Gavin's Tale: The Ghost Ship

''Lightning splits the sky and rolling thunder shakes everything from torrents of rain still falling to the foundations of the settlement's buildings on this distant frontier world. Wind whips through its dark alleyways, driving rain down in curtains to ripple across the flooded streets. You watch the raging storm in fascination, heavy droplets drumming in a roar of constant taps against the window pane beside your booth, but powerless to reach you in this cozy little pub where you've taken shelter.''

''Inside, the storm is drowned out by the voices of the patrons telling stories and laughing over one other, and the strum of a guitar from the man on a modest stage. Pipe smoke hangs in a haze around your head, but not unpleasantly. It mingles with the smell of pine from a primitive fireplace, and presses against you to draw the cold from your body like poison from a wound.''

''The cloud swirls as a few patrons applaud when the musician on-stage finishes his set, tipping the brim of his black baseball cap to the audience. He packs up his guitar and on his way down, you flip him a small credit chit with a flick of your thumb. He smiles, catching it with a wink, and stops to ask, ''"Mind if I join you for a spell?"

''You shrug and nod, and he sets down the guitar case, taking a seat across from you in the booth, motioning to the young waitress to collect his newly-acquired credits in exchange for a drink. He lays a hand on the wooden table and gazes out through the window.''

“Thanks. Heck of a night for a storm. Y’know what day it is by the military calendar, don’t you?” he asks. “October the thirty-first. That’s right. All Hallows’ Eve. And this planet’s kicked up some rightly fierce weather for the occasion. Ain't the worst storm I've ever seen, but come to think of it, worst I ever did see was around this time, too. Reminds me of a story. Something always does."

''The server-chan returns with a bottle of crystal-clear water, probably the least-dangerous drink you could ask for on a planet like this, and a couple of frosted glasses. The man pays her with a tip of his hat, a smile, and when that's not enough, the credit chit. He pours out some of that life-giving liquid into both glasses and takes a sip before continuing.''

“Strangest thing I ever saw was during a night like this. I’m a spacer, and my type go from one end of the galaxy to the other and see some pretty strange stuff, but even then, I like to think I’ve seen a bit more than my fair share. A Spartan that ain't heroic, planets that were built, and even a Kig-Yar brew that's almost fit for human consumption. But the strangest wasn't anything like that. Gonna be here a while to wait out the storm? I'll tell you all about it..."

It was back in the days I was working for the. They run the gúta’s share of cargo traffic between ag-worlds and the Inner Colonies, and just about every other job that needs a ship bigger than a skyscraper to move. Me, I wanted to fly freelance. Buy my own ship, be my own boss, the whole owner-operator deal. Turns out freelance flying’s less about taking the jobs you please and more every contract you can scrape up, but until such time, I had to pay my dues and work up the money to buy a ship of my own.

I spent just about every day on a ship back then. Soon as one DCS ship would touch down in port, I’d sign up for a shift on the next freighter lifting off that day. It meant no vacations, but I didn’t have to pay for room and board since the captains provided, and I didn’t mind ‘cause flying was what I loved, and is to this day. I was working through the ranks pretty quick, starting off at deck hand, up through crew chief and made co-pilot in ’55 after just a few months.

Around early October that year, I was working a space lane called the Alps Crossing, named ‘cause the New Carthage-based Hannibal Weapons corporation was paying a lot for ships to fly their merchandise between there and the distribution centers on Rōma, and some history buff just couldn’t let the reference go.

At the time, I’d worked as the co-pilot of a ship called the Mighty Mercury for a few consecutive runs. I liked the crew, and I liked the ship, a big 9000-series Rhodes Collosi Shunter, which could bully around more than ten times its weight pretty quickly in orbit on account of its massive engines. I'll tell you, I slept soundly knowing I was safe aboard that thing.

We landed in the city of Kotka and had to lay over a night because our shipment wasn’t ready yet. But come morning, the crew all rubbed the sleep out of their eyes, got the cargo loaded, and powered up that ship in plenty of time. And just then, the weather started kicking up.

Now, to some people, storm season on New Carthage is like a religious experience. Clouds come in off the seas dark and thick with rain, and enough lightning in ‘em to put Zeus to shame. It's a sight to see, like the gale we're waiting out now, but this was something else altogether. Just stepping outside was like standing under a waterfall, but the sky was still bright ‘cause the lightning never seemed to stop. Its branches crawled around behind the clouds near-constantly, shining through with the purple color of dark magic.

It scared us halfway to death just looking at it. But we pretended like it didn't; Hannibal wanted those guns off the landing pad that day, and we had our lightning rod set up, so we thought we’d be bragging about it in the bars of Rōma before we knew it. I went up into the cabin alongside the captain, he took the throttle in an iron grip and pulled eight hundred thousand pounds of steel and rocket fuel off the ground.

