Spaceships and Magic, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Chapter 133: Subspace Skipping

A quick shower and some fresh clothes later, and I was back on the bridge sitting in my Captain's chair. 

From that chair, I had control of pretty much the entire ship with readouts coming from a holographic projector in the arm. 

It told me that we were only a few minutes from entering the star system that Atcaeon was a part of. 

From the information dossier that I had read, there were three planets in the system, with the inhabited world being the second of the two. The world was a little bigger than Earth and had two small moons, and for the most part had a fairly even distribution of water and land, meaning there would be plenty of space for the refugees on my ship to make into a home. 

That was if the planet was still around by the time we got there, of course. 

Something that I had become worried about in my time after napping was the idea that the Human Race may be taking this time as a time to strike out at the Guard while they were in a weakened state. 

Not only had the best-protected world in the Galaxy fallen but the actual leader of the Guard was also gone as well. Without him around, it wouldn't be hard to imagine that the humans of the galaxy would just sit back. 

No, instead I was expecting them to launch a full-frontal attack against any worlds that they had immediate access to, and Actaeon was definitely close enough to where Prespian City used to be through this subspace technology to make it a very viable target. 

<Human's don't have access to subspace travel, you need a magical ship core to get through to the underlayer. That being said, their FTL equivalent is only marginally slower, so you're right in assuming that Actaeon is still somewhat a target,> BB said, <Though, any planet in the galaxy is a viable target for the Everest.>

The last thing I wanted was to arrive in the galaxy at warp speed and run headfirst into the Everest of all ships. 

Instead, we were going to try something that I had picked up from a sci-fi series of novels. 

Light moved at a certain amount of speed. It was a constant across this universe just as much as my own, BB had told me. 

Thanks to that, we could arrive a few light hours away from Actaeon and scope out the condition of the planet. If everything looked fine, we'd be able to jump a few more light hours forward for another check, and so on and so forth until it was deemed safe enough for us to just jump right in on top of the planet. 

If at any point, however, we were able to see one of the Human ships orbiting or attacking Actaeon, we'd be able to bug out of the system before they could even see us, thanks to our ship having just only arrived in the system, and the light from it having to take a few hours to get to the planet. 

At first, when I had explained the idea to my bridge crew, I'd gotten some rather incredulous looks. Then, when I explained the reasoning behind my decisions, they started taking things a bit more seriously. 

It was nice to be appreciated for something tactical, especially considering most of this bridge crew had never heard of me before. I was proving myself to them, because while they had all been polite enough that was definitely something I needed to do. 

"Okay, drop us out of subspace and scan the area," I said, sitting up just a little bit straighter in my chair. 

We came to a sudden halt, which the inertial dampeners stopped us from feeling at all, and a long-range image of Actaeon showed up on the viewscreen at the head of the bridge. 

A series of space stations and orbital dockyards could be seen orbiting the world, but other than that everything looked normal as of the 16 hours ago mark. 

"Okay, nothing to worry about there, take us another six light hours forward," I commanded, gripping the arms of my chair tensely. 

The ship burst forward into movement once again, immersing itself in subspace, before emerging just a few moments later. The world was still normal, by all accounts. 

"Okay," I said, "One last burst, take us to 30 light minutes out and be ready to punch it if we need to get out of here."

We emerged from subspace a final time, and part of me was expecting to see utter devastation and destruction, but fortunately, everything seemed to be completely fine. I let out a breath and relaxed a little in my seat, releasing my death grip on the arms of my chairs. 

"Alright, bring us into comms range," I said, "They should be expecting us, but I didn't want to give anyone a fright." 

We blipped into subspace again, though this time it was such a quick transition that I barely even noticed it, and emerged within ten light minutes of the planet, which mercilessly was still unharmed. 

"This is Squadron Leader Jacob Lyre, arriving with a group of refugees from Prespian City, en route to Actaeon and requesting docking privileges, over and out," I said, trying my best to sound professional and not at all nervous about my first diplomatic contact with another world as a Squadron Leader. 

A reply came back sooner than I was expecting, no doubt due to some sort of subspace magical communication trickery. 

"We've been given permission to dock at port 14-A, the data should be in the ship computer," I said, "Bring us in, Ensign Kriff." 

"Aye sir," Kriff said, pushing the ship forward. 

It'd take us around a half hour to make our way through to the docking point that we'd been instructed to arrive at, and I intended to have my inner circle with me when we inevitably got teleported on board the space station.