The bridge was a spacious circular room, with six workstations.  The captain’s chair and first officers were right next to each other in the center.  Rilok didn’t sit there though, he was at the navigation and operations console which was at a right angle from the captain about ten feet away, and facing toward the center of the bridge.  Telidur was at the pilot’s console, which was on a ten feet left diagonal from the captain, and the console faced the captain.

There were two more consoles in the back of the bridge, the one on the right was the engineering console where Jillintara sat, and faced the captain’s chair.  Mine was similarly placed to a left angle, and was the weapons console.

The bridge was also filled with holographic emitters, which made the round circular wall whatever we wanted it to be, a wall, a waterfall, or what it was now, which was the space around us in a three sixty circle.  There were also holograms on the bridge of our position to the moon around the gas giant, other vessels, mining facilities, and all other assets in the system.  I was also using my overlay to display weapons status and availability. 

Rilok said, “We’re loaded and buttoned up captain, we’ve also been cleared to leave the area.”

Jillintara said, “All systems are online captain.”

Vik said, “Set a course to Vehiri, and engage.  Move us out at a hundred gravities.”

Rilok said, “Course set.”

Telidur said, “Engaging.”

It was slower than the maximum acceleration, by half, but would take much less power than two hundred gravities would.  We also only needed to go two A.U. to reach the point we could safely enter subspace.  The gas giant was pretty far out from the sun already, over three A.U.s.  At that acceleration, it would be a little less than ten hours to cover that remaining distance to five A.U.s, which was the safe distance we needed from the sun.  It would be even faster if we didn’t have to flip ship halfway, but entering subspace while at a good portion of light speed would be a fatal error.

Vik turned to me, “I want you to review our mission logs, take a look at what we’ve done so far, and give some thought to suggestions.  I don’t necessarily need them today, we have a couple of days to drop off our shipment before we need to point the ship somewhere.  Once you’re caught up on the mission, I want you to run a simulation or two.”

“Yes captain.”

I brought up the logs and started to read.

They’d been working on this for a few months already, and a quick glance at the dates on the other mission logs told me that was unusual.  Which meant their usual tactics to figuring out what the Stolavii were up to weren’t working.

So far, they’d managed to take one pirate unaware, and have acted as bait three times.  The last time, the ship was almost destroyed, and they’d barely won the battle against a cruiser and two destroyers, which was why the ship had been in refit.  In all cases the Stolavii crews they questioned had no idea what was happening to all the humans.  It seemed like a simplistic approach, but clearly it was a successful one in the past.  This time though, the Stolavii involved weren’t spreading tales, and good operational security made our current approach unworkable.

I’d already been told trying to get access to their data wouldn’t work.  Intelligent computers were the gatekeepers, and a simple code vulnerability wouldn’t work like it would on Earth.  Most likely whatever reason they were stealing humans, was only accessible to those on that mission anyway. 

Going to their home world was out, the mission was to find the truth and only stop their plans if it was a threat to the empire.  We couldn’t even sneak in, the Stolavii only let their own on the planet.  Even the slaves didn’t step foot on their world.  Point was, the heart of the mission was to avert a war if possible, not start one.

Simply searching about six thousand star systems would take forever.  Not quite that long, but at least two years, and that’s if we could afford to not stop our search, which we couldn’t.  The wear and tear on the ship, power usage, resource usage, and food requirements, meant we’d have to stop too often to play merchant, which would add at least another year.  It wasn’t a viable option.

Which really, left random chance that we’d bait the right ship.  There had to be a better way to do it, but I wasn’t sure how.  What if the Stolavii on that mission to abduct all those extra humans are under strict orders not to attack targets of opportunity?  Then we’d really be screwed.  I wasn’t sure how likely that was, but they were mercenaries, not just pirates.  If they were paid enough compensation to ignore other opportunities I’d imagine they’d do as they were told.

An obvious alternate approach would be to lie in wait in the Sol system, and then take the next ship that pinched humans off the surface.  Problem was, they’d see us, and abort.  Plus, we’d still need an element of luck on our side, because other ships were still going there simply to take a few humans to supplement their slave crew due to attrition through death.  I supposed I might have even been lucky to get picked up by one of those, who knew what was happening to the rest of the humans taken?

