What popped up was... interesting.

  It had the same under-slung turret setup that Rekki-Ricky had been trying to emulate, in addition to one on top, but much smaller in size, and it was not a tracking plasma battery, it was...

  “Are those point defense plasma shotguns? Like I have on my hull?” I asked, recognizing them.

  “Incorrect, those are magnetic accelerator's that can sling a variety of ammunition, however they were the initial design used as the basis for the plasma shotgun point defenses. As you saw on Hou Ji plasma weaponry does not work well in atmosphere, so mostly solid projectiles are used.” Hook educated me.

  I was more than a little disappointed. The plasma shotguns had proven themselves time and again as my most solid defensive option when things got into cqc, and having a fighter with that as a defensive option really seemed... optimal to me.

  “But... this fighter is meant to work in space, so we would not have to worry about that.” I said.

  “Indeed not.” Hook said cryptically.

  I gave Hook the cyber side-eye.

  “You are in a mood.” I said to Hook.

  “I do not have moods.” Hook replied unconvincingly.

  I waffled on pursuing that but my urge to dive into design let me ignore that and move on.

  I searched through the list of plasma weapons we could make and found an older model plasma cannon. It used the same technology that was in the tracking plasma weapons on Hook but without the tracking, just a sphere of self contained plasma that would unload a whole heap of hurt on whatever it hit. I then scrapped the tracking plasma turret in the bottom and tried to replace it with two smaller plasma shotgun turrets, both top and bottom, like the atmospheric fighter, but...

  “This is no good. With the plasma this can hold, firing everything all at once, would leave the entire fighter dead in space after... thirty seconds.”

  “The plasma shotguns drain plasma quite rapidly in order to keep up their hail of shots for defense.” Hook replied.

  “Could I stick a reactor in it? Let it produce it's own plasma?” I asked.

  I was just about to look through the list of plasma reactor designs when I got a notification that we were receiving a hail.

  I dropped into real time to catch the transmission as it was received through my comms buffer.

  “...G vessel, hold your position and transmit credentials. The system of Triarii is under blockade pending change of leadership, and is under imperial protection. No non-imperial vessel is allowed to enter without scientific, trade, or diplomatic credentials. If you attempt to cross our exclusion zone, the coordinates of which are included in this transmission, you will be destroyed. Ave imperator. Margrave Samedi out” The transmission came from the largest vessel, the margrave class.

  “Well... Guess we have to hope this works.” I said, as I cut my drives and spun the ship, slowing it down as I transmitted our scientific credentials along with the scientific paper we had doctored.

  I wondered if this kind of doctoring was a common occurrence... It couldn't be rare if Doctor Smith had heard of it. Were they looking out for this? Would they take one look at the paper and realized we'd cut out enormous portions?

  I realized belatedly I had dropped into a higher reference frame without knowing it and forced myself back into real time.

  I didn't know I could do that subconsciously...

  I waited.

  For one minute.

  Then two.

  Then two minutes five seconds.

  Damnit I slipped into a higher reference frame again, why was that happening?

  I opened up a game in another window, a little top down strategy game to calm my nerves, and just hung there, outside of their exclusion zone, which I had displayed for me as a glowing red sphere around the jump point, and waited.

  It took nearly thirty minutes, I had progressed my base in the game all the way to the point that I was raiding vessels from other islands and had begun awakening my god when I finally got a response.

  “Your credentials check out, thanks for the information. The margrave extends his thanks and appreciation for scientists like yours. The sharing of information and advancement of our society is all that separates us from the animals. Ave Imperator” The message ended.

  Huh... That was odd.

  But not unwelcome, I reignited the drives and sent us towards the jump point.

  As we entered the exclusion zone one of the Baron class vessels moved to take up a position off our starboard, pacing us as we entered the jump point.

  At its first maneuver I was a little jumpy until I realized it was just escorting me into the transit point.

  “Hopefully we will have a less eventful transit this time.” I said to no one in particular.

  “One can hope Captain.” Hook replied to me.

  I watched the upcoming transit point.

  With a start I realized I should notify everyone.

