But What Will The Gods Eat Tomorrow?

Maybe I can come up with something."

I waited, but Tempest seemed to be done talking. "The alarms?" I prompted. "Why did they go off?"

"You really wanted to know?" Tempest asked. "I wasn’t sure if that was another of your rhetorical questions." I clenched my jaw tightly and felt a vein in my forehead throbbing. Apparently, the biometric readers warned Tempest of the problem because he chose to answer without additional comment. "The first siren was to inform us that we had reached our destination. The second let us know that the Aardvark was doing an intense sensor sweep of the asteroid belt."

"Wonderful."

"I knew you’d feel that way."

I considered our options. "Take us behind that asteroid," I told Tempest, pointing toward a large, irregularly shaped mass of dense rock, "and launch a mooring cable. Then power down all systems except minimum life support."

"I hope you know what you’re doing, Jonny."

"Me too, Scrapheap."

For once, Tempest did as he was told and led the Dragon behind the asteroid. "How is this going to help?" he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper as if the Aardvark could hear us through the vacuum of space.

"Fleet sensors detect a wide variety of energy signatures, but heat and electromagnetic fluctuations are what they’re designed to look for. I’m hoping we can hide here until the sweep passes, and then, after the convoy is past, fly the Dragon into the engine wash of the last freighter."

"It’s gonna be hot in the engine wash," Tempest pointed out. "And if you want to escape detection, we won’t be able to use the energy fields to deflect the heat."

"I know. You think the ship can take it?"

"I’m not worried about the ship, Jonny. It’s your health whi–" All of a sudden the console before me began to whine very loudly. I imagined Tempest grinding his teeth in fury. "One of these days this FEDs programming is going to fry my matrix!"

"Don’t worry about it, Toolbox!" I said, unsuccessfully trying to hide how much I was enjoying his discomfiture. "You’re not going to convince me any time soon that you’re concerned for my well-being. It’s not worth blowin’ a gasket over."

The whine faded and I looked at the vid screen. The convoy was approaching fast, and the Aardvark’s scans were getting close. "Hopefully, it won’t take them too long to get to Vartherik II, and we’ll be out of the heat before I suffer too much." Around me, the Dragon began to power down, leaving only the most essential systems functioning. The engines grew still, and the faint, ever-present hum disappeared. I cocked my head to the side. True silence sounded strange to a person who spent his life aboard spaceships.

We still had a while before the convoy passed. I reached to my left and flipped the switch to my reading light. It came on, soft and white, barely bright enough to illuminate the console in front. Groping under the pilot’s seat, I pulled out the volume I’d been reading to pass the time. High Command’s Official Guide to Inter-species Diplomacy – Making Friends and Confusing Enemies, 410th Edition.

It had been a very boring trip.

I leafed through the manual for some time, until a weak, buzzing beep came from the console. "I shut down the power to the entire console," Tempest lamented, "and the klaxons are still going off. The Aardvark’s sensor scan will pass over us in a few seconds. You sure you don’t want to nova out of here?"

"If we go back now, High Command’s just going to send us on a tougher mission."

"I guess you have a point," Tempest admitted.