Free Dreaming of Atmosphere by Jim C. Wilson Page B

without being in the right mind to do so.”
    “We don’t have much time. Max said I need to get sorted or I could cause people to get hurt if I’m not one hundred percent.”
    “Is that how this happened?” she gestured at my shoulder. “You weren’t one hundred percent when this happened and this is the result?”
    “No, I was good. I was solid then.”
    “So this wasn’t your fault? You didn’t screw up?”
    “No…no I....”
    “So what makes you think being one hundred percent can prevent something like this from happening?”
    “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
    “It wasn’t your fault. What happens to the crew on this job probably won’t be your fault either. You can’t control every facet of cause and effect, you can’t predict fate or twist the forces of chaos to ensure we all go home alive.”
    “Well, no…”
    “So don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself. Just because you’re First Mate of the Dreaming of Atmosphere, or were a Corporal in the Star Marines, doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to get PTSD. You need to realise that you have an avenue to address it. It’s not a weakness, but the opposite! You survived!”
    I sat there, mulling it over. After a few more minutes of silence, she turned around and started fiddling with the console again.
    “You can talk to me any time you need to. Oh, what’s this mean?”
    I looked up at what she indicated, and saw that the sensors had picked up a contact on an intercept cause with us. That already raises a number of alarms in my head – ships don’t seek each other out by intercepting them, not unless it’s a pre-arranged rendezvous. There were very few legitimate causes for such an action. No, most likely it was hostile.
    “Probably a pirate.” I said, turning to my console and activating the general alarm. I grabbed the PA microphone, “Secure the ship for combat! All hands, close up at stations and report.”
    Zoe was wide-eyed and scared, staring intently at the systems console she was sitting at, for all the world looking like she was determined to do what was necessary. I smiled and put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped.
    “Zoe, your station is in med lab.”
    “Oh, I thought…”
    “Fel will want to sit there.”
    “Yes, okay. I’ll be going then.”
    She stood up and almost made to bolt out of the command module, then stopped and turned around and surprised me by giving me a short hug. Then she turned and ran, not looking back. Huh, maybe Max was right. I already felt a better.
    A moment later Max and the rest of the command staff entered the compartment and we sealed the hatch. The compartment lights dimmed as I switched my console to battle configuration, and turned a deep sapphire blue. Crege started a checklist with Fel, recording readings and activating various systems.
    “What have we got?” asked Max, turning her console into a multi-faceted sensor display.
    “One contact one point two million kilometres at red three zero, nine degrees north. Bearing indicates intercept in ninety three minutes twenty seven seconds.” What that meant was the contact was thirty degrees off our port bow, nine degrees above the solar plane. When trying to determine coordinates in a solar system, the easiest way is to reference the largest object in the system – the star. As most planet tended to orbit the star along a similar plane, space farers use this to determine if an object is above, or north, and below the solar plane, or south. Military vessels handled this differently, as they often needed to coordinate with multiple ships in a fleet, but independent ships like us only needed to coordinate everything with reference to ourselves.
    “Emissions?”
    “Only on S band, tracking data only.”
    “So he’s got weapons on us.”
    “He’ll have to brake soon if he’s going to expect to hit anything at that speed. We’ll know if he intends to shoot first rather than talk in about…seventeen