Rett stilled his thoughts as he stared out into the abyss that was space. All around him was the emptiness of vacuum that he had lived in for most of his life. In his humanoid fighter [HF], through the direct neural link, he felt the coolness of space as he gently drifted with the gravity field of his assigned ship.

Farrah had been kind enough to cut him out of communications as she interpreted all the information until the time came for them to leave.

It was much like simply floating in the water, the serene peacefulness that came from graviton drifting. The fun fact about graviton fields was that it was a lot like water. You could float in it, move through it and, most importantly, fly through it.

His retinal information display indicated his other five teammates floating around as well. Well three of them were floating, two of them were dancing. He smiled as he knew that Sonia and Jerreck were exerting their love of drift dancing. Alicia, Leonard, and Maxmoff were simply floating with him.

“Pickup is here,” Farrah simply said as she passed along the location.

Rett blinked as the telepathic message slipped into his head. Her tone was as gentle and musical as ever as it washed across his mind. He wondered when the jarring invasiveness had disappeared. When they had first started to work together he found her mental touch like sandpaper. Now it was so subtle he sometimes forgot who was thinking what.

He looked over to where his partner had indicated and nodded as he saw the patrol corvette exit the Nadeshiko and flew his fighter over. The side bay of the automated corvette was open and Rett simply waited for everyone first and then entered.

The inside was a simple, spacious humanoid fighter bay. The other five were simply drifting into their chosen stalls and by process of elimination, Rett found his stall at the far end. He drifted over and aligned his unit while backing up into the anchor point.

With the ease of practice, his HF smoothly slid into the stall and the bay magnets activated to do the rest. With a dull thunk, his HF-188 now adhered to the fighter stall and he relaxed as his systems entered a diagnostic nap.

Rett sighed as he lifted his chin all the way up, looked to the left, and slowly rotated his head right. The dull crack of his neck alleviated the pressure and he then simply let his head rest against the headrest. It was always an odd, draining sensation as his mind separated from the HF. It felt like he was partially shrinking and partially disorienting as his senses left the hyper-sensitive HF sensors and realigned with his own basic, human ones. It reminded him of getting out of the warm pool and onto cool, dry land.

Farrah smiled as she disabled her safeties and began to move out of her seat. Though the HF had entered its nap, her mind was still firmly connected to her partner and she snaked three arms forward to touch and hold her partner.

With the arms in place, Farrah simply used her other five arms to lift and drag her body over to Rett and they embraced. When she was firmly secured in his arms, she used two arms, and their suckers, to pepper him with light kisses.

Rett tried to fight them off as they tickled but her other six arms had wrapped around him and pinned him into place. He had a brief thought of activating his armor’s helmet but decided against it. It might pinch one of her arms and she would go from nervous to murderous.

Her arms tightened and Rett grunted as the corvette ignited its primary engines and began its short journey to the edge of the Nadeshiko’s g-field where it could begin its loop jump. With the patrol class of corvettes, their engines were powerful and it wouldn’t take long to reach the outer edges of the g-field.

Rett snuggled with Farrah as she essentially began to wrap more tightly around him. She hated loop jumping and it showed. Rett smiled as he gently ran his hands over her body. Even over her combat armor, he could recall the silk smooth texture of her skin and her large, beautiful eyes.

His thoughts and feelings washed over her like the waves on a beach. With each caress, with each thought, it ebbed over her fears and her mind soaked them in. She held onto them for the pillars of devotion that they shared.

Rett tensed but suppressed all negative thoughts and began to count up after the corvette slowed to a stop. Farrah unfortunately did the same but her fears also kicked in as the hum of the special engines begun to wind up. The sound slowly intensified and with each acute rise in decibel of the engine, so did Farrah’s hugging wrap slowly turn into a crushing grip.

It was at the count of two hundred and one when his armor had activated its physical defense barriers that Rett remembered why the Selk-Trigans were feared for their close combat abilities. The engine was all but a shrill, piercing scream and Farrah was only a gibbering mess.

Huh, only two hundred and two today... He felt the world begin to desync and reshape. Farrah’s mind hardened, which made her tighten up just a touch harder and Rett sighed as he lapsed into unconsciousness.

**

The comms woke him up and his internal systems linked him up to the now active HF. The comm chatter was busy with Leonard leading a simple betting pool on how long before he woke up. “Pools at 36 credits.”

