First Contact

"Y'all stay away from me now, ya hear?" - Screams in the Dark, Great Grazing Field Studios, 14 PC3

"I keep screaming but God doesn't hear me." - Under an Empty Sky, Rigel-7 Press, 5381 PG

Two years prior it had been called jumpspace by almost every species. It even had fancy names for each 'layer' that allowed ships within it to travel multiple times the speed of light in realspace. Some were only less than a hundred C, the higher bands, where ships risked dissolving, a craft could travel tens of thousands times the speed of light. Travel within it was smooth, outside cameras seeing nothing more than swirling vapors that glowed with a sourceless light.

Jumpspace sat between two other spaces. The first, and lower, was the burnt hyperatomic plane that everyone called "Hellspace" or simply "Burn Space", or some variation of fire and burning; the second, and higher, was referred to as 'hyperspace' and was discovered by barely any species. It allowed travel at fantastic levels of speed. There was no worry about coming in inside the 'resonance zone' and being torn apart. It was as safe as could be expected, although there was always the chance of coming out of hyperspace and into a solid object.

But jumpspace, while often slower, was considered the safest.

Or, at least it had been.

First, there had been a shifting of the 'hyperlanes' AKA 'jump-rapids', where a ship could find itself flung at many multiples of normal speed along the twisted river within jumpspace.

Then had come the random leaks of Hellspace into jumpspace, leaks that had grown over time and appeared more and more often.

To top it off, as if that wasn't bad enough, tens of billions of screaming Terran shades had infested the entire jumpspace layer.

Two years ago it had been called jumpspace.

Now, it was called 'Ghostspace' or 'Shadespace' by almost every traveler.

The Flashbang Event had wiped shades out, but that was in realspace.

Ghostspace was still 'infected' so to speak.

There were precautions that could be taken. Not many, but some.

Mylar with a thin layer of aluminum oxide would block them. They could be blocked by the color red. Recordings of howlings of dogbois would send them fleeing. Iron, not alloyed, but pure iron, could block them. Sodium-chloride could keep them from crossing.

Many ships had added new armor. A composite layer of iron oxide, a layer of crystallized sodium chloride. Then a layer of red colored mylar with an aluminum oxide core.

Most ships had an external layer, an internal layer sandwiched in between standard hull plating, then a layer inside.

While in Ghostspace, most ships kept sodium lights burning in the hallways, red lights other places. Shadows were quickly ID'd by VI's and lights shifted to them.

High tech societies that had mastered faster than light travel were learning to fear the dark and what might lurk within it again.

Captain VoLagum was the owner/operator of the Junker's Guild registered ship "Uwu wuzzat?", a smaller vessel capable of hauling only a few megatons of weight, he and his crew ran small items like passengers or 'specialty cargo' that others wouldn't.

He'd gotten lucky, and he knew it. He was in mid-flight during the Shade Night and had managed to keep the shades from overwhelming his ship before the countermeasures were passed on.

While his vessel was a smaller vessel, it was a smaller vessel for junker ships. Which meant that he was the size of a Space Force destroyer.

That meant buying a lot of mass to run off the lights and the like he needed.

When the Flash happened, he'd been in a stellar system trying to deliver the warnings and countermeasures.

The ship's molycircs died a few hours later, the main reactor following it. The secondary reactor was a salvaged Space Force reactor, and it had held up a lot better.

Still, he had been stuck at a remote space station for a couple of months while his ship was repaired and he hired new crew. The damage to the ship's computer systems had been extensive and patchwork, as he had hardened military systems mixed in with off the shelf components and systems of various expense and quality.

Which is why he was sitting in the empty bar, nursing his drink so slowly that the bartender VI kept going into sleep mode.

He looked up when a trio pushed through the plastic strips hanging down from the doorframe. In the lead was something Captain VoLagum hadn't seen that often.

A Terran.

Sure, he'd seen the hordes of them rawfulstomping the Lanaktallan, Precursor Autonomous War Machines, the Dwellerspawn, the Atrekan, but since the Xenocide Event they were pretty much non-existent.

