“She’s all fueled up, ready to go, and ground preflight complete, sir,” a crew chief called as she jogged up and snapped off a salute. “Anything I can get you?”
Justin returned her salute before replying, “No, Chief. If it’s all the same, I’ll climb in, do my preflight, and stand by to get underway. Colonel Tehrani wants me in space by oh seven hundred, and it's already oh six thirty.”
“Roger that, sir. Godspeed out there.”
“You too.” As Justin put one leg on the first rung of the ladder leading up to the fighter’s cockpit, he realized that the old animosity he’d felt whenever someone mentioned God was gone. I am changing. That’s for sure.
It took a few minutes to settle into the pilot’s chair and configure everything precisely to his liking. Justin toggled a few of the displays to secondary modes, as he preferred how they displayed information. He sealed his flight helmet and performed a pressure check. All was a go. “Alpha One to flight.”
“This is the boss. Negative on Alpha One call sign, Captain. We’re going with Epsilon One for this mission.” The air boss was the senior officer in charge of all flight operations within a fifty-kilometer radius of the carrier.
“Understood, ma’am. Epsilon One has completed preflight, and I’m ready to depart on your order.”
“Stand by, Epsilon One. Colonel Tehrani would like a word.”
Tehrani’s voice filled the commlink. “Can you hear me, Captain Spencer?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I wish you good luck out there and pray that Allah may bless your mission and return you safely to us. As I’m sure the CAG has already said, don’t take too many crazy chances.”
“In triplicate, ma’am.”
“May we meet again, insha Allah.”
Justin wasn’t sure what the Arabic saying meant, but he appreciated the sentiment all the same. “Thank you, ma’am. Godspeed.”
“Tehrani out.”
A few moments later, the air boss cut back in. “You’re cleared to depart, Epsilon One.”
“Acknowledged.” Justin toggled his engines from idle to full power and accelerated out of the hangar bay, directly into the void. The Ghost raced away from the Greengold, each second putting more distance between him and the carrier. At five hundred kilometers, he pulled up the navigation computer and double-checked the coordinates for the Lagoon Nebula. They were supposed to drop him near a freighter carrying large quantities of rare earth minerals.
“Justin, can you hear me?” Feldstein’s voice cut into the commlink on a private channel.
What? He toggled his mic. “Yeah. Where are you?”
“I’m bouncing a signal off my Sabre’s comms system. Look, I want to apologize for what I said last night. I was out of line, and I don’t want to take a chance on those being our last words.”
Justin closed his eyes for a moment. “They won’t be, and neither will these. Why’s everybody acting so weird?”
“Because you’re flying into a nebula, Justin.”
“I guess there is that,” he replied with a chuckle. “All I’m doing is tagging a bad guy. That’s it. No heroics.” We cannot be having this conversation. Everything in Justin’s mind screamed they were getting too close to each other again, and he wouldn’t take the chance.
“Okay. I’m praying for you.”
Again, Justin marveled at how even a month earlier, he would’ve bristled at an offhand comment about prayer. Today, he welcomed it. “Thanks. I gotta get the Lawrence drive calibrated and engaged. See you on the flip side, Dvora.”
“You too.”
The private channel disappeared, leaving Justin in silence. Nothing was left to do except finishing plotting the jump. Using the Ghost’s navigation system, he entered the XYZ coordinates provided by Lieutenant Mitzner. Once validated, the navcomp’s Lawrence drive activation button turned green. Here goes nothing. Justin pressed his thumb on it, resulting in a satisfying click. “Epsilon One engaging FTL.”
Similar to the effect on a ship, the screens dimmed throughout the cockpit. Justin could’ve sworn the life-support heating system blinked for a moment, causing the craft to grow momentarily colder. A spacial vortex formed in front of the fighter and grew larger by the second until it encompassed the Ghost.
Justin scanned the wormhole and confirmed it was stable. He increased his throttle, sending his fighter into its beckoning maw. Immediately, Justin closed his eyes for the transit. He’d learned the hard way during the attack on Sol that watching the interior as his craft flew through was a recipe for coming close to vomiting.
A few seconds later, the Ghost popped out the other side, and Justin opened his eyes. The first thing he realized was how different the void of open space was compared to the interior of a nebula. Brightly colored clouds of ionized gas were laid out in front of him. They ranged from orange to red to blue. I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight. Awestruck, he took a minute to quit staring at the beauty of the stellar nursery and focus on his task.
A streak of energy Justin could only describe as akin to lightning erupted from one cloud to another, barely missing his craft. That was enough to bring him out of his rumination. He tightened his grip on the flight stick and kicked up the throttle to half of maximum speed. Okay, time to start looking for this freighter.
Sensor returns were short-range at best. Justin scanned his HUD and saw flickering contacts at three hundred kilometers, but there wasn’t enough resolution to determine what they were. If they’re anything. They could be energy discharges, for all I know. He decided to implement a grid search for the freighter and used the navigation computer to plot a series of waypoints. A button press later, the autopilot was engaged.
Justin sat back, brought up the expanded sensor screen, and stared at it, looking for contacts. Time passed slowly, and after fifteen minutes that felt like three hours, he realized he was no closer to finding the freighter than when he’d started. I’ve