Rett stopped blinking as he slowly looked down at his partner.

“Sorry,” Farrah bashfully thought out as she ran her arms over his midsection. Even with his combat armor, he knew he would probably be bruised. Which was impressive as he had upgraded to the newer modules with better protection against constriction.

Rett smiled as he leaned down and gave a kiss. He never said he forgave her. Nor would he ever since he saw no issues with her fears. Lots of people had an issue with loop jumping. Hell, after all these years of experiencing it and her, he probably would soon have phobias about it too.

Farrah smiled and gave him more kisses as she unwound all other arms and moved herself up. The minor gravity of the corvette allowed her to practically slide into her own seat as her arms moved around the cockpit. Once seated, her systems flared to life and her internal systems synced up. As the navigator, her job was to interpret all information and relay it to him. His was to not die and do stuff. A simple and effective team if she had any say in it.

The HF fully activated and the holding magnets deactivated in response, allowing them to clumsily drift in the corvettes' weak internal g-field. Rett easily moved out of his stall and out towards the two exits. As he left the corvette, his comms flared up with jeering and the high pitched cheers of Sonia and Jerrick as they had won the pool.

The two gave each other a soft high five and pushed each other away. From there, the other five shot off to their assigned tasks. The power of the modern HF spatial engine had them vanish from visual sight within a minute.

Farrah quickly read into the data and fed him their mission. Search areas F to J for possible causes for the blip that caught on the Nadeshiko’s dragnet. Rett was fed coordinates for possible their matching items and they set off.

This was a low key mission and as a result, only a half-squad was dispatched. Find the source of the blip, make a note, and return to the fleet. Or, contact fleet and have them make the judgment.

Rett raised his head, cracked his neck, and began manual movements. The rickety, uncivilized flight of unassisted flight was as barbaric as it sounded. He needed his own spatial engine to actually move itself and the motions were all linear.

Rett’s mouth twitched upwards as the corvette’s AI sent out a simple ‘Good Luck!’ message with a smiley face. He had seen over a hundred thousand of these and he still found out that he could still be amused by them.

Farrah quieted down as her consciousness mixed with the onboard AI and this left Rett to himself for the most part. Their main connection would come in times of strife or peaceful periods where she wasn’t caught up on their mission.

“Reaching point F”

Rett cracked his neck as he expanded his senses and looked. Point F was full of nothing. Or at least he felt it was full of nothing. He really couldn’t tell as Farrah was in charge of all of the advanced sensors. Those complex data streams were too much for his fragile human mind to fully understand.

He slowed down as he reached the point indicated and hit more nothing. The slow stop was a skill that he had taken a bit to master. Most rookies tried to do a hard brake and it was bad for both the fighter and the pilot. Well marginally bad as it mainly just looked funny as you suddenly jerked to a stop and it messed with your internal organs enough to either pass out or vomit.

“Point F clear. Let’s go-to point G,” Farrah messaged out with a giggled as her mind picked up on Rett’s first hard stop. The vomit was everywhere! The staff had also splattered on her and, if she recalled properly, even the cleaning machine broke down that day.

Rett sighed as his mind picked up on her amusement. ‘It happens to everyone!’ He grumbled to himself as he interpreted the coordinates and began to fly over. The HF hummed and Rett couldn’t help but smile. This moment didn’t happen often, but the symphonic hum of the synchronized systems was music to ears.

Wings. That was what the HF meant to him. It was the wings the enabled Farrah and him to fly through the skies of any world and any situation. That elation of freely moving through the skies, to travel over the land of the beautiful world and even the rare stars that still dotted the night sky.

It was a freedom that allowed his mind to clear and a joy to bubble from somewhere deep inside him. It was a craving that all HF pilots shared, the need to fly that made them so well suited to their jobs. Well, to be fair any fellow pTera’es could do an equally thorough, if not better, job but they, unfortunately, didn’t synchronize with modern variable HF at all. Something to do with their mentality or so…

“Reaching point G,”

Rett refocused his thoughts and stared out into the darkness. He slowed to a stop and, as usual, saw nothing. “Farrah, what is our search and locate ratio?”

“We have a current ratio of 0.08%. Below overage by 0.01%. To date, we have completed 121, 873 search missions. Of the 9,749 discoveries, only 18 have been relevant to Nadeshiko’s mission. Of the 18, we found an interesting, but broken, archeological grade prototype HF.”