  Checking the camera's quickly, I saw that Doctor Smith, Megan, and Carolina were asleep, so I surreptitiously activated their wall screens... wall screens.... where did that come from.

  “Hook, since when did they have wall screens in their rooms?” I asked.

  “Since Chief Carolina requested them, and they fell under the authority granted a chief engineer. That being the fabrication of equipment necessary for ship operation.” Hook replied.

  “Oh.” I said.

  I felt... a little... off. It didn't feel right that such orders didn't go through me...

  But then again, what was the point of having a chief engineer if they couldn't engineer things.

  I squashed the uneasy feeling.

  I had gotten too used to being in absolute control of the ship.

  Still.

  It felt off.

  “Would you like me to hold any and all future modifications until they are verified and run by you? I already have multiple triggers in place that prevent any significant alterations to the ship that would affect maneuverability or combat capability without your direct acknowledgment. Those were not triggered this time as I believed allowing the chief engineer the ability to streamline the usage of the ship for other crewmembers to be a low enough impact operation that it would not need your input, but I can adjust those settings for the future.”

  Hook sounded almost panicked.

  Scratch that, Hook DID sound panicked.

  “It's fine Hook, it's just weird, the ship feels like my body and it feels like someone altering something without letting me know...” I said to Hook.

  “Does that mean you want me to restrict the chief engineer from such changes?” Hook attempted to verify.

  “No, she needs to be able to do that to do her job, I just need to get over myself. I wanted her aboard, and now I have to deal with it.”

  “But you didn't want the crew members from Hou Ji onboard, correct Captain?” Hook asked.

  I was silent.

  “They are stuck with us now, and I would feel worse about just cutting them lose at this point. Does that answer your question?” I replied.

  I completed what I had initially been doing before being weirded out by the wall screens, and put up a silent warning for everyone still sleeping.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  We had gotten in range to activate the jump drive, but I held off.

  I wanted to test a theory that had come to me in a dream the last time I had taken a break... or one of the times before... It felt like the times I took a break and disconnected from the ship were more a dream than real recently.

  The theory was, what if transit points were transit points because that is where either the reality that was the void, sub space, transit space, whatever, overlapped with our reality, or where the separation between them thinned.

  If that was the case, maybe the glimpses I got while in the void would happen at the transit point.

  So I drifted, getting my ship closer to the center of the transit point with small bursts of cold gas thrusters before I triggered anything.

  I spent a long time there, just floating. Every few minutes I would think I felt something, only for the feeling to slip away.

  We had been at it for half an hour when the imperial vessels sent a message.

  “C.O.G. Vessel Hook, is your jump-drive inoperable? Do you require assistance?” One of the smaller vessels, the one that escorted me in and was still the closest of the three, sent.

  Odd, I was expecting something more authoritarian, not asking if I needed help.

  “Negative, there was something on sensors about this jump point that made me want to take a closer look. Probably nothing. I am running diagnostics as we spe...” I was saying, and then a flash hit.

  And we were in the void.

  ***********************************************************************************

  My head pounded.

  I felt like I had gone deaf, which was weird because I was still part of the ship, and couldn't hear anything.

  But it all seemed... fuzzy.

  '...tain...'

  I thought I heard something.

  Q??????????????????U????????????????E???????R????????????Y?????????????????:????????????????????? ???????????????S??????????????????T????????????????????A???????????T????????????????????U??????????????????S????????????????????????????????????

  Oh that hurt. Ow.

  “..YDEN!” Okay I definitely heard something there.

  C??????O???M??????M????E????N???C????????E?????????? ????????E?????????M?????????E???R????????G????????E?????????N???????C??????Y??????? ??????D??????I??????S?????C???????O??????N?????????N????E??????C?????T??????? ???Y?????/???????N???????????????

  Okay that last bit definitely came from Dog-bot...

  What was going on?

  Just then a flash hit, and I saw the Void, laid out before me.

  In the vast distance I saw the tentacle, our ever present companion in the void.

  At least we weren't inside it this time.

  “Brayden! Can you hear me?” That was Carolina, where was her voice coming from...

