping that the man would notice this sooner or later. “Yes, and I think you were making a point there, that didn’t need to be made. Weren’t you?”
Rascal’s smile never faded or faltered. “Not for you, old bean,” he said. “For Merance. She needed to learn not to be late, right?”
“I… I… suppose so,” said Vizile who wanted to sit down somewhere quietly and work this out without Rascal derailing his train of thought. “I… I mean, we can always go back for her.”
“No need!”
Vizile’s train of thought derailed thoroughly and catastrophically. He blinked several times, trying and failing to guess what Rascal might mean. Finally he gave in.
“What do you mean?” he asked, his tone full of trepidation.
“She was close enough to get pulled into hyperspace with us,” said Rascal. He started bouncing again, which Vizile considered a bad sign. “She’s sort of following us. She should pop out at the other end when we do. Give or take a half-million kilometres.”
“Wha— that— how—“ Vizile struggled to find any words and he took a couple of steps backwards while his brain short-circuited in every direction there was. Yemoi looked up from the navigation console, which was doing little at this point except showing the expected time to departure from hyperspace, and addressed the captain.
“The shuttle’s too small, Sir,” she said, and it irked Vizile just a little than the ‘Sir’ was sincere. “It’s not got the stability to withstand hyperspace travel. It’ll probably disintegrate when it emerges.”
“Let’s hope Merance gets into a space-suit before that happens then!” said Rascal cheerfully.