Rett blinked as Farrah dumped way too many statistics into his head. He grinned as he recalled the feeling of elation to find something worth reporting. That old junker was definitely old and bulky. He was glad he had a 188th generation HF versus that whatever grade.

“Central had identified it as a 3rd generation variable fighter. The VF project only had 7 generations before the project was folded into what we consider the modern humanoid fighter project.” Farrah explained as she brought up the public and military files of the unit.

“Neat,” Rett whispered out as he looked around his cockpit in comparison to the VF. His spherical space that was his cockpit was vastly larger than the narrow systems of old. With tight confines and gigantic but simplistic control systems taking up all the space.

Modern construction held his seat at the center, Farrah’s seat behind him, and the central nervous control system around below him. Covered with the modern ceramic armoring, he was well protected and well prepared to face anything and everything.

The thought of piloting constructed out of something soft as wurtzite titanium made him shudder in fear. How brave were those pioneers to go out into the dangers of space in such fragile materials?

“Point G, clear. Point H please.”

Rett absently changed course as he continued to look into the file. The last time this specific VF was used was almost a millennia ago. He wondered what they would think of the modern stuff now. Spatial engines, printed atomic ceramic materials, energy-based weapons, and shields.

“They would probably think it was magic, much like how we view the 189th specs,” Farrah chipped in as Rett’s mind turned into a drooling pool of mush.

The new sleek design, the revised spatial engine, the higher outputs of weapons, and movement!

Farrah rolled her eyes as Rett’s thoughts filled with various theoretical statistics of the next model. While she was looking forward to it as well, she was a big fan of the redesigned seats, but even she was impressed with his ability to rattle off random facts.

Her thoughts took a depressive turn as she had to once again accept that her partner’s love of HF somehow overtook other things like the date of their anniversary. She almost grumbled but dropped it as she instead tapped into his good cheer.

Most of the recon missions were boring enough before the gripping started. She heard legends that they got better after a quarter-million completed but she somehow doubted they were true.

Farrah shifted two of her three focuses inwards, using the internal systems to check up on Rett. His systems were all green and he was grinning ear to ear as he caught up on the newest tidbits of the 189th.

A single-arm snaked out and before it even touched him, he had reached out to grab it. He pulled it out to his face and planted a kiss absently as his eyes never left the slowly scrolling technical readout.

Farrah smiled as her arm wrapped its tip around his hand. Maybe. Just maybe the legends were exaggerated, but her current situation wasn’t a trial by any stretch either. She could definitely do another quarter-million with him.

**

The corvette came into view and Rett sighed in relief. His reserves were almost empty and having no power would suck since they were stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

Farrah quickly sent out their ID codes and the selected passcodes. The AI quickly received and responded to the messages, sending back it’s customary ‘Welcome Back!’ with a larger smiley face.

With the protocols fulfilled, Rett huffed as the HF entered the g-field. The g-field systems synced right away and his nearly depleted reserves began to fill. Maybe coming back at full speed wasn’t the smartest choice in terms of power efficiency but at least he was on time this mission.

Farrah was deep in thoughts as she sent over a simplified update. The assigned points were, as per usual, full of nothing.

Rett used the corvette as a reference point flopped onto his back and simply began to drift lazily around as he was the first one back. “Hey, how long did we take?”

Farrah was silent for a few minutes as she was finishing up their reports. “36 and a half hours,” she replied absently as she focused on a more in-depth report.

Rett nodded as he reoriented the HF and lazily headed for the ship and their HF stall. The re-charge would transfer faster with a direct connection and, more importantly, Farrah and he could take a nap. ‘Urk!’

Rett’s eyes snapped open as he dazedly wondered what the hell was going one. Where they under attack?

It took a full three seconds before he realized that Farrah was attached to his chest. The fact that she had squeezed her eyes shut and had all eight arms around him triggered the rest of his senses.

The shrill pitch of a much larger spatial engine. The beginnings of a desyncing reality as the loop jump warmed up.

‘URK!’

The feeling of his protective armor’s anti constriction systems kicking in. Kicking in and apparently failing.

Rett tried to make a mental note about a refund but blacked out halfway when Farrah made a mental shrieking sound so intense that not only did it hurt, but he was sure everyone in the void filled corvette physically heard loud and clear.