4 Tengshe Planetary System

After negotiating my way through the space traffic, my war cruiser exited out of the interstellar speedway to begin the jump sequence to our destination.

A bright burst of bluish light appeared nearby, another ship nearby started their jump sequence. I waited for them to enter as part of the regular hyperspace jump etiquette.

Two wormholes opening in the same fabric of space can tear into each other with serious damage dealt to both ships.

With no one else around, I started up the hyperdrive engines once the first wormhole vanished.

A greenish web-like crack of a wormhole appeared in front of my war cruiser. Wispy tendrils stretched out from the crack, tearing a larger hole in the dark fabric of space, a stabilisation phase of the wormhole to form a super cosmic highway tunnel.

A puddle-like entrance opened, pulling my war cruiser into the wormhole's thirsty mouth. In a blink of an eye, the wormhole shitted my ship out at the other end, just at the outer boundary of the Tengshe planetary system.

Unlike most planetary systems, snaking nebula clouds surrounded the Tengshe system instead of asteroid belts.

The illuminating nebula clouds in their pastel colours appeared in front of my front viewer. Beautiful as they were, entering a glowing nebula cloud meant going straight into the eye of the storm.

The Nuwans strictly regulated the specially shielded tour ships, which may skim past the nebula clouds surrounding the Tengshe system.

Any exploding tour ships would deal an enormous blow to the Nuwan space tourism economy.

Two tour ships passed my front viewer, skirting the stringy edges of the nebula creating a few sparks, to thrill their space tourists.

"Idiots," said Arabaki, now a glowing obelisk of droids standing next to my pilot's chair.

The droid swarm stayed together to generate a protective shield like a safety blanket.

"If you stay shielded each time we go past a nebula cloud, how do you expect to pilot this ship in the future?" I asked.

"Neah, I don't want to fry my circuits," Arabaki replied. "Tengshe has the most volatile nebula clouds around these parts."

"Then what's the use of my war cruiser's dark matter shields then?"

"Dark matter shield modulates the positive and negative charge to neutral," answered Arabaki.

I rolled my eyes at the missed point and retorted, "for protection. You are not the only one with circuits."

"Hey, whatever you want to do is your choice."

The illuminating colours of the nebula clouds came from highly charged clouds of moving gas and dust of varying masses. Negative-charged particles moved across the cloud, creating bursts of electrostatic electricity when they interacted with positive-charged particles.

Moving through the clouds meant moving more particles in the nebula, which created more violent bursts enough to cripple a ship or blow it up.

Most experienced pilots won't enter a nebula cloud unless forced to.

I lost count of how many times we've been to Tengshe. I rechecked the navigation control on the front viewer.

<Thrusters: online>

Only the Nuwans and my species have the technological knowledge to use dark matter shields in the galactic quadrant.

"Remembered how to manoeuvre into nebula clouds?" I asked as the ship came to a full stop outside before the welcoming filaments of the nebula cloud.

"No use of main, starlight and hyperdrive engines or we'll blow up. Maintain constant gliding movement and stop in front of any energised streaks. And full dark matter shields to minimise moderate electrostatic bursts?" Arabaki replied.

"Yup," I nodded at Arabaki's answer. "So hold on to the ride."

"Wait… what're you doing? Aren't you going to navigate manually?"

I shook my head. The last few manual nebula piloting were for Arabaki's learning benefit.

"Strap in for the ride," I said as I leaned back against the plush padded pilot seat and pressed on the neural link button on the side.

[Welcome back, Space Punk] the mainframe displayed a large yellow welcome sign across the front viewer.

"Oh shit," Arabaki cursed. "You are going to joy ride this, aren't ya?"

I ignored Arabaki.

A metallic tube of encased cybernetic wiring rose from the back of the seat, and attached to the neural link of my neck, synchronising the mainframe of the war cruiser to the core neural chip in my brain. A forcefield rose around me to secure my position.

"I need a shield around me too," I replied. "Besides, using the neural link to pilot is much faster."

A series of commands displayed on the front viewer ran the final diagnostic checks.

The deck dimmed as the thrusters fired up. I am no longer the pilot but part of the war cruiser as we moved into the nebula.

***

After dancing around the nebula clouds, I switched back to the manual controls once the war cruiser exited the nebula cloud. Arabaki stood as an obelisk stuck to the floor of the deck.

The force field disappeared and the metallic tube withdrew to the back of the seat.

Had Arabaki been an actual living creature, the droids would shake in fear. Maybe I should add such a code to the droids' reactions for fun.

From afar, the front viewer zoomed onto a large elongated Nuwan Imperator ship accompanied by two battle cruisers, half its size, and five scouts heading towards the planetary coordinates.

The Nuwan Imperator ship is a battle fortress class ship, only used by the Nuwan ruling elite and manned by a crew of two hundred. My war cruiser is twenty times smaller than the Imperator ship.

The entire fleet regiment moved in group formation with the bluish lights and radiation rebounding off the shields, in a play of light like an aurora swirling around their bodies. They moved gracefully above the planet which was designated as a parking space for my war ship

Fuck, I cussed.

"I guess your old friends are here to see you," Arabaki said. "AGAIN."

"I have no friends," I replied.

"They better be friendlies, coz that whole troupe there can blow us out of this dimension."

I narrowed my eyes at Arabaki for pointing out the obvious.

"This is Fleet Commander Long of Nuwan Imperator to Kamuy war cruiser, come in," a male voice echoed loudly over my transmitter.

I heaved a sigh. If I didn't need a parking space away for this war cruiser, I wouldn't bother to turn up in Nuwan space.

"Kamuy war cruiser to Fleet Commander, here. Over," I replied.

"Senator Zhuyin will like a word with you aboard our ship. Shall we transport you using the molecular—"

I was open to new technologies but the idea of scrambling my molecules via a beam from a distance, and then rebuilding the molecules in my body - NO WAY am I going to allow that. I don't even know the effects of a molecular transport beam on the atomites in my body.

"No, I will go over there with my war cruiser."

"Commander Long to First Ranked General Tuku Genja, we will send you the automatic sequence to dock."

"Kamuy war cruiser to Fleet Commander Long. I'm no longer in the military," I replied while watching the transmitting automatic docking sequence on the front viewer. "My war cruiser is more like a mobile space recreational home."

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