The one walking in was dressed strange and looked stranger.

The first thing Captain Lag noticed was how the stranger's eyes seemed to be hidden by the brim of his floppy wide-brimmed soft hat. His face was worn, gray in the bristles around his chin. The stranger obviously looked around, taking in the entirety of the bar. He had one what looked like a blanket wrapped around him, worn denim jeans, and a pair of leather boots with a high heel and pointed toes.

After him came in a boxy little robot whose head was more optics and sensors than somewhere a VI braincase could be located.

The robot looked as old and worn as the Terran.

Next was a Hashenesh that was carrying what Captain Lag had learned was a double-barrel breech action shotgun, the stock painted red. The Hashenesh looked around carefully, checking the shadows carefully, then followed the Terran and the robot.

Captain Lag felt a slight flutter of nervousness as the Terran stopped in front of the table he was sitting at. The eyes were suddenly visible.

Cold gunmetal gray eyes.

"You Captain VoLagum, owner, operator, Captain of the 'Uwu wuzzat?', a registered Junker's Guild salvage and transportation vessel," the Terran said.

His voice was rough and raspy, pitched low.

Captain Lag simply stared up, his beer forgotten.

The Terran dug a thick brown smokestick out of his pocket, along with a battered steel and flint striker, and lit the smokestick, puffing on it a few times.

"Well?" the Terran asked.

"I am," Captain VoLagum stated. He waited for a translator to work and was surprised when the Terran merely nodded slowly.

"Your ship is down for repairs. The station techs can't figure out what's wrong with it, and you're just sitting here losing money while they wander around trying to remember to breathe and chew gum at the same time," the Terran said.

Captain Lag nodded jerkily. "Yes. My ship was badly damaged by the Flash."

There was silence for a moment before the Terran exhaled a long stream of smoke and spoke again.

"I need passage to a world. No name, just a survey number. I'll need dropship passage to the world. You will be paid half in advance, half when I step off the dropship. During the transit time I will provide access to my skills in any acceptable manner you deem necessary," the Terran said.

Captain Lag thought about it for a moment.

Terrans were tough. They were smart. They had a wide range of technical skills. They had almost no fear of death. They lived for centuries, although some said they never truly died.

"My ship is still largely non-functional," Captain Lag said.

The Terran nodded. Captain Lag noticed that the Hashenesh and the robot were still, just looking around carefully.

"Of course it is. You had the primary reactors replaced, your sensors replaced, and now your computer core is throwing errors everywhere. Your jumpdrive core primary energy buffers are throwing errors and you can't figure out why, even though you keep replacing things," the Terran said, his voice still low and raspy.

"I suppose you can fix it?" Captain Lag said.

The Terran shrugged. "Perhaps. I have extensive experience repairing cobbled together systems with a wide variety of quality, many of the parts not designed to work together."

"And in Shadespace?" Captain Lag asked.

The Terran shrugged again. "I'll defend the ship to the best of my ability."

The Hashenesh snorted.

"It won't do my any good if we get taken out by shades an hour into jumpspace," the Terran finished.

Captain Lag swallowed down the rest of his drink and stood up, dusting off his hands.

"Well, let's get you a berth," he said.

-----

The Terran and his two companions were silent as they went from the airlock to the main passage, then down to the living quarters. The rooms were spartan, small, lit with red lights at all times, a sodium light on a motion-phasic detector.

Captain Lag expected some protest at how small the room with a bunkbed was. Instead, the Terran merely examined the power port, nodded, then tossed his battered bags onto the bed. The Hashenesh, who Captain Lag expected to complain, just tossed a satchel on the bottom bunk. The robot moved over and plugged into the power port, a jaunty little tune playing when the connection was established.

The Terran tossed the blanket looking wrap on the bed, revealing that he wore a leather vest, two crossed gunbelts, and a heavy checkered flannel shirt.

The Terran turned around and looked at Captain Lag. "Take me to an access port or a work terminal. Let's get a look at your computer systems first."

Despite Captain Lag's expectations, the Terran didn't bring along a computer.

The Hashenesh simply brought along the double barreled shotgun.