Water was sluicing off the bow and windshield in waves big enough to surf, and wind was trying to outdo the crash of thunder following every lightning flash that did its best to blind us. The captain, a man by the name of Walton, was fighting with that control yoke, and he wasn’t any kind of pushover. He was an ex-marine with more muscle on his body than a spacer who's got to consider his weight for breaking orbit has right to, and that throttle was still shaking in his grip like it’d been possessed by the living will of the storm.

Who or whatever was really in control, we'd managed to keep on-course for breaking orbit as we started up through the cloud layer, and that's when it happened. First sign something was up was the proximity alarm warning us there was another ship in the sky. I thought it had to be a glitch caused by the storm; dispatch was in touch with every ship on the planet or in its orbit, and they'd told us we were gonna be alone up there. I double-checked our sensors, but sure enough, there was a signature, just about a thousand kilometers ahead of us.

When I looked back up at the window, we caught our first glimpse as it hurtled out of a nightmarish dreamscape of clouds shaped by the storm. At such a distance, we could only see it as a speck, but a speck a shade darker than the depths of space and tearing free of the last haze clawing at it like the clouds were trying to hold it back. It was on our exact course in the opposite direction, cleaving through the storm with the wind not so much as shaking it a bit. My hand shot to the tethered COM on the dash and I sent out a hail on every frequency, telling that ship to alter course. If they heard me, they weren't showing it, just kept barreling down toward us.

Walton tried to abort our run and threw his whole weight against that control yoke, but the storm wouldn't let it go. He might as well've been trying to reign in a rodeo bull. A collision in-air, below orbit, where even if you survive the impact you’ll be thrown back a thousand meters to the ground, is one of every spacer’s worst fears, and I ain’t ashamed to say that I was screaming into that mic for the other ship to break off.

Both ships were bearing down on each other at kilometers per second, and we were getting nothing from our dispatch or the other ship as we closed in. I tried to shut my eyes for what I thought would be the moment when the cabin crumpled and exploded around me, but, just as that ship would've blown right through us, it vanished, leaving us with the sky to ourselves again.

After we had the wits to think again, I rechecked our sensors. Nothing. The ship had simply vanished into thin air in the midst of miles of open sky.

That take-off shook us up proper. When we made Rōma, Walton wouldn't go back right away. Said he'd take at least a week of vacation before even considering picking up his next cargo. Me, I wasn’t letting one incident stop me. I'd seen and heard about plenty of things just as strange, even if half of them were probably all talk. I know an AI that loves messing with meatbags, me specifically, and I wouldn't have put it above her to mastermind a prank like that. I still needed a paycheck, and Walton was no longer offering. After we offloaded and got our share, I put in a transfer request to the DCS office for the soonest possible opportunity. I was in luck; a ship would be lifting off the very next day. I Chattered with the captain and she let me spend the night in my new bunk instead of paying for a hostel.

Shanice was a grand old gal, flying in the days when I'd still been learning what a slipspace drive was. Her ship was just a run-of-the-mill DCS-class freighter, but that hadn't stopped her from using it during the Human-Covenant War to drop supplies to refugees even under Covie fire. I told her about what happened to me, and we proceeded to stay up long into the night swapping stories. Somehow, that old lady was still up and set to jet before I was.

Breaking out of Rōma’s orbit, I’ll admit I felt no slight amount of dread, but everything went smooth and we made the slip out-system with a quick prayer to Saint Elisa. It was after we were free of slipspace and started our re-entry over New Carthage that the alarm started blaring again.

This time, we didn’t see it until that black spot burst out of the clouds below, coming on fast with its nose aimed up like a hunting dog pointing at game. Shanice locked her throttle in a deathgrip and yelled at me to get myself to an escape pod, but before I even had the time to think of it, the ship disappeared again, without a trace, just the moment before it would have run right into us.

I’d had it after that. Shanice, the tough old gal, headed right back out, but I stayed with my feet planted firmly on New Carthage for a while. I started to think I might be cursed, and I can see you laughing at the idea, but I’ll tell you, I used to laugh at superstitious old spacers myself. Not anymore. I know they’ve got plenty reason to be.

I spent the rest of the month working as a dock hand in Kotka, and was in a bar like this on Halloween night when I heard the news. There’d been a mid-air collision between craft. A dozen spacers were dead, including the captains of both ships.

One of those captains was Walton, and the other had been Shanice.

''The man drains the last of his water and reveals a hint of a smile as he sets the empty glass back down. He stands, picking his guitar case off the floor.'' “I don’t know just what I saw in those skies, but I know one thing for sure. I don't let my landing gear leave the ground on Halloween night.”

Happy Halloween :)