  Ah, there it was, the audio pickups from the helm chair where my body was...

  Why was she there.

  And just then I had a flash.

  The void.

  We were in the void.

  How the hell had we gotten into the void, did I trigger the drive and not remember?

  I looked back through the logs for an instance of the transit drive triggering...

  The last time I triggered it had been days ago, when I had taken us out of the void into the last system.

  “How did we get into the void?” I said over the speakers.

  “What?” Came Carolina's surprised question.

  “Transit space, Jump space I mean. I was getting ready for us to jump but... I didn't engage the drive. But we're here.”

  I looked through the Camera into the bridge. Carolina was hovering over me and had my medication in a syringe it looked like, ready to be inserted.

  “I'm pulling you out Brayden, You were unresponsive and Hook was panicking, and apparently locked out of a lot of systems. They had to use a back door to contact me and I had to force the bridge door.”

  I wanted to protest... but with the last flash we seemed to be... fine. The tentacle was far, far away and I didn't see anything else that could concern me.

  “Okay... sure...” I said. Still confused but willing to trust her.

  Through the camera I watched as she injected me through the port, then tapped a few buttons.

  And I was me again.

  I felt... small.

  And wet.

  I touched my nose.

  My fingers came away bloody.

  “Oh that's probably not good.” I said.

  “Let's get you down to medical. I'll grab Doctor Smith after we get you on the table.”

  I nodded, and automatically reached for her arm, then stopped, as pain shot through it. I reached out with the other one, the metal one, and aside from some pain in my shoulder, I was alright.. She patted my hand reassuringly, but after a few steps I realized I was not off balance. In pain yes, but no vertigo.

  My mind just felt... weird.

  Also the nose bleed was worrying.

  I felt some warm trickling down the side of my neck and felt there.

  More blood

  Ears were bleeding too.

  Not good.

  We made our way down to the medical bay, and on the way I cataloged a host of new pains. It felt like my right ankle was sprained, and I swear my hips clicked every couple of steps, like they were trying to slot back into place but hadn't quite gotten there. Each click radiated pain.

  I dutifully ignored this much like I had ignored my other symptoms for most of my life while Carolina got me settled into the medical bed.

  “I'm going to get Doctor Smith. You stay.” she said, pointing at me like I was a misbehaving dog.

  I mean.

  I'm not THAT bad about taking care of myself.

  I engaged the auto doc and queried the readings into my hud.

  The big scary spider monstrosity that C.O.G. Thought made an amazing auto-doc, but that everyone who was actually SANE thought looked monstrously terrifying deployed over me.

  One of the arms immediately went to my new cyber arm; that I had honestly completely forgotten was metal in the panic, and plugged in.

  Another deployed a tendril that slipped around underneath the table, and plugged in to the port at the back of my skull through a hole in the bed I didn't know was there.

  The other arms began holding up various devices and running them over me, a few prodded at me, I got a pop-up asking me to agree to a blood sample, to which I pressed yes to. A syringe plunged into my neck immediately after and painfully extracted said sample, before rotating away.

  “Auto-doc definitely could use an improved bedside manner.” I muttered, as the door to the medical bay opened.

  There was an out of breath Doctor Smith being followed by Carolina, who did not look out of breath but was looking at the doctor with surprise.

  “You didn't have to run Doc, I'm fine.” I said.

  “You lost consciousness while connected to the ship, that alone...” Doctor Smith stopped to pant.

  “That alone would bring your doctor running, you shouldn't be able to lose consciousness while connected, not without suffering gross... Gross...” Doctor Smith held up one hand while he held his side, stretching out a stitch.

  “Gross physical trauma.” Doctor Smith said, finishing his stretch before moving over to the Medical bed.

  “Not to mention, you are in control of our food, air, and water, and if you died we would all die on this ship. SO just a little self interest there.” Doctor Smith said with a wry smile

  “Just a little.” I responded, unable to move my head due to the plug in it.

  “Can you make out what this thing is saying? I see red spots in parts of my spine and a whole lot of errors around my head-skull, but I'm also seeing errors... well everywhere else...” I said, trying to interpret the data from the machine.