"The Pheesching Sector is off limits to all spacecraft," a metallic voice said. "Please turn your ship now."
Casper glanced up at the large overhead screen. Against the blackness of space, he could see the flashing red signal of the yet another warning buoy. He wiped a trembling hand across his forehead and glanced down at his own smaller navigation screens. The buoy showed up as a small red blip.
The recording repeated itself.
"The Pheesching Sector is off limits to all spacecraft. Please turn your ship now."
Casper made his decision, switched off the radio and powered up the ansible.
If Blander finds out—
Casper didn't complete the thought.
"S.O.S.," he whispered urgently into the hyperspace communicator’s microphone. "Fleet Patrol, this is first officer Casper Van Soulier aboard scout ship two-dash-zero-zero-three. We have an S.O.S.! Do you read me? Over."
Static erupted along with a barely audible voice from the speaker.
"This is Fleet Patrol Base, Sector Seven. SOS ship, please adjust your output filters. Your signal is garbled."
Casper tapped the ansible override and slid both modulators to maximum.
“Can you hear me now? This is first officer Casper Van Soulier aboard scout ship two-dash-zero-zero-three. We’re in the northwest quadrant of Sector Six, location seven-six-three-four-seven-two. Do you read? We are low on fuel. Do you read?”
Another static filled explosion filled the speakers, this time with no voice. He adjusted the reception filters several times but Fleet Patrol was gone.
So much for the wonders of hyperspace communication.
Casper contemplated trying the radio but the chance of catching anyone else in this empty region of space would be astronomical. No one but Blander would have been stupid enough to stray so far from civilization. Casper couldn’t believe he had allowed himself to go along with this. His trembling fingers darted quickly across the keyboard. Another series of numbers representing a new filtering configuration appeared on the screen. He gently rolled the ship fifty degrees and waited for the ansible masthead to reposition itself toward Sector Eight.
"Fleet Patrol, this is first officer Casper Van Soulier aboard scout ship two-dash-zero-zero-three! We have an S.O.S.! Do you read me? Over."
"What the hell are you doing, Casper?"
Casper slammed his hand down on the power switch. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Captain Blander standing in the small doorway.
"Nothing, sir. Just running a few final scans before the jump."
"Bullshit!" Blander said.
He squeezed his heavy-set frame through the doorway and gripped the back of Casper’s chair. Trying to ignore how close those massive hands were to his scrawny neck, Casper waited helplessly as the captain scanned the monitors.
“What’s that?” Blander spat, jamming a big finger towards the open ansible screen.
“I-I was-was going to call…my niece,” Casper said.
"Sure you were, twerp!"
Blander leaned down until greasy snarls of his brown hair brushed against Casper’s cheek. Casper fought the urge to flick the disgusting mess away.
“You’ve got one last chance to tell me the truth,” Blander hissed, his bad breath spewing out like poisonous gas.
"I tried to reach Fleet Patrol on the ansible," Casper blurted, "but just to-to get help, sir. The fuel—”
“Will be plenty,” Blander cut him off. He spun his first mate’s chair to face him and leered down at him, revealing plaque-coated and discolored teeth.
Casper cringed and wished he could sneak away to brush his teeth and take a shower. His worst nightmare, other than dying at the buffoon’s hands, was that Blander’s slovenly condition might somehow infect him.
“So how’d that call go, Cas?” Blander’s mouth twisted into a smirk.
“It didn’t,” Casper admitted. “There’s a problem with the output filters."
Blander took two short strides and dropped his bulk down into his maroon and black luxury, padded captain's seat—a seat which, despite all of Casper's arguments and cited regulation breaches, Blander had confiscated from a pirate's vessel they'd boarded two weeks earlier. Blander had thrown his own torn seat out an airlock as soon as they were out of range of the pirate ship. His reason for the delay in tossing it had been, “Pirate captains have less attitude when they have to sit on the floor.” Casper hadn’t bothered to point out that the next ship to encounter that particular pirate vessel was sure to lose its own captain’s perch, possibly beginning a perverted and never-ending cycle of musical space chairs.
Blander still wore a sinister grin.
“What?” Casper asked.