I’d have to let it stew in my mind for a while, and learn exactly what this ship was capable of.  I was surprised that she had managed to best one of her class, as well as two destroyer escorts, even if barely.  Most of the credit for that goes to Vik’s plan and having Jillintara I’d imagine.  The one thing I did know for sure is this ship had the same weapon systems as all the other cruisers, it’d been in the download.  It had been a tactical victory against greater odds, not a technological one.

Well, if it was an easy problem to solve, Vik would’ve had it all figured out by now.

Caught up in the problem, if not a workable solution, I decided to put it on the back burner and let my sub-conscious take a crack at it, and focused on the simulations the captain had waiting for me.  There were quite a bunch of them, and any illusions I’d had of fast space battles immediately died.

The first one had us intercepting four enemy destroyers, which would take two hours.  Real battles could take days in a star system.  In fact, the simulation itself had started with a briefing and already four hours into the engagement.  I learned the missiles had a much better reach than the plasma weapons.  The latter were almost worthless if the enemy ship was further than a light second away. 

Missiles were another matter, but they were slower, and despite their four hundred gravity acceleration to chase down ships, their powered range was limited to about two light minutes, or a quarter A.U.  After that they’d be ballistic, at a decent percentage of light speed, but still a dumb projectile.  An enemy ship could easily evade it at that point by slightly changing course.

I wondered why they didn’t have a two-stage system to save some of the acceleration for later, but decided it was probably a money issue.

I spent the rest of the day working the console, trying hard to concentrate and not think about my dinner with Vik tonight, and speculate on what might happen.  What my body wanted was quite clear, but my mind was still unsure.  Humans didn’t really mix sex and work, or at least when they did it often led to disaster, but clearly the Isythians were different.

I was a confident young woman when it came to killing, fighting, and assassinations.  Fearless even, but I’d been avoiding entanglements my whole life in the fear that my handlers would either take me out, or the person I befriended or loved.  Now that I was free, and able to pursue others, it was rather daunting.  It didn’t help, that those others were all aliens, hot aliens yes, but alien.

Another part of me wondered how the hell I ended up here, a weapons officer on an experimental ship with just four other aliens, one of those an artificial intelligence.  There was still a surreal quality to it all as well, my mind hadn’t really accepted it yet.  It’d been less than a week since I’d been taken, and I kept waiting for my mind to catch up, and for me to lose it.  Maybe I wouldn’t, I wasn’t sure.

Regardless, sexual relief sounded like a good plan, I just worried I’d regret it.  This wasn’t a one-night stand, where I could sneak out after he fell asleep, and never see him again.  He was my captain, and we would form a link of some kind, and I’d see him every day for the next year at least, and probably longer than that.

Right, I needed to focus on the simulation, and not my sex life and possibly the first ever real relationships I’d ever have in this life.  Easier said than done.  I shook my head, and pushed it all down.  I could worry about it all later.

I suppressed a snort, brilliant plan Lori, worry about it after your dinner date and you fuck his brains out.  Still, I did manage to get back to the simulation.  Which comprised of swapping missile fire for almost an hour, and then finishing up with plasma at close range.

I did very well where fast reflexes were required, assigning point defense, and responding to simulated orders, but there was a lot of room for improvement in the places I needed to fill in the blanks.  There was an art to spoofing and countermeasures that I needed to get a handle on, and most of my enhancements were worthless in a space battle.  Sure, I wouldn’t miss the button I intended to press, even if I wasn’t looking, and my reaction speed and lack of hesitation were slightly better than most, but that only went so far.

My intuition was also completely worthless, at least in a simulation.  I wondered if real combat would be any different, or if those ships would just be too far away for my sixth sense to lock onto.  Regardless, I was sure I’d be running simulations for the foreseeable future, I had all the knowledge I needed from the download, but information wasn’t the same as experience.

The simulations were long, between that and catching up on the mission logs, I’d only managed to get two of them done before our bridge shift was up.  We all left, including Jillintara.  I didn’t think too hard about that, she was both off shift, and controlling the ship, the idea of it gave me a headache.  Since she had a real body, did she need sleep?  If she did, how did she control the ship at the same time?  I guess I had a lot of questions for our date three nights from now.

Vik said, “Take a moment, and then meet me at my quarters for dinner?”

Clearly, it wasn’t an order, which was good.

“I’ll be there soon.”

I headed to my quarters, to take a sonic shower, just in case things went how I thought they would, I wanted to be fresh, and to clear my mind of the day’s work…