Safe Travels

The obnoxious ping! of her telecom pulled Sakshi from a deep sleep. Head feeling full of molasses, she fumbled for the device on the side table and hit the voice activator. “Wha’?”

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“Rise and shine,” Amaz’s gravelly voice responded, crackling through the audio speaker. “Scanners just got a hit on a ship.”

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Well that didn’t sound right. Sakshi blinked sleep from her eyes and pushed herself to a sitting position – and smacked her head against the bunk. “Chack!” she swore. “Are we already in the Hyla system?” Last she knew, they were still in light-travel, and had no plans to stop until they reached their destination.

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“No. The coran capacitor was acting up again, so we dropped back to realspace to run a diagnostic. We picked up a distress beacon on an outlying frequency and Ma gave the okay to check it out.”

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“Lights on,” Sakshi instructed the room controls. Light began to filter from the sconces around her quarters, slowly, so her eyes could adjust. “A distress beacon? In the middle of nowhere?” She already had one arm out of her sleep-shirt.

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“That’s why we’re checking,” Amaz said. “Either we can lend a hand, or we get some extra scrap.”

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“Win-win,” she agreed, pulling on a jumpsuit. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

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The lights had come up to full brightness, illuminating her small, off-white room. Her bunkmate was still out, probably hunkered down in one of his hidey-holes, eating a late-night snack, leaving Sakshi with the room to herself. Considering how loudly H’rax snored, she felt lucky she’d gotten a few solid hours of sleep.

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Freeing her long black hair from the neckline of the jumpsuit, Sakshi took a few steps to stand in front of the small mirror hanging above her chest of drawers. Her dark eyes looked tired, even to her. She’d spent most of the day in the engine room, rewiring a phole transistor so it stopped sparking every time they applied the forward drivers. Between the transistor, the patchwork sensor array, and needing to constantly tweak the finicky fuel converter that refused to operate above seventy-three percent efficiency, the engine room was starting to become a full-time nuisance.

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Picking up the small container of sindoor from the top of the dresser, Sakshi dabbed the tip of her finger into the red powder before pressing it to her forehead, just between her eyes. The bindi in place, she recapped the container and grabbed a hair-tie. As she pulled on her boots, she tried to remember the dream she’d been having. It had been something mundane, but pleasant. She had a feeling it had something to do with her wife, Indukanta. She smiled.

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The door slid open at her touch, allowing her to step out into the circular hallway, its off-white walls cozy and clean. She braided her hair as she walked down the corridor towards the lift that would take her up to the cockpit. The Star Skipper wasn’t the newest ship on the market by any stretch of the imagination, but it was up-to-code and up-to-date. It wasn’t her ship, but Sakshi took pride in keeping it functioning at its highest capacity.

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There were already two people inside the cockpit when she stepped in. Amaz sat in the pilot’s seat, feet propped up on the control console, while Ma reclined in her custom chair just behind him. Screens flickered and hummed on every surface.

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Large and reptilian, with an impossibly strong tail and taloned appendages, Ma reminded Sakshi of a dragon from myths she’d heard as a child. Her snout lacked lips to form words, but the evolution of her people, the Calen, made up for it with hyper-developed throat muscles that allowed for speech. No one on the crew could pronounce her real name, but she took ‘Ma’ in stride.

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Amaz was much smaller than Ma, standing almost eye-level with Sakshi. Three blunted horns protruded from his forehead, ornamented with several strings of beads and charms commonly worn by Valeki men, which reminded Sakshi of wedding jewelry back home in Greater India. Short blue-grey fur covered Amaz head to toe, catching the lights of the opaque panels around them as he grinned at her. “Sleep well?”

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“Well enough. What’ve we got?”

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“Not sure yet,” Ma hissed between her pointy teeth. “They’re not responding to any hails on any frequency. It’s a marvel we picked it up at all. Not only is the signal weak, but it’s only broadcasting on an outdated wavelength.”

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Sakshi frowned. “Then how’d we pick it up?”

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“Amaz’s antique scanner,” Ma answered. “He was fiddling with it while the diagnostic ran, got a blip.”

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“And now I’ve got a visual,” Amaz announced. He placed a hand on the interface panel. “On-screen,” he instructed.

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The white panels around them flickered to life, mirroring the visuals outside. Stars and planets twinkled billions of lightyears away, blotting the inky void of space. And there, drifting in front of them, was the most decrepit, sorry excuse for a spaceship Sakshi had ever seen.

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It was upside-down from their perspective; a hodgepodge of parts and engines so varied it was a miracle it had ever gotten airborne. A bubble cockpit with transparent sidings was stacked on top of lumpy bulkheads, with rudimentary engines that must have broken every safety guideline in the book.

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Amaz whistled. “Now that’s a relic.”

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Ma bent forward to examine the readouts; Amaz leaned to the side to give her space. Ma’s slitted golden eyes read quickly. “No lifesigns, and life support is down. We’re not picking up readings of any kind.”

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“Dead in the water,” Sakshi mused.

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Amaz tapped one of his thick fingers on the directional input. “So, it’s up for scrapping?”

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Sakshi wrinkled her nose. “Doesn’t look like it’s even worth the effort. Look at those engines – how they take up a third of the ship?  I built a model like those in school for a history class. I can’t tell for sure, but those look like early-travel rockets.”

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“Might a museum take the parts?” Ma wondered.

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Sakshi considered it. “I’d have to get closer,” she finally said. “If I can get on board and take a look at the schematics and the state of them, I can assess them better. See if they’re worth salvaging.”

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An irritable huff sounded by Sakshi’s elbow. “And the distress beacon?”

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“Glad you could join us, H’rax,” Amaz grumbled.

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The Ta male stood with his clawed hands on his hips, less than half Sakshi’s height, his bleach-white scales in stark contrast with her own dark brown skin. His red eyes squinted behind light-filtering goggles. His people were subterranean, relying on vibrations to navigate and communicate; a translator headset let him speak to and hear the rest of the crew. “What if they got attacked? We need to check for danger first.”

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“Already done,” Amaz retorted. “Nothing else is within range of our scanners. We’re literally in the middle of nowhere. No one passes this way. I didn’t want to come this way,” he added, throwing a black-eyed glare at Ma.

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Ma just shrugged. “Fastest line between two points. If we want our payday before the new year, this is the way to go.”

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Amaz sighed. “I do like getting paid.”

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“Then find the docking port and let’s take a look.”

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