Friday, 23 January 2015

1.6 Pirates and Knights Part 3

“The ship has an AI?” says Sam, surprised by the revelation.

“Of course she does,” I reply, “All the good ones do.”

“Should we sit down?” asks Vance, glancing at some of the passenger seats.

“Only if you wish to,” answers the ship, “Due to my engines, inertia nullifiers and artificial gravity, you may stand upright even when it turns and spins. Only once they have been disabled will you need to worry about strapping in. Of course, by that point you will almost certainly have bigger problems to worry about.”

“So what is the ship called?” asks Sam as he stands behind the pilot seat.

“The Star Guardian,” I reply.

I activate the stealth fielding and the invisibility cloak before exiting the hangar. I don’t need people worrying about what we’re doing since it’s just a pleasure cruise.

Oh, that reminds me.

“Aunt Mary,” I say as she ends my call.

“Yes Daniel?” replies Mary, “This is important? I’m sort of busy.”

“Just wanted to let you know I’m visiting New Valletta with Sam and Vance,” I tell her.

“Just a tourist trip?” inquires Mary, “Not planning to get into any fights or trouble?”

“Not if we can help it,” I answer truthfully, “But I can’t guarantee nothing will happen while we’re out there.”

“Really,” says Mary.

“Really,” I reply, “I never had to worry about a supervillain before I started wearing the Sentinel armour. Now it seems like they’re coming every other day. The Machine yesterday, Vengeance Wedsday night, Gorlack on Monday, Hall and Edison Friday last week and let’s not forget about Vistorix.”

I pause for a moment before asking, “How is Vengeance’s trial going?”

“It hasn’t actually started yet,” answers Mary, “If they were back home in the States, they might get off, but here we don’t like supers like them and the public opinion is strongly against them. It also hasn’t helped that they attacked the League of Heroes unprovoked. You are the nation’s very own classical superhero team and Vengeance trying to murder some of you has riled up the public. The US government has made their displeasure clear, but hasn’t actually done anything due to not actually wanting some bloodthirsty vigilantes back in their country. A few politicians are making a fuss, but nothing major. Shade has been extremely useful in keeping America’s superhero population from making trouble even though I doubt many of them actually would cause trouble.”

“That’s all good to hear,” I reply, “I’ll let you get back to work now.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” says Mary, “Wait a moment, is Narszara free?”

“Should be,” I say, surprised by the question.

“Would she be willing to help the Defenders out with a mission?”

“I’m sure she would,” I answer.

“Thanks again,” says Mary before cutting the connection.

I decide to give Narszara a call.

“The Defenders might ask you to help with a mission,” I tell her, “Feel free to aid them if you see fit.”

“Understood milord,” replies Narszara, “I have almost finished my armour designs. I’ll let you look them over when you return from your trip.”

At this point the Star Guardian has been going straight up and has just reach the upper atmosphere. Vance and Sam are gaping at the view.

I admit it is pretty impressive, but as I have been throughout the solar system before, I’m more interested in visiting new ones like Epsilon Eridani.

The journey is quick and rather boring. Space is big. Big and empty. None of the government spaceships were anywhere near us and we weren’t going by Europa so we didn’t encounter anybody. Not to mention nobody, but the Sangor could detect the Star Guardian through her stealth field and the invisibility cloak kept anyone from just looking out the window and spotting us.

“Boring isn’t it,” notes Vance after roughly forty minutes.

“As least it’s isn’t slow as it could be,” I reply, “The Star Guardian can do 0.565 on her sub-light engines while most ships are lucky if they can do 0.2.”

“Oh,” says Vance, “How long left?”

“Until we can jump to the Epsilon Eridani System?” I reply, “About a few minutes.”

“Wait,” says Sam, “Aren’t we warping or using hyperspace? Mum has always said that starships used warp drives and hyper drives because jump drives were too dangerous.”

“Most are,” I answer, “Our jump drives and those of the Sangor are completely safe and stable unlike everyone else’s. Jump drives are much faster than hyper drives or warp drives.”

“But don’t they need jump points to enter jump space?”

“Jump points can be used to go anywhere, not just nearby systems,” I explain, “Hyperspace is basically in normal speed, but just going at FTL while you can enter warp space at anytime to go anywhere, you have to be aimed at your location, limiting where you can warp in and out pretty much like the jump point limit where you can jump to and from. While warp drives and hyper drives are good for the masses, if you got a good jump drive, it’s better as it is faster and you can go much further.”

“I guess that makes sense,” says Sam, but I doubt he understood much of it.

“So what are you called?” Sam asks the ship.

“The vessel is known as the Star Guardian as you know,” replies the ship, “But you’re grandparents referred to me by the name of Janelle.”

“Nice to meet you Janelle,” grins Sam.

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