Computer maintenance was up one level and six bulkhead struts forward. The room was small, cramped, and the entire room was just a clutter of jury-rigged parts.

The Terran walked in, brushed some cabling out of the way, and sat down in the chair. He took a moment to adjust it, then set his fingers on the primary I/O port.

Captain Lag felt his eye ridges go up in shock as the computer ran POST several times and then suddenly booted up in safe mode.

It was more than the station techs had been able to do in four weeks.

The other thing that startled the Captain was how fast the data flashed by. He could see some screens that were up for almost a full second, but in the input boxes filled up almost too fast for the 2.5D 240p screen's refresh rate to keep up.

It reboot several more times, sometimes not getting past the POST and BIOS settings.

Finally it came up in safe-mode and the Terran reached into his pocket, pulling out a can of narcrobrew. He handed it to the Hashenesh, then pulled out one for himself that he cracked open with the fingers on the hand he held the can with. The Hashenesh pried up the metal lever pull-tab and took a long drink as the Terran ran through more screens.

"How are you doing that with just the I/O port? How are you doing it so fast?" Captain Lag asked.

"Genetics," was all the Terran said.

The Hashenesh just shrugged when Captain Lag looked at him.

"Found a lot of your problems," the Terran said. He closed his eyes for a moment, then reached out and grabbed a data-platter that had ejected from the data-port. The rectangular piece of plastic, an inch thick, had spools of iron-oxide on plastic ribbon inside.

"Here, Dana'ahsh. Take this to the public data-terminal and shove it in the slot. It'll pull the drivers I need," the Terran said. "Take Wally with you."

The Hashenesh nodded, accepting the data-platter, then moved away.

"How do you prefer to be addressed?" Captain Lag asked.

"Call me Harry," the Terran said. He shrugged. "Terran, Hey-You, or You-Terran are all fine too."

Captain Lag nodded. "Aren't you worried at directly accessing the computers? The station technicians are afraid of finding a shade."

The Terran just shrugged again. "You've had a couple. I've handled shades before," he looked at Captain Lag. "Easy way to purge a lot of them is to go into the BIOS settings, lower the minimum core processor and RAM voltage, raise the maximum to max tolerance for the voltage on both. Then you have the system reboot with a full RAM and core processor stress test that flips back and forth between minimum and maximum voltage."

To Captain Lag, it might as well have been Precursor babbling.

The Terran took another drink and pushed his finger against the I/O port again.

"Most computer systems are designed to handle a slight bit of phasic energy intrusion, so you can do phasic protective buffer degaussing with it and the shades fuck off to somewhere we don't have to care about," the Terran said.

Screens flickered to life, showing different diagnostic screens that flashed by rapidly.

"Your biggest problem is that you have OEM plug and play drivers for your equipment. You primary reactor is stable, but not really usable since you're using standard one-size-fits-all drivers for a lot of the diagnostic and control systems," the Terran, Harry, said.

"The technicians ran the software installation pack," Captain Lag said, slightly defensively.

"And ran the autopatcher, then installed other software and ran their autopatchers," the Terran shrugged. "It's all OEM stuff. All generic drivers," he took a drink off the can. "It'd work, I guess," he shrugged, a motion that Captain Lag realized the Terran probably wasn't aware he was doing. "The big problem is they didn't reinstall the drivers on the rest of the system, so the software can't really talk to one another."

"Oh," Captain Lag said. "How many days will it take to repair?"

The Terran leaned back and again Captain Lag's eyebrow ridges raised in shock.

A slightly glittering hologram of the Terran stayed behind, the fingertips stuck in the I/O Port.

"Once Dana'ahsh gets back? Probably an hour or two for the software. Then we'll run diagnostics, see what hardware is slagged," the Terran said. "Wally can fab you up the parts once we give him the templates and access to your mass tanks. Any luck, a day, maybe two, and we'll have your ship ready to go."

Captain Lag stared for a long moment.

"How do you know all of this, human? Were you a starship engineer?" he asked.

The Terran just shrugged again.

"You just pick stuff up."