"I knew I couldn't trust you," Blander said.
"I’m not the one trying to get us killed out here at the edge of the galaxy!"
"Let's face it, Casper. You're a nitpicking, stiff-necked little jerk. So," Blander pulled a small circuit module out of his pocket, "I removed this from the ansible decoders. Those clowns at Fleet Patrol wouldn't have understood you if you'd been sitting on the roof at headquarters."
"I should have known," Casper mumbled.
"Now, First Mate Casper Van Screw up, please start the jump without any more nonsense."
Casper stared into the mocking, unshaven face of his captain. Though he hated the stained and wrinkled excuse for a commanding officer, there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it—at least not yet. His allotted minimum assignment time wouldn't be up for another three months. Unfortunately, Fleet Patrol Operations Manual, chapter six, section three, subsection two was perfectly clear on that point. Casper had read it so many times that when he placed the book on his nightstand it automatically opened to that page. Casper could quote it from memory: All apprentice crew members are to remain on initial assignment for a minimum of six Terran months. This is to insure that any minor personality conflicts will have had time to dissipate.
Dissipate—hell!
Their grating of personalities didn't have a prayer of abating. The two of them were like opposing polarities. Blander's sloppy appearance was exceeded only by his outright distain for regulations. How Fleet Patrol had given him command of even this tiny cruiser was completely beyond Casper. To him, Blander wasn’t qualified to keep a lavatory clean forget command a ship. And, worse yet, his captain seemed to revel in his authority to force Casper into his same haphazard mode of operation. Probably in defense, Casper struggled to be even more meticulous and found himself holding his Fleet Patrol Manual the way a zealous monk might wield a Bible. His and his captain's personality difference wasn’t so much a conflict as it was an out-and-out war.
"I said, start the jump sequence!"
"Yes, sir," Casper answered in resignation.
As it was, they didn’t have enough fuel to return to civilization, but somehow his genius of a captain now wanted to leap even further into the galactic hinterlands. For the first time, Casper was thankful Rachel had dumped him. If she hadn’t hooked up with the Centauri Governor’s son, they might already have married and maybe even had a child or two. Though it might have served Rachel right, he would never have wanted to leave a family behind the way his father had left him and his mother during the first hyper-war. No. If he had to go, dying single with no ties would be better. Of course, not dying at all would have been his preference, and his only consolation was that Blander would also be taking the same one-way trip.
He brought the navigation system up on screen two. Because of the gravitational pull of the black hole in this sector, there was only one survivable jump destination from where they sat: the Pheesching Sector. He waited for the nav to complete the calculations then double-checked it against the holo-projection that now spun slowly above all three of his console monitors. Like all hyperspace trajectories, their planned leap showed up as a spiral dotted, yellow line, which in this case swept around half the circumference of a black hole that looked like a swirling drain. The leap would positi
on them safely at the exact opposite side of the singularity but the blinking red symbol at the top of the projection illustrated what Casper had been saying: they would be damn near out of fuel when they got there.
Following Blander’s order would seal both their fates.
I should jettison the last of the chocolate cake while Blander is still unconscious after the leap.
Even as Casper considered his petty plan for revenge, he knew he wouldn’t do it; unlike Blander, he wasn’t cruel. Casper punched in the final series of numbers that would inevitably leave them helpless in the Pheesching Sector.
“COORDINATES ACCEPTED:” the nav screen flashed. “PLEASE ENTER YOUR PERSONAL ENGINEERING CODE TO BEGIN JUMP SEQUENCE.”
"Captain, fuel aside, you do know we could both be court-martialed. That sector is off limits. This is ludicrous."
"If you mean silly, Casper, say silly—not ludicrous. Now get this boat moving!"
Casper leaned forward and accidentally switched the radio receiver on.
". . . Pheesching Sector is off limits to all spacecraft. Please turn your ship now.
"Shut that off, Cas!"
"The Pheesching Sector is off —"
Casper obeyed. But the recording had been a frightening reminder of the danger they were placing themselves in. He said a silent prayer as he punched in his code.
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THE PHEESCHING SECTOR
ALSO BY TIM GREATON
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